Call for Your Assignment (but take it with a grain of salt)
(Update: 9:10 am - Nevermind. I guess the district staff really does visit us (that was fast). The numbers are not giving out information now except to tell you to call Transportation. Question is: why were they live in the first place and will the information given be valid for people who did call?)
Apparently some folks have tried calling automated enrollment numbers and have learned their child's assignment. You can try one of two numbers according to our readers.
206-252-0410
OR
206-252-0760
However, here's a caveat which is don't give it 100% credibility until you get it in writing in the mail.
Apparently some folks have tried calling automated enrollment numbers and have learned their child's assignment. You can try one of two numbers according to our readers.
206-252-0410
OR
206-252-0760
However, here's a caveat which is don't give it 100% credibility until you get it in writing in the mail.
Comments
As I commented on the open choice thread, apparently the district gnome who reads this blog panicked, and they pulled the number.
Apparently assignments have been made but the families affected by them are not allowed to know what they are.
Push, push, push, SPS, you are pushing us right out of the district.
I'm not sure what "a lot" means in actual numbers, but that was the report.
Seems to me that they must run the algorithms to get a first set of assignments, but perhaps some locations then require time-consuming manual review of the lists. In the NE, decisions have to be made about whether some schools will be adding K classes, etc. They can't sort this all out until they get a sense of where people want to be, so maybe they give this first round of "placeholder" assignments to see how it all shakes out.
This reminds me of homeroom assignments. Those get made in the spring, or at least prior the school year ending, but you don't find out the homeroom until September. We didn't have our child vaccinated against hepatitis B the day she was born (we'll do it at puberty along with the HPV vaccine), so we get a letter from the district early in the summer about our noncompliance. That letter includes the homeroom assignment for the following year. So thru a fluke or technicality, we get that information months ahead of other people, but we've been told not to rely on it because things are still fluid right up until the first day of school. Seems like the same situation to me; they've made a non-binding, temporary decision that isn't final until a much later date.
Anyway, it's all conjecture on my part, but for those who called and got an assignment this morning, I would indeed take it with a grain of salt.
They have to make sure everything works before they finalize in a letter. So, those who called, and got an assignment might not want to count on that.
I would imagine though that maybe we will know before end of May? I think there are a lot fewer requests to process, so that should speed things up.
*********************************
Is this post really only going to get 8 comments? I am looking for more general outrage and not because we cannot see our assignments yet.
Outrage because it is clear once again that internal operations within the district SUCK. Where was the cross-office meeting of enrollment, IT, customer service, transportation and perhaps most importantly COMMUNICATIONS to roll out assignment announcements. There wasn't one. This automated system snafu shows it loud and clear. DETAILS, people. DETAILS.
You KNOW this is going to be a difficult notification process because of the SAP. You KNOW parents are on edge. You KNOW the public and press and city government is watching you. And STILL you cannot pull it together?
How can we trust you to do wise, major, program planning when you cannot pull the details together on this rollout? You, the District, have a very very bad rep for putting a powerpoint together and never following through on the details. This is yet another example, and we haven't even seen the hard work that will have to be done when inevitably there is overcrowding and underenrollment ramifications next year.
I get it that you lost people to RIFs. I really do. But so has everyone else. It is no excuse for not being able to execute. Do you need remedial...or perhaps first time...Project Plan training? Do you not understand that every "small" slip up is a big slip up in the Internet age, and that your pattern of small public slipups are now a big fat snowball gathering speed downhill? Do you not get that you have to be experts in more than Education as part of Central Administration? And, my favorite, do you not understand that a PUBLIC APOLOGY when you make a mistake, big or small, goes a lot farther than stonewalling? What is the point of Communications anyhow, because from this vantage point it looks a lot like protecting the superintendent and not a whole lot like figuring out what parents, students and the public need and then getting it done.
Rant over.
1. Now that Spectrum at West Seattle is closed they applied to Spectrum at Lafayette. But if they don't get in, then what will become of them?
