Work Session Notes, Part One
I'm just going to try to plunge in with some info I got at last night's meeting. I'll try to group it but some of the info may seem random.
Sherry Carr remarks:
- There should be additional space at JSIS. This was explained by moving the BOC kids (I didn't hear where) and so there will be additional seats.
- Tracy said, "Special Ed and Advanced Learning certainly have plans under this new SAP." I know this is not telling you anything you don't already know but it's good to have heard it said out loud so we can remind them later. She also said about the assumptions used to create the boundaries, "Reasonable people can disagree about the assumptions and their use."
- We are using a modified VAX until 2011-2012. I guess they can't get us off it until then.
- Under Next Steps, the Super mentioned that there is early registration going on now. I don't get it.
- The projected size of the district by 2015 is almost 48,000.
- Why do some schools look like they have small attendance areas? Tracy said density is the key to that question.
- DeBell, along with several other directors, voiced the opinion that the new predictability factor might draw back private school parents. Tracy didn't agree but I sure do. I absolutely think it will be something that would give at least some private school parents pause.
Sherry Carr remarks:
- She asked about "balancing" schools between haves and have nots and asked Tracy about the process. Tracy said all the data will be available on-line for viewing. (She did say, later on, that not every single block is explained so don't look for that kind of detail.) Interestingly, walk zones are created by a City committee with staff from SPS . The issues is about adult crossing guards which the City has been supplying. With money tight, that will likely end after Dec. 2010 and the district is trying to figure this one out.
- Sherry is also worried about Metro (which is a worry for other Directors as well). There was an article in Seattle Times today about this issue. Fares may go up for students (which means the district will pay more for a Metro pass). Our transportation director seems to think it will be offset by help from the state but the Eastside schools doubt that. Something to keep on the radar.
- Sherry asked if something visual could be created to overlap old reference areas on new attendance areas.
- She asked about this finger of Green Lake at the top of the attendance area that goes into Maple Leaf. She also asked about McDonald straddling I-5 which she said could be a dangerous area because of drug activity.
- Sherry brought up the development around South Lake Union as an issue for the future. The demographer, Rachel Cassidy, spoke a couple of times, including this issue, but was very vague. Sherry brought this up twice and was one of a couple of directors to say that we might need another high school. Tracy said that high school population was in a decline because of smaller coherts.
- She asked about Laurelhurst's inclusion into Hamilton. Tracy said that one factor was that most of those students were out of the walk boundary to Eckstein and had to be on a bus anyway.
- She pointed out that part of GL that would go to Eckstein would then go to Ballard and was in Roosevelt's walk zone. (There are several of these anomolies around.)
- She also mentioned, kind of out of the blue, a question about whether APP would stay at Garfield. Tracy said most APP middle school students make the choice to go to Garfield and her understanding was it would stay.
- He managed to stump Tracy. (A new game show: Let's Stump Tracy Libros - first prize: enrollment in the school of your choice.) He asked her if the district had tried to establish equitible ratio of option school seats to middle school areas.
- He worried aloud about real opportunities for Open Choice seats. Tracy kind of said that siblings would likely get in anyway so that the seats would be open. (She forgot about siblings of students in the school for programs like Special Ed and ELL.)
- Michael said he thought the Census data would help but Rachel Cassidy said it wouldn't come for years. He seemed a bit wistful about it.
- He said he was concerned about walk zones. He saw some that looked good (like Adams) and some that looked off.
- He expressed concern over modified VAX use but Tracy said they didn't want to try to run two systems in parellel and said they do use modified VAX on some items every year.
- He worried over Metro use to Ingraham especially along Aurora.
- He expressed concern over walk zone to Whittier.
- He expressed concern over reopening schools without solid demographic data especially when presenting the case to the public. Rachel said she wasn't really planning to go into this issue in her presentation to the Board at the Board meeting (she makes a presentation on the October numbers tonight). I didn't hear a good answer to Peter's concerns.
- He suggested shifting the north boundary for Ballard 5 blocks north and rotating Ingraham counterclockwise.
- He also wondered about the Green Lake finger that will go to Eckstein and then to Ballard. Harium explained that the #48 goes from GL to Ballard easily. (It still seems weird.)
- She questioned how some middle schools only have 4 elementaries feeding into them versus places like Eckstein/Washington that have 9.
- She also brought up the oddity of having an elementary go to a middle school that then doubled back to a different high school. (For example, Laurelhurst used to go to Eckstein and then many students to Roosevelt. Now Laurelhurst will go to Hamilton but double back to Roosevelt. Maybe it will take getting used to.)
