Seattle Schools Community Forum

Let the Legislators Know TODAY

2012-01-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

The next couple of days are very important to get bills out of committee in the State Legislature. If you believe charters would be wrong for our state, please contact the following members of the Legislature:

Hotline number - 800-562-6000 to leave a message for any legislator or committee

House Education Committee:
House Bill 2428

santos.sharontomiko@leg.wa.gov; She is the Chair and could be the most valuable to contact.
kristine.lytton@leg.wa.gov;
fred.finn@leg.wa.gov;
andy.billig@leg.wa.gov;
sam.hunt@leg.wa.gov;
connie.ladenburg@leg.wa.gov;
maxwell.marcie@leg.wa.gov;
john.mccoy@leg.wa.gov;
probst.tim@leg.wa.gov
bruce.dammeier@leg.wa.gov
glenn.anderson@leg.wa.gov
cathy.dahlquist@leg.wa.gov
john.ahern@leg.wa.gov
susan.fagan@leg.wa.gov
mark.hargrove@leg.wa.gov
brad.klippert@leg.wa.gov
kevin.parker@leg.wa.gov
jt.wilcox@leg.wa.gov

Senate Committee:
Senate bill 6202

Chair
Rosemary.McAuliffe@leg.wa.gov;
Vice Chair
Christine.Rolfes@leg.wa.gov;
Committee Members
Steve.Litzow@leg.wa.gov;
Tracey.Eide@leg.wa.gov;
joe.fain@leg.wa.gov;
Nick.Harper@leg.wa.gov;
andy.hill@leg.wa.gov;
Steve.Hobbs@leg.wa.gov;
king.curtis@leg.wa.gov;
sharon.nelson@leg.wa.gov;
Rodney.Tom@leg.wa.gov

What should you say? Here are some suggestions:

- The Legislature has been cutting K-12 funding the last few years. The state Supreme Court just ruled that the State is not fully funding our existing schools. How is bringing on-line more underfunded schools going to help?
- Where is the money (roughly $10-15M) to support this bill going to come from if you are cutting programs and there are no additional revenues coming in?
- This bill is really three bills in one - a charter bill, a "transformation zone" school bill and a parent trigger bill. Let them know that initiatives and referendums can't have multiple topics and neither should legislative bills.

This bill (among other things):

will cost school districts money. If a school loses students, they will lose teachers as well as money for other staffing positions like librarians, counselors and nurses
the bill does NOT provide enough measures to make sure that the majority of charter schools would be of the best quality to serve educationally disadvantaged students
the "parent trigger" portion of this bill is not strict enough. In California, it takes a majority of parents AND teachers to convert an existing public school to a charter. This measure only takes a majority of either group.
- This legislation does NOT provide for background checks and child abuse registry checks for charter school board members.
Allowing for-profit companies to run/manage public schools is a bad idea.
There is no clause for a trigger for review of a charter school if it drops below a certain number of students. Most charter laws do have a limit somewhere around 100 students.
It creates more administration at the state level. That's money that is NOT going into classrooms.
The bill allows for several types of authorizers but those authrorizers can then contract out their responsibilities to other employees or contractors. With this system, how does the public know who read and reviewed any charter proposal?
There is virtually no mention of parental involvement in this bill. There is no requirement for parents to be part of the process whether it is parents in a neighborhood where a school is to be located OR for parents whose child attend the school.
In talking about providing a plan for educationally disadvantaged students, the bill mentions, “student discipline for Special Education students.” Why are these students are called out specifically for discipline issues?

Charters have the right of first refusal to purchase/lease at or below fair market value, a closed facility or property OR unused portions of a public school facility or property if the district decides to sell or lease the facility or property. This means district-owned buildings would pass out of the hands of the district.

Open Thread Tuesday

2012-01-31T08:31:00.001-08:00

What's going on today?

What's going on with you?

Creative Approach MOU Put on Hold

2012-01-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

The Creative Approach MOU has been postponed from the Board agenda for this Wednesday's meeting.

It seems that the Board may have read the whole thing and realized that it was beyond tweaking and needs some serious thought.

Additionally, it seems like teachers and parents really have not heard/understood this issue and they really should as it could radically change some schools. I know that parents are busy and often can only devote attention to their own schools and miss these issues and then wonder what happened.

I appreciate the School Board wanting to get this right to benefit all the parties involved.

Good call on their part.

District Seeks Waiver for Snow Days

2012-01-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

From SPS Communications:

Rather than add days to the end of the school year, Seattle Public Schools is asking the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) for a waiver for the Jan. 19 and Jan. 20 snow days.

Gov. Chris Gregoire declared Washington in a State of Emergency for those days, prompting Seattle Public Schools to seek a waiver to not make up the Jan. 19 or Jan. 20 snow days. This is contingent on a decision allowing the Emergency Proclamation to apply to schools in King County. OSPI officials said they will have more information next month on how to apply for waivers.

It would cost Seattle Public Schools roughly $500,000 to make up the two days in June.

Seattle schools made up one of the three snow days on Friday, Jan. 27. State law does not require students to make up a day for Tuesday, Jan. 17, when students had a late arrival and an early dismissal.

Making up the time during mid-winter break is not an option, as families and staff have arranged their schedules around the school calendar, which was approved by the School Board in May 2011. That calendar, which is available online at http://bit.ly/DistrictCalendar, listed Jan. 27 as a weather make-up day, and up to three additional days are to be made up at the end of the school year.

The approved calendar for the 2012-13 school year shortens the mid-winter break, reducing it from a full week to four days over the Presidents Day weekend. The break includes the Friday before the weekend and Monday, Presidents Day, which is already a holiday and a non-school day.

Also, given the timing of the snow days last week, the District is extending the first semester three days, through Tuesday, Jan. 31. Second semester will start on Wednesday, Feb. 1.

Quick Updates

2012-01-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, budgets are now being developed at both the district and school levels. There is a WSS (Weighted Staffing Standards) Committee made up, I believe, of a several principals and staff members. At the budget work session last week, the principals spoke up and said they could not take any more cuts and, in fact, needed some money restored.

I wasn't at this Work Session but Dorothy Neville was and said you could hear the worry in their voices.

I do wonder what would happen if PUSH really did come to SHOVE. Meaning, what if district administration would give up something BIG to protect the schools? Like MAP or some athletics programs or ??? - you tell me.

If you are interested in the budget process, it will be the topic of discussion at the next Seattle Council PTSA meeting on Monday, Feb. 13th. Here's their blurb:

Join us at our next Seattle Council PTSA General Meeting where we will discuss the nuts and bolts of school allocations plus an update on the State Budget and how that impacts SPS. This is a great opportunity for PTA/PTSA Presidents, Treasurers, PTA Budget Committee members and BLT (Building Leadership Team) reps to understand school budgets. Been through school budgets lots of times before? Come share your experiences with PTSA leaders who are new to the process.

School Board President, Michael DeBell and Sherry Carr, School Board Chair for Audit and Finance, will be there to answer questions.

6:30-8:30 p.m. at the JS Center, Rooms 2772-2774

Thanks to reader Steve for this information.

Also, many of you have been letting me know about the Advanced Learning surveys that you have received via e-mail.

This is a survey developed by the Advanced Learning Taskforce. We are fortunate enough to have a professional on the team who wrote the survey so we hope it is better than the usual survey.

Note: different parents will receive different surveys. We have a survey for nearly every kind of parent so that we can shape the questions to their experience (as well as ask general questions on what they would like/change/keep). I am trying to get a live survey link so that as many people as possible can take it.

Seattle Schools This Week

2012-01-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

It's a fairly slow week.

Wednesday, Feb. 1st

- Work Session: Facilities from 4-5:30 p.m. No agenda available yet.

-School Board meeting from 6-9 p.m. Agenda. (note; normally SB meetings are two weeks apart but, because of the snow, this one occurs just one week from the last one on Jan. 25th)

The agenda includes:
- Creative Approach Schools MOU - as I previously mentioned I support this effort but it cannot go forward without the Board having some oversight ability. Without that, we are giving away our public schools and their oversight. Director Peaslee has introduced an amendment towards that end.
- The Waiver for Basic Instructional Materials policy. The agenda indicates that the action report and policy has been updated but I have not read it yet.
Director Peaslee is offering two amendments; one is to allow the school principal the right to appeal to the School Board if the Superintendent denies a waiver request. The other amendment is to allow the district funding (or grant funding) to be used to support materials for waivers for schools that cannot afford it.
-Approve a resolution in support of an application to OSPI for a new skills center program.
-Policy Book preamble (edited) as well as an amendment by Director Smith-Blum regarding community partners.
- Intro items include an agreement for work to be done at John Marshall for "reopening 2013 project", approval of Facilities Master Plan (which I haven't seen available yet), policy on visitors to schools and a couple of other policy revisions.

The John Marshall contract is for $250k (that's just for consultant fees for architectural and
engineering services). The rest of the contract details spending of about $2M mostly to fix electrical, mechanical and basics like flooring.

There are no Director Community meetings this Saturday.

Let the Board Know about the Glitch in Creative Approach Schools' MOU

2012-01-29T16:24:00.000-08:00

Mea culpa and it happens sometimes.

I didn't read through the MOU for Creative Approach Schools thoroughly and I missed a key point. It cuts out ANY oversight by the Board.

This is unacceptable.

We elect a School Board to have people accountable for decisions made about our public schools and our public school dollars. While I think it is fine for district staff and SEA leaders to okay a proposal, the final decision must be the Board's.

I think my tip-off was when the question was asked about the passage about bringing in groups to help with these changes and when Asst. Superintendent Thompson was asked about who they might be, she shrugged.

This won't fly.

As I said in my testimony this cannot be a backdoor for astro-turf or charter groups to get their foot in the door of SPS with no oversight by the district AND the Board. Lack of oversight by the Board could lead to exactly that.

I don't really care if it is only a "might lead to..." - we cannot give up the oversight of our public schools by elected officials. That's why I don't like charters - most of them are not overseen by elected officials.

I urge all of you to ask the Board to table this motion and/or consider writing an amendment to make sure they are part of this important process.

Getting Desperate over at LEV

2012-01-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

Every week, LEV's leader, Chris Korsmo does a column at their webpage. She tries pretty hard to be funny but it usually falls somewhat flat. (If you are not a naturally funny writer, efforts to be funny just don't work.) This is part of what she had to say this week on charter legislation:

I don’t know about you, but if one more person tells me that they wish we could do something about the achievement gap, but bringing public charter schools to Washington will only help a few kids, somethin’s gotta give. I swear I’m going to go buy every copy of Schindler’s List I can find and hand them out like a human Pez dispenser.

Here's my reply:

Well, as LEV has itself pointed out, only 17% of charters do better than traditional public schools so yes, there is a very real chance that if charter legislation passed, it would only help a few kids.

What does the holocaust have to do with public education in Washington State?

It is a bit baffling that she chose Schindler's List to illustrate her point on closing the achievement gap with charter schools (and, Pez is a candy so it would be used to hand out books?).

She goes on:

As in previous years and iterations, the issue is not without its controversy. Goodness knows change doesn’t come without its dissenters. But even of those who support the issue, some think it has no chance. They are wrong. But we have to act now. We must push to get these bills voted out of committee over the next five days. While we wouldn’t be completely sunk if they didn’t it would be optimal if we could get the bills out of the house and senate committees by the Tuesday, January 31 cutoff.

The bill doesn't have "no chance." From those I know who know the Legislature, it has little chance. Word is that it won't make it out of one (or both) committees.

Mostly, I think it's about timing. This is just not the time to bring on more spending and more bureaucracy that isn't going straight to the classroom. And, of course, if we aren't fully-funding existing schools, how is bringing on more underfunded schools going to help?

Between the lack of funding and the low rate of success for charter schools, I wouldn't be surprised if this legislation fails.

However, Ms. Korsmo is right about one thing; it's not over until it's over. We do have a link on the homepage (to the right of the blog threads) to the Legislature. Let your legislator know what you think.

One More Piece to the PTA Fundraising Discussion

2012-01-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

Brian Rosenthal had one more small article on this subject and it, again, is about McGilvra.

In 2000, SPS and McGilvra had a contract to allow McGilvra a way to hold the line on their class sizes. To whit:

The oddity started in 2000, when parents at the small and then-low-performing school in Madison Park negotiated a unique contract: The PTA would buy two portable classrooms for about $120,000 and pay $200,000 per year to put teachers in them. In return, the district would keep the school's class sizes low or provide extra programs for the next 20 years.

It was an agreement unlike anything District Attorney Ron English had ever seen, he said.
And it worked for a decade.

But last year, amid implementation of a neighborhood-based assignment plan, overcrowding at some schools and pressure about the fairness to other schools, the district opted out of the contract, paying a $60,000 buyout fee.

I knew this was happening but I didn't know its status since the NSAP. Smart of McGilvra to make sure if anything changed, they got some money back out of it. But then, money does talk.

What is telling is a comment from the first article:

"Of course it's unfair. Of course it is," said Bill Crawford, president of the Roxhill Elementary PTA, which typically raises less than $5,000 per year. "That's the way the world is."

I agree with Mr. Crawford; that's life. That's what puzzles me about the charter school push for choice. State governments, in their role of providing public education, are not doing it to give parents choices. They simply do not have the money to provide choice. That most urban areas offer different schools beyond neighborhood schools - call them magnet, option, alternative, whatever - is a function of economies of scale, not because they believe parents deserve choice.

So this idea that we need charters because we need choice seems false to me (especially given the state of the economy). If a school is consistently low-performing and district efforts fail, then the state should take it over (and indeed the bill has this aspect in it).

As adults, we know the world isn't fair and really, we can advocate for better but we can't change how others view it. McGilvra operates more on the end of a private school than most public schools in this district but the parents there are able to create that model. I don't see it as good or bad; it just is.

Money, our Schools and PTSAs

2012-01-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Another fine article by Brian Rosenthal in the Sunday Seattle Times, this time about PTA fundraising and our schools. He certainly did his homework and here's some interesting information:

McGilvra Elementary raised over $390K last year. They have about 240 students. You do the math.
So far this school year, four of the district's nearly 100 schools make up more than one-third of the expenditures. They are all elementary schools in wealthy areas: McGilvra, of Madison Park ($240,280); Queen Anne's John Hay ($215,077) and Coe ($180,000); and View Ridge ($195,000) in Northeast Seattle. Other elementary schools at the top include Adams, John Stanford, Laurelhurst, Loyal Heights and Stevens.
At the same time, dozens of Seattle schools, mostly in the South End, don't appear on the list because they don't have PTAs or don't raise enough to go through the central office.

Wow.

There is no districtwide database documenting PTA fundraising by school, but it is clear that parent groups in wealthy parts of the city collect hundreds of thousands more than those in poor areas. The money — raised through everything from sales of baked goods or Christmas trees to black-tie auctions — can go toward almost anything, from classroom teachers to building maintenance, as long as the school principal accepts it.

Two things. One, I think the district is loath to collect data because, well, then they would have to admit how much money parents drive into the district. The Seattle Council PTSA should flex its muscle based on this issue. Parents are pumping money into this district.

Two, I really agree with the Washington State PTSA that parents should not be able to fund employees. It's too much pressure to sustain, it's inequitable and it allows the state to continue not fully funding education.

Bellevue, Lake Washington and Issaquah already ban the practice.

A similar shift is unlikely in Seattle, said School Board President Michael DeBell and Lauren McGuire, president of the Seattle Council of Parent, Teacher and Student Associations. They each cited the issue's political sensitivity and a reluctance to do anything that would limit donations in the current budget climate.

However:

Still, some are hoping to start the conversation. Among them is School Board member Betty Patu.

What is interesting is how other districts are handling this:

Portland Public Schools: One-third of all parent donations are pooled into an "equity fund" run by a foundation, which distributes the money to schools that can't raise their own funds.
Eugene (Ore.) School District: Five percent of all parent donations are pooled into an "equity fund" that is divvied up essentially equally among all schools. Parents are also allowed to donate directly to the equity fund.
Bellevue, Lake Washington, Issaquah: These districts do not pool donations but do prohibit contributions from being used to fund the salaries of certified teachers. It was in that spirit that Bellevue Public Schools — after a long and contentious debate — decided in June to enforce a long-neglected prohibition on using parent donations to fund staff positions.

And this paragraph is a great summary of the issue:

Indeed, as large as fundraising amounts are at schools such as Hay, they rarely come close to offsetting the differences in the district's weighted formula, federal Title I funding and other programs benefiting poor schools.

But advocates for low-income schools point out that those funding sources come with strict requirements. So while poorer schools have little control over how to spend the extra money, parents at wealthy schools get to choose what will be most beneficial for their children. And schools in the middle get neither higher district funding nor large fundraising.

One of the comments struck me:

I have long been disturbed by how Seattle parents can so easily rationalize such a blatant inequality in their public schools. That other school districts have already dealt with this issue, and yet the Seattle school board president and PTA district leader refuse to even put a discussion on the table, is yet another piece of the unethical milieu that plagues this district.

Once again, Betty Patu is way out in front in terms of wisdom, candor and fairness.

I don't know what the answer is. I can never fault parents for supporting their child's public school and wanting it to be the best. But eventually, these kids all meet up in middle and high school. It would be great, at least from an academic standpoint, if they could have had something of a level playing field in elementary.

BEX IV Planning

2012-01-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

There was a BEX IV planning work session on Wednesday (before the School Board meeting).
Folks, this is going to be one heck of a challenge. Once I get this charter monkey off my back, this is where I'm going to focus next because there are so many moving parts. I despair a little at how it may all come out but I can only urge you to KEEP UP and let the Board know what you think.

There were at least five handouts for this work session. They were:

Macro planning schedule for BEX IV
Long-range Enrollment Projections for 2012-13 through 2021-22
What are "Ed Specs"
What is BEX IV?
Overview of Facilities Master Plan 2012
Large form Master Schedule for BEX IV Planning
Exhibit 8-1 - Scoring Summary*

I'll try to see if I can find links for all these.

The Macro Planning Schedule is a nice piece of work with a month-line of 2012 and little action bubbles above different months.

Right now FACMAC and the BEX Oversight Committee, along with staff, are looking at everything and trying to get a grip on what we need and where.

In February (hey, that's the middle of next week), there will be a Prioritization List #1, reviewed by the Board, staff, FACMAC and BEX Oversight committee. I will emphasis here that I truly do believe this will definitely be a first stab and may not resemble what comes to pass at the end of the process.

In March, there will be a second Prioritization list (#2). Then, in April, comes the first public community input, this time for Prioritization list #3. In May, there will be a fourth list and then a fifth list in June. FACMAC will then take a well-deserved break from their work in the summer.

They expect yet another list in August. Then in September, a second public community input opportunity and then final recommendations and the Board creates the final project list.

In October, the Board will adopt the list and approve the ballot resolution (including what the figure will be, between $490M to a staggering $800M). Keep in mind, the voters will be receiving TWO levies requests in Feb. 2013 - one for BEX and the other for the Operations levy. Between the two of them, it will be well north of $1 BILLION. That's a huge and scary amount to be asking for from voters.

Also, here are the official district counts of schools:

57 elementaries,
10 K-8
9 middle schools
12 high schools

Also in the same document (Facilities Master Plan 2012) is this curious statement after a statement about district growth:
To compound the problem, many schools are showing signs of aging and deterioration despite an aggressive District maintenance program in recent years.

Vague, myopic and not really true. "Signs of aging and deterioration" doesn't cover how bad off many buildings are especially the ones that are 50-60+ years old.   And the "aggressive maintenance program"? When was this? I think they mean they just got around to restarting what should have been happening for decades.

Make no mistake - we have this many aging and deteriorating buildings because our district made a choice to put off maintenance and care for these buildings.   I know some of you might be shaking your head and thinking, "okay but in this place now; what use is it placing blame?" I continue to make this point because the district wants vast amounts of money for our facilities and yet, somehow, a lot of that money never makes it to the buildings.

*I put a start on this vague-sounding chart because it is a KEY chart to see. It has the facility rating for all our schools (from a study by Meng). They still have the seismic to do and that could change things.   Sadly, they did not include a key-to-terms box so I'm not sure what some of the markings mean. I will ask staff. )

As I have previously mentioned, the district is done with high schools (for now) with the two exceptions of SBOC and Nova. SBOC is getting a small amount $10M and it's not coming from BEX IV. I recently toured the Meany building where SBOC and Nova are housed; what a sad building.   It's score is a dismal 3.63. Very little natural light, small cafeteria and no decent common areas. Frankly, it should be a rebuild but that won't happen.   Nova is likely to move to Mann (but Mann is not listed but I recall it had a bad score from previous surveys and was still using a 100 year-old boiler.)

All of the "extra" buildings - Boren, John Marshall and Lincoln - are on the edge of needing help. It really depends on what the outcomes for those buildings are. I think, in the end, Boren and Lincoln, are going to stay our workhorse interim buildings. (I know APP Lowell is staying at Lincoln another year but it will eventually move out.) The only one I perceive will get work out of BEX IV is John Marshall which I predict will reopen as something.

So who are, on paper, the worst buildings?
Number one is Arbor Heights with an overall score of 3.92 (1-5 with 1 the best and 5 the worst).

Let's go by region and see how they stack out, keeping in mind the score AND capacity needs:

Aki Kurose region
Wing Luke with 3.65 and a good-sized area
Graham Hill with 3.39 and a good-sized area

Mercer region
Kimball with 3.36 with a medium area

Washington region
Montlake (a perennial favorite) with 3.38

I want to note here that I have been told by staff that there has to be a certain acreage size for each type of school, blah, blah. I always thought Montlake couldn't be rebuilt much bigger because of its lot size (1.7 acres). But then I looked down and saw that Emerson, in a newish building that holds 428 students only has 1.8 acres. Now I know that geography has a lot to do with it but I'm maintaining a healthy skepticism over what can and cannot be done.)

Denny region
Arbor Heights, 3.92, medium area
Roxhill, 3.86, small area

Madison region
Alki, 3.55, small area
Lafayette 3.54, big area
Schmitz Park, 3.45, big area

Eckstein region
Thorton Creek, 3.54, big area
View Ridge, 3.44, big area

Hamilton region
Laurelhurst, 3.70, small area

Whitman region
Bagley, 3.53, medium area

There were no schools that were high enough in the McClure area.

The worst middle school score was Washington with a 3.43, followed by Whitman with a 3.11.

Pinehurst K-8 is the worst of the K-8s with 3.35. Salmon Bay K-8 is also low with a 3.25 but a small (for a middle school) lot.

Okay, so where do we need more space?

West Seattle, I would bet that Arbor Heights, Lafayette and Schmitz Park could make the list. They need the capacity AND these are buildings in poor condition.

NE, I would bet Thorton Creek, View Ridge and Laurelhurst all have a good chance of making the list as again, needed capacity and poor quality buildings. I doubt that the district would invest the money in Pinehurst K-8 with such low enrollment.

NW, Bagley looks good. Poor condition building, big lot, popular program.

Central, Washington probably, Montlake maybe.

SE, Wing Luke and Kimball are in poor condition but I am unsure if that area needs more elementary space.

That leaves a few other issues.

would they invest money in building a new middle school at Wilson-Pacific? Centrally located, has a nice playfield, poor condition building. However, you have to consider where you would move the programs there (or build to co-locate). Or would they invest the money in a new building for either Eckstein or Whitman?

understand that NO building will remain the same size in population. The district cannot rebuild just for poor building quality. So, elementaries would be in the 425 size (at the smallest) and the middle schools at 1000 and the K-8s probably 700.

it is likely that they will go to a three-plan blueprint for the elementaries. There is not the time nor the money to be creating all new buildings for each one selected. But I think each building team would probably be able to pick which blueprint as well as colors used and maybe some finishes.
The district has been spending huge amounts of money on building. Now, at one point, there was a huge amount of building going on AND inflation but that's not the case now. So the middle schools have got to come in under $79M and the elementaries under $45M. I do not understand why, when I check other districts in our region, they seem to build very nice looking buildings for $30-40M.

