Tuesday Open Thread

Have you read thru the District's budgets?

 One funny thing is the cover with "Three Goals - 50,000 Journeys."  Last I looked the District was near 53,000 students.  What about the other 3,000?  Also, page 54, where they show the broad breakdown of "Expenditures" - it adds up to 99%, not 100%.  Must be that Common Core Math.  And guess who's spending is going up the most within SPS?  Central at 16.4% (but they still like to contend they are only 5.8% of the budget with 800 people working at JSCEE).

Important new ruling from the State Supreme court on sealing juvenile records.  Story from Crosscut.

He was talking about the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that resoundingly affirmed the constitutionality of letting youthful offenders start their adult lives without the door-slamming stigmata of public criminal records. 

There was the hard-won Youth Opportunities Act, passed by the Legislature last year, which makes sealing of records automatic for minors who commit nonviolent, non-sex-related crimes and settle their court debts; and this year’s Youth Equality and Reintegration Act, which amplifies that first law by relieving young offenders of most of the onerous legal financial obligations (or LFOs) that keep them from settling their tabs and starting fresh. (For more details, see Part 1 and Part 2 of Crosscut’s series on sealing juvenile records.)

Seattle/King County are making their volunteer lists now for the next free medical clinic weekend at Seattle Center in October.  If you are a medical professional or just want to help wrangle people, please consider signing up to help.

The University of Puget Sound is dropping its use of the SAT, reports the Seattle Times.

More computer science grads from UW?  Could be coming as Microsoft has just donated $10M to kick-start a fund for a second new Computer Science and Engineering building at UW.

Microsoft’s gift represents the first corporate commitment to a public-private partnership to assemble $110 million in funding to construct a new 130,000-square-foot CSE building. The new facility will provide the capacity needed to double the number of degrees we award annually.

Comments

mirmac1 said…
Those just terrific schools like Garfield that are testing their kids today ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL are experiencing system issues. Technical difficulties. There's a special place in hell......
Anonymous said…
Huh - interesting distinction on the Budget doc between "Other Support Service" at 15.5% and "Central Admin" at 5.8% - I think, after reading the descriptions that most people would put those 2 together for a whopping 21.5% of the total budget spent at Central. Way to play a game with us SPS gang.

reader47
Anonymous said…
Should have gone down a page before most - the total increase in spending for those two categories - "Other Support Services" and "Central Admin" is $14 million (23.7%) FOURTEEN MILLION!!!!! Bleep and double bleeeep. What could that kind of magic could happen in a classroom with an extra FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS. triple bleep

reader47
Anonymous said…
I notice an increase in the General Counsel budget due to increases in the need for outside legal counsel("The General Counsel budget increases due to contractual services for outside legal counsel services as well as from the conversion of 3.0 FTE vacant positions to fund additional contractual services"). Where are the pointers to the compensatory ed expenses incurred by non-delivery on the IEPs of students with disabilities?

Reader
Anonymous said…
Interesting about dropping the SAT. My kid (a high schooler) announced this morning in the car on the way to school that they are not going to apply to any college that requires the SAT for entrance because they don't believe in the SAT or any standardized test. Hunh.

North End Parent
Anonymous said…
Did you hear that the June 9th SAT booklet had a typo? It was in all the test books across the country. It said in the booklet that you had 25 minutes on test 8 or 9. It should have said 20 minutes which is what the proctors were told and what it has always been. There was worry they were going to cancel the scores from that day but the SAT has decided to adjust the scores without those two sections. Some kids got 25 minutes, some got 20 minutes, etc. Now everyone is upset that the College Board can just toss those two sections and adjust.

HP
Anonymous said…
Interesting read about my hometown school district: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/houstons-learning-curve-117959.html#ixzz3dFeaaTBu

- annr
Anonymous said…
Argh with the new SPS websites - how do you view staff email addresses? You used to be able to view a staff list and read the email address.

Help?

mirmac1 said…
Help?

