Friday Open Thread
Following up on the Lowell Stevens Elementary story about a deranged man who entered the school some weeks back (because apparently the police couldn't handle the situation early on), the district let me know that the man did enter the building via a gym door that was open because kids were using the gym and the playground. Normally, those doors are locked when not in use so the school had no real way of preventing this event.
The district had a raising of a pride flag and a transgender flag this morning at JSCEE to kick-off Gay Pride month.
Join senior leaders, board directors, families, staff and students as we raise the rainbow flag and the transgender pride flag outside the JSCEE for the first time at the district office. Mini flags and refreshments available!
To note, the work for the long-promised overpass on Lander is underway. JSCEE is on Lander between 3rd and 4th Avenues and Lander is now closed from 1st to 3rd Avenue. This makes accessing the building a challenge so keep that in mind for the foreseeable future. From KING-5:
Cleveland High students got a big surprise this week - a visit from the Seahawks who had a gift for the school. From SPS Communications:
No director community meetings tomorrow as the Board is having a retreat at JSCEE from 9:00am to 1:30 pm at JSCEE. It is open to the public but no comments are allowed. The agenda is pretty minimal so it's hard to say exactly what they will be discussing. I do find it odd - that at the near end of the school year - they are doing team-building exercises.
A big shout-out to Montlake Elementary for raising money to give to Lowell Elementary. From Lowell PTA:
What's on your mind?
The district had a raising of a pride flag and a transgender flag this morning at JSCEE to kick-off Gay Pride month.
Join senior leaders, board directors, families, staff and students as we raise the rainbow flag and the transgender pride flag outside the JSCEE for the first time at the district office. Mini flags and refreshments available!
To note, the work for the long-promised overpass on Lander is underway. JSCEE is on Lander between 3rd and 4th Avenues and Lander is now closed from 1st to 3rd Avenue. This makes accessing the building a challenge so keep that in mind for the foreseeable future. From KING-5:
Lander will be closed to traffic from 1st Avenue S. to 3rd Avenue S. as crews build the new overpass, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2020. More than 13,000 drivers use the route each day.Also to note for this weekend is the closing of northbound I-5 lanes from the West Seattle bridge to Olive Way. This starts tonight at 8 pm and ends Monday at 5 am. Plan accordingly.
Drivers can use S. Holgate or S. Spokane streets as alternate routes. The Seattle Department of Transportation says pedestrian and bicycle access will be maintained, along with access to businesses along Lander Street.
Cleveland High students got a big surprise this week - a visit from the Seahawks who had a gift for the school. From SPS Communications:
When Cleveland High School's football team suit’s up next year, they will be doing so with new equipment thanks in part to a $20,000 donation from the Seattle Seahawks.I can add that this is truly great but I believe they still have field issues that haven't been addressed by the district.
The announcement came at the start of Cleveland’s first annual Talon Awards, an event co-sponsored by the Seahawks to recognize Cleveland athletes, and brought a roar of cheers from the crowd that filled Cleveland's gym. Seahawks players Tedric Thompson, Marcus Smith and Dion Jordan took the stage with a pair of Sea Gals and mascots Blitz and Boom to present the oversized check to the Eagles football team.
No director community meetings tomorrow as the Board is having a retreat at JSCEE from 9:00am to 1:30 pm at JSCEE. It is open to the public but no comments are allowed. The agenda is pretty minimal so it's hard to say exactly what they will be discussing. I do find it odd - that at the near end of the school year - they are doing team-building exercises.
A big shout-out to Montlake Elementary for raising money to give to Lowell Elementary. From Lowell PTA:
We want to give huge thanks to the Montlake PTA, whose membership recently voted to donate 5% of their projected revenue in 2018–19 ($10,300!) to Lowell Elementary.I'll have a thread this weekend on the Work Session for BEX V; many important items discussed. One issue that came up was from Facilities head, Flip Herndon, on the district having so few interim buildings. News from the West Seattle blog on one empty building:
Montlake is just over the hill from Lowell, and the Montlake PTA wanted to help Lowell as a Title I (high poverty) school within the same Meany Middle School cluster—i.e., many of our kids are and will be classmates together at Meany.
