Friday Open Thread
This has (and continues to be) an interesting week for me as I stump against the two preschool measures. More on this to come.
From SPS:
Hello West Seattle Families,
Due to potential family scheduling conflicts, Seattle Public Schools is rescheduling the Monday, Sept. 29, Superintendent meet and greet at the Neighborhood House in West Seattle.
We’ve recently learned the Seattle Housing Authority is holding a meeting about its proposal for rent changes at the same date and time at the High Point Community Center and many of our families wish to attend. We are rescheduling out of respect for many of our families’ desires to attend both meetings.
The new date for the Superintendent’s meeting will be in late October to ensure families have time to plan and attend.
Saturday community meeting with Director Patu from 10 am to 11:30 am at Cafe Vita. I note that the SCPTA has this to say in urging members to go to Patu's meeting:
Have your students been impacted from the lack of school buses this year? We have been hearing stories of families walking long ways, mothers making choices between their jobs or walking their children safely to school.
We'd like to help by hearing from parents adversely impacted by the lack of school transportation. Many Title I schools have strict mandates on attendance and we want to ensure further funding is not lost.
If you are bilingual please share this email and if not, please share with your bilingual Instructional Assistants. There are many families hard hit, especially families that speak other languages.
Director Martin-Morris also has a meeting at Montlake Library from 11 am to noon.
Hey, it's Museum Day Live! tomorrow, Saturday the 27th. That means many museums are FREE. For our area that includes, Seattle Art Museum, MOHAI, Burke Museum, NW African-American Museum, EMP, Wing Luke Museum and many others. Here's where you can get your free ticket.
Hack the CD starts today at Garfield High at 4pm. From The Stranger:
So last summer, when the Crosscut Community Idea Lab held a competition asking, “How can we use Seattle’s tech boom as an asset to create an equitable and integrated city?”, Harris answered by proposing a “hackathon” in the heart of Seattle. “To hack essentially means to make a product do what it was not originally intended to do,” explains hackathon organizer Zithri Saleem. “We want our children of color to be a part of the growth and change of this area.”
This weekend the community will have a chance to propose new tech-based businesses or ideas that will reshape the CD. “Our goal is to launch at least 10 new businesses in the central area, but most of all we will expose over 100 people to entrepreneurial education.”
Two amazing videos about nature. One is my Friday funny - frogs and an iPad. The other is a booya video about a bumble bee and a spider. Show these to the kids (unless you don't like graphic insect violence and yes, I know spiders are not insects).
What's on your mind?
From SPS:
Hello West Seattle Families,
Due to potential family scheduling conflicts, Seattle Public Schools is rescheduling the Monday, Sept. 29, Superintendent meet and greet at the Neighborhood House in West Seattle.
We’ve recently learned the Seattle Housing Authority is holding a meeting about its proposal for rent changes at the same date and time at the High Point Community Center and many of our families wish to attend. We are rescheduling out of respect for many of our families’ desires to attend both meetings.
The new date for the Superintendent’s meeting will be in late October to ensure families have time to plan and attend.
Saturday community meeting with Director Patu from 10 am to 11:30 am at Cafe Vita. I note that the SCPTA has this to say in urging members to go to Patu's meeting:
Have your students been impacted from the lack of school buses this year? We have been hearing stories of families walking long ways, mothers making choices between their jobs or walking their children safely to school.
We'd like to help by hearing from parents adversely impacted by the lack of school transportation. Many Title I schools have strict mandates on attendance and we want to ensure further funding is not lost.
If you are bilingual please share this email and if not, please share with your bilingual Instructional Assistants. There are many families hard hit, especially families that speak other languages.
Director Martin-Morris also has a meeting at Montlake Library from 11 am to noon.
Hey, it's Museum Day Live! tomorrow, Saturday the 27th. That means many museums are FREE. For our area that includes, Seattle Art Museum, MOHAI, Burke Museum, NW African-American Museum, EMP, Wing Luke Museum and many others. Here's where you can get your free ticket.
Hack the CD starts today at Garfield High at 4pm. From The Stranger:
So last summer, when the Crosscut Community Idea Lab held a competition asking, “How can we use Seattle’s tech boom as an asset to create an equitable and integrated city?”, Harris answered by proposing a “hackathon” in the heart of Seattle. “To hack essentially means to make a product do what it was not originally intended to do,” explains hackathon organizer Zithri Saleem. “We want our children of color to be a part of the growth and change of this area.”
