Board on Hiatus

With the adjournment of the Board meeting last night, the Board will not take up any business for over a month. The next scheduled Board meeting is August 17th (one day after the primary) and the next scheduled Board event is an Executive Committee meeting on August 10 and a meeting of the Curriculum & Instruction Policy committee on August 15.

We expect some sort of announcement regarding the solution to Lowell overcrowding tomorrow, but, after that, there probably won't be much news coming out of the District for the next month.

The focus will turn, instead, on the primary campaigns.

Comments

dan dempsey said…
Here is a question for Board members running for reelection.

The New Student Assignment Plan was presented as something that would make every school a quality school. This was to be done by using the transportation savings under NSAP and using those dollars to increase quality in certain schools.

#1 How much has been saved under NSAP?

#2 How much money has been distributed to make every school a quality school?

#3 Which schools have received this funding and in what amounts?

========
Or is this just a plan which will require some students to attend separate and unequal schools?
7/7/11, 1:58 PM
Charlie Mas said…
Oh yes!

By all means let's offer some questions for Board Directors seeking re-election.

Here are some of mine:

#1 Give three examples of times when you enforced policy.

#2 Give three examples of times when you held the staff accountable.

#3 What would you do if the Board voted to direct the superintendent to take a specific action but the superintendent neglected to take that action?

#4 The staff tells you something, but a number of other people, members of the public, tell you the opposite. Whom do you believe?

#5 The staff says that they will promptly perform a task, but several months later they still have not done it. What do you do?
7/7/11, 3:19 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday Open Thread

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.)
Read more

Breaking It Down: Where the District Might Close Schools

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
Read more

MEETING CANCELED - Hey Kids, A Meeting with Three(!) Seattle Schools Board Directors

 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
Read more