This and That in Public Education

 A story this morning in the Seattle Times featured the Seattle Schools' student board members and their service. I think these fine young women were being polite but there's no missing the frustration they feel in NOT being included in most board discussions especially around policy. Of course, most of the policy talk takes place at board committee meetings but the Board got rid of most committees this year, saying they were not needed.

This entire episode of putting students on the board (they don't vote but they sure get paid) is just performative for the directors. They like to point and say, "Student voice, see?" As this article points out:

Some frustrations and concerns about the positions have been expressed by students, who want to be let in on policymaking discussions earlier in the process, as well as from district staff, who say the board gave students an opportunity that wasn’t fully thought out.

Why would the Board put forth a new initiative without understanding its ramifications and process might need more time? Because it's all performative.

Students take turns attending board meetings, which typically last between two and four hours, and are paid $17.27 an hour, not to exceed 20 hours per month.

Know what? If the meeting exceeds three hours, the student reps would make more money than the actual elected directors.

Mentors should be chosen based on what each student wants to learn and is interested in, Hersey said. And that could mean a SPS employee would make a better fit, he said, especially since board policies are most often created and developed by staff.

Really? That's the best use of staff time? Nice of the directors to try to put that work off on staff. And please note, that the Board is admitting staff does most of the work to create policy. 

Bellevue School District voted to consolidate two elementary schools. They did adjust their thinking to make sure that the student population at one school would move in its entirety to another school. Oddly, three directors voted yes and two abstained.  From the Times:

The School Board was presented with three options to reduce the shortfall: consolidating schools, postponing the decision by tapping into the district’s reserve fund, or reducing staff. The second option would have eliminated about 30 full-time positions, while the third would have eliminated about 60. In all options, the district expects to lose about 41 positions through attrition.

 

And the best option was to close schools? I don't even think SPS is thinking of options.

 

Wilburton opened in 2018 and was built to relieve overcrowding at other schools, including the ones the district is now planning to send Wilburton students to.

 

Hmm, wonder how this will play out for SPS?

 

The next McCleary case? From the Seattle Times: Tiny District with Decaying Buildings Sues WA State.

It’s an unremarkable day at the Wahkiakum School District when a bathroom floods, rainwater drains from the ceilings and classrooms are cold enough that teachers pass out blankets. 

 

This 433-student district on the Columbia River hasn’t been able to pass a school bond — the main way that school districts raise money for building and repairing schools — for 22 years. And the state’s largest lifeline for school construction funding won’t spare a dime unless they can pass one.

 

The state’s highest court will decide the fate of the district’s lawsuit sometime this year. If the district wins, the state would become responsible for funding building construction and repairs that are required to safely provide kids an education, the second massive and court-ordered infusion of cash into the state’s K-12 system in less than a decade. 

 

The article doesn't mention changing the law so that, just like levies, you only need a simple majority and not 60% as it is currently. 

The Arkansas Democrat is reporting that the superintendent in their city is a finalist for the Northshore superintendent job. Along with that superintendent, the other candidates are Jeanice Kerr Swift, superintendent in Ann Arbor (who was up for SPS superintendent against Denise Juneau) and Michael Tolley, the interim superintendent (who was formerly with SPS as a deputy superintendent).  It's just a circulating group of people, these superintendents. 

And speaking of Arkansas, if you care about kids, don't ever move there. Their current governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is nothing sort of a public education menace. 

From CNN, Texas Takes Control of Houston Independent School District.

Leaders of the Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas and one of the biggest in the nation, will be replaced by a new board appointed by the state commissioner of education, the district said Wednesday, raising questions over whether the new leaders will reflect the city’s ethnic and racial diversity and its political priorities.

The Texas Education Agency intends to replace the district’s superintendent and board trustees “in the next few months,” the board said in a statement. The move comes just weeks after the state Supreme Court ruled in the state education commissioner’s favor in a yearslong dispute with the district over a law that lets the state remove boards of districts with schools that fail to meet certain state standards. 

The intervention reflects yet another recent case of White, Republican-appointed state officials trying to muscle control of key local power in cities with mostly Democratic Black or brown leaders, including in Jackson, Mississippi, and Mason, Tennessee.  

From the Hill; maybe give your kids a heads up that the feds want to ban TikTok if the Chinese company doesn't sell its stakes. The issue is the Chinese government using TikTok to gather up info on Americans. Congress seems onboard with this idea. Here's what TikTok says:

“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan told The Hill in a statement. 

“The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing,” the spokesperson said. 

From the 74 Million, Hackers Use Stolen Student Data Against Minneapolis Schools in Brazen New Threat

Minneapolis Public Schools appears to be the latest ransomware target in a $1 million extortion scheme that came to light Tuesday after a shady cyber gang posted to the internet a ream of classified documents it claims it stole from the district. 

While districts nationwide have become victims in a rash of devastating ransomware attacks in the last several years, cybersecurity experts said the extortion tactics leveraged against the Minneapolis district are particularly aggressive and an escalation of those typically used against school systems to coerce payments.

The blog post gives the district until March 17 to hand over $1 million. If the district fails to pay up, criminal actors appear ready to post a trove of sensitive records about students and educators to their dark web leak site. The gang’s leak site gives the district the option to pay $50,000 to add a day to the ransom deadline and allows anyone to purchase the data for $1 million right now.

A preliminary review of the gang’s dark web leak site by The 74 suggest the compromised files include a significant volume of sensitive documents, including records related to student sexual violence allegations, district finances, student discipline, special education, civil rights investigations, student maltreatment and sex offender notifications. 

The district is saying little except they are aware of the issue, calling it "an encryption event."  But some parents are very concerned about the lack of information coming from the district.  

In double extortion ransomware attacks, threat actors gain access to a victim’s computer network, download compromising records and lock the files with an encryption key. Criminals then demand their victim pay a ransom to regain control of their files. Then, if a ransom is not paid, criminals sell the data or publish the records to a leak site. 

There’s little recourse, she said, for students and educators whose sensitive records were already leaked by Medusa. 

This issue continues to worry me. I hope Seattle Schools is ready.