Tuesday Open Thread

I attended the Board Work Session on the upcoming forum for District VII candidates.  The Board was hashing out what questions to ask.  Given there are so many candidates, they had to strive to try to get as many questions in as possible.  There were five of the candidates in attendance and boy, were they a serious bunch.  (Those candidates were Brandon Hersey, Julie Van Arcken, Barbara Rockey, Dionne Foster and Emijah Smith.) It is unclear to me if Romanita Hairston is still in the running; she did not turn in her responses to the questionnaire on-time.  I would have thought that would have eliminated her from the running but they didn't say that.


Good story about housing locations and outcomes for kids (suggested by several readers) from KUOW - In Seattle, A Move Across Town Could Be A Path Out Of Poverty.

It involves providing financial and other incentives to encourage more poor families to relocate to what are called "high opportunity" areas. These are neighborhoods that have been identified by economist Raj Chetty, who runs Harvard University's Opportunity Insights program, as places where low-income children have grown up to have more successful lives, with higher earnings, more college degrees and fewer teen births.

The initial results indicate that the program is working. Families receiving the extra help were almost four times as likely to move to a high-opportunity area as those who did not — 54% compared with 14%.

What's on your mind?

Comments

Alan said…
Vox also did a great write-up of the high-opportunity housing voucher story:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/4/20726427/raj-chetty-segregation-moving-opportunity-seattle-experiment
Anonymous said…
To contrast and compare. D2's applicant just strolls right in to office and D7 applicants get put through microscopic examinations, what's up with that?. Also, why is the district spending money on this D7 process when they claim they are broke. Just pick someone and move on.

Wasted money
Privacy Concerns said…
The Seattle Public Schools Community Discussion facebook page is a closed group.

Communications within this group is NOT private. Seattle Public School employee (Castro-Gill) takes screen shots and posts to her personal facebook page. The intention is to shame, humiliate and intimidate.

I wanted to contact the moderator of SPS Community Discussion group, but a former (possibly present) moderator has close ties to Castro-Gill. I fear retaliation.

Castro Gill had harsh words for a white woman with children of color.

Anyone posting on Seattle Public Schools Community Discussion facebook page should understand that their posts may be shared publicly for shaming and intimidation purposes.




Anonymous said…
I'm so sorry, but Richelle Krause Dickerson told me not to comment on your blog again. Thanks for all you have done. Maybe if you two make peace then I will be back someday.

Cecilia
Cecilia, is she your friend or your boss? Given she won't sit down and talk, I doubt that "peace" will happen. Hope to see you soon.
Anonymous said…
Who is Richelle Krause Dickerson, and why does she matter here? I’ve seen her name come up repeatedly.

I read some of her Twitter posts, and I can’t tell. All I can see is that she seems to hate white conservatives, and white progressives. I don’t know her, but it feels like I know where I stand in her eyes.

Am I misinterpreting her words? Is there more context?

Unclear
Intimidation Concerns said…
There is a facebook page called SPS Community Discussion and Resource page. The page was originally Soup for Teachers.

The SPS Community Discussion and Resource page is a closed group. Individuals that post on this page should understand that your posts are NOT private. A SPS employee (Tracy Castro- Gill) takes screen shots and posts conversations on her personal facebook page. The purpose of reposting threads is to shame and intimidate the same people she serves.

I have considered reporting Castro-Gill's behavior to the facebook administrator. However,
a former (possibly present) administrator has close ties to Castro Gill. I fear shame, humiliation and retaliation. The same could be said if I sent an e-mail to the board and superintendent.

The issue is not one of free speech, but of a district employee that shames, humiliates and bullies the people she was hired to serve. The district, in essence, hires a people that use fear and intimidation practices. This is not right
Unclear, I'll explain in my post on that Facebook page. I ask for no further comments. I have saved some comments from other posts that I will include in my post.
Anonymous said…
Tracy Castro-Gill is also a candidate for Highline School District, Director District No. 1.

From the Voters' Guide: "I teach an anti-racist pedagogy course in Seattle University's master in teaching program...I have recently been appointed to the Teaching Tolerance advisory board where I will work on a national level to advocate for racial justice in education."

Preliminary results show an almost equal split among the three candidates, with TC-G leading at 34%.

fyi
Anonymous said…
I hope Tracy Castro-Gill wins in Highline. She is very off-putting. She claims to be an educator in racism in one breath and then in the next says she is not going to answer questions because its not her job to educate whyte people. So which is it?

HP
Outsider said…
Here is a new article on a topic discussed in this blog last year, about how rich kids game the system by shopping for fuzzy diagnoses to get extra time on tests in class and for college admission:

www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/extra-time-504-sat-act.html

Jet City mom said…
It’s interesting to see articles on socio economic diversity being discussed.

Assigning students to schools considering socio economics is legal, and it has worked for our family, but the school district hadn’t gotten it yet.
Of course they preferred to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and yrs of time and energy in order to assign by race.

How’s that working out?
Jet City mom, the district does not assign students by race; that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jet City mom said…
Yes, they lost after seven yrs of fighting.
I will never forget when the school board president told me that the school district attorney had confessed that even if they had won the right to assign by race, they wouldn’t necessarily have used it.

But they wanted to win.

The school district is like a frog in boiling water.
It seems like it stopped being about what children need academically and developmentally a long time ago, but those in the pot can’t see outside the pot.

Then again oftentimes those outside the school district pot, can only see their own narrow viewpoint.
What sounds good on paper, doesn’t necessarily translate into practice.
Anonymous said…
From SPS:

Dr. Concie Pedroza has been named Seattle Public Schools’ Chief of Student Supports. Dr. Pedroza will provide oversight of the district’s Advanced Learning, Special Education, Athletics, and Student Enrollment departments. Dr. Pedroza will report directly to Superintendent Denise Juneau and begins her new position on September 1, 2019.

thoughts?

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