Tuesday Open Thread
Good story from NPR - How Hydroponic School Gardens Can Cultivate Food Justice, Year-Round
From Politico's Morning Education:
Also from Politico:
The students provide weekly produce for their cafeteria's salad bar and other dishes. Later that same day, for the first time, Quigley and several of her schoolmates also sold some of their harvest — at a discount from market rates — to community members. It's part of a new weekly "food box" service set up in the school's foyer. Each of 34 customers receive an allotment of fresh produce intended to feed two people for a week.One summer activity you might consider helping your child with - have them write a letter (not a tweet, Instagram or email) to their favorite person. Politician, artist, author, mayor, neighbor - anyone. You can generally find a snail mail address. Many of these people will respond to a hard copy letter as they don't get many of those compared to electronic messages. This story from the Charles Schultz museum is a good example of what might happen. I wrote a letter to former President Carter about 10 years ago and he was good enough to write a line on it, sign it and have it sent back to me.
School-based urban farms are one part of the food justice solution, Easterling says. A 2015 U.S. Department of Agriculture census of about 18,000 public, private and charter school districts found 7,101 gardens based in schools.
From Politico's Morning Education:
A day after applauding Sen. Bernie Sanders' call to pause charter school expansion, the union voted against making such opposition a condition of its endorsement.
Union members also applauded when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said “no federal funding for charter schools.” See our takeaways from the forum.
Members of the National Education Association, after hosting 10 Democratic presidential candidates at an annual conference, voted against demanding that any 2020 candidates seeking the union's endorsement publicly oppose all charter school expansion.
Another significant development: The nation’s largest labor union, already, is saying it’s open to new members, and they don’t have to be educators. “Community ally” memberships will be open to anyone “interested in advancing the cause of public education” and who supports the NEA mission.I'll have more to say about this one but it appears most of the candidates are willing to come out against for-profit charter schools. Candidates who have been solidly for charter schools are Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke. I'll have a deeper dive on all their answers to different education questions in a separate post.
Also from Politico:
EDUCATION GROUPS WEIGH IN ON CENSUS DISPUTE: They are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s continued call for a citizenship question on the 2020 census — possibly by executive order — even after the Supreme Court ruled in late June that the administration’s rationale for the move was legally inadequate.Good story from the Seattle Times on reading and dyslexia.
—“However the Administration responds, the [Council of the] Great City Schools will continue to use every resource to block their efforts,” Michael Casserly, the group’s executive director, said in a Sunday statement to POLITICO.
— The National School Boards Association’s chief legal officer, Francisco M. Negrón, Jr., told POLITICO in a Sunday statement: "Given the widespread adverse impact such a question will have on our children, we urge the administration to refrain from extraordinary executive measures that circumvent the necessary judicial review preserved by the Supreme Court."
Washington teachers lack “a common language and common theory of practice of how to teach reading,” said Aira Jackson, director of English language arts for the state Superintendent of Public Instruction.
A year ago, Washington lawmakers passed a bill that requires districts to screen children for signs of dyslexia. That bill was aimed at helping kids with a specific learning disability. But it will usher in major changes in the way all kids are taught to read in this state, Jackson said.
Washington’s new law specifically calls on teachers to emphasize four reading skills: phonemic awareness, the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the smallest unit of sound, or phoneme, in a word; phonological awareness, the ability to recognize and work with sounds; letter-sound knowledge, the ability to identify the unique sounds that every letter makes; and rapid automatized naming, the ability to quickly name aloud a series of familiar items.
Screening must start by fall 2021, Jackson said. However, some districts have started early, and others are already changing up their reading curriculum to emphasize phonics.
Elsewhere in the country, that dispute has been settled.What's on your mind?
Comments
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/opinion/biden-harris-busing.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Yes, I agree it is not super feasible to once more bus Ballard kids to Garfield, but I sincerely believe that it is possible to redraw neighborhood lines to create more integrated schools. It often feels like SPS is trying to achieve the opposite. Whitman was once diverse, until SPS redrew the lines to send the minority-majority neighborhoods to RES. Was that deliberate?
-NW
Some people
You throw out redlining accusations without facts.
Problem solved
By Cassandra Tate, Posted 9/07/2002, HistoryLink.org Essay 3939
...In 1977, 65 percent of the district's students were white; by 1995, the proportion had dropped to 40 percent (where it remains).
...In the first year of district-wide busing, the number of white students dropped by nearly 12 percent compared to the previous year, reducing total enrollment by 10 percent. Both the percentage of white students and the overall number of students fell steadily during the years of mandatory busing.
