King County alternative school evicted

SEATTLE – Inside an old hangar at Boeing Field, students who have frustrated legions of teachers are sitting down to learn about brain synapses, algebra and aviation. For many, this is a last chance at education; leave Opportunity Skyway and they will confront life with few prospects for earning a high school diploma.

But King County, which has allowed the alternative school to operate at its airport rent-free for the past nine years, now says the program must leave, possibly by next month. There is no plan in place for a new site.

To the school’s principal and teachers, the upheaval seems oddly timed. In September, airport officials had welcomed these 170 students, assuring Principal Cindy Ortega that Opportunity Skyway would surely be part of the future at the sprawling site off Interstate 5.

Then, after one student was shot dead and three others wounded in gang-related attacks last month, including one at Southcenter mall, a county official called Ortega suggesting that she find another home for the program.

There had also been a brutal public beating in the school’s parking lot earlier this year, and staff at the airport maintenance plant next door were making increasingly angry complaints.

Though King County could collect about $140,000 in rent from a paying tenant on that site, money does not appear to be the problem.

“Our employees certainly read the newspaper like everyone else, and security concerns are on their mind,” said Harold Taniguchi, who oversees the airport as director of transportation for King County.

No prospective tenant is pushing to move in. But Taniguchi said plans for a change had been in the works since the beginning of the school year, largely because most of the 170 students at the would-be flight program are involved in studies that have nothing to do with aviation.

“I understand the concerns – they’re totally legitimate – but at the same time, these kids need to be in school,” said Ortega, who oversees Opportunity Skyway and 11 other alternative-education programs that handle students who have been kicked out of other programs, have juvenile records or are otherwise hard to place.

“They want to make something of their lives, but they don’t fit into the traditional school setting,” she said. “There is a huge danger that we’re about to have all these kids with nowhere to go.”

Many are gang-affiliated, said teachers, worried about the ramifications of leaving more than 100 such kids to the streets.

David Tucker, a spokesman for Seattle Public Schools, said educators hope to find a new site soon.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure that these students continue their educational journey,” he said. “Our goal is to make sure that every student graduates.”

At this point, however, Ortega’s best hope is to keep a few dozen teens at the site next semester, pursuing studies in aviation, while she scrambles to find someplace to house the remainder for the rest of the school year.

It may not be easy. Interagency schools, such as Opportunity Skyway, result from joint agreements between the school district and various outside agencies – usually the city, county or a social service provider – which agree to host students in their facilities.

“There’s nobody jumping up and saying we want these kids,” said Dan Richman, a teacher at the alternative program for eight years. “They’ve pretty much been rejected by the system. Most of them have been kicked out so many times that there is no other school that will take them.”

Many are resigned to living on the fringes. “One kid told me, ‘I’m just going to thug it out until the end,’ ” Richman said. “So part of what we’re trying to do here is develop a sense of community between different groups where there are hostilities.

“Some days, we’ve got 100 kids and they’re all working, and you just think, ‘Man, this is beautiful.’ ”

Other days are more chaotic. Still, 96 students graduated the program last year, all of whom passed the reading and writing portions of the WASL.

Ashton Leffall, 17, hopes to be one of them in the near future. A fast talker who keeps up a constant patter, Leffall bounced from Rainier Beach High School to an alternative program at the YMCA and a tour through Cleveland High before landing at Opportunity Skyway last year.“If I never came here, I probably would be a dropout,” he said.