This Week's Meetings
(Update on Wednesday Work Session: Spoke to Joan in the Board office. The Work Session is to be about the Strategic plan as it had been previously bumped by the Integrated planning work. This is a quarterly update on the SP.)
Monday afternoon is the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee meeting from 4-6:30 p.m. in the Board conference room. The agenda reflects the following topics:
Tuesday, December 14th is last informal drop-in session on the Transition plan. It is from 6-8 p.m. at district headquarters, Room 2750. I had recommended if you go to any drop-in, I'd go to this one as they have far more data to work with than they did at the end of October.
Update: Steve Sundquist is having two community meetings this week. One is:
Wednesday, Dec. 15
11:00 am -12:30 pm
High Point Library
3411 SW Raymond St.
Wednesday is the final Board Work Session on Integrated planning from 4-7 p.m. at the headquarters. Okay but wait, what's this? The Board calendar now reflects this Work Session to be on the Strategic Plan Update from 4-6:30 p.m. There will be two Executive Sessions bookending the Work Session (the first for an employee appeal action and the other about the Superintendent's evaluation).
Uh, folks this is not good. If the Work Session is not about Integrated planning, then the discussion by the Board on issues around the Transition plan are done until staff formally presents the plan at the Jan. 5th Board meeting. This seems unfair. Was everything covered? Did the Board get to ask all the questions they had? What about community input from the staff presentations?
I'll call and ask about this tomorrow morning.
Thursday is the Operations Committee meeting from 4-6 p.m. Their agenda is not yet available.
On Saturday, DeBell, Martin-Morris, Maier and Patu all have community meetings. Update: Steve Sundquist is also having one on Saturday.
Monday afternoon is the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee meeting from 4-6:30 p.m. in the Board conference room. The agenda reflects the following topics:
- alternative schools with Thornton Creek principal John Miner presenting
- professional development waiver/parent/teacher conference waiver - I believe this is about not making up the days missed due to snow
- Board policy on school attendance
- schools of innovation (Susan Enfield)
- textual materials adoption update
- course of study discussion
- newly enrolled students school assignment's (sic)
Tuesday, December 14th is last informal drop-in session on the Transition plan. It is from 6-8 p.m. at district headquarters, Room 2750. I had recommended if you go to any drop-in, I'd go to this one as they have far more data to work with than they did at the end of October.
Update: Steve Sundquist is having two community meetings this week. One is:
Wednesday, Dec. 15
11:00 am -12:30 pm
High Point Library
3411 SW Raymond St.
Wednesday is the final Board Work Session on Integrated planning from 4-7 p.m. at the headquarters. Okay but wait, what's this? The Board calendar now reflects this Work Session to be on the Strategic Plan Update from 4-6:30 p.m. There will be two Executive Sessions bookending the Work Session (the first for an employee appeal action and the other about the Superintendent's evaluation).
Uh, folks this is not good. If the Work Session is not about Integrated planning, then the discussion by the Board on issues around the Transition plan are done until staff formally presents the plan at the Jan. 5th Board meeting. This seems unfair. Was everything covered? Did the Board get to ask all the questions they had? What about community input from the staff presentations?
I'll call and ask about this tomorrow morning.
Thursday is the Operations Committee meeting from 4-6 p.m. Their agenda is not yet available.
On Saturday, DeBell, Martin-Morris, Maier and Patu all have community meetings. Update: Steve Sundquist is also having one on Saturday.
Comments
Executive Session re Superintendent Evaluation
Mid-year eval?
Maybe the Board would like to get back to us on that.
I have a few comments.
First, the attorney general was elected by the people. The AG and the governor's office are in a dispute right now about who the AG answers to.
I'm not sure the governor can or would tell the AG to do something and I am not sure that the AG would necessarily do something that the governor tells him to do.
He is a republican, she is a democrat.
He is sueing the Obama administration, she is defending it.
Get the picture.
Second, I think fraud and forgery issues are prosecuted at the county level. Fraud and forgery issues are usually investigated by the police and, if there is sufficient evidence of a crime, they turn the evidence over to the prosecutor.
My experience with these issues is that the police look at most fraud and forgery matters as a civil matters to be resolved by the parties.
Thanks.
The Prosecutors office referred me to the Seattle Police. The Seattle Police referred me to the AG. Thus King County is not going to do anything about this.
As you said:
"My experience with these issues is that the police look at most fraud and forgery matters as a civil matters to be resolved by the parties."
So what is the next step?
What is the matter with the School Board? What is the problem with the legal system that MGJ can overrun our city?
Could the PD Waiver & Parent/Teacher Conference Waiver on the C&I agenda refer instead to the upcoming 180-day waiver applications (3 days for ea. waiver), which you listed as discussed during the last Executive meeting on your 12/02 post:
"There are also 3-day calendar waivers on the agenda to get from OSPI. Steve said the Board wants to push back to 108 days of instruction and knows this is something to talk to SEA about."
Also, item d. Costing out Waivers
...I wonder which waivers they are covering, as there's also been ongoing C&I discussion about "Performance Management" waivers?
Also of note, new items on the "parking lot";
*HS Credit for MS students taking on-line course
*Waivers for the 3 new elementary schools
(Does any one know about these 2 issues? What kind of additional waivers would the 3 new schools need?)
for Sundquist (it just came out by email):
Wednesday, Dec. 15
11:00 am -12:30 pm
High Point Library
3411 SW Raymond St.
Saturday, Dec. 18
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Delridge Library
5423 Delridge Way SW
The talk about supplemental education providers has been dropped, probably because the Board already voted on them.
Three items have been added:
alternative schools, waivers from the 180 day school year, and discussion of school assignments for newly enrolled students.
The District was supposed to conduct a review of alternative schools similar to the reviews they did of APP, Special Education, and bilingual education. Some outside expert was going to come to town talk to folks, and deliver a report with recommendations. That was supposed to happen in the fall of 2009. It didn't.
Director Martin-Morris promised that it would be done in the fall of 2010.
Now, instead of a review by an outside expert, the District has decided to do something else. Instead of that sort of review the District now says that they are going to have the schools do a "self-assessment".
I don't see the point of this. I think the root problem here is that the Board and the District don't really see the point of the Alternative Education Review.
Think of it. Will Montessori programs be included in the self-assessment? Will language immersion programs be included? Will the math programs at North Beach and Schmitz Park be included? Will unique CTE programs be included? Who decided which schools and programs are included and what are they going to assess?
This is not the review that was promised.
The District is moving forward with a lot of decisions about alternative schools without having any clear Vision for them. That's a really bad idea that reflects poor leadership and shoddy management.
And Saturday AM? Really? Who will watch the kids? That guy is so non-reality based. Guess his biggest supporters are retirees too...
The staff did stop doing updates for the community - we asked tougher questions than the Board members.
Also, unlike the Board members, we asked about things that the staff didn't want to talk about. In the updates to the Board the staff writes the whole script. They only review the projects that they want to review. It's not real oversight and the review is nowhere near comprehensive.
It's too bad that the Board doesn't set the agenda for these quarterly reviews.
It's also too bad that the Board doesn't use them as an opportunity to ask for a comprehensive report.
Tsk tsk. That's the duty of the secretary of the Board, which is the superintendent.
They will also discuss the draft capacity report. That should be interesting. (Well to some of us, at least!)