Tiger Mountain Community High School will close after the 2015-16 school year, a plan that deviates slightly from the one proposed by the Issaquah School District’s superintendent.
Superintendent Ron Thiele had recommended the closure of Tiger Mountain at the end of the current year, but the Issaquah School Board voted 5-0 at its Oct. 22 meeting to delay the closure by a year and remove a gap in alternative education for district students.
The vote capped an eight-month process surrounding Tiger Mountain, which has served as the district’s alternative high school since 1991. Thiele’s plan, announced in February, would have closed the school at the end of the 2014-15 year and created a gap year before a new alternative school, under a different educational model, opens for the 2016-17 year.
Board members said the feedback they’ve received from Tiger Mountain staff, students and parents over the past several months was influential in their decision-making process.
“I’m not comfortable with the district not having an alternative option,” board member Suzanne Weaver said, adding that Tiger Mountain is “obviously is an option that’s working well for some kids.”
Several people spoke last week in favor of keeping the school open, including Mitchell Reed, whose daughter, Erica, attends Tiger Mountain. He argued the district’s plan to close the school was a deceitful — and possibly illegal — repurposing of a $3.9 million bond measure approved by voters in 2012.
The bond was designed to pay for the relocation of Tiger Mountain to the current Issaquah Middle School campus, and to expand the district’s career and technical education efforts.
The measure was overseen by Thiele’s predecessor, Steve Rasmussen, and while it didn’t specify closing Tiger Mountain in favor of a new educational model, Thiele said he came to that conclusion because of data like the school’s low graduation rates, test scores and attendance figures.
“I could not live with the results that I was seeing,” Thiele said.
Fewer than 100 students are currently enrolled at Tiger Mountain, but its close-knit environment has proven to be a safe haven for many students, several people stated.
“If we close the school, not only will fewer kids graduate, but in my opinion, there’s a real chance that the suicide rate in our community may increase,” Reed said.
Tiger Mountain senior Ivy Catlin, who has spoken to the board on several occasions, said last week the school has helped her in ways a comprehensive-school environment could not have.
“At Tiger, through the efforts of these teachers, I can tell you I’m engaged in my education,” Catlin said. “I’m not going to stop when they hand me that degree.”
District officials said most of the students enrolled there are on track to graduate by 2016, and the ones remaining at that time would be able to use personalized learning plans to help them graduate.
The district has been working for several months with the Puget Sound Consortium for School Innovation to develop a framework for a new alternative school.
Board members said they want to see a more inclusive plan that could work for more students who are at risk of not graduating. Issaquah, Liberty and Skyline high schools have added full-time staff positions this year to help those types of students, but many people have argued that the typical child in need of alternative learning won’t be helped at a comprehensive school.
Board member Lisa Callan said a new alternative school would provide “new tools” for reaching more students, and she didn’t want people to be “boxed into the idea” that Tiger Mountain was the only usable model for alternative education.
Closing Tiger Mountain a year later, Callan said, would help students transition into a new educational plan.
“I want you to have time to do that,” she told students at the meeting.
Board President Marnie Maraldo said the district has known for two years that Tiger Mountain would have to change. A big shift is on the horizon next year as all public schools in the state shift to a 24-credit graduation requirement for the class of 2019, a four-credit increase from Tiger Mountain’s current standards.
Although Maraldo voted for the amended plan, she also said she could support the idea to close at the end of this year because action needed to be taken quickly. The closure isn’t the students’ fault, she added.
“We don’t think it’s the failure of the current students,” Maraldo said. “We think it’s the failure of the district to address what’s going on.”