Also, in answer to the question, yes the Advanced Learning Taskforce is trying to keep pace with FACMAC so that those recommendations can dovetail in with FACMC work. There are several FACMAC members on the AL Taskforce so everyone is keeping in the loop as far as information.

From the Work Session:

Director Carr rightly pointed out that the public has to stay in the loop and there needs to be a "narrative" - a story that explains where we are, what we need and how we plan to get there. She also made the point that "if we don't tell the story and are silent, others will tell the story."

Director Smith-Blum asked about the Advanced Learning Taskforce and the overlay for program placement?* Dr. Enfield said they would have an update in late spring for the overlay for program placement and that yes, they need to decide about APP K-5 at Lincoln.

Director DeBell asked about a bond versus a levy. (Again, with a levy you get the money in pieces but there is no interest. With a bond, you get the money all at once but there is interest. ) Bob Boesche said we could do a combo of both (and they have done this in the past). He said they are studying this issue.

Director Smith-Blum also asked for an assurance for SBOC at Meany and was told they would be getting their work (and that they already started).

Staff did say they need to take into account any building that is a city landmark (or might be up for designation). From my cursory look at the City's historic landmark site, I only see Eckstein as a school with that issue.

Eckstein Bus Driver Attacked by Dogs

2012-01-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

From the Times' Brian Rosenthal:

Two dogs attacked a school bus driver at Northeast Seattle’s Eckstein Middle on Friday morning, which led to a brief lock down at the school.

The bus driver, who was taking a walk around the school before heading to another school, suffered puncture wounds to his hands, according to a recorded message sent to all Eckstein families. All students and staff were told to remain in their classrooms out of concern the dogs would strike again.

Police detained the dogs, said Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Lesley Rogers, who did not know what type of dogs they were.

The school has since been reopened.

I am so sorry this happened to this poor bus driver but thankful the police were able to round-up the dogs before they hurt anyone else.

Open Thread Friday

2012-01-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking that KUOW is likely to talk about the School Board and policy 1620B on their weekly news-roundup at 10 am. Might be interesting.

Director Patu has the only community meeting tomorrow morning. Her's is at Caffe Vita, 5028 Wilson Ave. S. from 10 am -noon.

What's on your mind?

Former Aberdeen Student Wins Harassment Suit

2012-01-26T14:51:00.000-08:00

From our friends over at The Stranger Slog, comes this story of a young man who won a judgment against the Aberdeen School District for unbated harassment against him by classmates in both middle and high school. The lawsuit was filed with the help of the ACLU. He won $100,000 from the district.

The harassment sounds like crazy town (some kids went so far as to create a mocking website of him). He and his parents repeatedly reported the incidents, in person and in writing, and never got help from administrators. There were harassment over his perceived sexual orientation and his race.

“Public school officials must be held accountable when they fail to meet their responsibility to act decisively when a student is subjected to harassment by his peers," said Sarah Dunne, ACLU-WA legal director in a statement released today. "This settlement sends a message to school districts statewide to take strong action as soon as they learn that a student is being bullied."

I hope this message is received in districts everywhere.

A Question of Scale

2012-01-26T09:35:00.000-08:00

A lot of the work in education appears to be focused on small things that make little difference instead of big things that make a lot of difference. All of the fights are over the small stuff that doesn't much matter. These are distractions that keep us from taking the battle to the big stuff that really does matter.

Example 1: Seattle Public Schools is on the cusp of adopting a policy on waivers for instructional materials. The proposed policy includes a lot of safeguards that the district staff wrote in to make sure that the alternative materials work well and that the students make acceptable progress. The driving concern here is that we absolutely do not want 400 students using materials that don't work well.

That certainly makes sense, but you may be astonished to learn that our basic materials adoption policy has no such safeguards. So we have this elaborate feedback loop to make sure that 400 students don't use unhelpful materials, but we have no feedback loop to make sure that 20,000 students aren't using ineffective materials. That's messed up. The District demands proof of the effectiveness of Singapore math for 400 students. They will cancel the waiver if the results are not strong. But the District never measures the effectiveness of Everyday Math for 20,000 students and there is no chance, regardless of the outcomes, that its use will be reconsidered at any point in the (supposed) seven-year textbook adoption cycle. District administrators are not accountable.

Example 2: The State is seriously considering a charter school bill. This bill would allow charter schools. There is only one difference between the education students get in charter schools and the education they get in public schools - the charter schools don't have to conform to district rules. Let's just take a moment and consider what this bill - and our legislature - is saying about school district administration in Washington. They are saying that it impedes the education of our children. Grim. So if the district-level administration is holding kids back from achieving shouldn't we free ALL students from that regulation instead of just a few? The bill's supporters also claim that the charter schools will be subject to greater scrutiny and held to performance standards or they will be closed. If this is so wonderful then why don't we subject all public schools to that level of scrutiny and close them if they don't meet performance standards? If it is so wonderful, then why not do it for all schools instead of just ten a year?

Example 3: A lot of folks in the education reform business are totally focused on "teacher quality" and they are beside themselves with rage over the prospect that 25 children somewhere might have one of the few bad teachers. Supposedly everyone in the school knows who these bad teachers are. Which, I suppose, means that the principal knows who these bad teachers are. Doesn't it indicate that the principal is a bad principal if he or she allows a bad teacher to continue working in his or her school? Shouldn't we be at least as concerned about the impact of the bad principal on 400 students as we are about the bad teacher on 25 students? Yet I never hear any education reformers lay any responsibility for the continued presence of bad teachers on the principals, the people who have a duty to fire them. Instead, they focus their efforts on getting the state legislature to fire them. Managers are not accountable.

The education reform folks aren't just shaking with rage at the bad teachers, they are pretty upset over the concern that a lot of other teachers, while not actually bad, are just mediocre. I suppose it makes some incremental difference in students' lives if they have a great teacher or a good teacher or a mediocre teacher, but the impact of gradients in teacher quality - assuming that can even be measured - is tiny in comparison to the impact of the opportunity gap. Seriously, it's microscopic in comparison. Yet the focus on education reform is on this incremental difference that generally means incremental differences in student outcomes instead of this huge qualitative difference that generally means huge qualitative differences in student outcomes. They are focused on whether the student goes to UW or Western instead of whether the student goes to college or prison. The system is not accountable.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't evaluate the effectiveness of alternative materials, of course we should. But shouldn't we also evaluate the effectiveness of the board-adopted materials. I'm not saying that we shouldn't allow schools freedom from counter-productive district mandates or subject them to scrutiny, but if it is good for some schools why isn't it good for all schools? And of course we should have meaningful evaluations of teachers, but shouldn't we also have analogous evaluations of principals and district administrators all the way up to the superintendent? And if the state legislature is establishing a system of education for our children and that system isn't working for large number of them, then shouldn't there be some means of changing the system?

Instead of making the real changes in the system that will result in real changes in outcomes for our children, we focus instead on blaming or praising the front line workers who have almost no control over any element of their work or their results. Teachers at Eckstein are good and should get merit pay because the students in their classes pass the state tests. Teachers at Aki Kurose are bad and should be fired because the students in their classes fail the state tests. Except that the factors that cause these students to either pass or fail the test have almost nothing to do with the teachers.

Dan Dempsey writes frequently about W. Edwards Deming and his work. I don't know how many of you have actually read Demings; I have. It applies directly. Here's a central theme: while conventional management blames the worker for defects, Demings says that the system is the source of defects. If you do nothing else, take the time to learn about Demings' Red Bead Experiment. Read any Demings at all and you will very quickly realize the complete absurdity of the "teacher quality" effort as it is being conducted.

So what are the solutions? How does the system need to change? Some of the rhetoric can stay the same, but the actions and decisions need to match. We should set and maintain high expectations for all students. But we need to give students the support they need to meet those expectations. Different students need different amounts of support. Equity isn't equality. Some students will have to be in classes of 15, and some other students will have to be in classes of 35. Can you handle that? If not, then the system is more precious than the students.

The system is predicated on the industrial model of twenty-five to thirty students sitting in a classroom all getting the same instruction at the same time in the same way. That industrial model doesn't work. It worked tolerably well forty years ago because we had less diverse classrooms, failure didn't have tragic consequences, and we had some amazingly talented women stuck in the pink collar ghetto. Today we have students in the classroom who weren't there forty years ago - minority students, immigrants, disabled students, and students from low-income homes, so the classroom is more diverse. The one-size lesson might have suited the largely homogeneous class of 1970, but no more. The manufacturing jobs that were available without a high school diploma - let alone a college degree - in 1970 aren't around anymore, so the stakes are higher. And school districts need to compete for talent in an open market. Many of the women who were great teachers forty years ago would follow better-paying careers today.

Accountability needs to start at the top. The leadership needs to take responsibility for the design of the system and the impact of the system on the outcomes. There needs to be a re-definition of quality from "Did the student pass the test?" to "Did the student get the support needed to make appropriate progress?". We need to ask the teachers what impedes their ability to deliver support for each student or if it is even possible for them to adequately support some students. We need to break away from the industrial model for education. Everybody knows that. Everybody agrees. But where is the leadership at the state and district level to shift to a post-industrial model? I don't see it. I'll I see is people blaming the students and the teachers for the failure created by the system. I don't see anyone putting the responsibility for the failure where it belongs: on the people at the top who perpetuate and enforce a failed system.

It can start small. It can start with a district design for early and effective interventions. Let's see that. Let's make that the primary objective for the new superintendent. Is there a higher priority?

Board Tables Policy Decision, 4-3

2012-01-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

Other stuff did happen at the Board meeting.   But this was quite fascinating (and confusing). It was like watching a long tennis volley, back and forth with different points.

I will say that I think everyone made good points but clearly, the policy is being viewed through different lens.   I'm not sure anyone is wrong in this case.

What occurred was this; Smith-Blum had put a motion to take this Intro motion of 1620B off this agenda.  One big issue was that this Board meeting had been put off because of the snow last week so the next Board meeting is next week (and not two weeks from now).

(To note: NO ONE said they did not want this policy or asked for it to be tabled indefinitely.)

I'll go thru the whole thing because what was said should be parsed out. There was some friction but I did not see anger or animosity. (Indeed, the next item, they voted unanimously and later, all enjoyed a good laugh over a Patu miscue.)

It got started a little early when Director Patu, clearly upset, brought it up during the Director comments.   I think she felt she had been disrespected (she said it was unfair to accuse directors or ridicule them publicly). I can't disagree with that statement. After all, DeBell got the ball rolling last week and the media just jumped on it.

She said she felt she was being told to be quiet and not ask any questions. She said they were there oversee the Superintendent and that she had many community members asking her for information or for help. She felt that as an elected official her hands were being tied.

So when they go to the actual discussion since it was Smith-Blum's motion, she was asked to speak on it.

She said that collaboration is key. She also pointed out that there is already a procedure around this governance (passed last June) with many of the same elements. So it already exists and working on the specifics of how to carry it out was still work all seven directors need to do together. She also explained how moving it to later Feb. (with approval in early March) would still meet the timeline for superintendent finalists.

Sherry then talked about the timeline and her concern over having this done before the superintendent search was underway. She also said the policy was not about "what they do" but "how they do it." She recommended they have a work session over the next week to work on it and then vote next week.

She also said they needed to have the basics in place for the next superintendent.

I will just point out that I heard none, zero, zip of this concern during the last superintendent search. And who did we end up with? The most control-freak superintendent ever. (Who was constantly tried to gain more control and clearly she didn't need it codified...she just took it.)

Peaslee then spoke. She said they already a policy in place. She said she looked at half a dozen districts and none of them had a 3-page policy followed by a procedure.   She said it needed to be clean and clear and devoid of bias. She said there was no need to rush and they needed to get it right.

Martin-Morris spoke up and said he was "intrigued" by this notion of bias. But he went on to express concern over the amount of work facing the Board and that "kicking the can down the road" wouldn't help. He said they needed a "protocol" or else the policy had no teeth. (Yes, echos of Charlie and the issue of policies that the Superintendent doesn't follow and yet no enforcement from the Board.)

He also was worried about the timeline with the superintendent search.

Betty then spoke about her feeling that this policy was almost like "the weight of law" to her and that's how seriously she takes it." She said she felt it was important that they ALL agree with the wording of the policy.

Harium said he thought they could get it done in a work session because it was just "word-smithing." He then made a verbal slip that several of us noticed and had to smile. He said they had "get back to managing the district." I thought the Board didn't manage the district; that's a superintendent's job.

Marty weighed in with what is such a pleasingly calm and thoughtful manner. She said,  "I was initially interested in this because I see it as a vehicle for us to have real chance to come together as a group and talk about where each of us stands. Then I looked more at it and I began to see it as addressing a problem and fixing something. But what's broken? I haven't been on the Board long enough to feel broken and we are in formation as a Board." She said they needed to find out "who they are as a Board" and create a vision with the superintendent.

She also said she appreciated the need for urgency.

Sherry suggested they Intro it tonight but put off the vote (because of the snow-delayed Board meeting) until Feb. 15 (3 weeks off). This sounded plausible (and kudos to Director Carr for trying to find a compromise).

But Michael said that they already had a motion and that would have to be offered as an amendment to the motion (but oddly, that didn't happen.)

Kay then said this: "I appreciate what Sherry said and I looked at the calendar. Tomorrow we have 2 hours of work on budget, so I carefully looked at the calendar before I crafted this motion."

What was interestng is that she talked about needing more time and that perhaps they needed to reach out to senior staff for input. When she said that I thought, "Huh, that's a thought. If staff feels overburdened from Board requests, input from senior staff on what would work best for them might be something to ask."
She also said she had benchmarked 25 urban districts and only 4 have this kind of procedure. She said we are really breaking new ground here.

DeBell, clearly irritated by this point, had his say.

"This work was authorized at the retreat in December. We talked about multiple governance issues and the proposition to have the Ex Ctm work on it. I do believe minutes reflect that*. As chair of the Ex Ctm, I thought important to work on. I

want to note that the Ex Ctm is ultimately responsible about this kind of work and it is the jurisdiction of Committee".

*There is a bit of disagreement about whether this discussion actually made to the list of work for the Board this year.

He then said, "I shared with Holly F. and Erin the first draft and then did the first rewrite."

Okay, but two things. One, why did he share this first with staff and not any other Board members? Why would Holly and Erin be expected to work over a holiday break?

Two, why was the first Board member he shared it with Sherry and not Kay or Betty who are on the Ex. Ctm.? If it's their work, why not send it to them first?   I believe the first that any other Board members saw the policy was about at the third or fourth draft.

I was surprised but Dr. Enfield chose this point to jump in. She said:
"I appreciate that every Board member is giving this serious thought. Last spring when governance policies were discussed and adopted was when realized we needed to figure out how to operationalize these policies."   She added (almost as if for effect) "It is sorely needed."

So clearly she has been feeling aggrieved about Board requests even before any Board elections.

Michael then stated that you can't just go to a website to check policy (something of a dig at Smith-Blum's work) and said Bellevue and Kent were in the process of writing this kind of policy. He then said:

"The work environment is strongly affected by how Board interacts, collectively rather than individually. I agree with Sherry's Feb. 15th date. Note that taking an item off an agenda means we could table it and postpone it. We need to reassure them that we take responsibility seriously. "

I am assuming the "them" are the prospective superintendent candidates. And that leads me to wonder a couple of things?

Is he still holding out for Enfield to stay? Because I'm seeing a lot of signs that others up the food chain are thinking this way. Either Enfield has signaled this to them or they are just wistfully hoping for something that isn't going to happen.

OR

Some Board members already have some candidate in mind who has signaled an issue with Board/Superintendent interactions.

Kay again mentioned wanting to craft the policy more and seek input from senior staff. She said the budget was a priority for tomorrow's work session.
Michael again seemed irritated and said this is the Board's work. (Okay but Kay is only suggesting input from staff since access to staff seems to be a major problem on both sides. It's not a crazy thought on Kay's part.) He said there had to be a clear line on governance and management.

Then he looked around and called for the vote. It was 4-3.

I believe this issue is of particular relevance to all of them but maybe in varying degrees and obviously, from a difference level of urgency to get it done.

If this is the key to how the Board interacts with staff and the superintendent, then yes, I think it fair to make sure all seven people currently on the Board agree with it.

As I said, it was tense but then they all moved on, voted several more times, laughed and got through the meeting.

They are seven intelligent and thoughtful people; they will get this done and they will move on.

Let's Discuss the Survey Results

2012-01-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

From the "Hmmm" category (an SPS announcement):

Each spring, Seattle Public Schools administers a survey to all families, school staff and students about instruction, leadership, and family engagement. Teachers, families and community members are invited to join school leaders 5:30-7 p.m., Feb. 2 at the John Stanford Center for a meeting that will include an overview of last year’s survey results, small group discussions to gather feedback on improving the surveys and Q&A. For questions, comments, and accommodation requests, please contact research@seattleschools.org.

This could be very interesting and probably worth going to if only to listen.

The Limits of My Endurance

2012-01-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

I have been an education activist for about eleven years now. I have clashed with the district about two hundred times. I have never won. People wonder how I can keep doing this. Don't I get burned out? Don't I get tired? What the hell is wrong with me? Is it some kind of neurosis?

There are two secrets to my endurance.

I don't expect to win. Ever. If I have clashed with the district two hundred times then my won-loss record is 0-200. My greatest successes have been taking them to overtime on a couple of occasions. As I have long said "The futility of my efforts does not excuse me from the obligation to make those efforts."
I don't suffer from any outrage fatigue because it is always something new that outrages me. I am not some kind of Johnny-One-Note. I don't keep repeating the same complaint over and over (although some of them do recur). If I pick a new fight with the District every two weeks it is because the District has done something new that angers me every two weeks.

Sometimes, however, the limits of my endurance are reached in a different way. The League of Education Voters just hit it for me. With this blog post of theirs On Teacher Performance: Be Excellent by Hope Teague-Bowling, they rang the bell. It isn't this piece alone. I don't have some special grudge against Ms Teague-Bowling; her silly article was just the last straw. This story sings the praises of the bill presented in Olympia to increase teacher accountability. She would no doubt praise the legislature if they pass it. It pushed me over the edge and, before I could stop myself, I had responded with a screed (below).

That brings us to the third secret of my success. I write really fast.

Are our education failures a result of failures in the system or are they a collection of individual failures?

Some believe that they are a collection of individual failures. They see thirty students sitting together in a class and getting the same instruction. Twenty-five of them pass the state test; five fail. These folks believe that the five who failed got everything from the system that the other twenty-five got, but, as individuals, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity placed before them. Those folks believe that the five students failed individually, not as a systemic outcome.

Similarly, theses folks see classrooms in which five students pass the test and twenty-five fail. From these numbers they conclude that the teacher failed to provide the opportunity for students to succeed. Again, since other teachers who got the same resources – materials and content – saw a majority of their students pass the test, the failure was in the teacher who saw disappointing student outcomes, not in the system since the system worked elsewhere. These folks also label schools as failing if the student outcomes from the school are disappointing. Those schools also were provided with the same resources as other schools which saw higher student outcomes, so the schools are individual failures, not the system.

I’m not hearing this perspective expressed much by people who actually know what happens in schools. I’m not sure that the League of Education Voters would accept or endorse this perspective. Most folks realize that the failures are systemic, not individual. That’s why student outcomes are so predictably correlated to SES. The school in a low-income neighborhood isn’t necessarily doing any worse of a job educating students than the school in the affluent neighborhood; they are just hamstrung by the structure, the budget, and their students’ limited opportunities outside of school. No one really believes that the high-scoring and the low-scoring school would get the same outcomes if they swapped students. The school isn’t the determining factor. Neither are the teaching staffs. The high performing school and the low performing school would not swap test scores if they swapped teachers. No body really believes that they would.

You can continue to believe that these are individual failures – by students or teachers or schools – or you can acknowledge the obvious: there is a systemic problem. If you acknowledge that the problem is bigger than what is happening in a large number of individual cases, then it seems not only foolish but cruel to hold individuals accountable for these outcomes. Unless, of course, those individuals are responsible for the system.

The students are being held accountable. If they don’t get the test scores they will not get a diploma. That’s real accountability. The students, however, are the people with the least power of anyone to change the system. How does it make sense for the people with the least ability to change the system, the people who are, arguably, already the victims of the system, to be held individually accountable for the failure of the system? It makes no sense. It is cruel beyond words. You kick these kids and then punish them for having ugly bruises.

The next step up the totem pole are the teachers. After the students, the teachers are those with the next smallest ability to change the system. We are just starting to hold teachers accountable for the student outcomes. The next step up the ladder, then next least powerful, are principals. The wave of “reforms” to hold principals accountable is the next wave coming. We’re starting to see it in bills in Olympia and state houses across the country. There are already school turn-around programs that begin with firing the principal.

This accountability is exactly upside-down. Accountability and responsibility need to go together. We recognize that the problem is in the system and the failure is a systemic failure rather than a collection of individual failures. If any individuals are going to be held accountable for the failures, the accountability needs to start at the top with the people who have the greatest power and authority to change the system. However those folks are not being held accountable at all. There is no accountability at the top where it could be paired with the responsibility to create the needed systemic change. The legislators who refused to fully fund public education are not punished at all. The OSPI who promoted a failed math program goes unscathed. District leadership is under no pressure to change their practices and to allocate the necessary resources to close the opportunity gap.

Instead, these folks are out there selling the story that this is not a systemic failure. They are out there trying to convince us that it is a bunch of students who are slacking. They are trying to blame it on the teachers. Oh, right, those lazy, free-riding teachers who are just in it for the money. The people responsible for the failure want to tell a story of individual failure and they are going to punish the people closest to that failure – even if that failure is largely outside the students’ or the teachers’ control.

You can buy that story. I’m not buying it. I’m not signing on to the idea that we need to withhold diplomas from the same students from whom we also withheld an education. I’m not signing on to the idea that we need to damage the careers of the teachers who accept our greatest challenges. I don’t believe that we should label schools as “failing” because we have failed them. I’m not signing on to the idea that the people who have the least ability to control the system should pay for the system’s failures.

But you go ahead. Go ahead and protect the people who control the system at the expense of those crushed under its treads. I can’t stop you. After this fails – as it surely will – maybe then you will be willing to look for real reform. If you don’t just walk away from public education entirely.

District Extends Semester

2012-01-24T22:19:00.001-08:00

From SPS:

Given the timing of snow days last week, Seattle Public Schools is extending the semester three days, through Tuesday, Jan. 31. Second semester will start on Wednesday, Feb. 1.

The MAP testing window has been extended to Friday, January 27.

Also, the grading window has been extended, with a new deadline of Tuesday, Feb. 7 to turn in grades for the semester.

Please note a previous announcement that Seattle Public Schools will hold classes on Friday, Jan. 27 as a snow make-up day. Previously, no school was scheduled for next Friday, a professional development day for staff.

A determination on if and how the District needs to make up the remaining snow days will be made later this week.

Skill Center

2012-01-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

There are high school students in our house, so we got a robocall and an email about the Skill Center.

Here is the text for those who are interested:

Starting now, students who will have at least 10 credits OR are at least 16 years old may enroll in the new Seattle Public Schools SKILLS CENTER for next fall. A skills center is a public school opportunity for a student to take advanced Career and Technical Education courses. Students must still have a home school where they meet the rest of their graduation requirements. In other words, you cannot earn a diploma at a skills center, but it enriches the offerings of our existing high schools. It prepares students for college and for careers that are in high demand. All courses are cross-credited. Courses are almost three hours long and in the afternoon, so students can really be immersed in their studies.