This weekend the community will have a chance to propose new tech-based businesses or ideas that will reshape the CD. “Our goal is to launch at least 10 new businesses in the central area, but most of all we will expose over 100 people to entrepreneurial education.”
Two amazing videos about nature. One is my Friday funny - frogs and an iPad. The other is a booya video about a bumble bee and a spider. Show these to the kids (unless you don't like graphic insect violence and yes, I know spiders are not insects).
What's on your mind?
Comments
The District transportation department has been unresponsive and the City won't do anything. Nice partnership from Mayor Murray who refuses to provide crossing guards.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/954772-129/underwhelming-number-of-charter-school-applications
No parent or staff member should have to worry about this happening and no child should be afraid coming and going from school.
http://www.spl.org/library-collection/museum-pass
The Museum Pass allows you to use your Seattle Public Library card to reserve and print out an admission pass to participating Seattle museums at no charge. (more)
Participating museums
• The Burke Museum
• The Center for Wooden Boats
• EMP Museum
• Henry Art Gallery
• The Log House Museum
• Museum of Flight
• Museum History & Industry • Nordic Heritage Museum
• Northwest African American Museum
• Seattle Art Museum
• Seattle Asian Art Museum
• Seattle Aquarium
• Wing Luke Museum
-districtWatcher
11 Reasons why Seattle’s Preschool for all Proposition 1B is a bad idea.
Thanks,
martial arts mom
If Blanford's wife is working with the city's educational department, he needs to recuse himself from issues dealing with the city.
Aikido qualifies for a waiver, I assume other martial arts do too.
Wouldn't surprise me if she went to the City. Apparently there is no shortage of funds for suits in City Hall. Money for crossing guards, neighborhood policing, not so much. When some of us ask dolts like Burgess for support for safe streets or impact fees - he says he has no intention of asking his business friends to do anything. But, HEY, property owner tax yourself some more to pad my (preschool) Education caliphate!
Stop cutting things that impact our children while you are hiring more of your buddies downtown.
On a surprising note, I was happy to see my 2nd grader actually has a math book and her own workbook this year instead of 100's of photocopied worksheets!
That being said, her "grade" level math class has 32 kids in it while the "walk-to-math/advanced kids" enjoy having only 23 kids in their room. Guess which class has the largest number of behavior issues? Hint: it's not the small class!
And, let it be known that the entire elementary math placement was determined by one 10 question test on the 1st day of 1st grade. Awesome ALO....if you happen to be in the right class.
His plan was that his wife and their sole child were going to go to China for a year, to support daughter's post-Beacon Hill International School language immersion experience.
He's gone on and on about how excellent language immersion is, and how it is such a great school and such a fantastic program, etc. Utterly insensitive and classless since LI is NOT available on a lottery basis to anyone who wants it (neither is Montessori either). How equitable is that? Sigh. Details, details. Equity only counts when slamming 'elitists'. Otherwise, apparently, the current distribution of 'curricula foci' is fine and dandy.
So their plan was for Janet to retire and then she and daughter go to China to the sister school for a year. He has explained that he grew up as a child of a military family, and he moved around a lot, and, how he use to speak Japanese as a child, but, his family moved, so, he lost it. He wants to see his child retain her language ability gained at Seattle Public School's one of 2 LI programs (at the time, now there are 2 more schools).
Ordinarily, I would think personal info is off limits, but, he said this out loud in public meetings so HE himeself put it out there.
It was grossly insensitive for a Director who personally has enjoyed the advantage of a scare resource and gained tremendous educational benefits as a result (i.e., LI) to go on and on so utterly oblivious to what the obvious problem is (that it depends on having the 'right' address in order to get access -- that is a HUGE problem).
Don't know what his spouse is doing now; don't know if their family's plan got changed, but, it would be a conflict of interest if he is suppose to represent the public in the public education system for SPS while his spouse is trying to work to take that same system over. That is just my opinion. Technically, it would not be a legal conflict of interest according to the State Ethics Laws. It is just icky. Especially given how incurious he has been about the capacity crisis while simultaneously pushing Preschool for All.
Oh but wait, he 'got a huge mandate'. Oh yeah, he ran against a someone who was unfit to represent the public because of outright expressed homophobia, so his 'mandate' was merely a vote against his opponent.