With our many challenges and high turnover rate (in addition to 65% of Lowell students qualifying for Free and Reduced Lunch, upwards of 30% are homeless and 40% leave within the school year), Lowell doesn’t have the ability to fund-raise within our school community at the level of Montlake and other schools, so this gift really makes a big difference.
Let’s all keep working towards the day that all of our schools are funded adequately—but in the meantime, thank you to the Montlake PTA for showing solidarity and helping us work toward equitable funding!
(From the district): The Roxhill Elementary School program is moving into the newly renovated E.C. Hughes building in time for the 2018-19 school year. The Roxhill school building will not close but instead become the home to other Seattle Public Schools programs and services. To learn more about these programs and services, please join us for a community meeting on Thursday, June 7, from 6-7 p.m. in the Roxhill Library, 9430 30th Ave. SW. Seattle Public Schools staff will share information and answer your questions.We’re following up with the district to see what advance information is available regarding the aforementioned “programs and services.” The building, in poor shape, was at one point under consideration for a possible rebuild/rehab in the BEX V levy (still being developed for next year’s ballot), but we noted at the time of the West Seattle levy-planning meeting last month that it had vanished from the list.
What's on your mind?
Comments
Urinetown @ Garfield High School
Fiddler on the Roof @ Ingraham & Roosevelt
and I'm sure there are a lot more!
Parent
http://kuow.org/post/understand-white-liberal-racism-read-these-private-emails
- Lowell Parent
parent
Not odd at all - first, SPS work continues year-round; second, can’t have too much team-building: break down the silos and increase collaboration for our students and community.
Come on down - it’s a public meeting, you are welcome; and Supt. Designee Juneau will be joining us!
Best,
Leslie Harris
SPS Board President, Director, Dist. 6
Leslie.Harris@seattleschools.org
206.475.10000
Where they got into trouble on this was not adhering precisely to the dogma that Seattle progressives want to be repeated and not questioned. What Seattle progressives demand is akin to the email written by the parent that parrots the dogma "our white privilege and the community's lack of awareness is infuriating..."
We've somehow gotten to a place in America where people can make statements that align very closely with what Dr King said 50 years ago - that all lives should matter equally - and be called racists.
Isn't that where we are all actually trying to get to? Perhaps you are the intolerant one?
Parent
NW mom
Dr. Martin Luther King was talking about fundamentally evolving to a legally discrimination free society. He was not suggesting that we could get there by sustaining the old alliances, attitudes and legal barriers to such an ideal. Being tone deaf to the reality of his remarks and co-opting then to bolster your own confused polemics, is beyond the pale. Outward support of obvious racist remarks in the KUOW report identify you as reactionary on this issue and support the experience of many of us who have heard the coded playground conversations for years.
Kudos to Lowell parent for daring to post here.
All together
Uh, I'm willing to bet that there are some racist parents at every school--and not just white patents, either.
I assume there are racist teachers, school administrators, and district officials, too. Again, across racial lines. We may not have the emails or conversation transcripts to post, but if we did, I think we'd be appalled. Laurelhurst is probably not an exception.
Daylight
You know what's truly "deplorable, laughable and you know it" is the white Parent Leader of Equity in HCC getting her kid in the program by private appeal, and then working covertly with the district to remove private appeals for HCC. Why? Because she wants to prevent privileged white people from getting into the program. The irony is utterly perverse.
Where's the laugh track on this farce. Shrill denunciations of white privilege while knowingly, unrepentantly partaking of unearned rewards is progressive hypocrisy at its finest.
Typical
What do your remarks have to do with the linked KUOW piece and failure of posters to condemn racism, anywhere, outright and without equivocation?
Puzzled
Typical
I also condem racism when it comes in the form of statements from SPS board members, such as Blanford's various comments to the effect that white parents are racist.
Painting with a broad brush, as the article very much does, is not helpful. It could have been a good starting point for a discussion about to sensitively and appropriately discuss difficult topics with kids of different ages--since we all know the district does a crappy job with curriculum development--but the author took the lazy way out and added fuel to the fire.
Daylight
She managed to stay at RBHS for a whopping year. She is a prize like many in SPS has that they place via a roulette wheel. I am surprised they did not put her at Emerson which is another school that they bump and dump Principals.
I have lost count over the varying Principal scandals, turn and burn over the years. Yet some that should have been removed remain. Hmm.