That's double-secret information available on a need-to-know basis. And the public doesn't need to know apparently.
Anonymous said…
If you are found of googling items and then following the links to find your info forget it on SPS' website. Seems that is an outdated form of research as they have killed all old links. WHY?

Jeez!
Why would anyone kill old links? Why would anyone in government have one e-mail for both personal and professional?

Maybe you had something you didn't want people to see.

Help, tell me who you are looking for and I might have it.
Anonymous said…
It's not uncommon in a website transfer for some things they thought would transfer to no longer work in a new system. There are relatively simple migration tools - hopefully, since they keep talking about all that sparkly technology, someone has a clue. Give it a while more - things will ease up on the "dead link" end.

As for email addresses - try the doing a google search for the person's last name with phrase "@seattleschools.org" - you should get a hit or two with the person's email address.

reader47
Anonymous said…
Thank you MW they seem to have fixed it now. All searches went to SPS domain but had a page not found, now that seems to be resolved. Must have been just during the couple of weeks of transition to the new web hosting provider.

-Whew!
Anonymous said…
and thanks Reader too. I just thought the worst as it was fairly frustrating.

-whew
mirmac1 said…
The Times is reporting that the board will approve a $325k settlement of an injury case. What I find interesting is that a booster is being sued along with the district because it funded a coach position.

Now if that doesn't give pause to PTAs and parent groups for funding staff positions, then I don't know what will.
Anonymous said…
Will the settlement mean that the suit against the Nathan Hale Foundation won't go forward? It's not like they have a lot of money. They raise about $100,000 a year to pay for homework help and other things around the school. It is usually the sports boosters who helps fund the trainers in the weight room. I wonder if the Times got the group wrong. Sports Boosters have even less money than the Foundation.

It was interesting to read the comments from others who had weight trained at Hale. They seem to not believe the plaintiff. The district is probably correct to settle rather than risk a court trial.

I hope this doesn't discourage Hale and other schools to not support this type of training. Not everyone can afford to go to Bellevue's trainer. This training is provided to the kids at no cost to them.

HP
Anonymous said…
Liv Finne writes on a possible charter school closing =>

http://washingtonpolicy.org/blog/post/state-commission-consider-closing-seattle-charter-school

Her position seems a bit slanted for this charter and against the district. She fails to talk about actual violations by the charter school.
-- Dan Dempsey
Yes, First Place Scholars had until June 15th to show the Charter Commission what they needed to see.
Anonymous said…
Liv is a big supporter of charters, so it is not surprising she slams public schools and gives the charter school the benefit of the doubt.

Considering how high profile this first charter school was, it is surprising they could not fix their problems. Perhaps it is not as easy to run a school as the Washington Policy Center seems to think. Especially for disadvantaged students.

My opinion is that charters are a big distraction and we should be fully funding and supporting public schools.

S parent
Anonymous said…
From The Source login page:

The Source will close July 2, 2015 to prepare for the 2015-16 school year. It will reopen September 9, 2015.

just fyi
Anonymous said…
So the Times report is inaccurate on the lawsuit. The Nathan Hale Foundation and the Athletic Director were dropped from the suit.

HP
Anonymous said…
The "Central" budge includes all the OTs, PTs, SLPs and Psychologists as well as School Nurses (I believe) so keep that in mind...

-SPS OT
n said…
I didn't know that, SPS OT. I hope they get a big percentage but I doubt they do. We need more of them!
n said…
Right after I sent my comment I remembered that at my school our budget includes nurse and counselor if we want them. Every year our PTA picks up another half-day I believe of nurse time - maybe a whole day. We could use a nurse every day at elementary! But we pay for her and she costs more than senior teachers.
n said…
We do not pay for the others - do they connect with spec ed funds? I don't know. Three times is a charm they say. I'm done.
Anonymous said…
Seattle teacher takes plea deal, dodges sex-offender registration

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Seattle-teacher-dodges-sex-offender-registration-308329801.html

HP

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