Congrats and Big Thank Yous

The School Board had some interesting moments last night and I'll write an update on that later.

But I did want to call out some really great acknowledgments last night from both the district and the Board.

The Family Support Worker program had a segment where they acknowledged four groups (among many) who have been a huge help in their work.  They are:
  • Theraputic Health Services which has provided a full-time mental health worker at Madrona K-8 since 2009.  They allowed Madrona staff to be part of the interview process.  The director at THS, Norm Johnson, was noted as someone who went out of his way to help (he also organized a conference for FSW going into the MSW program at UW).  In receiving the praise, he said not to just look at what is offered in their brochure but if you need something, ask about it.   What a guy and what a great organization.
  • The Assistance League of Seattle and their Operation School Bell program provided new coats and other clothing to 1300 SPS elementary students this year.  They have been partnering with SPS since 1990.  
  • Northwest Harvest and its 3 Squares program has also been an SPS partner for years.  They delivered 67,000 lbs of food just this year for students (and their families) at 15 SPS elementaries.  They even looked into the make-up of each school's population to try to guide the food they gave out to try to serve ethnic food desires.  
  • Windemere Foundation and offices have also helped SPS since 1990.  For this school year they gave $20k to help families in crisis pay bills.  
Thelma Payne and Janet Preston of the SPS Family Support Worker program gave out the awards which were jars of "hugs and kisses"  (Hersheys kisses).   All the reps from these great community groups noted the important and invaluable work of the Family Support Worker program. 

Director Patu also spoke about the donation of 1,000 pairs of shoes from Tom's Shoes to Van Asselt and Emerson students.  (Credit to the Family Support Worker program who organized the distribution of all those shoes.)  

A huge THANK YOU to all these programs for their support of Seattle Schools' families.

Congrats
  • Jesse Markowitz from Garfield High who has been a global ed advocate since she was 9 and recently received an award for her world from the Hasbro Action Heros program in NYC.  Jessica founded Richard's Rwanda-IMPUHWE when she was 11 years old to support educational opportunities for young girls in the rural area of Nyamata, Rwanda.
  • At tonight's ArtWalk in Pioneer Square, art from students at Interagency will be displayed.  The ArtWalk is from 6-10 p.m. 
    Students' art are on the fourth floor of the Western Avenue Arts Building, 619 Western Ave.
     
  •  Students from Ballard, Roosevelt, Cleveland, Ingraham and Garfield recently competed at the 11th Student Biotech Expo and did very well.  The list of projects and winners is impressive.

Comments

Ed Doc said…
Truly good news and important to celebrate such success stories. If we successfully clean up headquarters, our public schools can benefit from even more success stories and truly functional and consistent support from the district.

I believe it is worth noting that these wonderful things are happening in spite of the mismanagement from headquarters. Too many students are having needs unmet and services not provided to support success.
Susan said…
Do students at all high schools have the oppurtunity to participate in this event?
Biotech? I don't know. You'd have to ask your school's science department.
seattle citizen said…
And a congratulations to about thirty Ballard Biotech Academy students who went to Pullman on the 21st, joined hundreds of other Washington students in the Imagine Tomorrow competition, competed in four different categories of innovated technologies, and came home with a 1st place, a 2nd, a 3rd and an honorable mention.
seattle citizen said…
and congratulations to Melissa, who was profiled (because of her work in this blog) in Seattle Magazine - along with LEV, CPPS, the Alliance, Stand for Children and the PTSA - as one of the watchdogs, the education advocates, monitoring Seattle Schools (Charlie is mentioned as her co-blogger, so congrats to him, too!)
Here is the article.

In the part about SaveSeattleSchools, they acknowledge that Melissa works many hours a day on watchdogging SPS, and that "School board vice president DeBell, a regular reader of the blog, says he appreciates the level of detail provided by Westbrook and other bloggers on the site."

(I got a hoot reading about the Alliance (and also learned they are part of the "National Public Education Network", must research that, now!).
Most of the part of the article about them was devoted to how they "convened the Our Schools coalition, a network of 35 groups working toward a strong professional teacher corps in Seattle. 'We want a culture of high expectations at every level—teachers, principals, students, district administrators and community partners,' says [Sara]Morris...Morris says the alliance’s key achievement has been leading the vigorous community conversation about how great teachers are supported, compensated and evaluated.")

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