Answer: If their chidren do not gain access to Spectrum at Lafayette, they will be defaulted back to West Seattle which will offer an ALO in the coming year instead of Spectrum.
2. Do they have no other alternative? They ask because they reported that the Spectrum program at West Seattle was horrible. Their children are literally getting exactly the same instruction they got last year. They get two one-hour pull-outs a week for challenging work - that's the Spectrum program at West Seattle.
Answer: They could try the new Spectrum program being started in the coming year at Arbor Heights.
3. Will Arbor Heights be better than West Seattle? Will it be as good as Lafayette?
Answer: There's no telling what Spectrum at Arbor Heights will be like, but the change was made in an effort to improve the quality of the program available to families in the Denny Service Area.
They were pretty frustrated and disgusted but full of fight.
I spoke with them afterwards and advised them on steps to take. Then I advised them that none of the steps would have any effect, but that they had to take the steps anyway. I advised them to speak with their children's teachers, but that it wouldn't help because the teachers have bigger issues. I advised them to then speak with the principal, but that it wouldn't help because that principal doesn't care about Spectrum. I them to then speak with the Ecucation Director, but that it wouldn't help because that Education Director doesn't care about Spectrum. I advised them to then file a written complaint, but that it wouldn't help. I advised them to continue up the food chain with their complaint to the Chief Academic Officer, but that it wouldn't help because she doesn't care about Spectrum. I advised them to then continue on and complain to the superintendent. This would have a chance to help, not because the Superintendent cares about them, their children, or Spectrum, but because the Superintendent will be outraged that she had to talk to a student family. That will make her angry at everyone down the food chain who didn't stop these people before they got to her office.
These women were totally ready for all of their efforts to be futile and they were still full of fight.
I admire them tremendously. I wish I had time and opportunity to work with them and be their advocate at every one of those meetings.
I wonder if Steve Sundquist would like to take that role?
I don't mind that the District lies to me. I'm used to it. But they insult my intelligence when they tell such tissue-thin lies.
The FAQs say:
"Open Enrollment applications indicate that a majority of students plan to go to the
attendance area school assigned in February, so it makes sense to complete as many course sign-ups
as possible at this time."
So they come right out and say that the schools will COMPLETE course sign-ups. As many as possible at THIS time. That means now, not later.
Then, in the very next paragraph, they talk out the other side of their mouth and say:
"Final class assignments can’t actually get made until the student data for ALL assigned students (initial assignments AND Open Enrollment assignments) is electronically transferred and schools can access the information for their incoming students." So what's the difference between COMPLETE COURSE SIGN-UPS and FINAL CLASS ASSIGNMENTS? In addition, I don't see how the inability to make final class assignments - whatever that is - in any way precludes them from filling sections with attendance area students before the out-of-area students have a chance to register.
This document does not address the concern. Not at all.
Were the staff at the school you called for a registration packet cordial and did they accept that you know of the registration assignemnt from calling the automated enrollment line? Do they care if you know the actual assignment or not?
Bingo.
The District will want to minimize the importance of the early release of names snafu and call it chatter amongst over-eager parents. But this is about a continued demonstration of lack of ability to carry out cross-departmental projects, whether because of lack of skills or politics or both.
Wasn't that motto "Everyone accountable?" Who exactly, and I do mean *who exactly* is in charge, by department, of the public rollout of next year's SAP.
Who is charged with supplying the best possible service to incoming students and their families (with the constraint of fiscal prudence for local taxpayers.)
I'd like a District insider to supply names, and then we can all ask what their individual Matrix of Success, as supplied by the Superintendent, looks like in regards to this 2010 enrollment rollout.
Strategically, if you leave it to the last minute, many many people are likely to swallow the bitter pill because they wont think they have a chance of success in getting things changed and they'll decide its better to do what they can to support their student in the school they dont like, than to spend time fighting something they dont know how to/think they can win...
And again, within SPS the left hand doesnt know what the right hand is doing, and someone forgot to tell the plan to whichever department put the phone number up... I dont know - were people able to ring in for their assignments last year? If they were, then for this department maybe it was just normal practice to put the phone number up now....