You can choose from one of the following programs:
Digital Animation + Game Design
Medical Careers
Aerospace Science and Technology
Computer programming and networking.
These are highly motivating advanced programs which prepare students for high demand careers.

Students who graduate with SKILLS CENTER courses on their transcripts leave high school with more than a diploma – they’ll have specific career experience and skills, industry certifications and college credit.

Talk to your counselor now about enrolling. Space is limited.

Superintendent Search

2012-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

The whole Executive Committee meeting today was about the superintendent search and nothing else.
In addition to the regular members of the committee, Michael DeBell, Kay Smith-Blum, and Betty Patu, the meeting was joined by Marty McLaren and Sharon Peaslee in person and Harium Martin-Morris by phone from Olympia. Sherry Carr was the only board member who could not be in attendance.

In addition to the Board, also present at the meeting were District General Counsel Ron English, the board staff, Brian Rosenthal of the Seattle Times, Cecilia McCormick, and I. Mr. Brewster of Crosscut did not grace us with his presence. Too bad he missed it; he could have seen how stable it was. There was a lot of strong agreement among all of the Board members and they worked very well together.

The bulk of the meeting was a conference call with the search firm. They settled on a timetable, the wording of the ad, and some details of the process - there will be five finalists. The Superintendent Search Committee consists of the seven board members and four others: one representative each from PASS, SEA, SCPTSA, and the central administration. Consultants from the search firm will be in Seattle in early February to conduct one-on-one interviews about what folks want in a superintendent. They will meet with each of the eleven members of the committee plus two students, two classroom teachers, the entire current superintendent's cabinet (Susan Enfield, Noel Treat, Pegi McEvoy, Bob Boesche, and Cathy Thompson), a representative from local 609, and a representative from the Special Education PTA. That's twenty-one interviews which is plenty. I really like this list. Neither Melissa Westbrook nor I should be included and neither should Lynne Varner or Sara Morris. We all had the opportunity to provide our input through the survey.

The search firm, by the way, is taking some guidance from the survey. They are also very aware of the level of involvement the community takes in our public schools.

I know that some folks are concerned that we're a bit late in the race and that all of the good superintendents will be gone by the time we get there. Don't worry. Our ad will go into the edition of Ed Week that comes out just before the big National School District Superintendent's Conference. In addition, the search firm will have an ad in the conference guide inviting folks to contact them at the conference if they are interested in any of the different districts they are working with, including Seattle. We're right on time and moving fast.

Open Thread Tuesday

2012-01-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

What's on your mind?

Guest Column: Creative Approach Schools

2012-01-23T23:23:00.000-08:00

Michelle Buetow has written a thoughtful piece about the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the district and SEA for schools to apply to be Creative Approach Schools. This action will be introduced at Wednesday's Board meeting. Here's the MOU and the Creative Approach Schools criteria page. Good for our district and our labor partners for making this effort to allow more innovation/flexibility/autonomy to schools.

Here's Michelle's article:
Washington state legislature last week held hearings on the fourth attempt to bring charter schools to our state. As expected, the proposed legislation is proving sharply divisive within the K12 education community.

I am wary of any proposal that further fractures a state population of legislators and voters who have yet to join together on the most elementary support of public schools: adequate and consistent funding. We have more urgent needs than a brawl over charters. And thanks to a remarkable proposal on the table right here in Seattle, we may be able to remove charters from the exhausting roster of state education knockout fights, while at the same time meeting the vital need to provide each child in our city with a solid education.

The Seattle Public Schools’ energizing Creative Approach School initiative has been quietly nurtured over the past year. Introduced by Seattle teacher’s union leadership, bargained by principals who head SPS Alternative Schools, and embraced by District central staff, the proposal offers the promise of strong school autonomy, with the counterbalance of a mandate to show student achievement.

In short, Creative Approach Schools offer many of the ideas that draw education reformers to charters, without bringing the additional administrative and cost overhead, perceived lack of accountability, often-resegregative enrollment practices, and public school funding diversions that trouble charter opponents. It also casts the Seattle Education Association (teacher’s union) as a problem solver, not a problem, in student success. This is a welcome development, as an anti-labor sentiment has fractured civic goodwill other states (Wisconsin) and has demoralized many top-performing teachers in our own city.

Creative Approach Schools offer an idealistic – and simultaneously pragmatic – counterbalance to the District’s multi-year push to provide a floor on grade-level student achievement via the standardization of neighborhood school offerings. The proposal recognizes the strong desire of a segment of Seattle’s community to allow for “choice” in selecting a school with a non-cookie-cutter approach to programming. Parents look for “choice” for four primary reasons,all potentially addressed by Creative Approach Schools:

A tool to address the opportunity (achievement) gap

Strong family interest in specialized programming (The Arts, exploratory learning, etc.)

Significant student learning disabilities or social needs

The perception that a neighborhood school is performing poorly or does not meet particular family values

Language from the District’s draft Memo of Understanding (MOU) on Creative Approach Schools defines the schools in broad terms: “A school community that develops a new, different, and creative approach that supports raising achievement and closing the achievement gap for all enrolled students.”

Note that the MOU intentionally does not limit the establishment of Creative Approach Schools to communities comprised primarily of so-called “at-risk” students. It does, however, mandate that any community seeking the freedoms of a Creative Approach School also focus on the needs of disadvantaged students. My hope is that with Creative Approach schools in the spotlight, District and public tracking of these schools’ performance would prevent the tawdry practice, found at some charter and traditional public schools alike, of “counseling out” students with special learning needs to inflate school achievement scores.

The MOU allows for any existing school to apply for Creative Approach status, though a school could not change its enrollment identity (neighborhood/option/alternative) in the process. (The certain-to-be-discussed difference between Creative Approach Schools and Seattle’s existing Alternative Schools will be the subject of a separate blog post.)

Although the definition of Creative Approach Schools is broad, the schools’ rewards – and requirements – are specific.

To obtain Creative Approach School status, the MOU envisions an existing school represented by staff, families and community submitting a rigorous written application and school program description to a joint District/SEA approval committee. The SPS superintendent would provide the final approval. Cross-constituency collaboration within a building would be necessary from the get-go, with a supermajority (80 percent) of SEA-represented staff, the school principal, and strong participation of parents and community all necessary to initiate and to maintain Creative Approach status.

This emphasis on authentic grassroots teamwork within a school community provides a better solution than well-meaning “Parent Trigger” laws in states such as California, in which communities pressing for program changes in their school sometimes inadvertently lose their voices to private or non-profit charter organizations focused on their own blueprints for student success.

The idea that a synchronized and strong school community provides the best chance for individual student success is everywhere in this proposal.

School staff would be mandated to work in conjunction with parents and community partners to design the school program, to monitor the program and ultimately to govern the school. This would be a significant, but necessary, increase in responsibility and workload for most school staffs and parents alike. Many of Seattle’s existing Alternative Schools embrace the idea of staff/community co-governance through a Site Council, though the power of those committees has been diminished significantly in recent years by District centralization initiatives. In buildings with a traditional administration + PTSA structure…or with no PTSA at all…the shift to true community partnership could be an enormous shift in perspective.

The draft MOU has the District promising that a Creative Approach School principal valued by the community would not be replaced for 3 years. (Principal “churn” during the term of Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson had significant negative effects on multiple school communities.)

Teacher participation in a school converting to Creative Approach School status would be voluntary, and existing teachers could ask for SEA-bargained procedures to leave a school that was no longer a good fit. Teachers hired into Creative Approach Schools would be asked to sign an employment contract specific to the school.

Schools would further strengthen site-based staffing needs by being exempt from mandatory displaced teacher assignments…negating the potential for the “lemon car” teachers that the movie “Waiting for Superman” publicized to great effect in its pro-charter message. (Side note: Despite popular belief to the contrary, in the last 2 years SPS has made significant strides in removing from its ranks the lowest-performing teachers unable or unwilling to strengthen their skills.)

Creative Approach schools would operate under 3-year, renewable program plans, with annual reviews community-defined school performance goals. The MOU provides the opportunity to demonstrate to public school system naysayers that the current bon mot “innovation” can and does happen in the public sector…with unionized teachers and public administration.

The MOU offers

An “opt out” of District assessments, as long as the schools adopt some form of benchmark and progress monitoring that shows student growth (But state and federal assessments would still be mandatory.)
Choice on all instructional materials
Latitude in developing program schedule, school day schedule and school year schedule.
Academics focused on specific themes or disciplines
Private partnerships within the school, such as for wraparound services, arts enhancement, technology, etc.

There are limits to autonomy. Federal, state and local laws would still need to be followed, unless specific waivers from the governing agencies were obtained. All breaks from District standards would be required to be cost-neutral to the District, however, schools would be allowed to pursue private partnerships and grants for services. Significantly, though, the District would maintain ultimate oversight of the schools, which would allay fears of a private organization “taking over” a public entity.

The Creative Approach Schools initiative is intended to offer benefits quickly – as early as the next academic year. The timeline is a counterpoint to the criticism that this District is unable or unwilling to move quickly to offer solutions to children impacted by the opportunity gap or to parents unhappy with their local school offering.

This is not a full-fledged program yet. Teachers will be looking at the MOU again this week, after asking Seattle Education Association leadership last month for more time to review and potentially to amend the proposal. (As community members increasingly ask the District to keep them informed of proposed policies affecting SPS students, so too are teachers looking for increased communication from its union leadership.) The proposal will not move forward without signoff by the teacher corps.

The still-evolving application and approval process is nascent at best, and will need revision, perhaps significantly so, in coming years. Principals are getting an overview of the proposal this week, and will need to add their perspective to the proposal. SPS administrative staff will make a presentation to the Seattle School Board as early as next week. The Board will need to approve the final MOU. Although strong reporting of program results to the public has been a weakness of the District in past years, the ultimate success of Creative Approach Schools will necessarily rest in annual reviews of each school’s program. Program management skills downtown and within individual schools will need sharpening.

Each “next step” is achievable. In writing this piece, I hope to add momentum to moving forward quickly. As a community advocate deeply immersed in the reality – and the promise – of public education in Seattle, I see this proposal as a treasure from the District - a recognition and response to civic hopes, family requests, and – most importantly – student needs. It is education reform that is collaborative and constructive, not just clamorous. I hope that school communities, education advocates and politicians throughout the city find it as refreshing, and exciting, as I do. I hope state legislators see our District poised to take a leadership position on providing an alternative way forward in the current Great Charter Debate, version 4.0.

Furlough day... why bother

2012-01-23T21:37:00.001-08:00

With the three-hour early release due to the furlough day tomorrow, my daughter says that each of her classes will be only twenty minutes long. She says that isn't enough time to do anything so there's no point to her going to school tomorrow.

I hate it when they make a good case for this sort of thing.

A Thoughtful Stance on Charters

2012-01-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

One of the perks of doing this work and getting out there in the community is meeting people who don't just talk - they act.

Trish Millines Dziko is such a person. Trish and her partner, Jill Hull Dziko, started providing STEM programs for students of color back in 1996. They then founded Technology Access Foundation which now has two programs: TechStart and TAF Academy.

TechStart is an after-school program (middle school) and school-day program (elementary) for STEM, to help them learn about it and be prepared for classes in it.

TAF Academy, in the Federal Way school district, is a 6-12th grade model for STEM.

So when I heard Trish giving testimony at a recent state senate committee meeting about TAF, I contacted her and thanked her for her work. I also asked her about charters because TAF has done tremendous work in creating their programs and doing the tough work to create partnerships to support their work.

So, it seems like TAF might be a natural for starting a charter school. Here's what she sent to me - a thoughtful position sheet that they sent to their donors on this issue. It is well worth reading as she lays out what it would mean, pro and con.

TAF has decided to take no position because she supports ALL schools who reach even the hardest-to-reach kids.

And who knows? If the legislation passes, TAF might start a charter (although their cons do point out items I hadn't even thought about - again, a signal to the thoughtfulness with which Trish and TAF approach their work).

There is good work being done out there for kids and TAF is one place where it is happening.

Seattle Schools This Week

2012-01-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

There will be a lot of catching up to do this week from the loss of time from the snow days. Also, much has happened in the media since the postponement of the School Board meeting last Wednesday the 18th to this Wednesday the 25th. I expect that many more media may be at this meeting.

I am also delighted that the speaker list carried over from last Wednesday's meeting. I expect that some listed speakers may get pressure to give up their places to people pushing the Board policy 1620B but I think many speakers who signed up for other reasons (like Whittier) may stand their ground. Good for them. (I, too, remain on the speakers list.)

Tuesday, January 24

Executive Committee meeting from 10-noon. The only item on the agenda is the superintendent search.

Curriculum&Instruction/Operations Committee, Meeting of the Whole (rescheduled) from 4-7 p.m.
Going off the agendas from Jan. 19th, it appears that they will be discussing the contract for school yearbooks, high school graduation requirements and high school grade and credit marking (new to me).

Partial Furlough Day - Three-Hour Early Dismissal

Wednesday, January 25th

Work Session on the Budget/BEX IV Planning Process from 4-5:30 p.m.

School Board Meeting from 6-9 p.m. Agenda.
There is the annual Disclosure of Financial/Conflict of Interest for the Board and the executive administrators. Nothing much new except that I note that Director Martin-Morris now works at the UW as a senior lecturer and that Noel Treat, Deputy Superintendent, this year acknowledged his relationship to the head of the Alliance for Education, Sara Morris (she is his wife of his brother-in-law).

They will be appointing the new members of the BEX Oversight Committee as well as approving the Short-Term Capacity Management and NSAP Transition Plan for 2012-2013. One interesting thing is the maps for the Geozones. Most have a fairly normal appearance (given the city's geography) but South Shore's is a bit of a crazy quilt.

There is the introduction of the Creative Approach Schools MOU with the SEA. More on this in a separate thread.

There is a policy book preamble. I note this section:

The Board’s policy website shall clearly delineate which policies are being reviewed, the timeline for the review, the lead staff assigned to the policy, the committee that will review the policy, a link to the draft policy presented at a Board committee or work session, and how to send feedback on the policy.

Well, I have gone to the Board's webpage several times to check policies and did not find them accessible. It would be a good idea if what they write in their preamble is actually the case in fact.

As well, there is the introduction of the Series 6000 policies which will skip the next Board meeting (to allow time for community input) and then be voted

Then there is the-now infamous Policy 1620B. I haven't reread it since the Executive Committee meeting but I'm hoping the language is less blunt and harsh. I also hope that some of Charlie's suggestions were in there.

I can say a couple of things that you should know about this issue:

- this work was NOT on their work plan agreed to for the year that they set up at the last Board retreat; it is new work, it is the Board's work and frankly, should be heard by ALL members - at a work session, the next Board retreat or a full Committee of the Whole Executive committee meeting. There is no rush to this work.
- Director Smith-Blum, in trying to find best practices in other districts, checked on this type of policy. Out of 25 urban districts that she checked, only four have such a policy. This seems to indicate it is not a typical policy that most Boards see as necessary.

There is also a resolution for introduction around new CTE fund for skills center programs. There is no info as of yet on this. I am hoping that this stage also includes RBHS.

Thursday, January 26th

Another Work Session on the Budget/BEX IV Planning process from 4-6 p.m. I'll have to ask how they will have these two meetings because I would like to hear more about BEX IV.

Friday, January 27th

Snow Make-Up day - School will be in session.

BEX Oversight Committee meeting (rescheduled) from 8:30-10:30 am

Saturday, January 28th

Community Meeting with Director Patu from 10 am - noon at Cafe Vita, 5028 Wilson Avenue S.

The Pendulum Problem

2012-01-21T15:17:00.000-08:00

District leadership style has swung back and forth between two extremes. It needs to be stopped and held at the center.

The Seattle School Board of 2000 - 2003 contributed to the financial fiasco that toppled the Olchefske administration. It was not just their misplaced trust, but the blindness of their trust that allowed things in the district – not just the financial reporting – to spiral down. They could have found the budget problem in the numbers reported to them (Director Bass did find it), but the majority of them lacked the necessary skepticism to look for it.

In response, the voters replaced them with a more activist board. It started with Director Bass elected in 2001. The four board directors elected in 2003 formed a much more hands-on and skeptical board majority – perhaps too much. They found a District that was poorly managed. They found all kinds of problems that had grown over the years and they were blunt and public about exposing it. I won’t say that they were wrong, but they were perhaps impatient. Culture doesn’t change overnight. This Board was accused of micro-managing thedistrict and they were accused of being dysfunctional.

In response, the voters replaced them with a more hands-off board. It started with Director DeBell and Director Chow elected in 2005. The four board directors elected in 2007 formed a new majority that rejected the activism of the previous board. Unfortunately they also rejected all of their duties and responsibilities. Far from micro-managing and taking over the superintendent’s duties, they didn’t even perform their own duties. They refused to provide management oversight, governance, or community representation. Only after the disastrous state audit of 2010 and the Pottergate scandal did a couple of them start to get the idea that they had a job to do.

In response, the voters have replaced them with a more activist board. It started with Director Patu elected in 2009 and now, following the election of two new directors in 2011, a new board majority is emerging.

In the past ten years we have seen the pendulum swing hard from negligence at one end, to excessive activism at the other end, then backto aggressive negligence, and, now, there is concern that the four newest board members (Peaslee, McLaren, Smith-Blum, and Patu) will form a new majority and the pendulum will swing too far back to activism with the negatives that come with that style of board.

It’s a legitimate concern. Let’s not dispute that. The Seattle Times, Crosscut, and Education Reform organizations are, without adoubt, over-reacting. They’re calling out the fire trucks from four stations while there are only sparks and no flames. But we need to be honest – there are sparks.

We do not want a board at either extreme and – even more – we sure don’t want to continue this swinging pendulum from one extreme to theother. It creates instability for everyone and whiplash for the staff. We would like to stop the pendulum at the balance point and keep it stable there. I would like to hope that we can get some agreement on that – from all sides. We don’t want a board thatneglects their duty, but neither do we want a board that over-reaches their duty. We want a healthy skepticism, somewhere between the cynicism of Darlene Flynn and the blind trust of Cheryl Chow.

We’ve had a lot of turnover in the superintendent job. Maybe no more than average for urban districts, but that’s still a lot. We’ve hadeven more turnover in the “C” level staff – way, way too much. The turnover at this level has been far more damaging. We have also had a lot of turnover on the Board. It takes a while for anyone new in a job to figure it out. The cost of high turnover is the mistakes made by someone new in the job. It takes a while for a newly elected board member – any newly elected board member – to find that line between governance and management. New board members, eager to get to work fixing problems, wanting to make a difference, often cross the line. Director DeBell has admitted how he crossed it when he first came onto the board. The line is not clearly or sharply drawn. Until recently, no one paid it much mind. If we are going to slow or stop the pendulum near the balance point, we need to more clearly define that balance point.

That was the motivation behind President DeBell’s proposed board procedure 1620BP. I know that this is his motivation because he said soat his community meeting this morning. I understand his goal and I completely agree that it is a good goal. I share it. I also agree with him that the proper path to that goal is through this public and transparent process of board policy and procedure. So I really like the idea of Board Procedure 1620BP. I’m looking forward to the board’s discussion of it. If there are elements of this proposal that are objectionable to some Board members, I want to know what they are.

I suppose that I could grumble a bit about how this procedure was presented. It seems to be coming from Director DeBell exclusively.It would be better if the Board could come together as a group to say that the line between governance and management needs to be sharper and brighter.

I seek a balance point. At this balance point the Board fulfills all of the governance duties, performs all of the requisite managementoversight, and effectively represents the community without stepping over the line and taking on management work. At this balance point the superintendent and the staff fulfill all of the management duties, implement the strategic plan, perform the day-to-day administration of the district, and comply with laws and policies without stepping over the line and usurping the board’s authority. While Board Procedure 1620BP is a step in that direction, I don’t think it gets us there. It needs some work. The good news is that it can be fixed. One of the best parts of fixing it will be a public discussion of it. The Board will have that discussion on January 25. I'm looking forward.

The Times Stirs the Pot

2012-01-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

As Scarlett O'Hara said, "What I wouldn't say if I wasn't a lady?"

Their latest editorial - full of tiresome terms, innuendo and flat-out hectoring - was printed today. And boy, are their knickers in a twist.

First, the ever-popular cry of "don't micromanage." No one is but they keep saying it whenever people they don't like get elected.

Then they treat McLaren and Peaslee like little children.

Then they call out Smith-Blum and Patu that they should read the policy 1620 as a reminder.

Do they call out Martin-Morris or Carr? Of course not.

They also say this:

One board member reportedly ordered Enfield to fire some employees.

To which I said:
You know, for a fact, that a Board member ordered Enfield to fire employees? Where is your evidence or proof? Because if you truth-challenged people HAD any, there would be a story by Brian Rosenthal and not an editorial.

Then they said:

At a recent retreat, another raised the idea of the board approving principal hires. The board should not be able to hire and fire anyone other than the superintendent.

Alas and alack -whether the people at the Times think they should not be able to, state law says they CAN. (These people NEVER do their homework.)

Here's what I said in the comments section:

Yes, at the Board retreat, newbie Sharon Peaslee, DID ask about the Board and principal hires. And guess what? It was explained to her that YES, Washington State RCW DOES give that power to school boards and ALL over the state, school boards hire principals.

In the larger school districts, most have given that power over to their superintendents. Michael DeBell, School Board President, said all of this at a recent Executive Committee meeting.

And then there's this undercurrent of "we will never attract anyone good to be superintendent with all this"?

But that's really the end game, no? For the Times and the powers that be in this town to smugly say, "See we were right" while THEY were stirring the pot the whole time. That's what Crosscut is doing as well.

It's a sad, sad thing but I still believe the Board will get a lot of great candidates. Even if others don't want them to materialize.

The Times gets more pathetic and desperate by the day, hoping that someone is listening to them when really, they exist in their own little echo chamber.

If Michael DeBell really cares about this district, he would be tamping this kind of nonsense down right now.

Yes, Director Community Meetings are on for Tomorrow

2012-01-20T17:15:00.000-08:00

I contacted both Michael DeBell and Sharon Peaslee and their community meetings scheduled for tomorrow are still on.

What's Up with Michael?

2012-01-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

I hadn't had time to write about the Executive Committee meeting last week but it ties in nicely with a recent article in the Seattle Weekly about why Dr. Enfield is leaving.

I noticed that after the election, Michael DeBell really seemed down. I can understand; Steve Sundquist and Peter Maier were not just colleagues but friends. But he is an elected official and election change comes with the territory.

Then, scant weeks into terms of Peaslee and McLaren, I was hearing that he was unhappy. That he thought that some members of the Board (who shall remain nameless) were asking too many "micromanaging" questions of Enfield. It's unclear to me whether it was asking too many questions or asking questions that stepped into Enfield's realm of action.

Then Enfield said she was leaving, said it had nothing to do with the election results but would not say anything else.

But it is clear from Michael's actions recently that he is struggling with not only losing Peter and Steve but now Dr. Enfield. He has made it very clear he doesn't want her to leave. I'm pretty sure he has told her privately to let him know what might make her stay.

So the Weekly article first where he is quite blunt (and unlike him, publicly so):

DeBell admitted that micro-managing is a problem at the district and that Enfield was unhappy with it.

He says he's not at liberty to discuss details, and the superintendent herself has been tight-lipped about her reasons for going.

But DeBell elaborates a little when he talks about "individual" board members trying to influence the superintendent and other staff members, rather than going through the "public" process of introducing a proposal and having it voted on.

Putting himself in the superintendent's shoes, he says: "If you just step back and consider seven different bosses all potentially going different and conflicting directions, it's really an impossible situation."

Yes, that would be a bad situation but I know the Board to be professional people who would NOT all be trying to sway staff. I think some of the issue how is how often the Board asks questions/volume of versus what they are asking.

