Wondering What the Seattle School Board is Doing Vis a Vis the Budget?
Apparently nothing. Or rather, nothing that is visible. Here's their schedule for the next month. (Editor's note: the district has gone to using "Sharepoint" documents whose links seem to not work. This link will guide you to all the documents and you can pick what you want to view.)
March 8th
Recognition ceremony for Billy Frank, Jr. Day
Executive Session; to review the performance of a public employee
Work Session: Policy Diet
The only documentation is for the Work Session. Sure would be nice if they were recognizing Mr. Frank, that the documentation would have reflected his accomplishments and why they are creating such a day. (I know who he is.)
What the "Policy Diet" Documentation says:
Deliverable Description: This item is to provide recommendations to the Board for implementation of a Policy Diet, in alignment with SOFG. It includes a sample future policy manual structure and a timeline of actions to review and revise the current board/district policies into a more user-friendly Board Policy Manual that supports role clarity between board and superintendent and focuses on student outcomes.
DELIVERABLE #3: POLICY DIET SCOPE AND TIMELINE
Deliverable Description: This item is to provide recommendations to the Board for implementation of a Policy Diet, in alignment with SOFG. It includes a sample future policy manual structure and a timeline of actions to review and revise the current board/district policies into a more user-friendly Board Policy Manual that supports role clarity between board and superintendent and focuses on student outcomes.
Recommended Practice Shift: This deliverable provides direction for a complete review and revision of the existing policy manual, and the sequencing of future policy work to maintain the Board Policy
Manual structure going forward. Implementing these recommendations will support future boards in understanding policy relevance to Goals and Guardrails, legally-required vs. not legally-required, and the responsibilities of the Board and Superintendent. Adopting this practice will also increase transparency and accountability for the public through more clearly defined assignment of responsibility and stronger centering of the board as the elected representatives of the community, and the community’s values, vision, and goals for education in Seattle Public Schools.
Timeline for Implementation: January 2023-October 2023
guidance: Completing a Board Policy Diet (see appendix)
Basically, just a lot of mouthing of the Council of Great City Schools' ideas.
They are - by themselves - reorganizing the work of the Seattle School Board. Did any of them run on doing this? Nope. I hope you all remember this come election time.
One line that is used over is the CGCS reference to t"he community’s values, vision, and goals for education in Seattle Public Schools.
This Board has NOT asked the entire SPS community about any of this. So whatever they are operating it's NOT community values. And I double-dog dare them to say they have.
And man, has the proofreading gone down at SPS. You see this on all kinds of documentation and on this particular piece of work, it's the one I dread the most. If you write about "public" education, you fear leaving out that "l". And yet there it is - Joyful Pubic Schools.
March 11th - Board Retreat
Folks, the agendas for past Board retreats used to be understandable and covered many topics. Not anymore.
For some reason, they are going to spend time on "WSSDA Legislative Positions" (WSSDA being the Washington State School Directors Association). Why, in the middle of the legislative session, do this?
Then, the biggest part of the day - "Board Norms & Code of Conduct." Yes folks, while the district decides how to strip down programs and close schools, your Board directors are learning how to be polite in their interactions with each other.
And the last item is... "Student Member Norms."
Ad Hoc Community Engagement Meeting followed by the regular School Board meeting
I don't know which community engagement they might be speaking of because the agenda reveals nothing and the minutes are not yet available.
I don't want to go over the entire agenda for the School Board meeting but it appears that the district is buying a warehouse but they don't say where or for how much because of "confidentiality of certain information." The purchase and sale will be backdated to December 22, 2022. The district says that the warehouse at Memorial Stadium is difficult to navigate and also prevents the updating of Memorial Stadium as the warehouse is under a section of bleachers. They are using money from BTA V.
March 22nd
Ad Hoc Community Engagement Meeting
March 29
Ad Hoc Community Engagement Meeting
So basically, it's the Board stripping down both its duties and responsibilities and doing advance navel gazing.