Rhetorical question, but, how do they manage to screw up sooo often? And we want to focus on teacher quality? Seriously, how much more energy would teachers have to dedicate to their classrooms if they didn't have to navigate a dysfunctional system? How much more time would principal have for students and building leadership if they didn't have to point out the obvious, advocate for practicality, to district staff? How about parents, how much more inclined/available would we be to lend support if all you school energy weren't zapped trying to navigate the administrative failures?
I heard it this morning, "Nova Alternative"- beautiful words I expect to see printed ASAP.
Melissa, I'm ready for the "something soon". Let's do this already. Everyone accountable.
Maybe it would have been best to throw the entire system into chaos -- change the enrollment process for classes this year, too along wiht do everythign else each person here has suggested that would make things perfect for their particular student(s)/family. But I certainly can see the logic of trying to hold some/many processes steady when there's so much other change going on.
I appreciate the passion of the commenters on this blog, but sometimes the armchair quarterbacking seems a little unrealistic. This is a huge entity -- 45,000 student, thousands of employees, 88 schools, $500,000 million operations budget, $180,000 million capital budget. I don't know any bureaucracy of this size that is particularly nimble, overly responsive, and able to immediately answer the personal questions in the way that folks on this blog expect.
Yes, SPS could do better. A whole heck of a lot better. And yes, there are some spots that begin to look a lot like incompetence. But most of the people I have interacted with at the John Stanford Center seem genuine and trying to do their best under trying circumstances. I would want to be given the benefit of the doubt if I were in their shoes, and so I start from a place of giving that to them.
So I'm suggesting a little bit of toning it down. When people are practically spitting in their anger and derision, no one is going to be particularly inclined to listen. Some of the commenters at the last Board meeting -- and I hesitate to say it but one of the authors of this blog included, were so angry in tone that it was all I heard. The substance got completely lost.
its not like the District hasnt had years to get it right, and its got less students, more staff and more being spent on administration now than it ever has had before...
And under MGJ's supervision over the past three years, it hasnt gotten any better... perhaps she ought to have started with the efficiency and accountability measures within her own bureaucracy - millions to be saved and more timely, accurate and effective outcomes to be had, rather than taking out of the hides of our children and the community...
Thats what gets people so mad... if SPS was doing better than other similar sized organisations, people might be more lenient... but its not - either in the education field (see the audit results) or when compared to other non-profit or for-profit organisations....
I pointed out how we had been told, when we needed more space at some schools, that portables were $200K and yet they purchased the ones for Hale for $108k. That's just pointing out a discrepancy in what the district has said at different points.
I asked for the Board to have some kind of public action to get input from parents about the teacher negotiations.
And, I pointed out the very obvious flaws in the budget meeting. That I singled out the Superintendent, well, she's the top of the heap.
If that's too angry, I don't know what to say.
But I will say that I have heard this for years. "If only we worked with the district" or "Give them some credit for a hard job". I have tried to work with the district, over and over. It's not really worth it. I DO give them credit for a hard job but when the same mistakes get made over and over and no, not just "spots" of incompetence (they just closed a brand-new $65M+ building, displacing and separating an entire K-8 community for heaven's sake), you have to wonder.
And I do wonder. I wonder why the same mistakes happen over and over. I wonder why the Superintendent doesn't seem even remotely interested in any opinion parents might have. I wonder if maybe our district is too big; maybe we would be better off with smaller districts if this one is so unwieldy and large.
Seems like some visitors to this blog want to perpetuate "Seattle nice" -- that passive/aggressive facade of civility that stifles healthy and lively discussion, difference of opinion, true feelings and passion. (See: "Seattle's 'niceness' problem" http://crosscut.com/2009/03/03/seattle/18886/)
There's plenty to be angry about in SPS, especially when you consider who is hurt the most by bad SPS decisions, irrational timelines, poor distribution of information, and misallocation of resources -- our kids.
