Emerson Elementary is losing most of its teachers next week

Somewhere between 10 and 15 teachers have reportedly resigned from Emerson Elementary School effective at the end of the school year.

By my count, that’s most of the teachers at this little neighborhood school in Rainier Beach. And if it's most of them, that means my son’s kindergarten and first-grade teachers are probably among the soon-departed.

Emerson lost former principal Farah Thaxton to the same position at West Woodland Elementary about a year ago now, so current principal Andrea Drake is days away from the end of her first school year.

There's been a different energy this year, and what feels to an outsider-looking-in like lower expectations school-wide, but if my son is a representative sample, the kids have no idea they're about to lose their teachers.

I don’t know much about this situation yet, so I don’t really know what to make of it except that it hits close to home. It doesn’t take much squinting to see this mass exodus as a sign that something is very much not right at Emerson. It could also mean the new principal is pushing such changes as to alienate her stagnant teachers. It could mean any number of things. I don’t know.

I do know that it’s been a bit of a leap of faith sending Julian to Emerson in the first place. Just about everyone in the neighborhood with the means and/or system wherewithal to opt out of their neighborhood school has done so.

Of course, most of them don’t seem much happier or more assured than we feel with Emerson. Orca and SouthShore are the two most common alternatives, and while they’re on steadier footing than Emerson, they’re suffering from the same south-end disparity and from calling a dysfunctional district home.

To its credit, the school has been safe and welcoming for my son, and he goes to school with a truly diverse group of classmates -- and research has shown that going to school with a diverse student population is actually connected to positive outcomes for students.

So far, it's been fine. He says he wants to stay. It's working for us.

But now most of the teachers are leaving. So, I don't know.

I’ll find out more soon about what’s happening at Emerson, and I’ll write about it.

In the meantime, what’s happening at your school? What’s the story nobody is telling? What’s missing that nobody is talking about?

Or better yet, what’s working? What is your school doing to help insulate itself, to reach all students, to stand up for families?