PTA Leaders from Affected Schools to Meet on Sunday about Staff Cuts
Lots happening on this front.
First, a petition to ask the district to rethink the cuts.
Next, some SPS documents - via public disclosure - on staffing and enrollment.
Seattle Schools Staffing Adjustment
Seattle Schools Staffing Adjustment Appendix 2015
Seattle Schools Oct FTE 2015
Latest from SPS to parents, via SPS website.
Link to parent analysis of schools losing staffing. Sobering stuff.
To PTA Leaders and others from Chandra Hampson, Sand Point PTA President about meeting:
First, a petition to ask the district to rethink the cuts.
Next, some SPS documents - via public disclosure - on staffing and enrollment.
Seattle Schools Staffing Adjustment
Seattle Schools Staffing Adjustment Appendix 2015
Seattle Schools Oct FTE 2015
Latest from SPS to parents, via SPS website.
Link to parent analysis of schools losing staffing. Sobering stuff.
To PTA Leaders and others from Chandra Hampson, Sand Point PTA President about meeting:
I am writing to you, the parent/community leadership regarding schools affected by staff cuts this week, with a formal request to join forces as a broader school community and fight this action by the Seattle School District. This is a once in 30-years opportunity to take our post-strike energy to Olympia and demand the ample funding our kids are owed by law. Instead, we are again distracted by our own District with cuts at the classroom level, in what they claim is an effort to maintain non-deficit spending. They are bringing the fight to us when they should be working with us. We must demand that THEY lead by fully funding our classrooms and demonstrating to the legislature the REAL cost complying with state-law and the positive outcomes it will create with our kids. We can accomplish much more together. The children of our district deserve, at long last, an equitable approach.Join us and our Legislators, this Sunday, October 11, 2-4pm for a strategy session and action planning based on the following strategies:1) Force the Administration to give us a “number" which represents the lost revenue (minus admin cost of cuts they enacted) or, more importantly, the cost savings they hope to capture with these cuts. The value of the employees is somewhere around $4 million but they will not see that level of savings.2) Demand time to develop a joint solution.3) Bring affected (and non-affected but concerned) PTA/School Leadership together to begin fundraising for this “nut” they have yet to divulge. Sand Point (the smallest school on the list will contribute $50k ($25k for us and $25K for a higher poverty school) and we put our full support behind working with the District to develop a more effective projection model and, more importantly, WE TURN OUR COLLECTIVE AND FULL ATTENTION TO OLYMPIA.4) Offer to raise these funds in exchange for leaving all ~25 schools alone and for the School Board’s adoption of a policy prohibiting staff reductions after October 1 of each year.5) Explore legal recourse.
If you cannot come please send a decision maker representing your group. All PTA and other community resource groups interested in joining the cause are encouraged to attend. Even if your school hasn’t had cuts, it may in future years. Please Share and RSVP to me directly if possible.
Her e-mail to RSVP for the location is chandraneah@icloud.com. Please be sure to include your school and your title.
Her testimony to Board regarding cuts on Wednesday the 5th: http://www.seattleschools.org/
Comments
I strongly feel that this is an unbelievably mean-spirited reaction by the district against parents, teachers and students who supported the strike.
-Sickening
sped left out again
“new formula, new ratio” was applied to the budget for K-3 classes in Schmitz Park
from http://westseattleblog.com/2015/10/followup-questions-advocacy-emerge-as-teacher-cut-news-circulates-at-local-schools/
Anybody know anything about this "new formula"?
-yumpears
Also, the issue is not that these teachers/staff will lose their jobs (although it's a bit murky to me about non-teachers) but about relationships and team-building done before school started and oh yeah - little people who had their first teachers.
- bean
-bean again
Do these sound like productive moves? Do Nyland and Co. really want to pick this fight? Because they will lose, absolutely lose, in public goodwill and opinion.
How about cutting some of those car allowance funds and the stupid Chief of Schools position as a start, Nyland? How about some more middle management cuts and a year delay in funds devoted to "fidelity of adoption of curriculum" or some of the other paper-pushing mumbo-jumbo sucking resources from OUR kids in OUR schools?
And P.S. to my earlier rant on another thread: If actual enrollment was running behind in projections in September, why didn't YOUR DOWNTOWN STAFF pick up the phone when OUR SCHOOLS wanted wait lists moved?
DistrictWatcher
How could the wait lists not move, when the schools were under enrolled?
It would be interesting to analyze this further at the individual school level.
-- Dan Dempsey
-Liz H.
reader47
The 2015-16 Budget is available online here
There's a link to a "complimentary copy" there
reader47
"1,000 students left Seattle for neighboring districts"
but didn't say "new to Seattle Schools." It's very possible that some of them had not been Seattle Schools students (either new to town or kindergarteners) but it's not credible to me that 1,000 current students left in one year.
sign me
the emperor has no clothes