Seattle Schools and 1B

From Seattle Schools:

Seattle Public Schools celebrates with the City of Seattle and says a resounding thank you to Seattle voters for their approval of the pre-school initiative. 
Our utmost appreciation for the leadership by the Mayor and the City Council in supporting this important work. 
Providing an early start to our neediest families is one of the most cost effective ways to help EVERY student succeed. 
The city initiative starts small and builds to 2000 students over the next four years. 
We look forward to working with the City of Seattle in the implementation of this important work.  

Naturally, we all think preschool is a good thing.  But really?  All the schools are excited about this work as they are underfunded and overenrolled?  Hard to believe but I'm going with headquarters staff is happy.   (I also note that the second sentence lacks a verb.)

 The district is also WRONG in the "neediest families" statement.  1B does not favor any group of children and consistently said it is open to all.

Most telling?  "We look forward to working" with the City.  So the partnership that IS the linchpin to 1B is a foregone conclusion?

That will be an interesting discussion because until McCleary is fully enacted AND our schools not busting at the seams, I would think the district's involvement would be small. 

As well, the district now has the mandate that is 1351. 

Comments

BS Tim said…
I received an e-mail from Tim Burgess. He thanked voters for choosing the city's prek plan.

Here is what he had to say:

"....nor does it require any space from the Seattle School District."

If his lips are moving...he is lying.
11/9/14, 6:34 PM
Catherine said…
I suspect SSD is going to be the leasee and operator (even if in name only), this gets around a whole bunch of costly, long delayed for inspection, state regs that other childcares are required to adhere to.
11/9/14, 11:05 PM
Anonymous said…
The Achilles heal of Seattlites is the belief that perfection can be achieved through compromise and that every person at the table can walk away with a win. Burgess personifies that attitude in spades. The idea that everyone wins is childish and naive. There has to be trade-offs to get things done. Unless Burgess is really, really dumb, he isn't being forthright here. And I don't think he's dumb.

Time to pin him down on this.

WSDWG
11/10/14, 2:20 PM
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