Please let us know if you attend the rally before the meeting. Seeing photos from Twitter; looks like a good crowd at the rally. The West Seattle Blog is there reporting. I am going to attempt to live blog so you will see abbreviations, spelling/grammar errors, etc. I will clean it up but I think it is worth trying to do. I will be refreshing the page as I go. I am sad to see that apparently President Liza Rankin is not even going to allow 10 people over the regular 20 to testify. Just five. Also, right at the beginning, the Board has stuck in, after Board comments, a Progress Monitoring presentation. They could have put it at the end but they didn't. They think - in 45 minutes - they can do Superintendent comments, Board comments and this presentation. I doubt that public testimony will start on-time. Tone-deaf doesn't even cover it with Board leadership. To note, apparently the district scheduled the NE community meeting on closures on Rosh Hashanah which is October 2. I
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Check out Florida .. and Jeb Bush.
It appears that significant gains are being eroded by ... online schools.
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Jeb Bush, with cash and clout, pushes contentious school reforms
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THE FLORIDA FORMULA
Bush, who declined to comment for this story, says often that he has one abiding goal: to give all students the chance to reach their "God-given potential."
His "Florida formula" rests on the principles of increasing accountability and expanding parental choice. Among its tenets:
* Grade schools on an A-to-F scale, based mostly on student scores and growth on standardized tests. Give students in poorly ranked schools vouchers to attend private and religious schools.
* Hold back 8-year-olds who can't pass a state reading test rather than promote them to fourth grade.
* Expand access to online classes and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, sometimes for profit.
"As many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of poor academic performance, according to a group representing states, districts and universities that grant them permission to operate.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers said 900 to 1,300 of the privately run, publicly financed schools should close because they are in the bottom 15 percent of public schools in their states."
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html
--FedMomof2
Yeah, it worth it.