...By the early 1990s, some of the most vocal critics of mandatory busing were African Americans, including the charismatic John H. Stanford (1938-1998), superintendent of Seattle schools from 1995 to 1998. In a key presentation to the School Board in November 1995, Stanford said the data showed that low-income students who attended schools outside their neighborhoods scored lower on achievement tests than low-income students in neighborhood schools. Furthermore, parental involvement in the schools was lowest among bused students, who often needed it the most...Stanford urged the board to put more emphasis on the quality of the education in the classroom and less on the color of the skin on the students.
history lesson
JK
For several reasons I agree people should have some choice within an urban district. (I think that harder to do in smaller districts.)
SPS has Option Schools. I wish the district would do a survey to ask parents why they do or don't choose an Option School. Distance? Focus? Didn't know?
The district does allow - correct me if I'm wrong - for students to choose an Option School out of their area but they have to provide transportation. There's an equity issue, although it might not be as much once more light rail comes on.
More money never solves these types of cultural issues.
Owler
You make an assumption that the problems are all cultural for schools with struggling populations. I don't agree and I do think more money is needed. Our schools are very different and they do need more.
JK
I thought enrollment was dropping 2-3 thousand students this year.
Owler
"In an important 2010 Century Foundation study of students in Montgomery County, Maryland, the researcher Heather Schwartz of the Rand Corporation looked at children whose families were randomly assigned to public-housing units in a way that allowed her to compare the relative impact of compensatory spending and integration strategies. Some students were assigned to public housing in relatively high-poverty areas where schools spent $2,000 extra per pupil for reduced class size in the early grades, better professional development for teachers, and other initiatives. Other students were part of a housing-integration program that allowed low-income students to live in middle-class neighborhoods and attend middle-class schools that spent less per pupil. Both approaches helped, but the outcomes for students in the integrated schools and neighborhoods were far better."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/school-integration-over-compensatory-education/587407/
It is interesting that Seattle concluded the opposite.
-NW
Gerrymander
2) Maryland (a): Low income students remain in their neighborhood, extra funding provided through Title I
3) Maryland (b): Housing integration, allows for increased school integration
Three different scenarios.
-apples oranges
This is a typical Democrat tactic, give us want we want or we will ruin it for everyone.Or as the Democrat community organizers chant, "no justice, no peace".
Of course, PTAs help fill the gap.
I am curious if you can provide this data or report where it is located.
Thank you.
Sounds interesting
Gerrymander
With talk like that you should be running for school board!
Yeeze
Yeeze
There are no negative definitions.
@ NESeattleMon - I suppose you would like to make the old CD a kin to a zoo or an anthropology studies zone? Perhaps a Cabrini-Green Northwest in the CD suits you?
I'm not sure you understand what you are writing.
--Not Oriental
From Merriam-Webster:
gentrification: the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents
Displacement can certainly be seen as a negative, no?
all types
She was the superintendent who stopped busing in SPS.
I recall no data, in terms of real outcomes, being given at that time.
So, your rebuttal of the Atlantic article is based on something you heard at some time by someone in charge?
Really
Many white poorer neighborhoods have been gentrification and no one said a thing.
Why can't liberals decouple themselves from everything as being repressive. Justice for this Justice for that and oh by the way can the rest of you pay our way to all this justice.
Oh boy
Gerrymander
Please refrain from using this name to make your comments as they do not reflect the thoughts and beliefs of our organization.
It is not in our practice to comment on blogs. Community members wanting to learn more about SCPTSA work in advocacy and events, trainings and resolutions or wish to get involved please visit our website www.scptsa.org, our Facebook page Seattle Council PTSA or send us an email
board@scptsa.org
Best regards,
Manuela Slye, President
Seattle Council PTSA
president@scptsa.org
Seattle School Board votes to end mandatory busing for desegregation in elementary schools on November 20, 1996
By David Wilma, 3/22/2001, HistoryLink.org Essay 3127
"Busing did not improve the academic performance of minorities who shouldered a disproportionate burden of busing. Parental involvement in cross-town schools did not increase and the financial costs of the program also hurt the district."
"'Before, we moved the kids to where the resources were,' said Joseph Olchefske, Seattle schools superintendent [1998-2003].'Now we're moving the resources to the kids. We want quality education close to home' (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)."
Under the choice system, there was no guarantee of enrollment at your neighborhood school, like we have now. Enrollment involved a system of tiebreakers (distance, sibling, and race; the race tiebreaker was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).
history lesson
Director Mack asked a lot of questions regarding enrollment projections. The numbers were thought to be low. Both Pinkham and Mack abstained from voting on the budget.