- Former Teacher
Shoreline news seems to respect HC students, not vilify them.
NW parent
Parent
G
M
Happily Retired
Many in the legislature were/are opposed to having all their e-mails available via public record requests. They understand the complex issue of having sensitive information getting into the hands of certain people.
Remember this story the next time you have a sensitive issue and decide to write the district, school board or teacher.
It is conceivable that Raferty's piece is part of a larger political agenda.
A couple years ago, a couple of legislators wanted to split the district. There was not support. Doe to levy issues, south end schools would receive less funding.
On this blog recently, a student's HCC entrance information was printed, along with identifers for the parent/child for all to see.
The "excuse" given by the moderator is that the parent had made that information public in the past.
Now, people are using that as a reference to publicly shame the parent and student. That is what is referenced above.
Just because the parent is a hypocrite doesn't mean it's okay to publicly trash the kid. If the parent wants to share the information in a forum, that's her business.
Spreading that information, as a means of discounting the message of the parent, is very low indeed.
Can't blame the child for the sins of the parent. That is why any decent publication (newspaper or blog) keeps children's information confidential, even when they know the information.
Deleted
Sorry about that Lowell link; it was Stevens.
Deleted, if you think the parent putting that info on her student out in the public then makes it wrong for me to report it, that's your take. I don't think most people would think that especially since I don't know the child's name (and many mothers have different last names than their children). I think the parent should be ashamed for admitting to using one tactic to get her child in a program and then publicly trying to get rid of it on "equity" grounds.
No one is trashing anyone's child.
As for keeping info confidential, I'd ask you to ask any reporter - the Times, the Stranger - how they would have printed it.
And, I never printed the gender or the name of the parent.
http://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=A&ID=607635&GUID=F9E9DAE6-3AC5-4BE2-A8A4-418B7244CF00
There is something strange about KUOW's story.
- BLTs are part of the Eliminating Opportunity Gaps policy so that should be noted to your principal and Executive Director.
- look up your school's CSIP report and see if it specifies who is on the BLT
- the BLT is embedded in the SEA contract. It says on page 18 that each school gets to decide the make-up of the committee but it also says:
"The Building Leadership Team/Program Leadership Team and building/program committees shall include parent/family members, students, and community representatives as appropriate. Building-based committees will seek input from other organizational structures (e.g., PTSA, site council) as appropriate."
There's "shall" not "must" so I think a principal/teachers might say they don't have to include parents.
Board policy also supports including parents.
What school is this?
The KUOW piece was published Jun. 16, 2017 which coincided with the Families of Laurelhurst Change.org petition to remove Talbot from Laurelhurst.
So it appears that Talbot's opponents - in this case, some Laurelhurst families, were unfairly discredited through press and two Board allies with the new progressive scarlet letter, "R".
There's not even a modicum of finesse in this bald attempt at subterfuge, but, hey, it worked. Talbot did keep her job.
Even though the authors of the emails are redacted due to FERPA, did you notice there is only one particular email whose name is not redacted? The same person is quoted throughout the article. Jill Geary.
I'd love to see Board Directors presented with a detailed churn rate analysis with historical trends by school of Principals, staff and students. Included could be optional exit interview type questions on why they left and where they went.
If what Lowell Parent said above is true, I find it extremely unfair that Lowell has so high a Principal churn rate. If equity concerns are such an issue, this situation raises significant red flags with children bearing the brunt.
Typical
They are a contracted part of the management of building/programs, as contracted in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between management and labor, between District and employees. The language in the CBA states that "Building Leadership Team/Program Leadership Team and building/program committees shall include parent/family members, students, and community representatives as appropriate. Building-based committees will seek input from other organizational structures (e.g., PTSA, site council) as appropriate." As you can see, there is wiggle room for HOW parent/guardians and/or PTSA reps are included on BLT, but not IF they are - they should be on the BLT but a principal selecting them would not be a breach of the contract.
There is not a way I can think of to VOTE parent/guardians in, so it would likely be volunteer, then principal or BLT approves.
GOOD BLTs have both parent/guardians AND students on them.
The structure and purposes of the BLT can be found on Page 10 of the CBA.
Collective Bargaining Agreement
Here is the Seattle Education Association page with contracts on it. BLT info is on page 10 of Certificated Contract.
SEA Contracts page