Today's Work Session

I had planned to go to the Work Session today.  As you may recall, it was to include Advanced Learning but that got pulled. 

The line-up of topics includes the Families & Education Levy which is the their first topic.  Their presentation's page 8 is an interesting pie chart showing the different areas of education they fund and how much. 

Early Learning and School Readiness  $7.7M  27%
Elementary Academic Achievement  $6.4M  22%
Middle School Academic Achievement  $5.9M  21%
High School Academic Achievement  $2.6M  9%
Student Health  $6.3M  22%

I'd have to ask about the Early Learning and School Readiness portion and how much includes pre-K.  Early Learning is generally defined at pre-K to 2nd or 3rd.  I raise the issue because the City now has its own Pre-K levy so it would be good to know how that spending breaks out because of the new levy.

This is certainly important:

Last summer, DEEL funded 12 summer programs serving more than 1,000 elementary and middle school students across18 sites. 

I don't know how many parents/citizens know that if the City wasn't funding summer school, there wouldn't be any.  I wish there were more dollars for high school summer school for students who either need to catch up or want to get a requirement out of the way so they can take an elective during the school year.

But I didn't know about this:

Growth mindset training for staff at the elementary, middle and high school levels, helping teachers help students to develop key 21stcentury learning skills, including persistence, effort & self-
reflection.

I'd love to see the documentation on what this looks like because that's a large and overarching kind of training for every single teacher in our district.

This was also important to see in Next Steps:

New SPS/DEEL partnership process

We've seen from the City's Pre-K process that they have some interesting ideas about what "partnership" looks like.  As well, I have been hearing about the Mayor's remarks during a race and equity discussion.  He sure sounds like a guy getting ready to take over the district.  There are plenty of things the city could address on race and equity - from the city side - without getting directly involved in running the district.


Then there's the next portion of the Work Session.  The presentation is labelled:

Building a Shared Understanding of Policy and Superintendent Procedure 2200:Equitable Access to Programs & Services

but the agenda calls it:

Program Changes - Process, Communication, and Decision- Making 

This should be a Work Session all by itself because the presentation is very long and very involved. I have to wonder how directors will work in their own questions.  I mean no disrespect - truly - but I find the presentation to be somewhat incoherent.  For example, for Highly Capable, they only list APP schools with no mention of Spectrum BUT, just a couple of slides later, it's mentioned in passing with other programs that they lump together. 

I just don't know if it's worth it to go down there and sit thru it all.
 

The last part of the Work Session is, once again, on Special Education.

Upside:
- By October 31, 2016, implement successfully 100% of the Special Education Memorandum of Understanding with OSPI requirements, including the recovery of IDEA Part B funding withheld.
- the state is due to give back $3M withheld and this presentation reports that the NW and SW regions had their scheduled visits and received $500K each from that sum.

- Slide 9 on principal feedback is heartening.

Downside:
I consistently hear from Sped parents that they are not seeing these changes for their own students.  There is virtually nothing in the presentation about how the end-users - the parents - feel about all this activity.