October 3, 2012 Board Meeting

The School Board will be meeting on Wednesday, October 3. The agenda is posted online and is full of pretty normal stuff.

The Board will vote on three action items: to update a fairly non-controversial policy about fair use and copyright, the change order for Fairmount Park, and the approval of the revised Creative Approach School MOU. Yes, this is the same Creative Approach School MOU that we were told could not possibly be revised this quickly and easily when the need for the revision was first raised. Funny, huh?

The introduction items are equally routine: a policy revision for actually tracking the District's assets, a contract for the new enterprise software for student information and gradebook, an administrative requirement for the E & O levy, a conditional certificate for one Teach for America corps member (only the second one this year), and final acceptance on three capital projects: Hawthorne's new roof, Rainier Beach's athletic fields, and the whole Denny/Sealth construction project.

That's it. There shouldn't be much to discuss - not that the Board President allows discussion anyway - and they should be out of there pretty quickly. Let's see if twenty members of the public can get down there to speak by 5:00 or if they close public testimony well before 6:00.

Comments

mirmac1 said…
Actually this is the third TFA put forward this year but, predictably, one dropped out.
10/1/12, 11:30 AM
Anonymous said…
Just a correction for readers of this blog: The third TFA candidate did not "drop out." She accepted another position to teach in the Federal Way School district. While that could qualify as a drop out from the perspective of SPS, it's misleading to call her a "drop out". Also, the word I have is there is a fourth 2012 TFA teacher who begun teaching recently within SPS, but this teacher did not come before the Board because the teacher already has a permanent state residency certificate. There will be perhaps another 1-2 TFA teachers that appear before the Board as well in the coming weeks.

- Someone who knows
10/1/12, 8:26 PM
Melissa Westbrook said…
That third TFA teacher was AWOL and could not be found. I'd call it a drop-out. If that's professional behavior, good luck.
10/1/12, 9:07 PM
mirmac1 said…
The third TFA teacher received a conditional cert through Renton school district, without going to the board. The WAC clearly requires that the school board approve that action, presumably before it happens. Guess they care even less than Seattle about an open process. But that is the TFA way, no?
10/2/12, 6:35 AM
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