SPS This and That

At last night's Board meeting, Deputy Superintendent Steve Nielsen alluded that things didn't go well in Olympia. Here's what local activist, Sarajane Siegfriedt, reports at her Facebook page:

At 46th Legislators Town Hall meeting, Sen. David Frockt revealed that Speaker Frank Chopp pledged today that a bill addressing the "levy cliff" would be the first to pass the House and go to the Senate.

However, in the Joint Education Task Force meeting today (via TVW), Senate Ways &.Means Chair John Braun said that they do not intend to address the levy cliff (expiration of added levy funding lid) until after McCleary is funded. In other words, the GOP will use it as a bargaining chip. 

 If the schools do not get an extension by March, their budgets will include pink slips to teachers and staff for next fall.

This - is - wrong (and I KNEW this is how it would play out and tried to tell both the Governor and Chopp.)  Thanks to the Governor for believing this would get done when he could have forced a Special Session to get this levy cliff nonsense done.

Understand, that the GOP members in the Legislature are now not just holding an entire state's public school children in wait for fully-funded schools, they apparently will allow some districts to endure pain and hardship.  

Oh look, Hale's basketball team has been picked #1 in the state. Again, I have to wonder outloud that given the influx of out-of-state and out-of-district players to the team, is the district checking to make sure all of them live in Hale's boundaries?  Tweet this morning from SPS:

Congrats Nathan Hale Boys Basketball Team! Ranked No. 1 in nation by @MaxPreps

(Editor's note: I checked MaxPreps' website and they say #1 in WA state and #12 in the nation.)

Apparently, Charlie's grousing on the CSIPs has yield some (kinda) results. He notes to the Board:

In the few days since I last wrote to you on this topic there have been significant changes in many of the school CSIPs posted on the District web site. A lot of the documents which, just a few days ago, had no reference to Advanced Learning or services for advanced learners have been edited so that they now include those elements.
I guess that's a good thing.

It's certainly not good that the school BLTs, the principals, the Executive Directors of Schools, and the Chief of Schools didn't think to include references to advanced learning or advanced learners on their own, but at least they were responsive when made aware of the oversight.


One little question, though: Were these changes to the CSIPs all discussed and approved by the school BLTs or were these changes made autocratically by the principals? And, if they were approved by the BLTs, why do the CSIPs all still have November dates on them? It seems that even when striving for compliance, Seattle Public Schools is awash in a culture of lawlessness.

Given that not all schools even have BLTs, probably not is the answer to your first question, Charlie.  As for the other question, hard to explain.

Lastly, looks like things are still not great at Emerson as yet a third letter of complaint against the principal,  Andrea Drake, by a staff member was upheld by a district investigation.   My intel is that Drake had a few extra weeks off (but not for disciplinary reasons) and Barbara Moore was assigned to Emerson.

But now Drake is back and apparently did something to cause that staffer to now file a complaint of retaliation against Drake.

Wonder how long this little drama will go on?  I can't imagine it is good for the morale of the school.