- She then asked a strange question about where 8th grade Spectrum kids go for high school. Hello? Cheryl? There is no path for Spectrum students and never has been. Why did she think of this now?
Comments
So here is the previous post:
I have a question about the numbers they are using, that I will ask at a community meeting, but want to ask here as well.
Have they accounted for private school students in these counts at all? You may see a larger than normal influx to Ballard and Roosevelt from the private schools, if those people know they have a guaranteed assignment. Couple that with the economic downturn, and it makes me wonder.
So, my question is, have they factored those students in at all?
Thanks!
I also expect private school returnees in the Stevens, Lowell, Thurgood Marshall and McGilvra areas, and possibly in Leschi if the new principal starts changing the culture. I don't mean that many people who have kids already in private elementary schools would move them to a public school. I mean that many entering kindergarteners who would have had Madrona or TT Minor assignements in the old system, and would have gone to private school, will choose these public schools instead.
There are LOTS of preschoolers in the northern part of the Washington Service Area, many of them affluent. This area has gentrified since the 2000 census, with many houses belonging to low-income seniors sold to young familes who work in software on the east side.
"He suggested shifting the north boundary for Ballard 5 blocks north and rotating Ingraham counterclockwise."
I am trying to understand the impact to the eastern Ingraham boundary. Would it change the alignment along I-5 (where I-5 as drafted serves as the boundary between Ingraham & Hale)?
I know a number of kids who could have gone to Garfield, but are in private high schools...so I'm with Tracy on this. Plenty of people still have money...and many are concerned about Garfield & Roosevelt's large size, fuzzy math, and the overall dysfunction of the District in general.
I even know one ex-Bush family who is sending their kid out of District to Interlochen in Bellevue!
Sure, people who have lost their jobs might return their kids to public school, but how many of them are there?
Who gets fired for this? Someone MUST be, right? This is as big a balls-up as I can imagine in the closure venue (we need to close a school -- now we need to reopen it!), so surely someone was simply incompetent, right?
After all the anguish, the kids schlepped all over hell's half-acre, after all the hooplah, surely someone will be willing to stand up and say they screwed up?
My wife works for Microsoft, and the idea that someone could so totally bollix things up and NOT lose his/her job made her laugh and laugh. Frankly, I need a scapegoat from JSC. Will someone be thrown to the wolves? Or will they just hope we didn't notice how incompetent they are?
However- configurations change and that could also be a best ( most) case scenario.
Reopening schools seems essential to making the plan work in the N.end, and dependant on a capital levy that won't be on the ballot until February?? Are Board members concerned about this? What about deferred maintenance in buildings that are currently open?
However, the fear that a vengeful public wants a human sacrifice might make the district want to sweep it under the rug, and therefore not learn from it or prevent its repeat.
As the North End fills up with density, the South End will follow, and is following, right behind. We can't outrun population growth.
Given all this, the Board needs to just open all the damn schools they need in the North End, including, and especially, Lincoln High School. Five years down the road, RB and Cleveland will be much larger than now if the district would just stick with properly resourcing the schools, holding staff accountable, and embracing, instead of alienating the South End communities.
Why the cowards on the board pussy-foot around with cultural and racial politics is absolutely beyond me. Give families what they need.
SPS had the census information because DeBell told me that is what they established their decision on to close schools.
One parent, Meg Diaz, did an exemplary accounting of the demographics for the school board but their minds had already been made up by the superintendent. See:
http://andrehelmstetter.com/Capacity_managementfinal_analysis/Capacity_managementfinal_analysis.htm
It has been a complete waste of time, money and resources to close schools, uproot children, rif teachers and move equipment, furniture and supplies around just to now say that we are over capacity and need to re-open seven buildings.
It reflects a complete lack of competency on the part of the superintendent and her chosen staff.
It is also unfair to expect to take money out of the upcoming Levy monies to pay for these mistakes. That money is to go to schools who desperately need funds to upgrade school buildings and address other items that were on the table before this came up.
Perhaps we should pressure SPS to cut some of the consultants, etc. to pay for reopening schools.
The mistakes have been made and now correcting them needs to be paid for. So where should the money come from?
Every other city entity is taking a big cut to their operating budget, why not the District?
It is true that if no heads roll the voters may feel more like making them roll..
The funds are there and can be used. With the international and national financial picture beginning to become brighter, there would be opportunity in the near future to refill that fund.
Oh yeah, and what about the money that Gates and the Broad gave SPS of $10M total. Why couldn't we use those funds so that the levy money can still go into making our schools safer?
