Board Agenda for Wednesday

If you wish to speak on the Board agenda on Wednesday, the 6th, be sure to call 252-0040 and leave your name, phone number, e-mail address and topic you wish to speak on.

The agenda has several interesting items of note. 

• one is a renewal of an agreement with Microsoft for software.  There is one puzzling item which I'm sure someone here can explain to me.  "Allows District staff access to the most current version of MS Office for home use."  Does that mean so they can take it home?  Work from home?  
• a huge item - approval of the budgets.  General Fund for $577,741,503; ASB for $4.4M; Debt Service fund for $85M and Capital Projects fund for $101M.  Adding all those up you get roughly $770M.  That's a lot of dough.
• Final vote on the attendance policy.

The change I see is this:

This motion has been discussed at the 5/23/2011 and 6/27/2011 meetings of the Curriculum &
Instruction Policy Committee. On 5/236/27/2011, after this item had been introduced, the
Committee recommended the following revisions to the Superintendent Procedure:  Clarify that
educational trips are allowed to be excused and that principals have the final say on whether a
planned absence is excused. The Committee recommended changes have been made in track
changes in the attached document.  With these changes, the C&I Policy Committee then
reviewed the motion and recommended that the item move forward to be reviewed by the
entire board.  (color theirs)

So really, it's up to your principal to decide if your idea of a trip is valid.

It is also noted that they contacted the Seattle Council PTSA to review this policy and submit comments.  I know at the Committee meeting they had not heard back from them so I don't know if any SCPTSA comments were ever received.

• There is also an item to buy 725 new Macs.  However the numbers on the Apple quote don't match up with what the agenda item says.  And, the quote is higher than the amount on the agenda item so I don't quite know what to make of this one.

• approval of Wallace Foundation grant.  This one is troubling to me although, on the surface, it sounds like a good idea.  As I previously reported, it is for $1M (with the City) to support arts.  I was at the Committee meeting where this was discussed and this $1M is only for a 19-month planning period.  If approved by the Foundation, then the district would get more money for its plan.  What I find troubling is that extra staff will have to be hired (3-4) to administer just the planning phase.  The item states that they would get money from various sources but also from SPS academic assurance budgets and Visual and performing arts staff.  I'm sorry but what gets loss if the planning money goes that way? 

Staff makes this statement with no backup - Failure to approve the Wallace Foundation Arts       Learning Initiative Grant will result in a significant delay in our ability to increase students' access to quality arts learning.  

Why is that?  I don't know.  But here's the line we always hear:  The Wallace grant will provide us the internal capacity (through consultants) to significantly accelerate our work towards an equitable arts system and aligned resources.  Always with the consultants.

There is one item on Teach for America but I want to address that in a separate post.