But you do need to step back and look at it from the Board's POV. They have one staff person who does research for them (and she reports to a district administrator, not the Board). If they have questions, it might occur to them to ask them at a committee meeting or work session (where you'd think it would be okay).

Then there was the discussion around Board Policy 1620 at the Executive Committee meeting that is crucial to this discussion and crucial to how the Board and the next superintendent interact.

The members of the Executive Committee are Kay Smith-Blum, Michael DeBell and Betty Patu. Michael is the Chair. Also in attendance were Marty McLaren and Sharon Peaslee.

At the beginning of the meeting as they went over the agenda, Kay asked for this item to be pulled because there was so much to go over and they had a full agenda. Then there ensued quite the polite tug-of-war. Michael said they had staff there to go over it and should continue. Betty backed Kay up and said it really was a serious policy that needed a lot of time. Michael said it was the 5th draft (but obviously probably only the lst draft that either Marty or Sharon had ever seen). Kay said it wasn't part of their work plan for the year. Michael said the committee was where this work took place. Betty said okay, if you feel strongly, let's do this.

So they then went thru a few items first.

They did talk about waivers and Betty had staff confirm that schools with waivers must pay for their own materials. Holly Ferguson said they must be able to identify their funding source(s). Marty asked if they could facilitate use of the waiver such that if a program has already been piloted at one school, that a new school could just use the first school's template. There was some discussion over whether this was a superintendent procedure or Board policy. Michael said those issues could be further discussed "downstream." It seems that Kay, Betty, Marty and Sharon are hoping the Board will consider an appeal process for schools if the Superintendent says no to a waiver.

Then they got to the policy. Michael explained that he was exercising his right as a Board member to make suggestions for Board procedures. He said none of the work came from staff and he worked on it over the winter break but he did have help from Erin and Holly.

He said he was trying to accomplish some guidelines for Board and staff to improve the "boundary" between governance and management. He said it was based on his years of experience.

He said the governance of the Board "isn't affected in any way." He said the Board can visit any school and ask staff questions. He said it was to help staff give the best answers possible.

He said there was a lack of clarity about the "ideal relationship" and what best practices could/should be. He said they do not have individual power for governance.

He said because of the cuts at central administration and lack of staff, there is language about Board asking staff for work.

(My aside here is that I get that but the Board has to do ITS work as well and the Board are elected officials. It's their job to make sure they have the best information possible to make decisions.)

Michael was clear about adopting the procedures at this meeting. He said because they are in a leadership transition and would like to attract the best possible candidates. He said there is an awareness of this issue in every district.

Then Dr. Enfield chimed in with what I thought was a telling statement. She said that some candidates for superintendent have their working relationship with a school board defined in their contract.

Really? Look, if someone looks our district over (as we look him or her over) and read the Board policies and gets upset, then probably he or she is not the person for our district. If a candidate demands specific language in their contract about how he or she will work with the Board, then maybe he or she is not the person for our district.

Dr Enfield left at this point.

Just as Michael does not want the Board to change its policies every time there is an election (he referenced this), it is then equally fair to say that we don't need a new set of rules every time we get a new superintendent.

Now unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay as they hashed it all out. (The Times' Brian Rosenthal told me the meeting went an hour over its scheduled time.) But what I heard in the beginning made me feel good about the elected officials in the room.

Fun fact that I didn't know about Marty McLaren. She has lived in a communal group situation for years. And, because of that, she has a LOT of experience in learning how to communicate and find consensus. During this meeting, she showed that.

She spoke up, saying she offered a new perspective and was a big believer in positive, constructive language. (And I have to say that the language in the sheet before me was much more of a blunt instrument, again, odd coming from the Michael DeBell that I know.)

Kay expressed the concern that this was a policy " that will guide everything we do."

Michael replied that "I own the language and am comfortable with changing the language but I am wedded to the basic goals."

Betty also chimed in about how serious this particular policy was to their work. She did not want to rush through it. Michael conceded that it was very important and that they may have to schedule more time. But he also said something that I had some disagreement with. He said that Harium and Sherry both have full-time jobs and time is of the issue.

Okay, BUT they chose to be on the Board. If it is impossible to be on the Board and work full-time, then your choice is not to be on the Board. Because of the almost volunteer nature of the job, of course, all the Board has to be sensitive to each other's time but it does not negate that they have a job to do that may require time and careful thought.

Michael also referenced Don McAdams (who has served as a consultant to the Board and I'm not sure I get why) and that Mr. McAdams wanted even stronger language.

So they got started working, line by line. As I said, I didn't stay for the entire thing but what I did hear were Board members expressing their thoughts and concerns and then listening to what other Board members had to say. It was a beautiful thing.

One thing I appreciated hearing was Sharon Peaslee stressing that it should be about how the Board can advocate for maximum effectiveness rather than what they shouldn't be doing.

Kay had a great point where she advocated for language like "the Board and Superintendent will work together as a cohesive unit in the spirit of collaboration." That's a lot friendlier language than drawing strong lines.

Michael also did point out a fact that most don't know (or want to forget). The law gives all authority to the Board. For example, the RCW about School Boards allows them to hire principals. Michael pointed out in small districts, their boards do just that but with larger, urban district that has shifted to superintendents.

The staff listened attentively and Ron English, district counsel, offered some good suggestions for wording. However, there was some body language from some staff that suggested some concern about the wording being decided on.

This policy was scheduled to be introduced at the Board meeting on January 18 but will now but introduced on Jan. 25. I did ask for an electronic copy and will link it as soon as I receive it.

News Roundup

2012-01-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

From the "boy, I'm glad my kids didn't go to these schools" file, a story from Georgia about worksheets used in elementary school math that reference slavery, beating a slave and picking cotton. And the principal said he "will work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons." That's it. A district spokesperson said she didn't think the teachers meant any harm.

Also, we're losing teachers rapidly in this country according to the activist group, Take Part. Five reasons: burnout (particularly among charter school teachers), threats of layoffs, low wages, testing pressures, and poor working conditions.

From the New York Times, an interesting story about how education brings "mental fitness."

“Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life,” says Margie E. Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University who specializes in aging. For those in midlife and beyond, a college degree appears to slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade, adding a new twist to the cost-benefit analysis of higher education — for young students as well as those thinking about returning to school.

It also goes into this really fascinating new belief about two categories of brainpower; fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

One bunch falls under the heading “fluid intelligence,” the abilities that produce solutions not based on experience, like pattern recognition, working memory and abstract thinking, the kind of intelligence tested on I.Q. examinations. These abilities tend to peak in one’s 20s.

“Crystallized intelligence,” by contrast, generally refers to skills that are acquired through experience and education, like verbal ability, inductive reasoning and judgment. While fluid intelligence is often considered largely a product of genetics, crystallized intelligence is much more dependent on a bouquet of influences, including personality, motivation, opportunity and culture.

Education was also associated with a longer life and decreased risk of dementia. “The effects of education are dramatic and long term,” Dr. Lachman says.

The moral of the story - stay in school, kids.

Snow Make-Up Day Next Friday, January 27th

2012-01-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

From SPS:

Seattle Public Schools will hold classes on Friday, Jan. 27 as a snow make-up day.

No school was scheduled for next Friday, a professional development day for staff, but instead will be used as a make-up day for one of the three snow days this week, as outlined in the 2011-12 school calendar.

A determination on making up the additional snow days, most likely at the end of the school year, will be decided next week.

“It is important to get our students back in the classroom next week,” said Interim Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield. “We know some families may have made out-of-town plans for next Friday, and we apologize for any inconvenience this causes.”

There will still be a three-hour early dismissal on Tuesday, Jan. 24 for a scheduled furlough day for teachers and staff represented by the Seattle Education Association (SEA). That day cannot be used as a snow make-up day.

Open Thread Friday

2012-01-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

As has been noted in other threads, there is a steady drumbeat of "keep Dr. Enfield." Crosscut unleashed a particularly unworthy piece this week (insulting Directors Smith-Blum and Patu as well as casting suspicion on Directors McLaren and Peaslee).

Now we have an op-ed from a Seattle Schools parent (and Stand supporter) that gives a whole list of reasons why keeping Dr. Enfield would be a good idea and the Board should be working on this.

First, the op-ed piece is not entirely truthful (the author says the survey shows parents want her) and second, what did I miss?

She said she wouldn't participate in a search. She waited weeks after the election and THEN said she was leaving. What did anyone do or have time to do to drive her away? It would seem Dr. Enfield has to make a decision, not the Board.

I have told readers, if you feel as this parent does, please go advocate to the Board. But I sincerely believe her mind is made up. I am fairly sure we will find out she had another job in the wings after she leaves.

But this continuing whining about how bad the newly-constituted Board will be needs to stop. I know these seven people and I continue to believe they will work together, collaboratively to make this district better.

I have communicated with some of them that if they want to take on the task of finding a new superintendent themselves, I have faith they will do the job well. If they want community help, just ask and I will be glad to post any notice at this blog.

We need to move on.

What's on your mind?

My No to Charters

2012-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

I'm going to express my thoughts about charters in general and then, in a separate thread, give an analysis of the current charter legislation.

I waited until I had finished my series on charters. I gave time for readers to read the series and hopefully, thoughtfully consider the evidence and experience that other states have had. You may have noticed that I put the series (with links) at the top right of the blog along with a link to the State Legislature page that shows how to contact your legislator to give your opinion.

I will say this again - this blog is the only place that truly tried to give factual and complete information in order to allow readers to educate themselves on this issue. We have never had charters in this state and so there are likely many, many people who don't even have a vague idea about what they are.

(Update: a lot of egg on my face from a brain that sometimes doesn't fire on all pistons. Of course, I left out the wonderful work at the Seattle Education blog written by Dora Taylor and Sue Peters. My apologies.)

This did not happen at LEV, Stand for Children or through the state PTSA organization. They could have done this but chose not to do so. Ask yourself why. Why would there be pro and con discussions about charters from those groups without providing complete information first?

No big surprise - I don't believe in charters.

Charters were about better outcomes in exchange for fewer regulations and more autonomy in teaching and learning. For only 17% of ALL charters to do better than traditional public schools, after 20 years of trying and with the federal government now giving grants to start-up charter schools - I do NOT see the cost benefit ratio that makes sense. What is most troubling is that if a school was not performing academically within a certain period of time, it was to be closed down. That has not happened in the numbers you would expect given that 17% figure.

Why don't I support charter schools?

First and foremost, after 20 years and 42 states, they have still not proven their worth in a large enough way to support their costs. With the stats standing at 17% of charters (in all those states) doing better than traditional public schools (and about 43% doing the same and 33% doing worse) - those are not odds even Vegas would go with.

I really support why charters started. As you may recall, it was about creating innovation within a school. Innovation created by teachers. It has not turned out that way.

From a review by Richard D. Kahlenberg of the book, "The Charter School Experiment: Expectations, Evidence and Implications edited by Christopher A. Lubienski and Peter C. Weitzel - The Minnesota legislator who authored the nation’s first charter school law also noted that “many teachers were frustrated with their work and were leaving the profession. I wanted to give them ownership.” In practice, however, Lubienski and Weitzel note that most charter schools actually reduce teacher voice and have come to “represent the institutionalization of anti-union interests,” which is why Shanker came to reject charters by the mid-1990s. With only 12 percent of charter schools unionized, charter school teachers are less well paid than regular public school teachers and leave the profession at much higher rates.

Again from the book review - According to researchers at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, 70 percent of black charter school students attend “intensely segregated” schools, compared with 34 percent of black students in regular public schools.

Charter schools are more likely to serve minority and low-income students but less likely to serve students in special education. They serve fewer homeless students. This has a two-fold problem. One, the resegregation of our schools. Two, it puts more of the responsibility on traditional schools and the accompanying costs.

Charters are less likely to employ teachers meeting state certification standards. Studies point to that issue as one likely reason charters do not perform as well as traditional public schools.

Teacher and principal turnover at charters is greater than at traditional public schools.

Charter schools do not face sanctions often. Most often charters go out of business because of problems with compliance with regulations/finances than student performance. Authorizers in many states have problems with closing schools that have issues.

From the DOE, There is a general expectation in the charter school sector that authorizers have a responsibility to regularly oversee charter school operations and progress toward meeting the goals in the charter. The reality is that only 36 percent of authorizers had a charter school office or staff in 2001-02, suggesting limited capacity to address charter school oversight. However, this finding varies by type of authorizer. For example, 85 percent of states that are authorizers have an office or staff dedicated to charter school work. Because states are more likely to authorize a large number of schools, they may require an infrastructure to provide adequate oversight. More important, more than half of authorizers report difficulty closing a school that is having problems--a key responsibility of authorizers in this educational reform.

Despite the hope that charters would put competitive pressure on traditional public schools, there is little evidence that has happened.

Charters do better academically when they operate within a traditional school district and yet, there has been rise in in CMO-managed charters.

Charters, unless they are managed by a CMO (charter management organization), are little islands unto themselves. They don't collaborate with the district they sit in. They don't have to have regular public meetings with the communities they sit in or even allow the public to sit in on their Board meetings. Board members for charters don't have to have any education background nor do most charter laws even require background checks.

From the book review: Charter schools remain popular with Americans because they serve an important function: providing an educational alternative for poor kids in lousy public schools. But the fact that charters are not, on the whole, any better than public schools suggests that the key impediment to equal opportunity does not lie with regulation or teachers unions or modes of school governance. Several successful charter schools throughout the country—such as High Tech High in San Diego, and the Denver School of Science and Technology—consciously seek a socio-economically diverse student population, heeding decades of research that suggest that low-income students will perform far better in economically integrated environments.

So what about those that do well?
- One thought is that charters are smaller than most traditional schools (just as most private schools are).
- Another thought is that charters have been shown to be able to manipulate who comes in (and stays in) at their schools. Any time you are able to manage the population group, you will get better outcomes.

And yes, absolutely yes, there are some great charter schools out there.
Just like great private schools.
Just like great traditional public schools.

So a charter law for Washington State means that perhaps 20% of the charter schools would perform better than traditionals but there is no guarantee they will.

Meanwhile, a school district loses money, the state takes on a huge burden of oversight and costs and all that for hope and a prayer for better.

It does not cost out for me. I believe our own district is slowly but surely doing better. I believe a lot more attention is being paid to our lowest-performing schools. I believe our labor partners know all this and understand there needs to be more give and take. Tacoma School District wants to be an innovation district and not just a district with innovative schools. I believe that is what Seattle Schools should be as well.

I believe it can be done and done without charters.

City Club is Looking for Heroes

2012-01-19T19:17:00.000-08:00

I was pleased to find out that City Club took over the Jefferson Awards went the PI went dark. The Jefferson Awards "recognize, inspire and activate volunteerism and public service in communities, workplaces and schools across America." The awards are presented on a national and local level. The program started in 1972 "to create a Nobel Prize for public service."

"From the beginning the Jefferson awards has been based on a simple idea. One of the most powerful ideas in the world. One person can make a difference. That is the heart of democracy at work."

I was nominated for the work we did as part of the entire Closure and Consolidation Committee. It was somewhat embarrassing because we were doing difficult and intense work but it was short-term. Frankly, the award winners were just awe-inspiring.

There are people out in our communities, doing yeoman's work in service to our city. If you know such a person, please nominate him or her. The nomination materials must be received by Friday, Feb. 10th.

Seattle Schools to be Closed, Friday, January 20th

2012-01-19T16:46:00.001-08:00

Seattle Public Schools will remain closed on Friday, Jan. 20 because of continued winter weather conditions. The John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence will also be closed.

“The snow is still falling and temperatures are low, making it difficult to safely transport students to and from school,” said Dr. Susan Enfield, Interim Superintendent. “We hope our students, families and staff members are staying safe and warm, and we look forward to re-opening our schools on Monday.”

Next Tuesday, Jan. 24 is a three-hour early dismissal from schools because of a scheduled furlough day. That day cannot be used as a snow make-up day. District administration will determine tomorrow if Friday, Jan. 27 – a scheduled day off for professional development – can be used as a snow make-up day.

Common Ground

2012-01-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

I have been reading a lot of Education Reform material this week. Some of their blogs are even busier than ours. When I read things by the more responsible and less hysterical members of that community I see a lot that makes sense to me. In fact, I see a lot that I could have written myself.

I also read a lot of stuff that makes no sense at all.

So let's try to sort through this and determine if we can't find some common ground.

Education Reform have two primary agenda items: charter schools and "teacher quality". I can't support either of these, but I understand their concerns. Perhaps their concerns can be addressed through some more responsible structures than the ones they are proposing. They also seem to be deeply interested in education technology, as am I, but, again not in the same way as the more extreme members of that movement. There is a responsible middle there also.

Charter Schools. I have spoken with thoughtful people who support the idea of Charter Schools and can hold up their end of a calm, reality-based conversation about them. They and I have found common ground on this single point: the only difference between Charter Schools and regular public schools is that Charter Schools are free of district-level interference. Charter schools are not a cure for bad teachers, bad principals, bad students, bad culture, or bad families. For all of the talk that piled on top of Charter Schools, everything from union-busting to innovation, the only real element that defines a Charter School is freedom from district level mismanagement. They are not a cure for bad district management, but a path around it.

How does district management go bad? It goes bad when it misunderstands its mission or suffers from mission creep. Seattle Public Schools is a prime example. Rather than running a lean, flat management structure, Seattle Public Schools has a bloated administration full of Directors, Executive Directors, Assistant Directors, and Project Managers. All of them pull down six-figure salaries and have highly paid staff as well. Someone seems to have forgotten that no one in the JSCEE does anything that teaches students.

The central administration should only have three narrow missions and they should hold themselves only to those. They should take care of all of the non-academic elements of operating the District (transportation, food service, HR, budget, finance, legal, enrollment, facilities, purchasing, etc.). Seattle Public Schools has recently reformed these operational departments and made a lot of improvement. More improvement is possible. With regard to academics, the central administration should only have a few curriculum folks to set the required content (the knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire) for subject and grade, to facilitate collaboration among teachers across the district, to provide a bit of subject-area specific coaching and consultation to teachers, and to consult on the selection of materials and professional development. The District should similarly have experts for special education, ELL, advanced learning, intervention, and other special needs populations. District level teaching and learning department should not be a lot of people. Seattle Public Schools is trying to do too much here; they issue mandates instead of advice. That needs to stop. What needs to start, however, is a critical role of the central administration which is completely absent in Seattle Public Schools: quality assurance. The District doesn't intervene when schools spiral down. Or, if they do intervene, they make things worse by more tightly enforcing compliance with a system that doesn't work. Real quality assurance would look a lot different.

What would schools look like if they didn't have to follow District academic mandates? Could they re-form their classrooms to provide more individual instruction for the students who need it while overloading other classes? Could they extend their day, week or year? Could they spend some of their budget on providing the sort of enrichment needed to fill the opportunity gap? I find it very hard to believe that teachers and principals, given the authority to do as they like, would follow the industrial model of age-peer classes of thirty students all getting the same instruction in the same way at the same time.

Charter Schools represent an effort to get out from under the heavy-handed academic mandates that fall down on schools from the District level. They are also an effort to provide some quality assurance through non-mandatory enrollment. I get that. I see that. But that only evades the problem; it doesn't address it. It provides a helicopter rescue to some children and abandons the rest of them to their doom. I can't support that. If the Education Reform folks see bad district management as the problem, then let's see them talk about that and take action on that. They never talk about quality of the work done by district administrators. They don't cast district administrators as the villains of their "documentaries". They don't propose legislation to improve the evaluation of district managers and make them more accountable.

Teacher Quality. All of the talk about teacher quality needs to stop until we can know what we are talking about. The Education Reform folks talk about it like there is some universally acknowledged measure of teacher quality, that teacher quality can be quantified, and that all teachers can be ranked. That's simply not true. Without that - and they are without that - nearly all of their teacher quality talk is empty. I don't dispute the truth that there are some teachers who should either get better or get gone, but it is the principal's job to identify them and take action. If there is a bad teacher in a school then there is a bad principal there as well. Besides, I think that "teacher quality" is over-rated. The Education Reform folks like to go on about how critically important it is, but let's remember that they can't identify the quality teachers so their data about their impact is meaningless. Moreover, we all know that the determinants of student achievement are dominated by home-based influences.

A more fruitful discussion would be the evolving role of the teacher. We no longer need teachers as the dispensers of information. There is a shift from the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side". The teacher should help students find information, put that information in context, make sense of it, make connections to it, and work collaboratively with other students in the class. Now that technology can do a MUCH better job of dispensing information, the teacher can delegate that work to the technology (whether print, video, or electronic), and focus instead on the work that only the teacher can do. It is a poor teacher who simply reads the textbook aloud at the front of the class. The teacher should engage the higher order cognitive skills, respond to individual student needs, build a positive culture in the classroom, foster social skills and collaborative skills, and motivate. Shouldn't those be the measure of teacher quality?

As we think about the determinants of student achievement, the role of motivation looms large. Teachers, therefore, should focus a lot of their time and effort on motivation. Teacher quality, if there is such a thing, is largely a measure of how well they can motivate their class.

Education Technology. When responsible people discuss education technology they are thinking of things like flipped classrooms and hybrid programs in which it is teacher AND technology, not teacher OR technology. The good idea is to identify the few - and there are just a few - things that the technology can do better than the teacher and delegate those tasks to the technology and to allow the teacher to focus on the things that only the teacher - a real-time, present, interactive, responsive, reactive and pro-active, creative, improvisational professional with a relationship with the student - can do. Technology is great for teaching skills and building them. It's great for providing students with individualized instruction. It's great as a source of information. Social technology is improving, but I wonder if it can ever compete with collaboration in the real world where we have tone of voice, a huge catalog of non-verbal communications, and, for lack of a better term, vibe. See, I can't really communicate it this way, but you know what I mean.

The Education Reform folks aren't winning us over by yelling at us or accusing us of supporting an entrenched status quo, and we are not winning them over by accusing them of segregation, privatization, or union-busting. I believe that we can engage the calmer, more reality-based members of that movement and find common cause with them. Speak kindly to them about what they hope to achieve with charter schools. Ask them what a charter school can do that public school cannot do. Explore their ideas about teacher quality. Ask them what a great teacher does and ask them if those practices can be defined and measured. Understand how they want technology used in a classroom and refer it back to their understanding of what a great teacher does and how well technology can do it.

Am I making any sense at all?

Fun for the Kids (Well, Not Today)

2012-01-19T10:06:00.001-08:00

A couple of things came across my radar that I wanted to let you parents of younger students know about.

One the Woodland Park Zoo is having a Hippo Weigh-in Contest for its two hippos, Water Lily and Guadalupe. Entries taken until Jan. 27th. Might be a good research project for your kids to look up the average weight of a female hippo and, using math (gasp!) figure out an average.

Also, the Seattle International Film Festival is having a Films4Families Series that started last week but continues through Feb. 26th. The films each show a couple of weekends. The first in the series is ET, then The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a Looney Tunes Cartoon Festival and then The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (I will be attending the Looney Tunes Cartoon Festival as I love those great old ones.)

Library Grant Opportunity

2012-01-19T09:56:00.001-08:00

The National Center for Family Literacy is offering grants for their Libraries and Families Award. Three library literacy programs that serve families will win $10,000 each and scholarships to the National Conference on Family Literacy in 2012 and 2013.

Applications are due by Monday, Feb. 6, 2012.

If your library is doing a great job connecting parents and children with books or if your school librarian has a great idea for that, let him or her know about these grants.

Really? We're Winning? It Doesn't Seem Like It

2012-01-18T19:19:00.000-08:00

Reader Caroline commented on this post by Alexander Russo at This Week in Education (late December, 2011). It's a pretty funny lament over how the ed reformers can't seem to sell their message. These two lines made me laugh:

In contrast, reformy folks have lacked a SWAT team of feisty and prolific school-level champions defending articulating their message.