3YearsLeft
When did the Council hear from their constituents "build a bloated city Ed Dept"? We must stop allowing City councilmembers to decide they know what's best for our students' public education. If they were so concerned, then take a volunteer school board position. Stop the Burgess' who, once they're enshrined protect their business friends and tell the rest of us to play in the freeway or cram our kids in classrooms so his preschool programs have room to grow.
There was a mention of Dr. Blanford moving to China.
Fun fact I found out today - there's over $30M in F&E levy money just sitting there (apparently waiting for new programs).
Hmm. Which new programs would that be? It's funny because as the City claims there is no money for the unions early childhood plan (1A), the City has money to open a whole Department of Education and Early Learning (with new positions, not just some consolidation) AND there's this education money sitting there.
Very depressing
I still think 2370 is a huge number and something that should concern us.
CR
CR
Although your heart is in the right place, your information is incorrect. On the same chart (available at http://www.k12.wa.us/HomelessEd/pubdocs/2012-13ByDistrict2-7-14.pdfthat gives the number of homeless students in Seattle as 2370, the total number in the state is 30, 609. Of the 2,370 in Seattle, of these 1678 are in shelters, 587 are "doubled up," 31 are unsheltered and 74 are in hotels/motels.
Even though this is a much lower number than 8000, it still is incredibly sad.
Ballard
QA Mama
Is the district signalling preferential treatment?
f
I'll have more to say on this but parents, the City's preschool plan, 1B? The linchpin IS space at Seattle Schools - they talk about the partnerships, priorities and every single time, it's the district they are talking about.
-- Idea?
From the last Friday Memo to the board dated Sep 19, 2014, I found out that Supt. Nyland met with Brad Jupp, Senior Policy Advisor to Arne Duncan to discuss SPS's request for a waiver. The memo does not discuss if there was any response.
From prior memos to the board I learned more about MTSS and various surprising community groups that Supt. Nyland has met with.
Also tucked into the Sept 19 memo is this: "We continue to work diligently on the RCCAP priorities by meeting with Wyeth to learn about progress and what other supports are needed to keep moving forward. The big need is continuity of leadership and time for good people to put systems in place and support them long enough to become part of the culture. We are also working across district systems to get support for Special Education from communications, community engagement and computer technology.
Zakiyyah McWilliams remains on leave with resolution now another 30 days out. We are moving toward awarding the consulting contract for the support which OSPI determined we
needed. OSPI is also sending one of their staff to provide support one day per week. And OSPI is withholding a portion of our Special Education funding pending our completion of the RCCAP requirements.
This is interesting in several obvious regards. Almost all previous memos mention his priorities with regard to SpEd. It is great to see that he is always keeping SpEd's issues in mind. I read that line about OSPI withholding funds with interest. Last year, the assumption was that OSPI withheld funds, but as I learned last year in a rather blunt conversation with Doug Gill, OSPI's Assistant Superintendent for Special Education, they can't withhold funds for something when the request hasn't been made. So if Doug Gill is actually withholding funds, that would imply that SPS actually applied for the funds far closer to the deadline at the beginning of September. So that's good. Looming in Supt. Nyland's mind is the Oct 1 deadline for many tasks related to the revised C-CAP. From a recent conversation with Supt. Nyland, a project manager has been hired to assure that the tasks that are due on that date are complete. While the R-C-CAP does not contain many items that parents really care about, completion of these items would show that the district is becoming more functional, more intentional and moving in the right direction.
The "project manager" approach is a vestige of MGJ days (straight from A4E) and is the ONE thing Charles Wright has had to contribute.
curious
Can you elaborate about your seeming distaste for Second Step program/curricula? I have believed it to be a very positive step towards IDg appropriate behaviors, problems and solutions to bullying and safety issues.
Thanks in advance.
Leslie
Don't keep us in suspense - who did he meet with?
Curious, if it's during the school day, it might be harder. But I think you should be able to. I looked at the website and I can't say for certain what is being used by SPS but some of it is values-based. Parents should have some degree of control over what their children are told - in this context - about issues like divorce and incarceration.
You might talk to your child's teacher to see what is being covered before you opt out. It might just be general info on bullying and resilience.
I just watched Burgess debate the prek initiative. When is Burgess going to tell voters that the city's prek initiative aligns prek-3. When is the city's prek-5th grade program going to be explained to voters and the board?
