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Just a reminder of tonight's forum on Youth and Families, part of an initiative by Mayor McGinn:
I have e-mailed the Mayor's office and LEV (they are coordinating the caucuses). They apologized and are setting up a new one and will let us know when that is done. I expect to hear back this week.
Please go here and read the Declaration of Support of Public Education... if you agree with the principles contained within this Declaration, please consider signing the petition...
And please, if you have the inclination, see how different this Declaration is to what the Our Schools Coalition has put forward as 'community, grass roots desires' for public education...
Nowhere else to put this, but if like me you don't like what the Alliance for Education/Our Schools Coalition is doing around town (trying to influence teacher contract bargaining and education reform, claiming it speaks for the SPS community), you might like to take the time to tell them, either on their blot or on their facebook page, which URL I have included at the top...
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.)
Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read). end of update Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board. To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up. But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, grief, that is to come fro
Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting. In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance. - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
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http://www.petitiononline.com/PUBED102/petition.html
Please go here and read the Declaration of Support of Public Education... if you agree with the principles contained within this Declaration, please consider signing the petition...
And please, if you have the inclination, see how different this Declaration is to what the Our Schools Coalition has put forward as 'community, grass roots desires' for public education...
Nowhere else to put this, but if like me you don't like what the Alliance for Education/Our Schools Coalition is doing around town (trying to influence teacher contract bargaining and education reform, claiming it speaks for the SPS community), you might like to take the time to tell them, either on their blot or on their facebook page, which URL I have included at the top...