The now middle-aged reform movement seems to have relied on institutional and organizational voices -- Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, et al -- and mainstream news outlets, where they dominate.

You mean feisty and numerous people on the ground (instead of those at 10,000 feet) actually work harder and are able to engage more?

And those institutional and organization voices - you mean, the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation? Yes, you do find yourself wondering what they truly know about public education that they didn't learn from a white paper or quick and orchestrated school tour.

He seems to think the battle will be won via social media.

Nope.

It's funny how people up the food chain forget how personal this fight is. And those on the ground - the parents, the teachers, the staff - know the challenges better than anyone. That's why their voices resonate in a way that Bill Gates' never will.

More Leadership Voices Speaking Out Against Charter Legislation

2012-01-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

Braving the snow day, the president of WSSDA (Washington State School Directors' Association), Mary Fertakis, testified today before the Senate committee hearing testimony about SB 6202, the charter schools bill.

Here's a link to the story at the Seattle Education blog. It is clear from her testimony that she has read this bill thoroughly and spotted several of the issues I saw as well. From the SE blog story:

In her testimony, Fertakis pointed out the association’s concerns that the bill may fall short of its stated objective to serve students who struggle to achieve due to poverty, racial and ethnic diversity, and special needs. She referenced Section 105 of the bill, which allows charter schools to be set up for educationally disadvantaged students, but noted that the bill also allows charter schools to be set up around a special emphasis, theme, or concept that do not have to serve educationally disadvantaged students, which is the stated purpose of the bill.

The bill caps the number of charter schools to 10 a year, with a majority “reserved” for schools serving educationally disadvantaged students. However, as Fertakis noted, the bill (Section 115) is clear that if the reserve is not met, the State Board of Education must allow implementation of other charters, regardless of whether they serve educationally disadvantaged students.

Her suggestion? If the Legislature continues to pursue the bill, then all 10 of the charter schools should be focused solely on our most struggling students.

Fertakis told the committee the bill goes too far, too fast. She said if it was the Legislature’s intent to pass a bill authorizing charter schools in Washington, then a decision of that magnitude should be sent to the people for a vote. This is particularly important when charter schools will be using public monies without locally elected oversight.

In other news, the League of Women Voters of Kitsap County have come out against the charter legislation as well. They say:

• Private boards selected by non-profit corporations rather than publicly elected by citizens will govern charter schools. Voters will lose their right to elect representatives to oversee the spending of their taxes.
• Charter schools will be exempt from state statutes and rules applicable to school districts and boards, creating a separate and unequal school system even though Article IX of the Washington state Constitution requires a general and uniform system of public schools. *
• HB 2428 and SB 6202 will create additional administrative functions and costs for the State Board of Education, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and School Districts at a time when further cuts are proposed for K-12, and the Supreme Court has ruled in McCleary v. State that Washington is failing to provide ample funding for education. *
• There are many successful innovative and alternative schools as part of the public school system in Washington state. Let’s encourage them and work toward full funding rather than be distracted by charter schools that the voters have already rejected three times.

Seattle Schools Closed Thursday, January 19th

2012-01-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

From the district:

“We hoped that students and staff could return to school on Thursday, but forecasts right now are showing continuing severe weather, including the potential for icy roads,” said Dr. Susan Enfield, Interim Superintendent. “We want to err on the side of caution, and also give families enough time to plan for another snow day.”

Please note that the 4 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 19 School Board Committee of the Whole meeting has not been canceled. As of now, that meeting will take place, and a decision on whether or not to cancel will be made by noon Thursday. However, the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence will be closed to all non-essential personnel.

As of this afternoon, Seattle Public Schools has not yet determined when and how the snow days will be made up this year. That announcement will be made early next week.

Open Thread Wednesday

2012-01-18T11:09:00.001-08:00

It's cold, it's snowy and the kids are home.

What's on your mind?

School Board Meeting Tonight Canceled

2012-01-18T11:08:00.001-08:00

This meeting has been rescheduled for Jan. 25th.

Race to the Top - It's Not Just for States Anymore

2012-01-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan just came out with a new idea for RTTT: allowing districts to compete as stand-alones (as opposed to just entire states competing). This is interesting because the most recent news on RTTT is that Hawaii was placed on a "high-risk" grant status and may have its award taken away. This is also the case in New York.

From Education Week:

"I think we'll use it for the districts," he said. "You can do different things. You can do early childhood as a piece of that, or STEM as a piece of that. ... I don't want to commit, but the bulk of the money will go through districts...what we'll be asking of districts is still very much up for consideration."

It's clear that Duncan sees the potential of investing a half-billion dollars in districts, especially in states that are, as he calls them, "less functional" and haven't won any other competitive grants.
"I love that we played at the state level. I love that we played in the early childhood space," said Duncan, who is expected to talk about the new Race to the Top in a speech before the nation's mayors in Washington today. "But I'm really really pleased now to have a chance to participate with districts, and there's a huge appetite there."

Besides hammering out the details of what a new Race to the Top competition for districts would look like, Duncan's most immediate task is overseeing an ambitious new plan to grant states waivers from many of the core components of the No Child Left Behind Act—his answer to Congress' inability, so far, to formally rewrite the law. Already, 11 states have applied in the first round, with a second wave of applications due Feb. 21.

That's a weird phrasing "played." But maybe it is a big chess game to him.

On this issue of waivers from NCLB, he had this to say:

"No question the waivers are a stronger plan," he said. "I hope that changes. I hope at some point next month, six months from now, or next year that we get a strong bipartisan bill; unfortunately that's not reality."

For the first time, Duncan telegraphed how tough he plans to be on states that win a waiver. It's the same kind of tough talk he engaged in before and during the original $4 billion Race to the Top competition for states.

"I'm not promising anyone we're going to bat 1,000. We may grant a waiver to a state that makes its commitments in good faith but doesn't keep them," he said. "And just to be very clear, and just as in Race to the Top, if we need to revoke the waiver six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, because folks can't deliver on what they said, we're more than prepared to do that."

He was almost as tough on states that don't apply for a waiver—such as California—and decide to stick it out with the current NCLB requirements. Though he said it wasn't his first choice, he said he was prepared to withhold Title I money to states, if needed.

Whittier Fighting Back on Kindergarten Expansion

2012-01-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

The Whittier Elementary PTA has put forth a petition to the Board to ask them to not add an additional kindergarten class next year (which would take away their long-time child-care program.

From PhinneyWood.com

Members of Whittier Elementary School’s PTA plan to attend Wednesday night’s Seattle School Board meeting to oppose a proposal to add a fourth kindergarten class next year. Whittier, which is at 13th Avenue NW and NW 75th Street in Ballard, currently has three kindergarten classes of 23 students each.

The letter from PTA Co-Presidents Lisa Melenyzer and April Brown states that 80 percent of this year’s kindergarteners live within the school’s attendance area, and that there was no waitlist for kindergarten at Whittier this year. The two say that there is room within the current three classes to add any anticipated population growth in the next few years.

In the letter from the PTA:

Please note that we are not suggesting that kids in the attendance area who are entitled to come to Whittier should be turned away. We also want the siblings of Whittier families to be served, and for Whittier to be a welcoming place to the community. We simply don’t want Whittier to be appointed a fourth kindergarten – with this lack of planning and foresight – merely to help serve a capacity problem in the rest of our service area.

From the petition:
As of the October 1, 2011 enrollment count, Whittier had 69 kindergarteners enrolled, accommodating 55 children in our attendance area, plus 14 children whose addresses are outside the attendance area. This translates to 20% of current year K students come from outside the school’s attendance area, demonstrating that there is healthy access for students within the attendance area as well as for siblings. Even with any anticipated growth in our attendance area population of six-year olds, three kindergartens seems sufficient to handle that population.

I find this all very interesting. Whittier is a good school and yet it doesn't fill from its own attendance area (at least in K). And, they have kindergarten classes of 23 kids; that's pretty good.

They also have a good point in saying that adding another K class doesn't answer where all those students would go would all go.

They seem to feel there is no middle-to-long term vision for what is being proposed.

SPS to be Closed on Wednesday, January 18th

2012-01-17T17:09:00.000-08:00

From the district;

All schools canceled for Wednesday, Jan. 18.

All after-school activities canceled.

All Seattle Public Schools will be closed on Wednesday, Jan. 18 because of predicted winter weather that might make it difficult and potentially unsafe to transport students to schools.

Between five and 10 inches of snow is predicted to fall in south Seattle. All after-school events are cancelled Tuesday night and will be cancelled on Wednesday night. This includes games, practices, events, plays, meetings, etc.

The John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence will remain open. Employees are asked to monitor email and voicemail in the morning for any additional news, and to use best judgment when commuting to work.

A decision on whether or not to postpone Wednesday’s School Board meeting will be made by noon.

On Tuesday, a change in weather patterns meant Seattle Public Schools had both a two-hour delayed start and a two-hour early dismissal. Interim Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield apologized for the inconvenience to families, students and staff,but stressed that decisions are made erring on the side of caution.

FYI, Wikipedia

2012-01-17T15:47:00.000-08:00

As some of you may have heard, there is a bill in the House called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and in the Senate (PROTECT IP Act - PIPA) that would seriously impact a free and open Internet. (Do your research and decide if this will be worth it - I am against both bills.)

But, for our purposes here, this thread is to notify you (and maybe your student) that Wikipedia, the sixth most visited site in the world, will blackout on Wednesday, Jan. 18th in protest. This is the first time they have ever staged such a protest. From Wickipedia:

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That's a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia's articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

Other groups are following this tactic as well: Mozilla, Wordpress, Reddit and Boing, Boing . Facebook, Google, Twitter and Tumblr are all opposed but are not joining in the blackout.

Apple to Have "Education-Related" Press Conference

2012-01-17T13:17:00.000-08:00

From Apple Insider:

As Apple's education-related media event on Thursday approaches, multiple reports are claiming that the company could announce an initiative to help textbook makers produce interactive ebooks for the iPad, with some sources calling the initiative "Garageband for e-books."

According to the report, some industry executives are also confident that Apple will likely unveil a textbook publishing tool this week. Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis, who worked on education projects at Apple before leaving to focus on interactive e-books, voiced his belief that a textbook app from Apple is in the works.

"When you think about what Apple is doing... they are selling tens of thousands of iPads into K-12 institutions," MacInnis said. "What are they doing with those iPads? They don't really replace textbooks, because there's not very much content on offer."

Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had intimated to biographer Walter Isaacson that he wanted to revolutionize textbooks ArsTechnica's sources said Jobs had worked on the project for years. The plans were reportedly set to be announced last October, but they were postponed at the last minute because of Jobs' failing health.

This follows on the heels of Rep. Reuven Carlyle's desire/push for spending less on textbooks in K-12 education.

SPS to Close Two Hours Early

2012-01-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

I am a little confused because the SPS website does not say this but the Times is reporting that SPS will close two hours early today. I verified this at the district headquarters and it is true.

Wedgwood Elementary Opportunity

2012-01-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

In the Ravenna Blog: Coffee chats with Wedgwood Elementary's principal scheduled

Wedgwood Elementary School’s principal, Chris Cronas, is holding a series of informal meetings for parents in January and February. The meetings look to be taking place in the neighborhood (vs. at the school) in both mornings and evenings.

This will provide an excellent opportunity for folks to get the answers they seek about Wedgwood, including the adoption of the "cluster grouping" model for Spectrum. I'm sure there are a lot of other topics to discuss as well.

PTSA Forum on Charter Schools Tonight is Cancelled

2012-01-17T08:22:00.001-08:00

Due to the coming storm. It will be rescheduled.

How Does the Board Enforce Policy

2012-01-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

I see a lot of support among the District leadership for clear job descriptions and duties for everyone in the District - everyone, that is, except the District leadership. Each Board member will acknowledge that the Board has the duty to enforce policy yet no Board member will allow that duty to be explicitly stated in any document. It does not appear in the newly adopted Series 1000 Policies. It does not appear in the policy that describes the duties of the Board. It does not appear in the policy on governance. Now the Board is going to adopt two more elements of Board policy that should mention this duty yet fail to do so.

The board policy preamble on the Board meeting agenda this week is an ideal place for it, but instead the preamble makes reference to it only vaguely and euphemistically as "governance tools". It says that policies can be used by the superintendent to hold staff accountable but it neglects to say that they can be used by the Board to hold the superintendent accountable.

Another excellent opportunity to overt state the Board's duty to enforce policy appears with the proposed Policy 1620 on the board's agenda this week. Again the opportunity is squandered with a ambiguous reference to governance tools and the opaque statement that "The Superintendent shall be held accountable to all areas of responsibility delegated to him or her by policy".

You might wonder what harm comes from this pussyfooting. The harm is also clear this week as the Board adopts the student assignment plan for 2012-2013. The plan acknowledges that "Some of these program placement changes have been implemented." So, once again, the superintendent is in violation of the program placement policy. How disappointing after she had promised the Executive Committee that she could comply with the policy this year. The policy only requires transparency. The superintendent clearly has a process for making program placement decisions - we know that because she has made some. She refuses, however, to disclose that process as required by the policy. This not only represents a failure to comply with the policy, contempt for transparency, and contempt for the public's involvement in our district. Because the superintendent has spoken so highly of the value of transparency, it also represents a personal hypocrisy and lack of integrity. It's very discouraging.

The Board must act. The Board must enforce the policy. Whether they specifically acknowledge it or not, this is their duty. The first step, of course, would be to refuse to vote on the transition plan for 2012-2013 until the required transparency has been provided. In the absence of this transparency, the motion simply is not ready for a vote.

I look forward to the day when the Board takes its governance duties seriously and steps up to enforce policy. I wish that day came this week.

Next, the Board should have this duty explicitly stated in the preamble to the policy book, in the list of the Board's duties, in the policy on governance, and in the policy on the Board-Superintendent relationship.

The Charter Discussion

2012-01-16T20:08:00.000-08:00

I still have to write a thread on the entire charter bill (the Senate and House bills are identical, SB 6202 and HB 2428) and a thread on why charters I think charters are a bad idea for our state. But let's catch up on what others are saying.

First, the Times. Oh Times, you always slay me. Always out the gate with that bad "teachers union." Seriously, first thing. Then, they always get something factually wrong (and I ask them to cite the page and line for this):

Each would be required to adopt a specific plan to serve educationally disadvantaged children.

I've read the bill twice and I'm going to read it again but I do not see that statement anywhere but it sure looks good in print.

Then they have their funniest line (but I give them credit for printing it):

Nationally, about 20 percent of charter schools have been found to do a better job of educating students than public schools. Part and parcel of bringing charters to this state is to learn what those successful charters are doing and do it here.

You don't need me to tell you what the question is that both the readers of this editorial AND those reading the story over at The Stranger Slog all ask: You mean that 80% of charters aren't better than public schools? Quite the vote of confidence and sound reasoning to create fundamental change in an entire education system. They are right about learning from charters but you don't have to have charters to learn from them.

(One aside; there is this talking point on the pro side that charters are just a "tool in the education toolbox." No, they're not. You do not have this kind of sweeping change to a system and call it a "tool." Or you hear "oh, let's try a couple." This is NOT a pilot program - it's a new law. You can't just undo a law once enacted.)

Snow - It's Coming

2012-01-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: 7:33 pm - SPS Schools will open TWO HOURS LATE on Tuesday, Jan. 17th. Buses will be operating on snow routes tomorrow, which means that yellow buses run only on roads maintained by the City that receive snow removal.

If you missed it, there's a storm a'brewin'.

According to Cliff Mass:

The big question for days...the question on which the forecast depended on...was where the trough/low pressure would go. Head north of us, we get perhaps 4-8 inches of snow, followed by a few hours of rain and then the whole thing starts melting.    The snow would start around 3-4 AM on Wednesday AM. This is the best case (if you don't like a crippling snow event).

The bottom line is that there is a serious threat on Wednesday of 8-15 inches of snow over the region, with a minimal turn over to rain. The biggest snowstorm in years. Anyway, before anyone goes out and buys a snowblower, lets see what tonight's runs show. If they continue this trend then Slushmageddon might be replaced by Snowmageddon.   In almost any conceivable case, Wednesday morning is going to be very problematic for travel...I suspect there will be a lot of school cancellations and the like.

Up to FIFTEEN inches of snow.

The good news is that by Thursday, it is going to be 48-49 degrees and raining so it should not be as problematic as times when the temperature plunges and the snow stays for days.

Want to find out about school closures? The SPS website will be kept up-to-date. As well, they do send out notice to the radio and tv stations about school delays and closures.

Be careful out there by Tuesday PM and thru Wednesday.

And on this MLK, Jr. Day

2012-01-16T13:34:00.000-08:00

Kudos go out to the Orca K-8 student body and staff who delivered 500 nonperishable food items and cash to the Rainier Valley Food Bank last Friday. From Southend Seattle:

Orca K-8 has been a supporter of Rainier Valley Food Bank for the past several years, donating fresh vegetables from the school’s organic garden to the food bank during the growing season, and bringing groups of students in to see the place in operation and help stock shelves. Orca has actively supported RVFB since the beginning of this school year with their “A Can a Kid a Month” program, where every student is asked to bring in at least one canned good for donation monthly. At the end of December, this program alone has brought in over 2,000 cans for RVFB.

“The great kids, parents and teachers at Orca set an excellent example for all of us, and are actively helping us realize our vision of a hunger-free Rainier Valley,” Osborne said. “We are profoundly grateful for this partnership, and encourage other area schools and organizations to follow Orca’s lead in 2012.”

Seattle Schools This Week

2012-01-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, Jan. 17th
Region 6 PTSA Forum on charter schools at Washington Middle School from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.

I want to note a couple of things here. One, this is not sponsored by the Seattle Council PTSA so please take note of that. President Lauren McGuire stated to me that they would be taking no stance on charter schools until legislation was offered (she and I spoke before legislation came out) and that the PTSA Board would read it and then consider their stance. Seems like a good way to go.

Second, while this is billed as a forum, to my mind, if you present a pro side and a con side, it's a debate. Keep in mind that Region 6 is not trying to educate parents as to what charters are (and are not); this is going to be two sides basically explaining why we should or should not have them. It's a little hard to follow that kind of debate if you don't even clearly understand the subject matter but that's what they are doing.

Lastly, what's interesting is that Ramona Hattendorf, the state PTSA governmental person has stated that the PTSA has 6 top issues this legislative session. None of them are about charters. That subject falls on their "supported" issues. And yet, there seems to be a remarkable amount of energy on charters. Hmm.

I look forward to forums on their top issues of improving basic education, math and science instruction, phonological awareness screening/reading instruction, changing layoff polices to include more than just seniority, funding education first in the state budget and research-based model for teacher compensation rewarding teacher effectiveness.

(Also, reading what the national PTA says about charters, it would seem they would NOT support them but that's another thread.)

Wednesday, Jan. 18th
Board Work Session on the Budget from 4-5:30 p.m. - yes, where to find the money to close up that budget gap?

School Board Meeting from 6-9 p.m. Agenda.

Thursday, Jan. 19th
Curriculum & Instruction/Operations Meeting of the Whole from 4-7 p.m.

Community Conversation with ELL and Special Education Directors from 6-7:30 p.m. at Broadview-Thompson K-8

Friday, Jan. 20th
BEX Oversight Committee meeting (which I mistakenly put down for last week) from 8:30-10:30 am

Saturday, Jan. 21st
Director DeBell Community meeting from 9-11 am at Cafe Appasionato
Director Peaslee Community meeting from 10:30 am - noon, Lake City Library

SEA Leadership Candidates invite Teachers to Coffee

2012-01-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

Teachers Eric Muhs (Ballard High School) and Jennifer Hall (West Seattle High School), candidates for Seattle Education Association president and vice president, respectively, will hold the first of several citywide coffee conversations this Monday, January 16th. Cafe Apassionato, Fisherman's terminal, 4001 21st Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98199. 9 to 10:30 am.

We are especially interested in meeting other like-minded Seattle Public Schools educators, but are also intent on opening new lines of communication between teachers, parents and other supporters of public education.

Our website:

www.socialequalityeducators.org

Enrollment Data Available

2012-01-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

I have had no time to check this info out but it is available so I'm putting up this link for anyone who wants to see enrollment data for 2011-2012.

McLaren to Remove Amendment About Boren

2012-01-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

From the West Seattle Blog:

Thank you to all the West Seattle (and other) people who have joined the dialogue about short term solutions for overcrowding in our elementary schools.
Decision to move forward with the STEM option proposal
Friday I made the decision not to go forward with my amendment to the current proposal: Thus, the Seattle School Board will vote next Wednesday, January 18th, on whether to open an elementary STEM option program at the Boren site, and in addition to add portables as needed in the Denny and Madison service areas for the 2012-13 school year.

Because many of you felt that there had not been adequate community discussion about the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program recommendation, I had prepared an amendment which would have delayed placing a STEM program at Boren for a year, until 2013-14. I invited interested people to comment on this blog about their vision for West Seattle schools and the STEM option, and also invited people to attend one of three meetings (the final meeting of this series takes place this morning at 11 AM at the Delridge Library). However, after listening carefully, discussing the various angles, and looking at all the factors, when the Friday deadline came to post the amendment, I chose not to do it.

Deciding factors — concerns about going forward
As you know, this was a complex and difficult decision. Many West Seattle people have correctly pointed out that placing a STEM program at Boren does not begin to adequately address overcrowding in our elementary schools. It’s clear that we need a comprehensive mid- and long-range master plan for providing more neighborhood schools, and many people believe strongly that it’s premature to commit to a STEM option program before a feeder pattern for the program is determined and before the master plan is in place. However, there is simply not enough time to formulate such a plan before open enrollment begins on February 27th.

I share this concern about hasty action, and despite my enthusiasm for STEM, I had been fully prepared to carry my amendment forward and to ask other Directors to support me in delaying the Boren STEM program. However, on Thursday I learned details that I’d not previously understood about what monies would pay for the program, and what would happen to those monies if we delayed it for a year.

More factors — either/or opportunity
Basically, this is a one-time opportunity; it’s urgent for the district to place a program at Boren in order to maintain the building’s Occupancy status. Otherwise, re-opening the building when needed as an interim site will cost about five times more money. The Capital Budget funds which happen to be available for opening and refurbishing the building include startup costs for the first year of the program. These startup costs are available to whatever program is put in place, for the first year only, and would pay for equipment, books, etc. This creates a perfect opportunity to open a STEM program, which requires a sizable investment in technology. While other programs, such as Interagency, could be placed at Boren, the STEM program is the only one which would give some benefit to West Seattle and yet, as an option program, would not entail boundary commitments which would prematurely shape a master plan

Holding to convictions vs. snatching the opportunity
To create positive change, good planning is essential; in my experience seizing opportunities is another vital ingredient for success. I’ve been urged to stick to my convictions and try to delay STEM at Boren until we have a master plan. However, it’s important to remember that delaying STEM will not hasten this planning. It would certainly be ideal to wait for a comprehensive plan, but if we do, we won’t have those startup funds, and investing in a STEM program at Boren in 2013 from our severely reduced operating monies would be extremely difficult. (The Operating Budget pays for day-to-day school costs; these funds are much more heavily encumbered than the Capital Budget funds available now.)

The opportunity: a model for strengthening math and science across the district?
Our very talented and innovative West Seattle Executive Director, Aurora Lora, has experience in opening a STEM school, and she is confident that we can offer an excellent STEM program in West Seattle in the fall. Visionary educators have expressed great enthusiasm for developing this STEM elementary program; in addition to offering a unique option, it could serve as an incubator and model for strengthening math and science across our West Seattle District. All of our elementary students could benefit greatly.

