Tuesday Open Thread
Election Day - get those ballots in. List of King County dropboxes.
Seattle speed bumps are working. From Seattle Bike Blog,
Total speeding on the streets near three elementary schools dropped between 79 – 88 percent after speed humps were installed, and high-end speeding was nearly eradicated according to SDOT.
Teacher who is challenged to spend two days as a high school student learns her own lessons.
Catharine Blaine K-8 School*
Cleveland High School*
Franklin High School
Greenwood Elementary School*
Hamilton International Middle School*
Ingraham High School
Maple Elementary School
McDonald International Elementary School
Mercer International Middle School* (6th year in a row)
Pathfinder K-8 School
Wing Luke Elementary School*
*denotes schools that have won in previous years
What's on your mind?
Seattle speed bumps are working. From Seattle Bike Blog,
Total speeding on the streets near three elementary schools dropped between 79 – 88 percent after speed humps were installed, and high-end speeding was nearly eradicated according to SDOT.
Teacher who is challenged to spend two days as a high school student learns her own lessons.
- Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.
- High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90 percent of their classes.
- You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.
- total enrollment 51,988 students in 97 schools
- F/RL is at 37.8%
- ELL is at 25.9%
- Sped is at 13.7%
- Over 1200 preschoolers are in SPS
- interesting stats on minority groups - Black, Asian and Hispanic/Latino are within 4 points of each other at 16.4%, 15.9% and 12.5% respectively.
- Budget - $689.4M for the General Fund
Catharine Blaine K-8 School*
Cleveland High School*
Franklin High School
Greenwood Elementary School*
Hamilton International Middle School*
Ingraham High School
Maple Elementary School
McDonald International Elementary School
Mercer International Middle School* (6th year in a row)
Pathfinder K-8 School
Wing Luke Elementary School*
*denotes schools that have won in previous years
What's on your mind?
Comments
- Pissed of Taxpayer
http://www.queenanneview.com/2014/11/04/seattle-public-schools-to-open-interagency-recovery-school-in-old-queen-anne-high-gym/
Are other schools on the list similar to this? The awards don't seem to mean much to me.
Puzzled
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Waste-and-neglect-at-Seattle-Public-Schools-281338231.html
Also Bryant had its third lockdown in two weeks...
--NE Parent
09/10 to 13/14 FRL rates
Seattle Public Schools 42% to 40%
Catharine Blaine 17% to 9%
Cleveland 73% to 70%
Franklin 65% to 68%
Greenwood 38% to 22%
Hamilton 35% to 10%
Ingraham 56% to 31%
Maple 63% to 66%
McDonald n/a now 13%
Mercer 75% to 72%
Pathfinder 40% to 26%
Wing Luke 79% to 85%
_ pissed off taxpayer
I'm not answering your question which seems posed in a hostile manner.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/245529643/NEW-October-1-2014-P223
I think these kids deserve a second chance.
-friend
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018513097_lastchance24m.html
The most impressive turn-around I saw was a young woman who had gotten involved in crime and then got pregnant and dropped out of school. A social worker helped convince her to go to Interagency, which in turn helped her find services she needed. When I met her she had a 4.0 average and a full ride to college.
So, be as PO'd as you like, this is one thing SPS does right.
NOT PO'd
Despite his academic and behavioral problems, Dennis was never evaluated or identified as a child with a disability in need of special education. After years of struggling in school with an undiagnosed learning disability, an attorney from Legal Aid filed for a due process hearing on Dennis’s behalf under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
A settlement was reached without a hearing.
Lather rise repeat
Lawyers needed
-Franklin Parent
And re:Interagency, I can't imagine how much worse off those kids would be without it. And it is SPS's job- to educate kids, no matter how damaged they might be.
-sleeper
DistrictWatcher
Wink Wink
ARRRGH!! Suppose they missed the "Race and Equity" training downtown keeps touting to the board.
I currently have a gen ed 7th grader. In 5th grade she met APP eligibility requirements, but for a variety of reasons, we elected to not move her to APP. My understanding is that 7th grade is the last year to test for advanced learning, meaning they'd be eligible for APP/HCC in 8th grade (at WMS, in our case) and then move onto high school. But I've since heard that it's possible to test in 8th grade for HCC in high school, either at Garfield or Ingraham. If anyone here can help me shed light on this, I'd appreciate it. I have emailed SPS, but am not expecting to hear back.
