This and That

Update: it appears that tonight's first community meeting will be televised on the SPS channel on YouTube.

end of update

A couple of things.

Tomorrow, August 8th,  is the first community meeting about "what a well-resourced school look like." The original venue was to be JSCEE but it has been moved to Garfield High School, 400 23rd Ave.. The meeting starts at 6 pm with no set end time. 

Interpretation will be available in Cantonese, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese

The second meeting is on Thursday, August 10 at 6 pm at Madison Middle School, 3429 45th Ave. SW.

Interpretation will be available in: Spanish and Vietnamese.

Meetings continue next week. 

If anyone attends either of these meetings, please do comment here. I'm interested in a number of things like:

  • who presents,
  •  if there are any Board members in attendance, 
  • if community has to write down their questions rather than ask openly, and 
  • if any questions on school closures are answered rather than just acknowledged

In serious news via The Wenatchee World:

A 52-year-old former Seattle middle school teacher, Darren D. Hunter, was arrested Sunday after investigators say he raped and assaulted a woman at his home in Chelan.

Hunter was previously employed as a special education teacher with Madison Middle School in the Seattle Public School district but was charged in February 2021 of third-degree rape, according to KIRO 7 News.

The Seattle school district noted that the incident did not involve students or school staff. He is currently not employed by any school district, according to the sheriff’s office.

Creepy. 
 
Update: there's a law firm, PCVA,  looking for info on Hunter. They state:
 
At the time this article was written, Hunter is a 52-year-old man who formerly worked as a special education teacher at Chelan Middle School, according to KIRO 7 News. A current resident of Chelan, Wash., Hunter formerly lived in Kent but moved after pleading guilty to assault with sexual motivation, a misdemeanor.
 
The charges stemmed from an incident that occurred in August 2021 with a 44-year-old woman who had met Hunter on a dating app. Hunter was working as a special education teacher at Madison Middle School in Seattle Public Schools at the time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday Open Thread

The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested.  It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio.  (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Read more

Breaking It Down: Where the District Might Close Schools

Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read).   end of update    Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update   I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board.    To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up.   But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, grief, that is to come fro
Read more

MEETING CANCELED - Hey Kids, A Meeting with Three(!) Seattle Schools Board Directors

 Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting.  In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance.  - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
Read more