What about capacity?
In fact, the new program will ease some overcrowding; probably relatively little the first year, but likely a good deal in the second year. In the meantime, basic comprehensive planning will have been completed and by the fall of 2013 we should be moving ahead with opening at least one, and hopefully two, neighborhood schools in an interim site.

Risks of moving forward with STEM?
Many people, including me, are concerned that Seattle School District history will repeat itself; the exciting new program will come, and nothing else — that there may be no progress in addressing the clear needs and desires of the West Seattle community — to address overcrowding and to offer strong math, science, and literacy programs (in addition to PE, arts, and enrichment) in ALL OF OUR SCHOOLS, across the district.

West Seattle Preferences
In the very rich and heartfelt sharing which has happened in the last couple of weeks, over the blog and in our meetings, people have shown widespread agreement about several things: Overcrowding must be addressed, and not only in elementary schools.
We want vibrant neighborhood schools throughout West Seattle.
We want strong math and science programs in all our schools.

Where are we now?
I feel that we’ve accomplished very important community work in this dialogue: We’ve come together from the north, south, east, and west of West Seattle to address problems that are facing our children in their schools — overcrowding and, in many places, our desire for them to have greater success in math and science, for additional basic amenities, and for other enriching options.

As mentioned above, we share a belief that it is essential to have comprehensive planning to address capacity needs in a thoughtful way — a way that also includes program planning, such as decisions on what kind of emphasis new schools will have, choices among other approaches such as Language Immersion, Montessori, etc., and needs of Special Education students, for example. There is a deadline: To prepare for the 2013 Capital Levy proposal, (BEX IV Building Excellence IV — the fourth in a series over the last two decades), the planning must commence soon — in the next months.

Work to be done; Seattle Public Schools leadership and commitment
There are many questions which I will attempt to answer in another post. For now, I want to say that I have also discussed these issues in depth with staff. We are fortunate now to have many remarkably smart and talented cabinet-level district leaders, people of great integrity with a profound commitment to moving all of our schools forward. Along with dedicated staff in each school, I am confident that district leaders are focused on working collaboratively with us in this planning process.

Most of you know full well of the dedication, caring, talent, and energy of our children’s teachers as well as of the extended staff who support them. We continue to owe them all a tremendous debt of gratitude for devoting their lives to our children and their education. Working together with them, as a large community and in smaller, school- and neighborhood-based groups, we must carry the momentum of our neighborhood conversations forward. We can commit ourselves to working together enthusiastically towards stable, supportive, challenging and enriching classrooms for all of our students, in schools filled with the joy of teaching and learning.

First, this is one of the longest, most thoughtful explanations to come out of Director in a long time. Credit to Marty for that.

Second, it is clear she has given this a lot of thought and listened to the families in West Seattle.

However this line gives me pause:

The Capital Budget funds which happen to be available for opening and refurbishing the building include startup costs for the first year of the program. These startup costs are available to whatever program is put in place, for the first year only, and would pay for equipment, books, etc.

There are capital funds just sitting around and are available just for reopening a school? I know of no such pot of money. I'll have to find out what funds these are. The district has said there are some funds from going under budget on a couple of BEX III projects; maybe that's where this money comes from. But keep in mind, that any "extra" capital funds that go this now almost-constant reopening of buildings means some other existing building, that needs work on their facility, isn't getting it. And so the maintenance continues to fall behind.

I'm glad that Executive Director Lora believes there can be a healthy STEM program in Boren by fall. I'd like to know what gives her that confidence. STEM is an expensive proposition (if it's a real STEM program).

But it's nice to hear that there are real conversations going about capacity management out in the public arena.

I do think that BEX IV is going to get complicated (and, if my reading of the charter school bill is right, there's even more to complicate this already complicated BEX picture).

Randy Dorn Comes Out Against Charter Legislation

2012-01-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

From OSPI, Randy Dorn on Education Reform:

January 2012 - State Superintendent Randy Dorn is pleased that education reform will be front and center during the 2012 legislative session. Dorn believes – and hopes legislators agree – that discussions around education reform must be mindful of the Supreme Court’s January 6 ruling on McCleary v. State, which held that the state isn’t providing adequate funding for basic education.
Here are Dorn’s positions on the major reform issues:

Improve/remove.
Teachers who are not successful ought to be given every opportunity to improve. If they cannot improve, superintendents need the flexibility to remove those teachers without employing current expensive and unwieldy legal procedures. The Superintendent’s request legislation would change a teacher’s tenured status to “provisional” (instead of “continuing”) if that teacher gets two consecutive “unsatisfactory” ratings.
Charter schools.
Charter school legislation has been voted down three times by Washington voters, in 1996, 2000 and 2004. While much can be accomplished through charter schools, public alternative schools and other school district-managed schools also can foster innovation. Washington has many very innovative schools in our state. We need to encourage more innovation in our public schools, but any move to create charter schools should go to a vote of the people.
University laboratory schools.
Gov. Chris Gregoire has proposed that six university-led “laboratory schools” be created. The universities would partner with the state’s lowest performing five percent of schools, measured in terms of student achievement. Together, the universities and schools would implement innovative practices to help the schools improve. The idea of university-led schools is worthwhile, but the program should be managed by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Governance.
Improving the transition between high school and college is a worthwhile goal. The Washington Constitution, though, is very clear about K-12 public education. Article III, Section 22, states that the State Superintendent “shall have supervision over all matters pertaining to public schools, and shall perform such specific duties as may be prescribed by law.” Any laws passed that create new education agencies or structures must keep that in mind.
Health care.
A recent report by the Health Care Authority looked into whether consolidating health insurance plans for public school employees might save the state money in the long run. At this time, there are about 200 plans available for the state’s 200,000 workers. Now is the time to support reform to make the K-12 health care system more efficient and uniform.
Teacher/Principal evaluations.
The new evaluation system for teachers and principals will transform the way those educators are evaluated, which in turn will have a profound effect on how students are taught. The work is crucial to the future of education in Washington. The program must be fully funded, and we should support any ideas to strengthen it. The Superintendent supports a more efficient system to evaluate and, if necessary, remove low-performing teachers.
Reduction in force, assignment and due process.
Proposals to alter how teachers are laid off due to reductions in force, or how they are assigned to specific buildings, must consider the reality of collective bargaining and existing contracts.

Seattle High Schools

2012-01-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

A request was made for a thread about high schools and parents' experiences with them. I did a quick check and it appears most high schools are having at least one daytime tour and one evening tour (Roosevelt and Hale seem to be the only ones with a single tour.) Again, while the tours aren't always the most fun, it is a very good way to get a feel for a building, see what gets emphasized, and, if it is during the day, to see the energy at the school.

My students attended Hale and Roosevelt. I think they both received a good education and were prepared for college. Each was a good fit for each son. (This is one reason I really feel unhappy about the lack of 10% set-aside seats under the NSAP.   High school IS a big deal and you want your student to feel good about the school he/she attends. They need to feel a part of that tribe. That said, I know people who easily switched high schools so it can be done.)

One observation I have about high school is the ownership the teachers feel for their building. Maybe it's because it is a bigger staff with department heads but they truly feel invested in their school and its organization. This can have good and bad aspects but I believe it makes for a stronger school when you have teams of teachers working together.

Before I start with my experience, one caveat. This is one family's experience but my experience is that school culture doesn't change that much. However, a principal can really make a difference so ask other parents about the principal. Ask some students what they think.

Hale

Hale has a new building which is quite nice. They have their own full-sized sports field (they are one of the few high schools to have one).

When my son was there, it had quite a solid teaching corps and counseling office.

I was not at the school with the current principal (Hale has had quite a few principals over the last 8 years). I note that the district was recently found guilty of unfair labor practices around actions the current principal took against an employee. The principal changed a staff member's evaluation several times to reflect badly on the employee. This is troubling. But I know little about her abilities as a principal so maybe a Hale parent could weigh in.

Hale has an inclusion model for both classes and sports. This means that they have few separate classes for honors or AP. This is model they had been working towards for years and many parents like it. They did want to do away with separate AP classes altogether (except for foreign language and math) but I believe they ended up with something in the middle.   You have to decide for yourself if a separate AP class matters. I think it does matter in terms of getting through all the material at the same pace.

My experience with inclusion in sports wasn't great. While it is true that no one gets cut, it is also true that they don't play everyone. When my son was on the Ultimate Frisbee team, he never got to play in a single game and was told he never would as they were competitive and he wasn't a good player. You can imagine how hurtful that was (especially as he is a special needs student).   I doubt this happens in all sports but I would imagine that for students who are not especially athletically gifted, it would be a hard thing to be on a team and know you won't be competing at all. This could have changed by now.

Hale has started up musical theater in the last couple of years and I hear the shows have been great. They have the only FM radio station in the district and it is a real point of pride.   It's the mighty C89.5 and they have a beautiful new studio (and I note that parents raised the funds for the equipment).

They also have a Horticulture program and share a new greenhouse with Jane Addams.

Hale has a reputation for having an inclusive student body. It is less cliqueish than some other schools. Hale has a reputation for some students using pot. (This is in contrast to Roosevelt's reputation for alcohol use among some students.)

Hale has a steady and fairly strong parent base.

In recent years, I know of two people who transferred their children out of Hale because of a perception of less rigor but I know of one person who transferred in (from Roosevelt) because of Hale's student culture.

Roosevelt

One of the oldest of Seattle's high school, Roosevelt has a long and storied history (I helped organize the archives and it is fascinating. They also maintain a library of every single yearbook.)

Roosevelt also had a rebuild and it maintained the original facade so the school has that "grand old lady" look. My one beef with the building is that the numbering system is wacky and you tend to wander a lot (and so do the freshmen).

Roosevelt also has a solid teaching corps. I was a little less impressed with the counseling (and you hear this from other parents as well). I will say, though, that most counselors at ANY high school are generally dealing with about 350-400 students EACH and that's a lot for any human being. It can be difficult to get the class schedule you want (just as it is at Garfield and Ballard).

Roosevelt's principal has been there five years and I found him a good person to work with and the kids generally like him. I give him a lot of credit because in his first years at Roosevelt he exited two poor quality teachers. He knew what had to be done and did the work to get it done.

Roosevelt is a fairly rigorous school. In 10th grade all sophomores are required to take a year-long AP Human Geography class. (Dorothy Neville has weighed in on this a couple of times. It gets mixed reviews.) Roosevelt is the only high school to offer Latin and regularly attended Latin competitions. It has one of the highest numbers of AP and honors classes in the district. There is one oddity in the LA department where they refuse to offer AP classes. They have a strong computer science department with a full lab. They also offer a UW in the Schools class.

Roosevelt is, of course, known for its powerhouse music and drama departments. The drama department offers theater classes as well as producing plays and a musical each year.

Roosevelt also has a strong sports program (along with club sports like Ultimate Frisbee and Lacrosse).

My observation about Roosevelt and its student body is that (1) they have a lot of kids who are involved in the life of their school in one way or another and (2) it can be cliqueish. You tend to have some fairly strong groups come out of Eckstein and I think for kids who didn't go there, it can be a hard thing to break into. That said, I do see plenty of interaction between groups.

One note about Roosevelt is that it has a very strong parent base but that it splinters depending on what activity your child is in. Roosevelt's PTSA has a No-Bake bake sale for fundraising, meaning, they ask you to write a check. No buying anything, no auctions, just whatever you can afford. Meanwhile the various music, drama and sports groups raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to support those activities. So parents have their own tribes just as the kids do. I think Hale's example of more school-wide fundraising might offer more opportunities for all parents to be together. Just an observation.

Friday Open Thread

2012-01-13T09:27:00.000-08:00

The first Friday the 13th of the year.

Best wishes and get well soon go out to the following:

Dr. Enfield for pending surgery on her hand
Communications' Teresa Whippel who broke both wrists
Director Patu who sustained a fall and is now limping
Anyone and everyone who gets this cold that is going around

What's on your mind?

Bill in the Leg, Column in the Times

2012-01-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

There must be a teacher evaluation bill in the legislature because there is a guest column about something similar in the Seattle Times. "It's hard to overestimate the value of a good teacher" by Nicholas Kristof is all about the false concept of "teacher quality". It is based on the most ridiculously and obviously flawed analysis possible, the circular logic that great teachers can be identified by how their students' test scores rise and the proof of their greatness can be found in the rise of their students' test scores. We might as well identify great teachers by how much taller their students grow and then use the increase in their students' height as the proof of their great teaching. The truth is that "teacher quality" has only an incremental influence on student test scores and therefore student test scores are an extraordinarily poor measure of teacher quality.

Holes Big Enough to Drive a Mack Truck Through This Bill

2012-01-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

I started reading the charter school bill. Boy, that didn't take long to find some real issues. I'm only at page 23 of the 45 page bill and there is a lot to worry over. (So I'm not done but understand that many of the "strict charter law" items that some at this blog want, aren't found in this particular bill. )

I do need to finish reading it but here's the first major one on page 4. LEV wants us all to believe that only non-profits can open charters. They would be right but that doesn't mean only non-profits can run them. To whit:

A charter school board may:

Enter into contracts with any school district, educational service district, or other public or private entity for the provision of real property, equipment, goods, supplies, and services, including educational instructional services and including for the management and operation of the charter school as long as the charter school board maintains oversight authority over the charter school;

Unless I have misread this section, that would mean FOR-PROFIT companies can run any charter school that enters into a contract for those services.

Also, did you know this bill also allows for conversion schools? Meaning, a regular school can be converted "in its entirety to a charter school. Yup, if a majority of parents OR teachers agree to it:

(3) In the case of an application to establish a conversion charter school, the applicant must also demonstrate support for the proposed conversion by a petition signed by a majority of teachers assigned to the school or a petition signed by a majority of parents of students in the school.

Our own built-in Parent Trigger law.

Also, under Charter applications, Content, "Each authorizer's request for proposals must:" - mentions parents just one time (and it's a throwaway with a mention of "advisory bodies or parent or teacher councils" as examples).

But maybe it gets better. I'll read on and get back to you.

Charter Schools: the Landscape Today

2012-01-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

This is the last in the series on charter schools. I will have a final piece on what I think it means and what we need to think about for Washington State. I hope that this has been a helpful series.

(I note that I asked the Washington State PTSA about putting up a link about this series and got a busy signal. I will also do a link to LEV's "activist" training about charters which is a fairly skewed affair. Bluntly put, at least this blog making the effort to educate before we advocate.)

The Basics Today:

Washington is one of eight states without charters. The others are Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia. Maine just went on-line with charters this year and bills have been introduced in the other states but not passed. Expansion of charter law has continued in those states that already have them (see what charter advocates want).
There are over 5,000 charter schools in the U.S., representing a little over 5% of all public schools. California has the largest number at 917 (9.2%) with Arizona having the largest percentage for a state (506 schools and 23.2%) and the District of Columbia with 52 schools and a whopping 45% of all public schools.
They average charter has been open about 7 years with about 30% open 10+years, 19% 7-9 years, 23% 4-6 years and 26% 1-3 years.
The majority are in urban areas (52%), suburbs 20% and rural/town about 23%. (By comparison, it's fairly even for traditional public schools with 24% urban, 27% suburban, 14% town and 33% rural.)
Enrollment has increased from last year of about 200,000 more students (an increase of 13%)
The average charter school enrollment is 372, compared with about 478 in all public schools, according to the Center for Education Reform.
65 percent of charter schools have waiting lists, an increase of 6 percent over 2009.
A 2010 study by researchers at University of Colorado-Boulder and Western Michigan University found that most charter schools were “divided into either very segregative high-income schools or very segregative low-income schools” compared to their sending districts, and that the pattern had changed little between 2000-01 and 2006-07. They also tended to enroll a lower proportion of special education students and English-language learners. (Miron, Urschel, Mathis, 2010)
It has been difficult for researchers to be able to state the actual closure rate (due to lax reporting/oversight) for charters but it appears to be around 13-16%.

What charter advocates want (in states that already have charters)

lifting caps on the number of new charters that can open in any given year
allowing charters to share in levy revenues, both operations and capital
allowing charters access to state credit ratings so that they can get better interest rates on bond for facilities
approval of charter schools at only the state level (rather than at a local level which is done in some states)

Are charters doing what they say their model will do (accountability in exchange for innovation and flexiblity)?

Mostly no (to the chagrin of many). Almost too late, many are realizing that while charters make many parents happy,

they are not providing better academic outcomes for the majority of charter students
they are not being held accountable (the majority close for financial reasons but studies have found if states held charters to their actual charter goals, many more would close)
they are not particularly innovative (and this is from the Center on Reinventing Education)

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers is one such organization trying to create change from within and are pushing for voluntary standards for authorizing charter schools (right now, each state creates their own).

From the NEA:

NEA has long supported charter schools that are laboratories for developing new approaches to educating at-risk students—approaches which can then be replicated in the broader public school system.

But many of the charter schools with the best test scores and the highest college attendance rates also have high attrition. A 2008 study of five KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay area revealed that 60% of KIPP students left during their middle school years. So the schools most often touted as proof that charters are the key to helping all children reach high standards—don’t help all students. They help some—those with enough confidence, motivation, and family support to push forward through a demanding program.

“The vast majority of students enter during the 6th grade and then the total number of KIPP students in 7th and 8th grade falls precipitously,” explains Richard Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation.

Then they go back to public school.

In Indiana, the state Legislature is considering a bill that would, in part, give the state’s Department of Education more tools to force changes at under-performing charter schools. Rhode Island education officials have proposed a plan to increase state oversight over charter schools and to hold them to higher standards.

Idaho is taking a critical look at its ability to oversee the charter schools that already exist in the state. State education officials are asking for money to increase oversight, saying that current staff resources are insufficient.

New York is taking aim at how charters recruit students. This past spring, New York passed a law requiring charters to enroll a sufficient number of lower-income students, students with disabilities and English language learners. National studies have found that charter schools tend to under-enroll students with disabilities and English language learners. New York also introduced regulations designed to make charter lotteries more transparent.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Twenty years ago the idea for charters was to be a hothouse for teachers to try new ideas in teaching. The idea was to allow a couple of classrooms to pilot new ideas and find the ever elusive "best practices." And it went from there.

Like Topsy, charters have gone in every direction you can think of, good and bad. I have diligently tried but have not been able to ascertain how many charters could fit the model of being both accountable AND innovative.

There is charter research out there that shows that charter school parents, even when shown evidence that their child's school is performing no better than their traditional public school, still say they like their charter better. (Choice is good thing for Americans even if it's between a Pepsi or a Coke.)

This is really a key point because if the reason for the existence of charters is to provide better academic outcomes, then they are not working.

Now, is it important to have happy parents? As a former PTSA parent and co-president, I say yes. Is it the state's job to try to make parents happy or to achieve better academic outcomes? There's a question.

That twenty years later, in over 40 states, we are still struggling to define charters and more importantly regulate and hold them accountable is troubling.

That there is difficult in getting data from charter schools and charter school management organizations is troubling.

That there are growing numbers of for-profit charter management organizations is troubling.

In a small number of charters, for minority/high-poverty students and their families, there has been hope and greater achievement. This is valuable and powerful.

But here's where we come to a big leap - is there a greater good question for charters?

Are the costs, in the face of underfunding and declining funding, worth the small positive outcomes?

On balance, with the loss of funds to existing schools, is it worth it?

And, as always, I ask - what is the problem we are trying to solve and what needs to change? I think the achievement gap is the problem we are trying to solve and, at least in Washington State, we are on our way forward without charters.

I'll address the Washington State issue in-depth in a separate thread.

A Brave Seattle Teacher (Who Can No Longer Teach)

2012-01-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

A beautiful and moving video, Defining Honor, is about former Adams Elementary teacher, Joseph Skillings. In 2008, he intervened to help a woman being harassed at a bus stop and was beaten so badly he suffered brain damage. He is no longer able to teach but continues to volunteer and inspire at Adams. Thank you to The Stranger Slog for this important video.

Around Seattle School District (and Beyond)

2012-01-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

SYMPHONY PLAYS AT RHS Jan. 24th at 7:30PM. The acclaimed Seattle Symphony will be performing at Roosevelt High School alongside the Roosevelt Symphony Orchestra. This incredible event will feature Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florcence. Concert is free with optional donations accepted for the RHS orchestra.

MLK Celebration
Recapturing MLK Jr.'s Revolutionary Spirit
Monday, Jan. 16, 2012
9:30-11 a.m. - Workshops
11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - Rally
12:30 p.m. - March
Garfield High School (23rd and East Jefferson Street)
Information: (206) 786-2763 or (206) 296-1002
Website: www.mlkseattle.org

Roxhill Elementary was just awarded a grant form Symetra Financial Services continue their Saturday Academy which gives up to 50 3rd-5th graders a chance to work on their math and reading skills by attending special Saturday classes at school.

Seattle Public Library is seeking input on improving library services to its patrons. Patrons are also welcome to make comments online.

The community meetings are scheduled as follows:

Noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, Beacon Hill Branch, 2821 Beacon Ave. S. (206-684-4711)
6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18, Ballard Branch, 5614 22^nd Ave. N.W. (206-684-4089).

The Seattle Aquarium is sponsoring Ocean Career Day on Saturday, Feb. 4th from 9 am to 3 pm. Discuss career opportunities with biologists, researchers and educators, learn about schools and volunteer internship opportunities. This event is open to middle, high school or college students (teachers and parents are welcome as well). It is $8 for pre-registration, $10 day of with limited scholarships available. To register, visit the Aquarium website.

What's going on at your school or what news to use do you have?

Open Thread Wednesday

2012-01-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

For something new and different - Wednesday.

What's on your mind?

A New Neighborhood School for West Seattle

2012-01-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

The District Staff has recommended to the Board a short-term capacity management plan for West Seattle that calls for a fleet of portables and a new option school located (at least at first) at Boren.

The community is calling for a new neighborhood school located in West Seattle, not an option school.

The staff says that they prefer an option school because they can see that they are going to have to change the attendance area boundaries, but they are going to do it next year, not this year, and they only want to do it once. All of these boundaries, they explain, are seriously interconnected.

That sounds pretty reasonable, until you remember that West Seattle is on a peninsula and is completely dis-connected from the rest of the District. The District can change the West Seattle attendance area boundaries this year and change the boundaries for the rest of the district next year. There won't be any problem caused by the inter-connectedness of the boundaries because they are not, in fact, interconnected.

The District can go ahead and house the new school, temporarily, at Boren while the long-term site is made ready. But let's go ahead and name the long-term site and draw boundaries for it without further delay.

Oh, and if you want to make it a STEM school, that's fine. The program in the building has nothing to do with whether it is a neighborhood school or an option school.

Ed Reform Marches On In Washington State

2012-01-09T16:30:00.000-08:00

Lisa Macfarlane, who helped co-found LEV, has moved on and is now the head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) with this modest-sounding goal:

"..a political organization focused on encouraging a more productive conversation within the Democratic Party on the need to fundamentally reform public education. DFER operates at all levels of government to educate elected officials and support reform-minded candidates for public office."

Basically, a PAC for ed reform.   (One thing that strikes me is all these ed reformer love a new org; I'm thinking it makes it look - to elected officials - like "hey, look at all these groups for ed reform" when it is generally the same 25 people.)

There is a national DFER and it's supported by the infamous Koch brothers as well as Steve Klinsky, a former hedge fund manager and founder of the for-profit charter company, Victory Schools, Inc.   He gave the max he could to DFER but it was the only Democratic group he supported - all his other donations went to Republican candidates and PACs.

Interestingly, Tom Van Der Ark (former Federal Way superintendent and former first head of the education division of the Gates Foundation and a serious do-nothing) said this recently:

"I'm touring high performing California charter schools with Washington legislators today along with the fledgling WA DFER steering committee. Washington is one of a handful of states that does not allow charter schools."

