Latest District Budget News

This article was in the Times this afternoon. The District has announced a hiring freeze in anticipation of a tough budget cycle next year.

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dan dempsey said…
Currently Robert Femiano is running for Vice President of the Seattle Education Association.

Mr Femiano made the School Board well aware of their coming budget short fall over the next few years, in school board testimony one year ago.

He cautioned the district about choosing expensive unproved programs that needed great additional costs beyond the traditional programs, being replaced.

Now we see programs in use with expensive consumable materials, academic coaches, in-service for implementation and then ongoing in-service to enhance the skills of our professional teachers to enable them to perhaps produce positive results from all this expenditure.

Nice of the board to notice 11 months later that we have a financial problem.

I do not fault the board as much as I fault the administration for their failure to inform the board.

Is it not the Superintendent's job to keep the board fully informed?

Should Michael Hureaux, Robert Femiano, and Patricia Bailey be elected as SEA President, Vice President, and Treasurer, it will be interesting to see how Dr Goodloe-Johnson deals with Union leadership that are aware of the facts and chooses to talk about them.

The atmosphere that was sometimes called collegial and cooperative of the last several years has not served either our children or the union members particularly well.

Hopefully actually looking at the real situation in an intelligent way could help us make significantly better more intelligent choices.
4/12/08, 12:39 AM
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