Thanks,
- missed
You're pissed at the wrong target. Interagency people are doing what most people at the John Stanford Center for Excess generally don't do: they're helping kids that in most cases are unreachable in any other way; kids that aren't in traditional schools, even kids in detention. They helped my daughter. She graduated and was guided into a program at SSCC. Hated high school, loves community college, and she'll be another taxpayer soon enough and will support your aged a$$ when you're no longer able to support it yourself. Money well spent. Let's get Gates to pay his tax and not just hide it behind a foundation and it's all good.
Westside
From the AL website under the enrollment link:
Enrollment for Highly Capable Students Rising to Sixth or Ninth Grades
Currently enrolled fifth- and eighth-grade Highly Capable Cohort (formerly APP) students are automatically assigned to their regional Highly Capable Cohort (formerly APP) middle school site for sixth grade or to Garfield for ninth grade and do not need to submit school choice forms.
There are no automatic or guaranteed assignments to Garfield for students who are not enrolled in the Highly Capable Cohort (formerly APP) at Washington, Hamilton or Jane Addams middle schools.
If you wanted Garfield as a pathway, your child would have needed to test this year and enroll at one of the middle school APP/HCC sites (Washington, Hamilton or Jane Addams) for 8th grade.
parent
I disagree with her about the exhaustion of sitting. She found sitting all day to be exhausting -- I would find standing and walking around the class all day to be exhausting. Good thing that she's a teacher and I work at a computer all day.
She argued that students feel like a bother and exhausted from sitting and listening all day. I don't know how I feel about her analysis. It seemed a bit silly and "hippie"-ish to me. Students spend less time sitting in class at school than most office-workers spend sitting at their desks.
That being said, to be a high school student is to be subject to many strictures and little indignities, to have little control over your day. If I had to ask permission from my boss every time that I wanted to leave my desk and go to the bathroom, I'd be screaming in frustration.
On exercise in schools: read an article about a school in North Carolina where students were able to pedal stationary bikes while reading. Apparently it improved their reading proficiency dramatically.
I love my Stranger, but the reason preschool passed is because they endorsed it. They didn't really understand how messed up the implementation of this is (no focusing of resources on at-risk youth - instead, spreading the wealth to stable families whose kids do fine AND to a lots of educats at City Hall).
Oh well. Lots of truly good intentions on the part of our wonderfully generous civic-minded fellow citizens who are predominantly childless. Their generosity is what I'll focus on, not what a mess this will be.
-election over
- missed
IMHO, IB is a good match for HCC. Check out RBHS and does Sealth have it too?
Chris
Would they automatically assign south-end students testing into APP in 8th grade to Ingraham? I guess I would expect them to be assigned to the new IB program at Rainier beach (although I know that IB and IBX are not the same).
Mom of 4
I know my older daughter loved that, as a Caucasian, she was in the minority for her first couple of years at Ingraham. She had never been in such an ethnically diverse school. I heard many of her classmates make similar comments. They observed that the increase of Caucasians over recent years hurt that diversity, and it bothered them. I have also heard long-time parents comment at football games how sad they are at the decreasing diversity among the cheerleaders.
Yes, it's easier for the PTO to raise money now that we have a smaller FRL population, but beyond that, I don't hear anyone saying that this new Ingraham is "improved." Merely different.
Rosemary D.
Maureen
Any student who tests into HCC in the eighth grade is automatically assigned to their attendance area school. They can enroll in IBX at Ingraham during open enrollment if they prefer that. They do not have guaranteed access to another school with IB unless it's their attendance area school.
I would want to be sure there was a group of academic peers for my child before I enrolled them anywhere. (I don't think IB classes in 11th and 12th grade make a high school a good fit for a highly capable kid.) You'd want to look at the classes available for the first two years too.
Seattle Public Schools has an annual budget of $680,031,000, spending an average of $14,246 per student.
Seattle Public Schools has 2,645 teachers, yielding 19 students per teacher.
On average, the teacher salary for the district is $73,009.
Seattle Public Schools 739th in America for Best Districts!
Rocky
My 2cents
I've been posting on this blog for a long time (ten years?) under my own name. So, in my opinion, 2cents' name is perfectly apt.
Maureen
My 2cents
It says that there are 3,122 teachers and a budget of $689M. Even if they were paying $100k per teacher, and they are not, that would be less than half the budget going to teachers.
The District usually claims that 70% of budget goes to teachers, which is already too low, but this makes it look like maybe only 45% of budget goes to teachers. What's going on?
This seems to be confirmed by the FTE count, which is 6,436. So, only 3,122 of 6,436 full time employees are teachers, or only 49%.
How could this be correct? Is it really true that less than half of the budget should be going for teachers and less than half of the full time employees should be teachers? Shouldn't most of the budget be for teachers?