Friday Open Thread

Tick tock.  We have 60 days to give input on Secretary Betsy DeVos' desired changes to Title IX.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to put in a comment as DeVos wants to make sweeping changes that would give almost more help to the accused than the victim.  Almost worse, it relieves institutions from responsibilities that they should be accountable for in order to protect students.


From the New York Times (an opinion piece):

The new proposed rules lighten the burdens on institutions. First, the rules significantly narrow what counts as sexual harassment. Under the Trump administration’s definition, harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access” to education. Some courts (though fortunately not all) have said that even a rape does not count under this standard because a one-time act of violence is not “pervasive.” That means a victim of rape (not to mention other less severe forms of sexual misconduct) might never see her school investigate her claims, let alone remedy them.

Second, under the rules, a school need only respond to sexual harassment that occurs within a school program or activity. A 12-year-old raped at a park by her classmate? The proposed rules wouldn’t require her school to provide her support, like assigning her to a different homeroom than her alleged rapist.

Seattle Schools announced that head of Athletics, Eric McCurdy, will be leaving the district at the end of 2018.  This comes after the district paid out $500,000 to an employee who said McCurdy bullied her.
So that makes the head of Facilities, Flip Herndon, gone, the CAO, Michael Tolley, leaving and now the head of Athletics is exiting.  Whether by coincidence or because of Juneau's leadership, the top leadership at SPS is changing.

Snohomish School District just had an issue where wifi networks were created at Glacier Peak High School with racist/anti-Semitic/hateful names.  From the Times:

During an assembly at Glacier Peak High School, attendees began receiving notifications about available hotspot networks with “highly offensive” names, according to an email from Principal Jeff Larson and three assistant principals to parents Thursday afternoon. Students told administrators about the network names, the assembly was canceled and students were sent back to their classes. Police and school officials determined there was no direct safety threat, the email said.

The names of the hotspots “contained words and symbols that were highly offensive, discriminatory, divisive, inappropriate, anti-Semitic and, in some cases, racially motivated,” Snohomish School District Superintendent Kent Kultgen wrote in a second update to parents, students and staff Thursday evening. The network names included racist slurs and swastikas, according to screenshots posted on Facebook.

Hate-motivated crimes have increased across the country in recent years, according to a recent FBI report. A 2017 report from the Anti-Defamation League said anti-Semitic incidents in K-12 schools, including vandalism, harassment and assault, had increased by about 100 percent each year for the previous two years.

Read that last sentence.  It's horrifying.  I urge you to talk to your own student about what he/she or others may think is "funny" and how this kind of action is both hurtful to other students AND could follow he/she around for a long time especially if law enforcement gets involved.   Of course, it's not just a matter of saying "don't do this" but asking if your student has been hearing this kind of talk at their school and what your student thinks.

This ties into an update on the story about a prom photo taken of a group of boys going to prom in Wisconsin last spring.  They will not be punished for what looks like a group Nazi salute.  From The Atlantic:

Hateful, frightening, disappointing—but ultimately unpunishable. That’s what the Baraboo School District concluded after an investigation into the incident this month. In another letter, Mueller said that students’ actions were protected under the First Amendment, explaining that “we are still unclear about some key details” and reiterating that “we cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved.”

Read the whole article and again, talk to your kids.  It's an interesting conversation about the reality of our Constitution in our daily lives.

The Board has its retreat tomorrow from 9:30 am to 3 pm at JSCEE.  It's open to the public but there is no comment time.  The topic will be primarily about the Strategic Plan planning.

What's on your mind?