Burgess tells the community that low income children will be able to attend prek for free, but fails to mention that there are only 2000 seats. Seats for low, middle and high income have not been determined.
Burgess also tells voters that administrative costs will be limited to 13%. I've not seen any document to verify. Presently, administrative costs are 20% of prek budget.
The union claims that they would need $3M of the Family and Education budget. Burgess and Holly Miller have withheld funding from very high poverty schools.
I am beginning to think it is ok to vote for 1A- the union's initiative.
Any chance groundwork for the city's pre-k program is being put in place?
- I keep telling various election boards that the City's program will NOT get the best outcomes without middle/upper class children enrolled. (And that's based on research.) So a certain number of space will HAVE to be set aside AND a great marketing campaign made to get those families in the door. (Given that those families have more choices, it will be a fairly heavy lift for the City.)
And, of course, some children from low-income families will likely not get in.
- ah administrative costs (and administrators' salaries), yes that is a bit of a mystery.
Burgess is saying the administrative costs will be about 13% in the early years and 10% following. That seems about right for a start-up program. Problem is, I can't find that documentation.
When I called out that their independent consultants said teachers salaries could be between $30K-60K and administrators' salaries could between $100K-200K, he flatly said I was wrong.
So I tried to find out what I missed in order to correct "my" error.
Burgess says that the City Council rejected those salaries but his office won't say when that happened. The City's Action Plan - their official version of their pre-K plan - mentioned the BERK report multiple times glowingly. There is NO asterisk anywhere saying "While most of the BERK report was accepted by the Council, some areas were rejected."
So unless I see something different, I can only go on the documentation at the City's website.
And to see administrators salaries so much higher than teachers is troubling to me. The money should go into the classroom, not downtown.
- bilingual/ ELL/ dual language - I find this confusing as the City is using all these terms (and they don't necessarily mean the same thing).
Dora Taylor calls the RttT for preschool, Race to the Tots.
Wow. That sounds like something bad happened TO the district instead of BECAUSE of the district. They haven't bothered to recruit anybody good, for any SPED position centrally, for years on end. They hire a low level compliance officer in a weak California district for the top spot, and are surprised when she can't manage a revolving door of career climbers. They hire a teacher out of college less than 5 years, with 3 years experience, to be the compliance officer, as if a few years in the classroom gives you some legal expertise. They hire a school psych to be Jr. director, even though most of the SPED. positions are teaching because, she really really wants it. Then they load the bases with all sorts of people from self contained classrooms, while telling families they are committed to a least restrictive environment for students. Too bad there are few people supporting least restrictive environments, and any form of inclusion in the central office.
OSPI isn't going to take a dime from SPS on account of SPED. If they were going to take money from the district, they would have done it in the 20 years they've been running the show. No need to hire even one more person. And if they do hire someone, I vote for one of our own SPED transition students. That would at least be a productive use of sped funds.
Spedvocate
There was definitely pushback on the 1B proposal. There was a bit of advocacy for the 1A proposal and a little pushback on that proposal, but during the voting, the 2 positions that gained moment were either 1B or for the 46th to no endorse either plan.
Ultimately, after a couple rounds of voting, the position of taking no position won with barely 60% of the votes of the members present, so neither preschool plan will be endorsed.
Sounds like there were a couple of other Seattle precincts that have already voted to endorse 1B.
I'm glad I went and would encourage others who are concerned to do so. People do pay attention to and use the endorsements made within their districts, so if you can participate, please do so.
The vote was also made to endorse the idea of preschool in general.
~ SPS Dem
http://qz.com/271422/the-six-paths-of-the-typical-us-college-graduate-and-why-theyre-all-wrong/
-katydid
And HMM? I heard that he literally asked the City for a job in the preschool work session. Not figuratively, but literally asked if he could be considered for the director of early learning job in a few years once he stops being a school board member.
Ohlord helpus
When are people going to realize that Jackie Bezos and Bill Gates are behind the city's prek proposa? When are people going to realize that the same people that pushed charter schools are behind the city's proposal?
When are people going to start looking at the city's excessive administration within the City of Seattle's Education department and realize there may be bigger plans?
Frank Ordway actually had the audacity to say..that they didn't know which plan they would support. Ordway actually was silent on the fact that LEV launched a campaign for the school board to support the prek initiative BEFORE they knew that staff was working on expansion of prek and the city's initiative.