I wonder who those legislators could be - I'm thinking probably Rodney Tom, Eric Pettigrew and Sharon Tomiko-Santos.

Vander Ark is a one-two punch of activist/businessman for public education. He also said that one question charters can't answer is if they "take money from already cash-strapped districts. The answer to that objection depends on whether you think public education exists to serve students or district employees. DFER stands squarely on the side of children and families."

That's pretty breathtaking in its arrogance. Everyone who believes that what we have now, and what we are moving towards with new reforms that don't include charters, that we are only for district employees?   And aren't we supposed to be supporting our teachers and staff? Or is that "district employees" is code for unions?

That actually sounds like an argument from the right and not the left and that should be a big red flag to anyone paying attention.

Now this PAC was called to my attention by Michelle Buetow (not letting any grass grow under her feet) and she and I both had gone to the new DFER website and seen the list of who was on the steering committee for the Washington DFER. It had Chris Korsmo, Mrs. Vander Ark and Shannon Campion of STAND. But boy, that got taken down fast and now it looks like Lisa is a one-person office. Hmmm.

Seattle Schools This Week

2012-01-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, Jan. 10th
Audit&Finance Committee Meeting (Audit) from 4-6 p.m.
Looks like there will be an update on the Cleveland laptop program among other items.

Wednesday, Jan. 11th
Executive Committee Meeting from 8-10 a.m.

Executive Committee of the Whole from 5-7 p.m. to discuss the Superintendent's evaluation (this is preceded by a closed session of the committee on this topic).

Thursday, Jan. 12th
Audit&Finance Committee Meeting (Finance) from 4-6 p.m. Topics here include the annual summary of state and federal grans, preliminary enrollment projections by Tracy Libros, student fees summary and "ideas/proposals to close the gap for 2012-13." There was an interesting article in the Times about Pay for Play fees recently. It generated a lot of comments with about half saying sports are an important part of high school and half saying PE is fine but sports are not as important.

Friday, Jan. 13th
BEX Oversight Committee - this will likely be the first with the new members so this should be interesting.

Saturday, Jan. 14th - Directors' community meetings
Carr - 8:30 am-10:00 am - Bethany Community Church, 8023 Green Lake Dr. North

McLaren - 11 am - 1:00 p.m. - Delridge Library, 5423 Delridge Way, SW

Coe Event with Enfield, DeBell and Carlyle

2012-01-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

I did want to write up a post about the Coe event as I thought some interesting things were said.    (This is long so get a cup of joe or tea.)

The panel was President Michael DeBell, Superintendent Susan Enfield and Rep. Reuven Carlyle. (Director Harium Martin-Morris was in attendance and got included in the panel.) Executive Director Nancy Coogan was also in attendance.

I would estimate there were 60 in attendance, mostly from the QA/Magnolia/Ballard area. One attendee who caught my eye - UW COE Dean Tom Stritikus.   This event was put on by the PTAs in the area.

Dr. Enfield spoke first and gave out a short handout version of her State of the District speech. She said that the 4 pillars in her vision but really the top two - great principals and great teachers - were the most important.

She also said the district had been behind in following the growth in the district but were working very hard to catch-up. I give Dr. Enfield a lot of credit; I have rarely ever heard a superintendent admitting the district overlooked something or made a mistake.

She also said that they expect the state to make more cuts and are preparing for that possibility. She also said despite some small but steady gains in student achievement, the achievement gap is still stubbornly in place (and she called out the lack of any gains for Native American students). Again, she was very honest and that is very commendable.

She also said one final thing - that SPS is there to serve all children and that includes those at standard level or above.

President DeBell talked about the superintendent search. He said that they started the process in March of 2011, laying out the process.   He was the first in the line of people to acknowledge Dr. Enfield's "good work." He stated for the record that he wanted to offer her the contract to be superintendent. He stated that the Board at that time felt it important to allow the new Board (should any incumbents lose), the opportunity to pick the next superintendent.

He did make one important-to-know statement - the search committee may be just Board members OR it may include some community members.

He said they would close the application period by the end of Feb. and bring finalists here at the beginning of March.

Rep. Carlyle said he had 3 children in Seattle Schools (at three different schools) and one in pre-school.

He said he was in a reflective mood since the McCleary case about state funding for schools. He really spoke with a lot of conviction and passion about needing that funding to come through. He said there were 295 school districts and how much decentralization in administration existed in our state. He stated that Washington state was 35th in the nation in state/local taxes.   He was quite pointed in saying that health care costs are really a key issue that is eating up the budget and that he felt it was "out-of-control."

He also stated he was "deeply saddened to be losing Susan."

He also said there was a role for community activists (and yay! bloggers) and people who sit through Board meetings. He cannot know how much that means for someone in power to make that acknowledgement.

Q&A highlights:

Kate Martin stood and explained that her son had dropped out of community college because he was not doing well and yet had graduated from Roosevelt with As and Bs. She asked about what could be done about grade inflation and how parents could know how their students are truly doing.

Susan apologized and said that she felt there had been too much local autonomy at schools and they now have district-wide metrics and standards as well as the MAP results. She was also quite passionate about the district not having a preK-3rd grade department for early learning.

Michael said Kate's concern was one that was widely-held in the recent survey.

A parent from Ingraham asked about who to know if, after six years pass, the state will be fully funding education (per the McCleary ruling).

Reuven said her sense of frustration was legitimate and the concern universally shared. He mentioned how I-728 and I-732 had fared and how little outcry came as those initiatives went by the wayside. He said it was vital for the public to hold the Legislature accountable.   He said he was putting forth a bill that would put an expiration date on ALL exemptions to tax laws. Good for him. All those exemptions need to be examined carefully and not just rubber-stamped.

There was a question about the superintendent search.

Harium said that "we are a little late to the party." I can appreciate that thought but it was Susan's late announcement that got us here. I would have thought that once she said she would not participate in a search, that would have been their tip-off to pick up the pace rather than believe they would just vote in numbers to give her the contract.

He mentioned that other similiar district were already looking and named Anchorage, Spokane, Omaha and Atlanta. I did a quick look. Anchorage had 150 applications and has named two finalists and will select someone by late January.   It actually has a similar size and demographic look as our district (except for a much higher number of Native American students).    Omaha is in the middle of its search process. According to the NY Times, Atlanta has suspended its search due to its massive cheating scandal (and offered their interim sup a one-year contract).

Michael also mentioned looking at "Puget Sound talent."

Another parent asked about the top three leadership qualities that the Board was looking for in a superintendent. Michael said high quality instruction and leadership, the ability to navigate a complex city and to inspire and motivate and have vision.   Harium said the ability to communicate with a diverse community and build releationships as well as be the standard bearer for SPS.

But Michael also said something that really bothered me. He said we have a "dysfunctional civic culture." He said it was hard to lead and govern with the expectations that exist.

Here was yet another sign of the backlash from the departure of MGJ, the two incumbent loss during the SB elections and Enfield's departure.   It feels like there is a lot of frustration out there but this time from people higher up the food chain than you or me.

Do we have a dysfunctional civic culture? Did Michael mean that for the school district culture or the city in general? I don't know but I can ask him.

It could be that there is a lot of hyper-focus about what goes on at the district.   We now have people who are actually reading the action reports before the Board meetings and come armed with many questions.   We have a parent community who, by turns, is probably exasperated and exhausted and angered by the last 3+ years.

But can anyone honestly blame us? How many times should people say it was just one bad actor or one mistake or even worse "an error" as the Times likes to say? I don't think it's dysfunctional. I think the community, along with the State Auditor's office, is forcing this district to take stock and do things differently.   I'm sure that many would like parents and community to go back to our schools and let the administration function by itself.

We already tried that. More than once. And look what it got us.

I'm sorry, Michael, but better hypervigiliance than none. And if the Board won't pay attention - even when warned - then yes, the community must.

Then another parent said that it seemed with the survey that there was overwhelming support for Dr. Enfield to stay (I would charitably say this is this parent's own take on the survey) and wouldn't Dr. Enfield stay? Michael said he hoped that the next superintendent would continue the good work and that the district didn't not need change or reinventing the wheel. Harium said he believed that work would be slowed down for a year because of the changeover to a new superintendent. He said we didn't need a change agent in our next superintendent.

I agree with both of them.

I asked Rep. Carlyle if he felt he understood enough about charter schools and the effect charter legislation could have on Washington State to vote on it and if he did support them, what would he suggest cutting from the state budget to support them?

He said no, he was not well-enough informed and that most legislators, when faced with a new idea, did need to do a deep-dive to become well-informed. He said that charters were not on his agenda as there were too many issues with the budget and too many already existing issues to address. I will note that he did not say he was for or against but that the timing is wrong and he was not ready to address the issue.

In terms of what might come from the state budget, Susan Enfield said that they had not used the money in the supplemental levy for textual materials. She said they may have to go to community partners for help in sustaining professional growth training for principals and teachers.

Michael said the Board was slightly dropping the reserve amount (and I thought he said by $2M but I need to recheck that). He said the staff has been directed to start at the school budget level to build the budget so that any cuts would not come to the schools but to administration.

Reuven said that the Legislature is very sensitive to mid-year cuts and talked about the costs of buying books and how the State could save a great deal of money by buying shareware texts.

There was also a question by a Seattle U professor about finding more teachers, principals, etc. who are people of color to mirror the students in our district. Harium said he thought the district could do more outreach to historically black colleges than had been done in the past.   I noticed that no one - not Enfield, Martin-Morris or DeBell - mentioned TFA helping in this area.

Marty McLaren Wants to Hear from You

2012-01-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

From our friends at the West Seattle Blog we learn that new Board member Marty McLaren has stepped up in a big way to hear what constituents are thinking about the capacity management plans for next year. (I'm sorry for not posting this earlier - still nursing that cold - but there are still two other meetings.)

*Tomorrow, Saturday, January 7th, Southwest Library, 10 am-noon
*Monday, January 9th, at West Seattle Library, 10 am-noon
*Saturday, January 14th, Delridge Library, 11 am-1 pm

A Teacher Speaks

2012-01-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

From the thread, Drawing Lines in the Sand, below is this heartfelt plea from a teacher. I sometimes give these teacher thoughts their own thread, not so much for comments, but so we can all hear what it is like from the front lines. (I have teased it out, line by line, to maximize the impact and realities of what teachers face.)

I have been teaching for 6 years. Last year and this year have been the toughest years of my short career by far. I have bigger classes, less support, and more district bull to deal with.

I spent countless hours last year battling badly designed alignment plans.

This year I have been told to raise my expectations to close the achievement gap as if I have not had high expectations for my students to begin with. As if raising my expectations more will make my students magically rise to that expectation. A mentality that conveniently disregards the need for boots on the ground support in schools.

I can raise my expectations as high as the moon, but without resources for students with learning, language, home, and personal challenges my high expectations will not be enough.

I need resources to close the gap.

I need instructional IA's in the classroom, counselors who are not managing 500 students, and a career center than can help them find a career path after they graduate.

I need a truancy specialist who can track down students who don't come to school.

I need a library that can stay open past 4pm so students can study after school.

If the district was serious about the gap they would put their money where their mouths are.

I'm hoping for a superintendent who walks the talk. Someone who has a plan that actually is a plan and not an acronym.

Drawing Lines in the Sand

2012-01-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned previously, I attended the Coe Elementary event last night. It was fairly full but I wish I had publicized it more as it was worthwhile being there.   But it deserves a separate thread.

But a couple things happened and as I pondered them in bed last night (while nursing a cold) as well as thinking about all that has been written in the media lately, I came to some conclusions.

The first thing that happened is that one parent got up and said that it seemed like with the survey results and parents and teachers speaking out, that the majority of people want Dr. Enfield to stay. That got some decent applause.   Not from me, though.

And it's not because I don't want Dr. Enfield to reconsider. I wish she would and I wish she would apply for the permanent job.

No, it's because that parent completely misread the survey results. As Charlie pointed out, so did Publicola and Crosscut. The parent also took it upon herself to say that the majority of parents and teachers wanted her to stay without a shred of evidence except her own experience in her own community.

I have no problem with anyone's opinion or perception within their community. Coe was going to write a letter to the Board and endorse her hiring but that was in December and, of course, things changed.

But she put it out in the either that this is what "most" people wanted.

Then, I had a woman approach me as I was walking to my car. She did not ID herself but told me that I was a negative person who wrote negative things. The first thing out of my mouth (as it generally is with matters about the blog) is "Thank you for the input." But she continued on to say that she isn't having a negative experience at her school.

I told her I rarely talk about "experiences" at specific schools precisely because I don't have first-hand knowledge. I told her I write more at a district level.

She then asked whether I had students in the system and I said no, I graduated both of them. She said, well then I didn't know what I was talking about. I had to smile because she should be a brave person and go tell that to the multitudes of Seattlites who DON'T have children in the system. Taxpayers are not allowed to say anything about the state of our school district? That's a big opinion to have.

She said she was very worried about the two new Board members. I gently pointed out there were still five incumbents and she said well, thank goodness for that. She said we needed continuity and stability. I told her the two new people had been duly elected as had all the Board members. I told her that the incumbent candidates had not done well in their four years. I pointed out Pottergate which she said was not a crisis and it wasn't that much money in the scope of the overall budget.

That's when something clicked. Here, standing before me, was a person for whom that professional veneer and stability at any cost, was more important than a person's job performance. She seemed not get that it wasn't just the money. It was the lack of oversight, the fear that Potter had engendered in many people at headquarters, it was Maier hiding an important document about the issue, Fred Stephens and others looking the other way - all of that either didn't exist in her mind or didn't matter.

(As an aside, about the money, DeBell had just announced at the meeting that they were lowering the reserve amount the district holds in anticipation of more cuts from the Legislature. It was about $2M which is about how much we lost with Potter. Also, it would be interesting to cut, say, $250,000 from her school's budget and see if she noticed.   Even Carlyle said a million here and a million there still matters.)

My point is that I believe there really is something going on out there. Some is being directed and some is pure stubborn behavior.

We all know that the Times is tone-deaf editorially. They, along with Crosscut, seem to believe that somehow voters got hoodwinked and that Marty and Sharon are the early signs of the apocalypse for this district. No one seems to want to do the civil thing and accept the election outcome, be welcoming and give them a chance.

On the other hand, we have massive hand-wringing over Susan Enfield with words like "beloved" and the feeling we let someone good get away. No one let her get away; she is leaving on her own. No one pushed her out. No one was unkind to her. Apparently, she didn't get want she wanted early enough and made the personal/professional decision to leave.

Again, I was quite surprised by her decision. The Alliance was lining up with her, LEV, a couple of the unions in the district, many parents and the majority of the Board. That's a lot of support and yet, not enough for her to stay and see what happened.

I'm thinking that there are some out there who are going to take every chance they have to bad-mouth Marty and Sharon and really, to what end? Is it worth demoralizing them early on to make a point?

It's interesting because a big vibe from Michael and Susan last night was kindness. I get the feeling that they feel that people are being too rough, too inquisitive and too insensitive to staff.

Susan asked that people say thank you - to a teacher, to a cafeteria worker, to a staffer. She's right, of course. She said people are working hard and with good intent. (This echoes what Bob Vaughn told the AL Taskforce Committee - to assume good intent.)

I never assume bad intent because I know that the SPS staff genuinely care about the students in their care. There are a few very bad apples like Silas Potter and a few like MGJ and Don Kennedy who just can't be bothered to care. They are very few.

But I don't assume that all is well because I was told that. Why? Because each and every time we get promised that a mistake that was made won't happen again, it does. So skepticism, at least until this tanker gets turned around, is healthy.

What I thought was just an election hangover, though, is more than that. I think we should all be aware and be willing to correct impressions that are not valid or proven. Because once an idea gets out into the public, it tends to stick. It will not help the work of the district to have mistruths out there. It will not help the work of the Board of two members are not treated with the same respect as others.

We all need to behave civilly and work together to make this district great.   If it is fair in one direction, it should be the same in the other direction.

Friday Open Thread

2012-01-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

Word is out that there's a big all-JSCEE meeting this morning at 9ish. Everyone is meeting in the auditorium with the speaker being Dr. Enfield. Hmmm. Is there a big announcement coming?

Also, I attended the Coe Elementary event last night with Michael DeBell, Dr. Enfield and Rep. Reuven Carlyle (and Harium Martin-Morris also came). It was quite interesting and I'll write up a separate thread. There was an awful lot of "please Susan stay" from the panel and enthusiasm from parents. But no mention or hint of any announcement.

I can think of one of two things: one, Dr. Enfield has decided to stay or two, she has decided to leave earlier.

I think the former unlikely (unless like Lady Gaga, she's got a great poker face) and the latter more probable as she is now not an interim but a lame duck superintendent both to staff and to the Legislature.

Or maybe it's a coffee hour.

Also to note; there are no Board Director community meetings tomorrow.

What's on your mind?

Alliance for Education Community Breakfast

2012-01-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

The Alliance for Education's 10th annual community breakfast will be at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle on March 29. This is one of the big community fundraisers for the Alliance. Last year they raised $220,000 at this event. The Alliance has about $11 million in cash and securities and raised about $7 million in contributions last year, so this breakfast is not completely insignificant, but it is mostly for show. The bulk of the Alliance's fundraising is done at the Gates Foundation, not with the general public at all.

Unlike a lot of my friends, I do not believe that the Alliance for Education is the debil, although they have become a puppet organization for the Gates Foundation. I am glad to hear that anyone - Gates, Broad, Phillip Morris, or Darth Vader - wants to contribute to public education. Now, I may think that some of their contributions are misguided, but - with the exception of a handful of specific privateers and profiteers (Goldman Sachs, I talking about you) - I give folks the benefit of the doubt and presume good intentions. The Gates Foundation, for example, could be a powerful positive force if their efforts were more effectively focused. I don't even blame these types too much for their mistakes. They know what worked and was good in their industry or experience and presume - often incorrectly - that it will work as well in the context of public K-12 education. They don't seem to understand that the keys to success for fish will not bring success to birds and the practices that worked in the private sector will not work in the public sector.

I have been to the Alliance breakfast. It's full of well-intentioned people congratulating themselves for being so well-intentioned. They have no idea how wrong they are. They have been told - time and time again - that they are making horrible mistakes, but they persist in making them. In other words, it's a nearly ideal spot for a public mic check.

If you could give a forty-five second speech at the Alliance Community Breakfast - a speech delivered one clause at a time - what would you say?

State Supreme Court Issues Pointless Ruling

2012-01-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Washington State Supreme Court has upheld the ruling by a King County judge that the state is failing to fulfill its constitutional duty to provide funding for public schools.

Here is the Court's opinion.

Then the Court threw up their hands and admitted that there was nothing they could do about it. They can't - or won't - force the legislature to do anything and they have given the legislature six years to mend their ways. Can you imagine? "This Court finds that you have been mal-nourishing these children in your charge and gives you just six years to start feeding them properly." And if they don't? Then I guess the Court will bring them in and give them another six years to comply.

Here is the story in the Seattle Times by Brian Rosenthal.

Here is the story in Publicola.

Hamilton Teacher Passes Away

2012-01-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

From the Hamilton website:

There comes a time in the life of every community when painful events occur that compel us to take pause and support one another in our sadness and distress. It is with a heavy heart that I share information with you that has saddened our Hamilton International and Washington Middle School communities. As you may have been aware, one of our teachers, Ms. Shadow, has been critically ill. Tuesday afternoon, December 27^th, Marcy died peacefully surrounded by her family.

Ms. Shadow was a passionate teacher. She began teaching Gifted and Talented students in 1976. She moved onto Washington Middle School in 1980 where she taught with the APP program until 2009. In 2009 Marcy moved to Hamilton International Middle School when the APP program opened here.

Words cannot begin to express the wide range of emotions we are all feeling and our heartfelt sympathy goes out to Ms. Shadow’s family and friends. Ms. Shadow’s enthusiasm for inspiring children will be deeply missed. For those of you that would like to send messages to Ms. Shadow’s family please forward these to stephanieabower@gmail.com. The memorial service will be held at Peace Lutheran church in West Seattle on Thursday, January 5^th at 3:30 PM. Families and students are invited to attend.

Our community is close and a tragedy such as this reminds us of what a wonderful school community we have at Hamilton International Middle School. I want to share our staff’s appreciation of your support and patience during our time of grief.

Sincerely,

Christopher Carter
Principal

How Many Things Can the Local Press Get Wrong?

2012-01-05T05:37:00.000-08:00

First we have the story in Crosscut about the survey results that not only mis-reported the results (seriously, how do you get the numbers wrong in a story about the numbers?), but also grossly mis-interpreted them. The numbers in the story have been corrected but the editorial content remains mis-directed. The Crosscut story suggests that Dr. Enfield's 37% favorable rating in the survey suggests that the City loves her but that the Board's 33% favorable rating suggests that the City thinks they stink. Let's remember that the survey has a margin of error of five percentage points so these two results are, statistically, the same. Let's also note that Dr. Enfield got a 56% neutral rating. So way more people responded "Susan Who?" than proclaimed their love. And if a 37% favorable rating means love, then what does the teachers' 81% favorable rating suggest? Adoration, I suppose. Dr. Enfield, despite the focus of the story, actually finished a distant fifth - Michele Bachman territory - behind teachers (81%), schools (62%), the PTSA (60%) and the district as a whole (60%). Behind those numbers her 37% looks like something you would scrape off your shoe.

Then we have Publicola also, bizarrely, getting the numbers wrong.

The news story in the Times has it right. Good job, Brian Rosenthal.

Worst of all is the column in Crosscut by Anthony B. Robinson. This is a guy who, during the election, acknowledged that he didn't really pay much attention to the school board races. Now he says that we should have done a better job of supporting and following the past three superintendents. Really? Did he meet them? Was Dr. Goodloe-Johnson such a prize? In a bizarre self-contradiction, Mr. Robinson says that the 2010-2011 school board was one of the best ever, and it was the one that fired her. Raj Manhas was called out by his own blue-ribbon committee, the CACIEE, as having failed to fulfill any of the executive duties. And as for Joseph Olchefske, was it poor support from the community and the unions that caused him to overspend $32 million? I don't think so.

2012-2013 Transition Plan

2012-01-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

I attended the press conference today about the 2012-2013 Transition Plan and short-term capacity management options. (I also listened to the public input from the Board meeting about this issue.)

It was actually a full house of reporters so look for something on the tv news. There was nothing new but here are some of the highlights:

I asked about Charlie's point about a student entering the system after Sep. 30th only having their attendance school or option school open to them. Tracy said yes, that is correct and was always the case. I guess I missed that but again, a new student arriving after Sep. 30th can't access any other school besides his/her attendance area school or option schools even if there were room available at another attendance area school.

The district wants to open a STEM elementary at Boren. There is a chance they might open another elementary in that area as well but they were vague on that issue. They were asked why not Montessori but said the community wanted STEM more. One interesting statement on this issue was from Tracy Libros saying it would be hard to get Montessori trained staff and that they had considered the idea of moving some Montessori teachers from one school (for capacity management) to Boren and then rejected it. (I hadn't heard this before so it came as a surprise to me. I don't know which Montessori school she had been referencing.)

Sealth is overcrowded and wants a portable. I note that several Sealth staff/parents complained about this at the Board meeting and said that they told the district when the remodel was going on that they were not adding space but actually taking it away. Wait a minute, the community is right...again? Go figure.

I asked about Charlie's point about the geozones being more for capacity management now than helping students who live close by. I didn't get any disagreement there from Tracy but she did say - to Charlie's point about a North Capitol hill Garfield student having more access to Cleveland STEM than someone near to Cleveland - that it didn't happen this year. I think that's a bit tortured given that the system has been set-up so that the Capitol Hill student would get favored if there were a tussle for a seat with a nearby Cleveland resident.

