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This article was in the Times this afternoon. The District has announced a hiring freeze in anticipation of a tough budget cycle next year.
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.
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Why You Should Care Mr. Crabill has found quite the acolyte in Director Chandra Hampson. In the course of discussions over SOFG, she says his name over and over, "A.J .says we...." Now that's not too surprising given the direction the district is heading and that it is Mr. Crabill's work with the Council of Great City Schools is how we got here. But it appears that Mr. Crabill is working very closely with Hampson and we know she wields some amount of power over the majority of the Board. Mr. Crabill is going to continue to work with the Board as SOFG is instituted in SPS. In fact, his role may become more public as it did at one SPS Board meeting in the spring where he was on the phone during the meeting and suggested the Board stop the meeting to "self-reflect." I also noticed that in a district in South Carolina, when things weren't going to plan, he blamed the Board for not following SOFG to the letter. Look for that to happen here if Board members w
Here's the agenda for tonight's Board meeting. I note that people can no longer sign up to speak at a Board meeting by phone. It is strictly by online sign-up. Not good. Public Testimony seems to cover two topics. Apparently, the Chinese program at West Seattle High School is in jeopardy and there are several speakers for that issue. The other issue is, of course, school closures. There are six people on the waitlist. Here's the latest from the Times which says that " Seattle Could Close about a quarter of its elementary schools." First, that would be a heck of a lot of schools (17) and two, only elementaries? My cynical side is that the district is throwing out a big number so they can "generously" only close 10-12. The article claims that the district is taking "$32M from its reserves" which is not true; they have no reserves. I think the reporter means capital reserves. I'll be tuning in with updates. 4:15 pm and has the 4:15
Comments
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.