To note: there is currently NO NOTICE on the district/Board calendar about this "community meeting" about the budget that they said at the last Board Work Session on the Budget would be on March 20th.
Comments
vanishing money
I was looking over the spreadsheet you put together on google docs several weeks ago and wanted to ask you about adding some data into it both from the Census estimates and the SPS annual enrollment reports. You can email me at omep 16 at hotmail.
One More Eckstein Parent
I’m not wondering what the Board is doing vis-Ã -vis the budget; I know exactly what they are doing with the budget:
Total and complete abdication of any and all of their entire responsibility to do anything “to” or “with” or “for” the budget.
I seriously doubt that they’ve even read it, let alone actually understand it if they did bother to read it.
They have no clue. Nor do they appear interested, or even curious, except, *maybe* Leslie. It appears the majority of them do not even understand budgeting, or their role as the public overseers of the tax dollars. Chandra particularly seems to just wave it off, passing it along. When they take the whole thing and just put it on a consent agenda, when they raise the limit of line items that need individual approval to more than $1 million, it just tells you they’re not interested and don’t care.
Given the revolving door in the budget office, given the revolving door in the superintendence office, no body else really seems to care. This beast (effectiveness of spending i.e. budget ) is truly out of control, meaning there are no controls: you tell me, where does the buck stop in JSCEE?
Never mind the poor quality of education which is causing families to flee; the fiscal irresponsibility is so blatant, and yet, as long as Seattle continues to pass each and every single education levy unquestioned by large majorities, guess what, they’ll continue to act like drunk trust fund babies blowing through money like it’s nothing. Why not? There all always be another dollar to come in to spend willy-nilly.
I am in a minority: I believe the absolute only tool we have, the only leverage, is to fail the levies. I know that sacrilegious here in Seattle, where we always do it, vote to tax ourselves, for the kids, but it’s not working. Special Ed appears to be fairly tragic, gifted education they’ve absolutely stripped out, general education they have also stripped bare, removing science curriculum which teaches science, for example, removing AP courses in high schools, removing world languages from multiple schools.
I challenge your readers to think about how this school system changes direction, how this gets better. We had a half decent board not too long ago, yet they still voted in Amplify. Does anyone think a new superintendent would make things better? No, no such superintendent exists, and even if they did, smart ones would not take on Seattle with a 10 foot pole, which means guess what kind of quality superintendent will get next. Would a strong board make a difference? No, the staff and the glass palace are absolutely entrenched, and they to rotate on a regular basis.
Teachers are competent and caring and show up for the kids. I have absolutely no problem with them getting paid well to do a really hard job. Good principles as well, beloved by their community, show up and support their teachers and their families, usually they get attacked for doing so by JSCEE. The glass palace has figured out the way to take down a high performing school is to stick them with a pathetic principal, see Roosevelt and Ballard.
The truly despicable aspect to all of the JSCEE incompetence or laziness IS THAT IT IS HELPING USHER IN CHARTER SCHOOLS, AND BY DOING SO, THEY PUT PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN JEOPARDY, AND THAT WILL CLEARLY AFFECT THE MOST VULNERABLE in the worst ways. Can you imagine having two systems? Basically, one for those with means and resources and networks, and the other for everybody else? One might argue we already have that with the suburbs versus the cities, but even if we do, that is not something we want to exacerbate, and grow even deeper inequities in the access of education.
You can turn around and vote yes on a levy in six months when they bring it back. That’s what I would do. But in the meantime, I will be voting no 100% of the time as it is the only way I know of to yank the chain hard and get them to pay attention to the fact that there is a big problem.
Vote No
-Skeptical Parent
Vote No, I have advocated for decades to vote no on levies. It WOULD be the single thing the district and the Board would listen to. Especially for the BEX/BTA, it would not be the Chicken Little scenario they portray it to be.
Question, as of today, March 13th, there is still no named property nor cost on the Board Meeting agenda. Stay tuned.