Our community rallied and made the voices of Roxhill heard, sharing their belief in the importance of art education. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Update: August 14, 2026
We want to share with our school community that, although we were not able to restore Ms. Binkow’s position to fulltime, we made our voices heard loud-and-clear by SPS leadership, and there’s more we can do to support Roxhill’s access to art moving forward.
Principal Bruno shared this update in the August 14 family news:
As many of you are aware, Roxhill received a notice of reduced staffing during our district’s June budget adjustment. Due to a projected drop in average annual full-time student enrollment, we lost a primary classroom teaching position. Because our specialists allocation is directly driven by the number of classrooms, this reduced our Art Teacher position to half-time. This was really difficult news to receive. The classroom position reduction did not impact current teachers as we had several staff making moves to other schools (or countries!) already for personal reasons.
We were overwhelmed with the outpouring of support for our Art Teacher, Ms. Binkow (pictured here). Our community rallied and made the voices of Roxhill heard, sharing their belief in the importance of art education. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Unfortunately, the reduction stands. Ms. Binkow has accepted another 0.5 elementary art placement and will split time between Roxhill and another SPS school. In accordance with state procedures and the SPS district-wide funding formula, average annual full-time student enrollment will be re-evaluated in early October. If we have an increase in enrollment, there is a possibility that the reduced positions would be restored at that time.
How You Can Help
With our current district-wide funding formula, classroom teacher positions and specialist positions are driven by enrollment.
- Share your experience at Roxhill with others, especially neighbors! We are a neighborhood school and most of our enrollment comes from within our attendance boundary. Folks rely on word-of-mouth, message boards on social media, and rating sites like GreatSchools [link added] when considering their options.
- Do you know someone outside our attendance boundary who is interested in attending Roxhill? Encourage them to apply for Roxhill through the Open Enrollment process in January.
- Do you know a neighbor with an incoming Kindergartner? Encourage them to enroll early! We get our first enrollment projections in February for the next school year and our school leadership team collaborates to create a budget based on those numbers. Early enrollment means we’re less likely to have changes in June or even October after the school year has begun.
- Support Roxhill’s enrollment efforts this winter. Be on the look out for school tour information, the annual SPS enrollment fair, and Kindergarten enrollment support sessions between November – January of this coming 26-27 school year. Join us and help spread the word!
Original Post: June 15, 2026
Roxhill just found out that Seattle Public Schools wants to reduce our Art teacher, Ms. Binkow, to a half-time position.
Please send an email TODAY so they consider family input before making their decision.
SPS is currently considering an appeal from our school. It is important that we as families and caregivers let the district know that we value having a full-time Art teacher.
Suggested Email Template
Use this template to send an email to the Seattle Public Schools school board members, Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, Chief Operations Officer Fred Podesta, and Visual and Performing Arts Program Manager Gail Frasier.
Be sure to fill in the blanks with your details!
If you can, please customize this email to include details about the personal impact of art education and Ms. Binkow on your student’s experience at Roxhill.
To:
liza.rankin@seattleschools.org,kesmith2@seattleschools.org,jllavallee@seattleschools.org,gktopp@seattleschools.org,vsmaritz@seattleschools.org,jemizrahi@seattleschools.org,eybriggs@seattleschools.org,boshuldiner@seattleschools.org,fhpodesta@seattleschools.org,ghfrasier@seattleschools.org
Subject:
Restore Roxhill Elementary’s full-time Art Teacher position
Dear Superintendent Shuldiner, Mr. Podesta, Ms. Rankin, Ms. Smith, Ms. Briggs, Ms. Topp, Mr. Mizrahi, Ms. Song, Ms. LaVallee, and Ms. Frasier,
I am writing to ask that you restore the Art teacher position at Roxhill Elementary to 1.0. It was by cut by .5 during the June Adjustment.
I am a parent of a _____ grader at Roxhill Elementary in West Seattle. One of the many things I love about our school are the enrichment programs such as art, music, PE, outdoor education, and more. This spring, our school already lost our .5 music teacher and now will also be losing .5 of our art teacher.
Please reconsider this decision with the points below in mind:
- Next school year, Roxhill will house 12 K-5 classrooms, including our Distinct SPED program. It is hard to imagine only 1 PE teacher and a .5 Art teacher being able to serve all of those classes equitably across the week.
- Reducing our Art teacher will mean that grade level teachers no longer share prep periods. We want our teachers to be able to have time within the workday to collaborate and plan with their counterparts, because we know that meaningful collaboration leads to better outcomes for our kids.
- Our Art teacher, Ms. Binkow, co-leads Roxhill’s MTSS efforts, leading to improvements in delivery of services and interventions to students who need them. There is no way she would be able to continue doing this as a .5 employee.
- Roxhill proudly serves a beautifully diverse population, including a high population of students designated as furthest from educational justice. We are a Title I school, and we have experienced so many staffing cuts over the past few years. Our school and teachers need stability and continuity, not to be asked over and over again to do more with less.
- Schools serving affluent populations in West Seattle have been using their PTAs’ fundraising power to buy up music teachers since they heard that their music programs would be cut. While Roxhill has an engaged and hard-working parent teacher organization, Friends of Roxhill, our community simply does not have the resources to even consider buying up staff.
Just last week, the Superintendent’s newsletter applauded the wonderful arts and music programming that SPS offers. Schools can only provide those enriching programs if they have the staffing to build out and sustain those programs. Cutting music and art staff at Roxhill directly undermines providing students across our district with equitable opportunities to engage in the arts.
Please reconsider the June Adjustment and reinstate Roxhill’s Art teacher to a full time position.
Thank you,
__________YOUR NAME___________
Parent of Roxhill ____ grader