Seattle Schools Community Forum

Wednesday night sees a regular Board meeting on the calendar. Here's the agenda . The Board office is still taking names for public testimony but if I see any trends there when it is released, I'll update this post.  Items of note from the agenda: - Licton Springs@Webster is losing its principal, Ammon McWashington, Jr. That does not seem a good sign. Consent Agenda - Approval of funding from the City's FEPP (Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise) program at over $16M.  This funding will allow the District to continue operating 43 current Seattle Preschool Program (SPP) classrooms, convert three SPP classrooms to SPP Plus, and add two new SPP Plus classrooms for a total of 48 classrooms in the 2026-27 school year.  Boy, the City is just chugging right along in expansion in SPS.  The SPP Plus classrooms are for Special Education PK students and the SPP DLL is for dual-language PK. But, if you think about it, the City sees SPS enrollment falling and then their pr...

I will up doing multiple posts but let's just start with AI in SPS.  Another long-time public education advocate, Leonie Haimson, who covers NYC public education, had this to say when I asked her about AI: I believe it is the greatest threat to education right now –  as well as huge threat to the environment as you point out.   Here is her group's PowerPoint on AI (She leads the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy) . Emily Cherkin is a noted speaker and writer on screen time in schools; her website is The Screentime Consultant. She's an SPS  parent. Right on her home page she says: Technology has fundamentally changed parenting, teaching, and learning. I absolutely agree.  Help me out - what have you heard from your child's teacher and your child's school? Here's what I have heard from one SPS parent, Emily Cherkin, who told me: Kids were/are using ChatGPT to write essays (because of course they are), and when I complained, the district supposedly blocked Cha...

  Hey.... The district is bankrupt. The next year or so should be really interesting. ~JustCheckedTheFinancials! So this comment just came in. Coincidentally, a public education friend said that they had ran the SPS budget documents through AI. Here's what was stated: 1. The district is functionally insolvent.  2. The accounts payable jumped 296%. It appears the district may be managing cash by delaying payments.  3. A negative $57.7M unassigned equity position, a 296% unexplained surge in payables, a $27.5M internal loan that appears to violate the entity's own governance policy, a beginning-of-the-year balance that came in at $21.2M below plan with no disclosure or adjustment - in a public company context, those aren't budget challenges.   Those are material weaknesses in internal controls, potential going-concern qualifications from the auditor, and the kind of findings that get the CFO terminated, trigger SEC inquiries, and expose board members to personal l...

 Via SPS Communications: Career and Technical Education (CTE) and Seattle Skills Center are teaming up to offer internship opportunities for high school students to earn both credit and compensation this summer.  Ninth grade students can explore coding and careers in tech with Tech Quest. Students interested in education can support social emotional learning among elementary-age students with Education Quest, and students can deep-dive into biology at the Allen Institute’s Open Science Quest!    Internship Opportunities   Amazon Periscope   July 13-24; 9 a.m. – 3 p.m., Monday through Friday with in-person orientation during the week of June 22  A two-week career intensive at Amazon South Lake Union campus for current 10th grade students. Students receive ongoing mentorship from Amazon leadership, earn 0.25 CTE credit, and a $400 gift card upon completion  Career Quest   July 6-30; Class on Mondays from ...

By bad pattern, I mean SPS senior leadership has allowed suspect coaches and athletes to come in from outside the district and miraculously lead sports teams to championships, only to be gone the next year. It's just ridiculous AND SPS gets dinged by the state group overseeing high school athletics each time.  Here's the latest about phenom Tyran Stokes, the nation's top high school basketball player, who transferred into Rainier Beach High School. This comes from J425 , a substack journal on Washington state prep sports.  I note that J425 does not use the word "alleged" but I will for all their reporting printed here.  The athletic eligibility of Tyran Stokes, the nation’s top high school basketball recruit, remains under scrutiny on the eve of the WIAA 3A State Tournament after numerous published reports say his transfer to a Seattle public school involved an eligibility review process that omitted multiple details — including a violent disciplinary record at hi...

 I came across a district "memo" on Athletics from the Office of Accountability to the Board. It's dated January 28, 2026.  This would be Ted Howard's office. I would love to share it with you but I must have somehow deleted the link. It starts with a " Vision for Athletics" which basically says that sports are good for K-12 students for reasons like " student engagement, academic growth, physical health, social belonging, leadership developments, and positive mental health outcomes as well as resilience, confidence, collaboration, and connection to school."  These outcomes directly support the district's commitment to academic success and whole child development.  Then the memo gets to the meat of the matter - costs. Their idea is Pay for Play wherein students ' parents pay for their student to participate in sports. (I'm assuming they mean district sponsored sports.)  Cost Context is the cost for the district. Elementary: $150-$300 Mi...