So yes, some of us -- a growing number, it would seem -- are ticked off about how SPS is run. Better to speak up and act up -- which many of us are doing, by the way -- than passively accept all this and do nothing.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
--Frederick Douglass
"We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp
(here's an excerpt):
Published: April 26, 2010
WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.
“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.
The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
(continued on NYTimes)
(This is from the end of that NYT article, bold is mine):
Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp
Melissa, can you please clarify and also let us know whether this is something that would need parent action?
Don't mean to be cryptic but we do have district staff reading the blog.
I think another thing that gets some of us so angry is that it's unnecessarily complex for what they're doing. They've been "upgrading" the computer system for something like 10 years and are STILL using the VAX for this stuff. You say it's large; I say it's only 47,000 students and that you could have hired monkeys to enter the information into a new system, for 1/100th of the millions they've spent, by now. You know what? Hire two temps to enter 500 names a day, and you'd still only need 3 months or so to have everything on a new system. It's gotten to the point I honestly believe they don't want to migrate 'cause it gets rid of one of their best, all-purpose, excuses. The thing is, Lee, it's NOT rocket science, it's database management. Lastly, while I think it's ridiculous the way they work the enrollment, waiting isn't the issue; it's that some of the students don't have to wait to sign up for popular programs and, therefore, new or late-assigned students then don't have as many options. In addition, they already know the bulk of the assignment . . . they started telling people. It's starting and then stopping that's annoying.
The problem isn't the dedication of the staff -- many of us do believe that there are some really hard workers down there -- but the district does seem to go out of it's way to keep parents out of the loop.
stu
They also told me that if you ever had your child enrolled in SPS the student ID number remains the same -- so if you can find it anywhere, it could help in attempts to find out enrollment info from the district. If you can find a phone # or link that works!
She stated that all 9th grade registrations will be held and not processed until all assigned students can fill out paperwork (including those assigned via open enrollment).
She was also very helpful in giving info about how to get a student into advanced math and science classes.
It was encouraging to be able to speak to her in person and get information directly from the school rather than the FAQ on the district website.
I would like to hear a blanket statement from the district that the high schools have been directed to take those scheduling requests and are holding ALL of them until the Open Choice seats have been filled and their requests taken. Really, the only people who should get last choice are those who come in late, not those on time.
Schools are able to do school-level planning, to get a general sense of how many sections they will need of each class, with the registration packets they get back this week, and they will be able to do the work necessary to review those packets and clean them up (make sure that students requested the right number, combination and level of classes), but they will not be able to do any student-level planning with the paper-and-ink forms. That work has to be done on the computer and can only be done after the data is entered. Until the district flips the switch the schools won't even be able to do that data entry.
So, rest assured, it appears that the Open Enrollment students will not be at a disadvantage.
And it was very unfortunate that the counselor said that Open Enrollment students would get classes on a space-available basis like late enrollment students in previous years.
So someone downtown, please make sure all pieces of the process are on the same page.
Our household had never received any registration materials prior to yesterday. As a parent, I expect to be able to see the course guidelines and discuss with my kid BEFORE a school counselor provides registration. If I knew my kid was going to Franklin, I would have been pretty steamed because there were some strange course choices made and plenty of unanswered questions.
In contrast, my kid related that students going to Roosevelt and Garfield had packets with alot of info they had received prior. A much better system.
I am assuming that changes could have been made to my kid's course selections, but again, surely not the best of systems. And, does not do much to entice families to all high schools.
Does anyone have any info on the implementation of the Seattle Math Pathway? Have recommended placements been reasonable? Have requests to skip an additional level been accomodated? I emailed Anna Maria delaFuente with some questions (which she answered). It sounds like she plans to post a FAQ at some point.
The district explains the automated assignment information line snafu:
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/eso/letters.pdf
Re, math pathway: Sealth counselor told me that current math teacher should send letter of recommendation to district math dept and also to school. No other specifics offered about what would happen after that. I don't think the schools really have any idea how this is supposed to work.