SPS budget has reached $1,044,890,979.
The adoption included operating transfers from the Capital Projects Fund to the Debt Service Fund up to the amount of $2,819,525 and transfers up to the amount of $25,580,499 to the General Fund.
"The 2019-2020 Debt Service Fund Budget is recommended at $2,829,525. This fund will be used to pay the debt service on the 2010 Series-A Refunding bond that financed the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, and $10,000 in capacity for administrative fees or other currently unknown expenses."
Affirmative action
I think it’s fine if SCPTSA doesn’t want to comment here but you do miss a wide audience. Many people won’t use Facebook.
Interestingly, President Harris said that it was hard to reconcile being $40M in the hole and spending $90M more than last year’s budget.
The budget has nearly doubled since 2012-2013 when the budget was $569M.
MGJ didn't eliminate busing at all she eliminated choice. And the crosscut of buses that supported that choice.
To reality (and beyond)
If Ms. Pinkham's behavior is representative of the UNEA membership then you can see why the UNEA was booted.
The first priority of a school board should be to leave the district better than you found it and not to make deals with union base construction companies.
Very disappointing
There is noway Harris should retain her seat. There is noway these &%$#% should be selecting PATUs replacement.
Has the CFO been sleeping on the job?
--Good grief
Very disappointing, if you have something to say “not make deals with union base (sic) construction companies” then explain. Otherwise, do not be cryptic.
Good Grief, better they pick than a bunch of newbies (which is exactly what will happen if DeWolf gets elected to City Council).
“Has the CFO been sleeping on the job?” No, JoLynn Berge has not. But again, the last Operations Committee meeting where Director Mack questioned Berge and Linda Sebring, over and over on the budget, with no real answers, was deeply troubling.
The Board MUST stand up to staff. Period. The mantra should be “if you can’t explain it so I can vote on it, I’ll vote no.”
Seattle Public Schools is hiring a Chief of Student Support Services
"The Chief of Student Support Services supervises and directs the day-to-day operations of the District's Student Support Services division, including the Special Education, Advanced Learning, 504 Student Accommodations, and Athletics departments; chairs and serves on District committees as directed by the Superintendent; assists in planning, development and implementation of the Strategic Plan, Board Policies and Administrative Regulations; supervises and evaluates appropriate personnel staff; is responsible for all staff members in Student Support Services; and is a line administrator to all school sites."
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/seattleschools/jobs/2492871/chief-of-student-support-services
Reader
Oh and I finally reviewed the districts website, specifically the strategic plan.
1. Who published the plan on the website? It would be wise to proof read there a lot of garbage on the website?
2. How is it possible that the district could possibly legitimately produce such a biased plan?
3. How do they think an African American male would feel reading it?
I think the district should make it mandatory for every single 6-12 grader to read the plan.
--Good grief
do better
Pinkham almost gave himself whiplash.
That meeting was about the strangest one I've ever watched.
Where were all the people who signed up to speak?
watching
I would like to point out that Seattle wasn’t the only city to conclude that busing didn’t work, it was stopped all over the country- because it doesn’t work.
It is also fundamentally unfair to poor kids. Middle class and rich kids will have parents who take them to school each day, however poor kids will have to spend hours on the bus each day just so a bunch of rich people and politicians will feel better.
The same can be done by allowed more apartment buildings in neighborhoods and thus changing the demographics or redrawing boundary lines.
I will be sure to share your distaste for all of us rich or middle class (code for white) with all the PTA members at the next meeting. You are done, cooked. transfer now!
Eckstein parent
Are you even a fan of busing? As for knowing that I don’t live in Seattle it’s really kind of really kind of creepy that you know so much about me without telling your name
Finally. I work in SPS so I have as much right to post here as you
kinda weird
Regarding your comment on how to solve the problem without bussing, allowing more apartment buildings (in, I presume, well-off neighborhoods) only works for the segment of population that gets to go to those schools, and changing the demographics or redrawing boundary lines can create similar how-to-get-to-school issues as you said bussing does. It seems like we would be hard-pressed to draw boundaries that create racially, financially, and linguistically diverse neighborhood schools throughout the district —which are also walkable—given the housing patterns we now have.
Oh, and your assumption that middle class and rich parents would just take their kids to school themselves is inaccurate. We already have kids going to distant schools (e.g., HCC pathways), and many take busses. I’m not saying that bussing is the answer, but you might want to tone down your assumptions. Families are all different.
Messy