May I have your attention please—Will the shut-down schools please stand up?
It was announced on Oct. 25, 2024, that four elementary schools are shutting down in the 2025-2026 school year: North Beach, Sacajawea, Stevens, and Sanislo. Out of the four schools shutting down next year, there is one that stands out to me the most, and it is Stevens Elementary.
Stevens Elementary, a kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary school, was named after Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Washington State’s first territorial governor. It opened its doors in 1906 and is considered one of the state’s historic schools. Although remodeled in 2001, it still retains many of its original features, like the hardwood stairways.
The reason why I want to focus on this school’s closure is because Stevens Elementary was the school I went to growing up in Capitol Hill, near the Hello Robins cookie shop and Miller Park. During my time at Stevens, I had a good experience.
My experience at Stevens took place during most of the 2010s, which yes, makes me seem young, but there was a lot of chaos that little me witnessed. I met so many people who I still try to keep in touch with these days, but a lot of our relationships have fizzled out over the years.
One of the wildest experiences I had was in the fifth grade. It was the big end-of-year trip that fifth graders would take to Camp Orkila, a camp on Orcas Island, offering a variety of traditional camp activities, but the school ended up losing funding for the trip. As a result, we held a protest at the school to try to get the camp funding back.
That ended up not working because it led parents to be the ones who paid for the camping trip behind the school’s back. Surprisingly, only 12 of us, including myself, decided to stay back because it felt a little sketchy to go to a camp where a lot of the fun, traditional activities were no longer available.
I have also seen a lot of teachers and staff retire or get fired throughout my time at Stevens, which has always been either bittersweet, or a “thank goodness” for a multitude of reasons.
It is going to be bittersweet to say goodbye to the school I grew up in, but it is not a particularly surprising goodbye, since there hasn’t been a lot of enrollment at the school since I was last there in 2016.
Author
As Rhiannon had done journalism in the past for her high school. She hopes to continue that path through the Collegian.
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