Many school board retreats around the country are financed by the Broad Foundation which is a proponent of charter schools. Was our board's retreat funded in a circuitous fashion by them as well?
25 Central District folks, about 70-30 percentage of district parents to non-. The levy went down. Hard. Reasons for thumbs down included economy, feeling and I quote "shafted" by SPS program policies in the CD (specific schools were mentioned in each case) and two votes of no confidence in District facilities. Two said they never vote on levy matters. Thumbs up reasons given were all along the line of "I always vote for public school levies."
This is a small poll, but interesting to me. One note is that I'd consider all of these people to be relatively educated.
It still wouldn't be easy, full stop: there aren't a lot of private schools with openings for full-scholarship students, and it might be hard to get in. But it wouldn't be any harder because of being poor. Given that AAA was an alternative school, you wouldn't have too many parents incapable of planning ahead about their kids' education.
Helen Schinske
See:
http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/0-alliance-sps%20release%20final%203-10.pdf
My next question is, who decided that this money would be used for this purpose and did the school board have a say in this? We have schools at over-capacity and in disrepair, schools closed and teachers rif'd and the best thing they could do with the money is testing and evaluation of students? Isn't the WASL enough of a statistical evaluation of how a student is doing? A good teacher, and we have plenty of them in our school system, can evaluate where a student is at any point in time. I know that my daughter's teachers can and I can also as an educator.
And, why do we need the Alliance for Education to handle such funds? Can't that be done within SPS and monitored by the school board who are in turn are monitored by us?
It is interesting how these grants were provided to SPS just before the superintendent's evaluation and based on how well they thought that she was performing. Particularly considering that our superintendent is on the Board of Directors for the Broad Foundation. As my daughter would say, "Coincidence? I think not."
There is a lot going on here that needs further study.
See:
http://seattle-ed.blogspot.com/
and scroll down to merit pay to see how it ties into charter schools, the Broad Foundation and Bill Gates.
Also, check out who is on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Education. I don’t see too many educators on this board.
http://www.alliance4ed.org/about/board.htm
This is from the school Chancellor in D.C. ( however- I don't think the union has signed a contract yet)
Earlier this year, [Rhee] proposed a revolutionary new model to let teachers choose between two pay scales. They could make up to $130,000 in merit pay on the basis of their effectiveness--in exchange for giving up tenure for one year. Or they could keep tenure and accept a smaller raise.
I don't know how to get the HTML link but updates are in the Washington Post
Basically, it requires that teachers pay be based on how well their students perform on standardized tests. For our students, it could be the WASL or a similar test such as the assessment test that is being created thanks to the donations of Bill Gates and the Broad Foundation. (See my comment above regarding that.) With the No Child Left Behind Act, teachers and staff were pressured to teach much of the class work to the standardized tests. With so much focus on the test, many other parts of knowledge building, creativity and understanding of subjects and their synthesis with other knowledge had to take a back seat. For many students, teaching to a test meant that they were not able to reach their full potential which would have been far beyond the level of the tests.
No one wins in this situation.
Part of the fallout also is that if a teacher's pay is based on how well their students test, many teachers will want to teach in a school where they know that the students will perform better. Those schools are, for the most part, not the minority schools.
Some students do not perform well on standardized tests for many different reasons and yet a teacher's pay can be tied to that student's performance. High stakes testing also puts pressure and stress on the students who become burdened with the thought that they need to perform well on one test. The test becomes a focus with little opportunity to explore and have fun learning, creating and synthesizing new thoughts and ideas.
If we are to have merit pay in Seattle, it needs to be based on many factors and not just what is indicated on one standardized test.
Also, where would we get the money for these bonuses? We are cash strapped as it is.
For an interesting article regarding the subject, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/obama-and-duncan-champion_b_245565.html
It's just like when you want to cut and paste in a word document.
Hope that helps.
and I think in the case of the DC schools- the money was being donated for teacher salaries- but that is like opening a can of worms because once you start getting donated funds- it isn't often no strings attached
No one wins in this situation.
This is kind of a hip, and pat response against standardized testing. But it isn't completley correct. In fact, WASL has forced teachers to reach out and teach to where the students are... and to try much harder with students they would ordinarily give up on. It may be on a limited scope, but it is better than before. MAP testing tests a huge range... so students ahead of the state standards can still be measured and expected to make at least a year's progress in a year's time. EG. If you're working at year ahead, next year you should still be a year or more ahead.
The problem with WASL is the high stakes nature of it. Perhaps it can't be avoided ... because students who aren't required to take a test, may well not show up... or may not try hard if they do show up, which reduces validity.
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