Seattle Schools This Week

Monday, May 9th
Curriculum&Instruction Meeting, JSCEE, from 4:30-6:30 pm Agenda
Lots of reviews with one of them being "research activity and assessment" - wonder if that will be an assessment of how testing is going this school year.  Under "Special Attention Items" there is "Native American update, K-5 ELA Adoption* and Initiate Middle School math adoption."

Open House for English Language Arts Adoption at JSCEE from 5-7 pm in the second-floor library.

Wednesday, May 11th
School Nurse Day - thank you to all the nurses and health care professionals working in Seattle Schools for caring for our students!

Board Work Session - Human Resources From 4:30-6:30 pm.  Agenda
Executive Session immediately following - closed to the public

This is a rather timely work session given issues that have arisen around who gets hired and who stays and who gets placed where at several of the district's schools. 

Thursday, May 12th
Audit&Finance Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm No agenda yet available.

International School and Dual Language Immersion Programs meeting - 6:00-7:30 pm at Hamilton International Middle School.

 Friday, May 13th
BEX Oversight Committee meeting canceled for this month.

No Saturday community meetings with directors.

*On English Language Arts Adoption
- committee members
- ELA materials and ways to give feedback
- Process and timeline

Comments

Charlie Mas said…
The agenda for the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee includes two big steps forward:
The Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook now includes some student rights beyond constitutional rights.
The Program Evaluation policy now clearly requires annual evaluations of district programs and services.
5/9/16, 2:36 AM
Ann D said…
HR seems to be way off-base in addressing the efficacy of the SPS administrative staff -- from its own department all the way to the principal level. Their SWOT analysis is useless as far as I can see relative to all the problems under its purview.

HR is supposed to ensure that the BLTs (building leadership teams) are all in keeping with board policy going back 20 years, including making sure they all have appropriate by-laws -- but not all schools have either.

Students filling in for missing appropriate substitutes, or classes being left with rotating subs for months is also under their purview. The principals might ge doing a bad job with sub management but ultimately delivery of services of the schools is on the backs of HR, no?

Then there are the issues of staff retention by moving weak and dfficult principals to other schools, just putting the problem on the next neighborhood. Or what about punative treatment of instructors that including forcing them from buildings and programs they have developed and have a following for and degrading instruction in doing so.

C&I likely also has a hand in this but HR are looking like a lot of paper pushers and not leaders if you watch this district for any length if time.

:/
5/9/16, 5:27 AM
Anonymous said…
HR needs to fix their huge back log of personnel complaints. They are non responsive and don't seem to be held accountable for communicating status updates to those who have filed complaints. How is this even remotely acceptable customer service (the non-responsiveness) and what is their plan for getting a handle on their backlog? The board needs to take on this issue and provide oversight and accountability. It's getting so bad that one employee took to public testimony at the board meeting to express her disdain for poor service levels from HR. She had been bullied by her principal and could not get any support or response. What use is an HR dept. if they can't keep up on this basic function?

-HRneverchngs
5/9/16, 8:50 PM
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