In the future, let's remember this:
"Harium and Stephen Blanford are all comfortable with the city's ability to find space (and mentioned unspecified partnerships) and that that there would be no diversion of existing funds that serve SPS students currently."
It is funny that we have the district saying that we are short on space, but Sherry and Harium think otherwise.
Well, it will be interesting.
On the bright side, maybe that will fix Seattle's high school capacity crisis. Joking.
What would be fun? If they took over Rainier Beach with 'promises, promises'. Conversion charters are not that high of a threshold to hit. All schools have the right to 'self determination', even if it hurts that rest of us. Not saying the parents or the teachers would... but, just that they could, just like any other school community.
The smaller the school community, the easier it is to achieve the conversion threshold. Building a break-away consensus in a small school is a lot more simpler than trying to do it in a school with 1200 students and 30 teachers.
-flat dot
NO one should ever vote for something like that.
I heard that 46th was quite the meeting and neither prop was allowed to be challenged. You have to wonder when there are no dissenting voices allowed.
"Sherry said that there was some concern they had heard about lack of space for the proposal but that she, Harium and Stephen Blanford are all comfortable with the city's ability to find space (and mentioned unspecified partnerships) and that that there would be no diversion of existing funds that serve SPS students currently."
Carr is the head of the A&F committee. They just got a document on the 11th outlining what needs to happen. And YES there are costs (even if in-kind costs - if staff is working on pre-K for the City, that's a cost).
LEV is part of the district's pre-K plan and has been since 2010.
I'll be putting up this documentation soon.
And yes, it seems that many want to vote YES on the first question to show support for "preschool." First, if you voted for the Families and Ed levy, you ARE paying for preschool services - 26% of the F&E levy ($61M) goes to preschool services.
Voting for the wrong plan for the right reason is not a good idea. But the people of Seattle are generous souls but we can't forget that many people cannot afford another tax. It has to be done right and that means rejecting both of these and sending labor and governance back to the table to hammer out ONE plan.
I know lots of people who will probably vote for one of these because they think it's the right thing to do. I'd love to have a great article to point them to when I email and facebook them to ask them to vote "no".
-flibbertigibbet
It's interesting that you say that you perceive people will vote because "it's the right thing to do." I believe you are exactly right.
The 1B preschool expert insulted me three times and the second time, when he asked me how I could be against the City's plan when it parallels Obama's preschool plan, he got called on it (not by me). Then, the third time, he said to me - to ME - that if I truly supported public education as I said I did, I would support the City's plan.
You can imagine the slow burn I did because naturally, I am pretty much the last person you would challenge on commitment to public education. (Whether you agree with me or not, I think anyone can admit, grudgingly or not, that I care.)
I did let him know, after the meeting, that he might not want to say that to my face again.
I'm not going to be guilted into voting for ANYTHING because I'm a Dem or a liberal.
I had an op-ed in Publicola on this issue but I should write up one for the blog as there is new information.
The 1st question asks Should either of these measures be enacted into law? (Kinda begs the question- If not a law, then what is it? A wishful thought?)
Then it goes on to ask which measure to vote for. The 2nd question asks "regardless" how you answer the 1st question (BUT the voters have to answer yes to the 1st question by a majority for either one to pass) if one of these enacted measures is adopted, which one should it be. If you didn't vote on the 1st question or voted no, but voted on the second question, would the vote be counted? It seems to me for my vote to count for either of these measures, I have to vote yes to the 1st question. Is that correct?
I've been voting 30 years and occasionally I get stumped. This is one of them.
Any light you can shine on this would be helpful. Thanks.
night shift
You have it mostly right.
Two questions on the ballot for these props.
First one, should we enact either? Yes or no.
Yes, then proceed to voting for which prop you favor.
If no,you have two choices. One, stop voting right there.
Or, to hedge your bets, if you worry the "yes" vote will carry on the first question (thereby making the second vote critical), you can pick the lesser of the two evils.
If the yes vote prevails on the first questions, whichever prop in the second question gets the most votes, wins.
If the no vote prevails in the first question, neither wins (no matter how many votes they got).
So hypothetically speaking, in the first question, the "no" vote could win but one of the props in the second question could get more votes and still lose.
As I have said to the elections boards, these are detailed and confusing props followed by a confusing voting procedure.
Both should be turned down and the two parties unite to give voters the best prop.
Seattle parent