Brian Rosenthal from the Times asked some careful questions about where the money was coming from for these opening issues and portables. They said there were savings from both BEX and BTA. (Frankly, I want to see this on paper.) They said that reopening Boren will cost between $2.8-3.1M. Once again we were given the $135k for portable costs which is NOT what was said just a few years ago. I find this moving target cost amusing.

I asked about foreign language immersion schools becoming option schools and it was stated that it was a Board decision.

From the comments at the Board meeting, I think JSIS parents do not want boundary changes. They seem to want more enrollment over at MacDonald (since they are both foreign language immersion). I am not clear on the details but obviously they want to keep families together.

The BIG news that I came away with is that BEX IV is going to have a big impact on boundary changes. I believe that once the list is approved, parents can start looking at how those choices could impact schools near them. If BEX IV passes, then you can really start thinking about boundary changes because what school gets what additional space will greatly influence who goes where.

Last interesting thing - Lynne Varner was there for the first press conference on the transition plan but left before the press conference on the Board survey results. I was a little surprised given her concern over the superintendent issue.

One last thing - kudos to ace reporter Phyllis Fletcher at KUOW. Phyllis has been a steady (and welcome presence) on the education beat for several years. She has received a promotion at KUOW to editor so we won't be seeing her around much at Board meetings. Congratulations to her and I hope whoever comes next can fill her shoes.

District Looking for Volunteers for Special Education Council

2012-01-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

Seattle Public Schools is seeking unpaid volunteers from our ethnically, linguistically and culturally
diverse communities to serve on the Special Education Advisory & Advocacy Council (SEAAC),
for terms of one year.

This Advisory Committee will:

- Represent parent, staff, and community agency perspectives across the education system and community on behalf of students with a wide range of abilities on Special Education issues,
- Provide Seattle Public Schools with perspectives on special education programs including current operation and management, policies, proposed changes, future plans, and goals.
- Present its recommendations and opinions in a report on an annual basis, and more often as requested, to the Executive Director of Special Education.

The committee will meet once every month. An orientation session will be held for newly appointed members. District staff will schedule and facilitate the meetings.

The council will include up to 30 members appointed by the Superintendent or her designee. A minimum of two-thirds of the members will be parents of children with disabilities currently enrolled in a Special Education Program in Seattle public Schools. SPS students, families, community members, staff, non- District community based organizations and representatives of higher learning institutions are encouraged to apply.

Interested individuals should submit background information and reasons for their interest via email to specialed@seattleschools.org no later than 5:00 pm on Wednesday, January 18. Nominations will be reviewed between January 30 and February 6. The nomination form is attached, and you
can read the full charge of the committee here. The term of office will be one calendar year (August 1 – July 31) and begin August of 2012.

Thank you to SeattleSped for this info.

No Surprises in Survey Results

2012-01-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

The results of the survey conducted by the School District are in. And they are pretty much what you would expect to see. People like their teachers and their schools and want the superintendent to pay attention to teachers. The focus is almost entirely on what happens in the classroom and everything else fades into the background.

Student Assignment Plan for 2012-2013

2012-01-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

There isn't a lot of change in the student assignment plan for 2012-2013 and what is there is mostly a result of the capacity management ~~failure~~ crisis.

They have tightened up some rules about switching schools. I don't think the rules have changed really, they are just more clearly stated. If your child has been assigned to an attendance area school for an attendance area other than the one where you live since before the new student assignment plan, that seat is a "grandfathered" seat and harder to change than if it post-dates the plan.

They are shrinking the attendance area for JSIS. They will have to continue to shrink the attendance area for this school until they finally admit that either it needs to be an option school or the language immersion program in it needs to be an option program and re-located out of the building. The district is simply deferring the inevitable here. It's easier for them, but it creates a lot of wear-and-tear on the community. They have a number of reasonable rules for families who are re-zoned out of the attendance area. Many of them are getting re-zoned into the McDonald attendance area, which may not be so bad since McDonald is also home to a language immersion program. Others are getting re-zoned into the B.F. Day attendance area. I have to wonder how many more students can be pushed into B.F. Day before that school, like Hamilton and Ingraham (two others schools that were over-targeted for additional students), becomes overcrowded.

There are changes to the geozones for some option schools. The original idea for geozones - that they would be small areas immediately around the school so that children who were super-local to the school could have preferred access - has been completely swept aside and forgotten. Geozones are now used exclusively as a capacity management tool. The geozone will expand aggressively into the attendance area for any overcrowded school and avoid the attendance area for any under-enrolled school as if it were hot lava. This represents yet another example of how unprincipled the district staff are. Everything exists only as a tool to address their immediate crisis (or cause) du jour. No matter what the intended purpose, everything gets bent to serve the Strategic Plan, closing the Achievement Gap, as a Pillar, an element of AGREE, to close the budget gap, or, as in this case, to address the capacity management ~~botch up~~ crisis.

Think of all of the families in southeast Seattle that were so delighted to get STEM, an academically focused high school in their neighborhood. Think of how shocked they are to learn that a student living in North Capitol Hill has priority access to that school (as part of the Garfield opt-out) over a student living right near it on Beacon Hill (cut out of the geozone).

One new twist in the assignment plan is guaranteed access to the Spectrum program for eligible 6th grade students enrolled at their attendance area middle school. I'm not sure how this is going to work. As we have noted, Spectrum students do not come in convenient 30-packs. If a school has 42 Spectrum students entering the sixth grade, what will they do? Will they create two self-contained classes of 21? Will they put 21 of them into each of two classes and fill the remaining seats in the class with high performing students? Will they put 21 of them into each of two classes and fill the remaining seats with a heterogeneous group of students selected at random? Will they create one self-contained class of 30 Spectrum-eligible students and one mixed class with 12 of them? Does the District care what the school does? Does the District regulate it in any way? After the experience with Wedgwood Elementary, is it possible that the middle school will make no effort to create Spectrum classes at all? We shall see.

The District has yet to identify the additional elementary schools that will be host to the language immersion programs that will feed up to Mercer along with Beacon Hill and to Denny along with Concord. That said, we can be pretty sure that they will be Van Asselt (when it re-opens) and Boren. I don't know why they don't just announce it now.

As this year, the set-aside seats in high schools have been eliminated. High school choice, which was supposed to be specifically preserved in the New Student Assignment Plan, is gone. No principle or commitment means a thing in the face of the capacity management ~~screw-up~~ crisis.

The elegant process that allowed families to name their true choices in their true order has been swept aside because it was too much trouble for the staff. Now families have to game their first choice because if they don't get it they have seriously diminished chances to get their second choice. All second choices will be processed after all first choices. All third choices will be processed after second choices. If you name a popular school as your first choice and don't gain access, your will have no opportunity to get into any school that fills with students who name it as a first choice.

The tie-breakers, intended originally to provide fairness, have been perverted to serve the capacity management ~~error~~ crisis. The West Seattle high schools now form a sort of attendance area. Anyone living in the Garfield attendance area gets to cut in line ahead of other applicants to encourage them out of Garfield (why don't they do this for JSIS?).

I'm not sure if I'm reading the rules correctly, but it seems to me that new students entering the district after September 30 will not be allowed to enroll in any attendance area school other than their own. Here's what it says:

After September 30, assignments for new students are to their attendance area school (including K-8 attendance area schools), or to an option school with space available.

There is some clarification to the rules for siblings and twins, but I don't believe that these clarifications actually reflect any changes in the rules.

Finally, the plan doesn't include any program placement decisions. It only says that such decisions have been deferred, but that they will be made in time for Open Enrollment. That's what it said last year, but we know that some of the decisions were made after Open Enrollment.

Proposed Waiver Policy

2012-01-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

Here is the proposed policy 2020, Waiver of Basic Instructional Materials.

The primary thing to like about this policy is its very existence. Finally we have a policy to codify the process and set standards for allowing schools to use alternatives to the board-adopted materials as their basic instructional materials (rather than as supplemental materials).

Beyond that, there isn't much good here at all.

First, the policy sets a higher community engagement and staff engagement standard for the alternative materials used by one school than the standards set for the basic instructional materials used by the whole district.

Indicate how the school staff and community has been involved in making the recommendation to use alternative basic instructional materials, including information on how the school-based decision matrix was used in this process and evidence that staff have agreed to implement the alternative materials fully;

Second, the feedback loop for alternative materials is more demanding than the one for board-adopted materials. If we set up these protections to prevent the use of sub-standard materials by 300 students, why don't we set up the same protections to prevent the use of sub-standard materials by 30,000 students?

Schools for which a waiver is granted must take all relevant district and state assessments, and must, on average over the 3-year waiver period, meet or exceed the gains demonstrated by peer schools that are using the district-adopted materials for all segments of their population in order to continue using the alternative basic instructional materials.

Approved waivers shall be granted for a 3-year period, after which the school’s data and continued interest in the waiver will be assessed. The Superintendent shall have the final decision about revoking the waiver or continuing it for another 3-year term. If a waiver is revoked the school will be required to return to district-adopted materials.

Third, why three hoops? The principal submits the request to the Executive Director of Schools, who reviews it and makes a recommendation, then it is reviewed by the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning, who reviews it and makes a recommendation, then it is reviewed by the superintendent, who reviews it and makes a decision. Why not just send it directly to the superintendent for review and decision? What benefit are we expected to get from kibbitzing by the Executive Director and the Assistant Superintendent?

A waiver request must be completed by the Principal of the school and submitted to the Executive Director of Schools (EDS) or equivalent position. The EDS shall review the request and make a recommendation to the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning. The Assistant Superintendent shall review the request and the recommendation of the EDS and make a recommendation to the Superintendent. The Superintendent shall review all materials and make a decision on the request. The Superintendent’s decision is final.

Fourth, the superintendent's decision is final. There is no appeal. This means that the superintendent can simply choose to reject all waiver requests out of hand. How is that a good practice? Yes, the superintendent is supposed to make a report to the Board about waiver requests and the rationale for her decision, but the superintendent is also required by policy to make a number of other annual reports to the Board and many of them are never made. Why should we think that the superintendent will make this report or make it honestly?

The Superintendent shall annually inform the School Board about the number and type of waivers requested and the disposition, including rationale, of those requests.

Fifth, completely absent from this policy is any mention of how the District as a whole is supposed to benefit from this experimentation. That was supposed to be a significant feature of this type of innovation. It is simply absent. What happened to that idea? Figuring that out was supposedly why this policy took so long to develop, but now that the policy is here there is no mention of it.

Program Placement, Yet Again

2012-01-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

I know that my zeal for the Program Placement policy, C56.00, exceeds that of just about anyone else. I suspect that my enthusiasm for it is a curiosity for a lot of folks. It seems like a small and ineffective policy. Even if the policy were followed, what difference would it make? The policy still leaves all of the authority with the superintendent, so what difference would transparency make? It think it makes a big difference. I think that the policy represents the change that we want to see in Seattle Public Schools. I think the continued violation of the policy reveals the failure of the superintendent and the Board to live up to the ideals they espouse.

A Quick Review
Dr. Enfield isn't following the policy this year. She did not follow the policy last year. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson never followed the policy. You might think the policy is hard to follow. It isn't.

The Program Placement policy has a modest requirement. It requires the superintendent to have a process for making program placement decisions and it requires her to distribute that process within the District and make it publicly available.

The policy does not constrain the superintendent in any way. She is free to devise whatever process she wants. She is free to make whatever program placement decisions she chooses. There is no micro-management here. The policy actually re-affirms her absolute authority to unilaterally determine the process and the outcomes. It only demands transparency.

We all remember transparency. Dr. Enfield committed herself to transparency when she took office. She and the Board waxed eloquent about their love affair with transparency. They sang hymns to it. We were practically buried in their claims of support for transparency. But transparency isn't supported by claims of support for transparency. Transparency is supported by acts of transparency. Those have been in much shorter supply.

Dr. Enfield has a process for making program placement decisions. We know this because she has made them - dozens of them. They must have been made somehow. They did not appear on the front step in a wicker basket. They were not made overnight by the shoemaker's elves. Dr. Enfield made them. She knows how they were made because she was there when they were made. All she has to do is disclose how they were made. She has refused to do so.

I want to be perfectly clear about this. I have specifically asked the superintendent "How were these program placement decisions made?" and she has specifically refused to answer. More than that, the Board has specifically asked her how these decisions were made and she has specifically refused to answer them. Let's remember that Dr. Enfield has proclaimed her devotion to transparency. She adores it, but not enough to overcome her need to keep this process secret. Her process must be so shameful that she dare not speak it aloud. She cannot allow this truth to become public. That's how horrific it is.

Why Bother?
I spoke to Steve Sundquist when he was the Board President and I suggested that it would be much more honest for the Board to vote to suspend the policy than for them to continue to leave it un-enforced. Let's face it, if the superintendent is determined to violate the policy and if the Board is determined not to enforce it, then the honest thing to do is to vote to suspend it. The Board's Executive Committee discussed the idea but eventually (after Director Sundquist had left the Board) rejected the plan. They did not enforce the policy last year, but the Board wants to enforce the policy this year and Dr. Enfield says that she can follow the policy this year.

What Next?
The student assignment plan for the coming year includes some program placement decisions. Which means that effective Wednesday night, the superintendent is, once again, in violation of the policy.

I suppose that the Board could defer the vote on the transition plan until the required transparency is provided. They could say that without the transparency required by the policy that the motion isn't ready for a vote.

I suppose that any member of the Board could try to do their job and enforce the policy. They could set a deadline for the superintendent directing her to comply with the policy by the end of business on Friday. Let's remember that not only does each and every member of the Board have the authority to enforce the policy in this way, but they each have the duty to enforce the policy in this way. It would take about ten seconds for them to say to the superintendent (either in person, by phone or by email): "Dr. Enfield, you are out of compliance with the program placement policy. Please take the necessary steps to comply with the policy by the end of business Friday. Thank you." See? It's easy, it's quick, it's also professional, colleagial, non-confrontational, and courteous.

In the end, however, it will be entirely up to the superintendent to fulfill the policy. She has already quit the job (with six months' notice), so she doesn't have to fear getting fired. The board has no tool to manage her anymore. She needn't fear a poor performance evaluation or dismissal. She's free.

What Will It Take?
Just as it would be easy for the Board to support transparency or enforce the policy, it would be easy for the superintendent to follow the policy. It would take her about thirty seconds. All she has to do is write a document that says: "Program placement proposals that directly impact the current capacity management crisis will be discussed in the FACMAC. The superintendent will make the decision to accept, reject, or amend the proposal after review of the FACMAC's recommendation. The superintendent will make the decision to accept, reject, or amend other program placement proposals after consultation with a Magic 8 Ball." Then she distributes that statement within the District and posts it on the District Web Site.

Let's remember that the superintendent is free to determine whatever process she likes. She can use the Magic 8 Ball if she wants. I know that some folks may object to it, but let's remember that the Magic 8 Ball has a lot of advantages over a Ouija Board. First, it requires half of the labor since one person can operate it instead of two. Second, it allows for those all-valuable non-committal answers such as "Ask again later" and "Cannot predict now" which a Ouija Board (with its Yes/No dichotomy) cannot offer. Let's also remember that the Magic 8 Ball, like the FACMAC, can only make recommendations; the final decisions are still made by the superintendent.

What Difference Will it Make?
In the end, the superintendent has absolute authority to do whatever she wants, so who cares if she discloses what she does or not? Whether she does it with or without disclosure, she will still do it.

Will she? Will she really use the Magic 8 Ball if she has to tell everyone that's what she's doing? Maybe.

Eight years ago we saw a popular uprising within the district, a popular uprising that rallied around the ideas of openness, honesty, transparency, accountability, engagement, and responsiveness. These ideas were seen as the cure for the district's dysfunctional culture. The worst example of that dysfunctional culture was program placement. Very few really knew how program placement decisions were made. The Board didn't know. The attempted split of middle school APP in 2007 required board review and that's when the Board discovered the process. They learned about the Program Placement Committee and how it worked, and they were appalled. In response, they wrote this policy. It was one of the last acts of the Bass/Butler-Wall board.

The old program placement practice was the most egregious example of the District's corruption and dysfunction. To bring transparency to this process would be to capture the enemy's flag. It would be a stake in the heart of the bad culture. This is the test of the commitment to transparency, to compliance, to honesty, and to openness. To fail to bring transparency here is to admit defeat. To fail in this would be to admit that all of the talk about reforming the culture, all of the talk about transparency, all of the talk about openness and honesty was all just talk. To fail here would be an admission that the Board cannot govern. To fail here would be cause get rid of the entire district leadership.

Seattle Schools This Week

2012-01-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, Jan. 4th

Second part of a Work Session around Board policy Series 6000 from 4-5:30 p.m. This series is about operations including budgeting, revenues, purchasing, etc.

School Board Meeting - 6-9 p.m. Among items on the agenda:

approval of superintendent search
capital levy planning policy
guiding principles for BEX IV planning (I guess this is just here because they need one because it says virtually nothing specific.)
a public hand-slapping of the district by the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) because they violated the union rights of a district employee trying to engage in union activities and failed to provide the union requested collective bargaining information in a timely fashion.
appointment of new members of the BEX Oversight Committee (they all look good - I wish there were a single one in there, though).

The two most interesting items will be the Actions for Short-Term Capacity Management and the NSAP: Transition Plan for 2012-13 and Waiver of Basic Instructional Materials policy.

It looks like Boren opens as a temporary site for a new elementary option to later be located at Fairmount park, Genessee Hill and/or Hughes. (That "and/or" may mean two schools, I assume.)

The action states that even with opening Boren, "there is a potential need of 25-35 portables, to be located at various sites throughout the District."

They are reallocating money from the Capital Budget from alleged saving from BTA III projects and BEX III projects. (I'd have to see this on paper because I worry about all this magical "savings" the district is so fond of touting without proof.)

From the action:

The primary student assignment changes to accommodate capacity management issues are: (1)
boundary adjustments to John Stanford, B.F. Day, and McDonald; and (2) modifications to
Geographic Priority Zones for Queen Anne, South Shore, and Thornton Creek.

Other than capacity-related assignment components, very few changes are being recommended
for the NSAP Transition Plan for 2012-13. These are generally based on streamlining and/or
clarifying assignment rules where greater clarity is needed about the specifics of implementation.
The principal changes are: (1) guaranteed assignment of Spectrum-eligible 5th graders to
Spectrum at their attendance area school; (2) more clear and equitable processes for
twins/multiples and siblings applying for school choice; (3) implementation of the International
School pathway from Denny to Chief Sealth (Spanish), and (4) address boundary changes at
John Stanford International School.

The program at Boren will be an elementary option school, serving grades K-5. No geographic
priority zone (GeoZone) is being recommended for this option school for 2012-13, since the goal
is to serve students from all West Seattle elementary schools.

The Waiver policy action includes a "Research and Data Sources" section that seems a bit sketchy to me. In short, the information there seems to be there to support the action and not what may be best practices. They do say that of 46 principals who responded to a survey, 52.2% stated they did NOT support material waivers and 47.8% did.

Boy, you should read the answers to the survey.   Principals have several answers but none of them seem to be "it's a bad idea." The answers come out to:

- inequity between schools able to raise money for additional materials versus those who cannot
- yes, if the school can prove how it will enhance learning
- consistency
- this would be a step backwards from Aligned curriculum
- worry about students who move to different schools

As far as the policy, it still retains a multi-step process that looks like a big hill to climb.    It leaves all final decisions in the hands of the superintendent. There is no parent input involved in the process. T (That might happen at a school level but only if you have a principal who will agree.)

Don't look for more waivers anytime soon unless your PTA will pony up the money and your principal agrees to it.

Thursday, Jan. 5th
The district is starting its annual "College Goal Sunday" (apparently on a Thursday) at Ballard High School from 6-9 p.m.

The goal is to help high-school seniors applying for federal aid to higher education institutions. Trained volunteers will be on-hand to help parents and students with the (dreaded) FAFSA (Federal Student Aid form).   Students and parents will also be able to talked with expert financial aid administrators about deadlines and other information about paying for college.

College Bound Scholarship seniors must complete the FAFSA by Feb. 1, 2012 to meet the deadline for priority funding.

There will be an event at nearly every high school during the month of January; visit the district website for other dates. Visit College Goal Sunday for more info.

Back to Work - First Up, Charter Legislation

2012-01-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, Happy NewYear and best wishes for everyone's health, safety and happiness

BUT

There's work to be done. First up, charter schools.   I am so unhappy to be having to waste my time on this issue but if not, well then we get to see one more layer of bureaucracy at the state level and more dollars exiting our own district.   (As if we have the money for either thing to happen without a concrete belief that we will get better academic outcomes.)

Dora Taylor, over at Seattle Education, has written up a very good overview of what is early-state charter law as put forth by LEV.   Read it for your own education on what is being put forth as reasoning for charter law in Washington State.

(Note: the LEV summary says "In recent years, the research on charter school effectiveness has grown, enabling us to identify effective providers and practices through data. The data show that, if properly managed, charters are an effective alternative for students in chronically under-performing schools." One, don't make the mistake of thinking that says that the effectiveness of charter schools has grown, it's the RESEARCH on it. One thing isn't the other. And that second sentence is quite the tall order - finding effective providers, with proper management and using best practices. Isn't that a definition for ANY good school?)

I may end up on the panel discussion for charter schools that the PTSA is having on January 17th.   My disappointment in the way it is being presented is that it appears to be a debate rather than an informational forum. The minute you present the issue as pro/con, I think it becomes a debate.   My contention is that most parents/voters do NOT know enough about charters to take a side. I had made this point several times to Heidi Bennett who is organizing this event when she approached me to be on the panel. I am very worried that there will be a lot of misinformation/half-truths passed around.

I am going to get together a weekly datapoint about charters, put it up and post a way for all of you to pass it onto your legislators. They, too, probably need some education.   As well, we should pass these points onto the Mayor and City Council and hope they won't be coming out for charters schools in Seattle without fully understanding the issue.

I'm not saying that elected officials are dumb or uneducated but for many of them, they are only as good on an issue as the white paper they are handed.

This is going to be a tough issue to fight as there are several items favoring passage. One, the "all the other kids are doing it" syndrome wherein a state not following the rest of the states looks out-of-step.

Two, "we need it to be in favor with the feds." No, we need to have a great education system to be in favor with the feds. If Arne Duncan is going to slight our state over charters, then so be it.

Three, as usual, there will be many high-powered, big moneyed interests who want this law. Keep in mind, with charters THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE. I don't think that LEV or PTSA or any other educational entity wants charters because of this point but that doesn't matter because there is a whole infrastructure of groups that do. Charter management organizations (CMOs), facilities management, TFA, whoever makes money from education, that's who wants in on this law.

And then there are the big players like the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation.

I have no doubt that come January 9th when the state legislature comes back into session, that many charter lobbyists will be there. We can't all be there but we can inundate our legislators with weekly calls and messages. That is very powerful because they will know you are a Washington State voter. All the outside lobbyists in the world do not have that powerful influence.

Also, the more they hear from public school parents the better. And, if you disagree with the PTSA's stand/advocacy, you will muddy the waters for the PTSA's lobbying efforts because the legislators are going to get mixed messages and have to wonder if PTSA really does represent public school parents.

I have two more pieces to my charter series - the Landscape Today and my own view (which will likely come as no surprise to anyone but I have tried my best to keep the informational sections neutral).   I will put up a separate area link for the whole series so you can let your friends or parents or neighbors know about charters so they, too, can make an informed choice.

I will gently point out that it is not the Washington State PTSA putting out this information. In fact, the charter school white paper at the Washington State PTSA's website has several incorrect and/or misleading statements. Ditto for LEV.   It is this blog.

If PTSA and LEV and Stand for Children really cared about making sure this issue was clearly laid out for parents and the public, they would have done so. That they have not means they care more about winning than making sure we pass legislation based on facts.