This and That, April 17, 2024

I see the Board has a curious "special meeting" for tomorrow. It's a half-hour meeting about:

Board Development 4:30 p.m.*
• Overview of Curriculum Adoption Process in Washington State

Adjourn 5:00 p.m.

There is no documentation attached. 

I'm thinking, due to the brevity of this meeting, this is just some kind of legally required overview for the benefit of all the newbies on the Board. Curriculum adoption is a lot more complex than a half-hour meeting. It's a little sad that the Board is giving this topic so little when, if they did it right, it would be a good time for parents, students and the public to understand this process.

And remember the real discourse over the last science adoption? It was pretty rough and tumble but it was meaty and everything was laid out on the table. Under the Student Outcome Focused Governance, you will never see that again. 

 

Holy Smokes! Real facilities issues at Franklin High School. From KOMO News:

Broken down bathrooms, loss of power, and refrigeration are just a few of the serious problems plaguing Franklin High School in Seattle.

It’s so bad that a staff member went all the way to a school board meeting, not once, but twice, to tell the Seattle School Board and Superintendent Brent Jones and the rest of the staff that attends those meetings that this school needs attention from maintenance.

It’s now been at least six weeks, according to his public comments, that the boys’ bathrooms on two floors are not usable.

During his public comment at the April 3 meeting, Parker said they came back from winter break with partial power.

“There was no heat, no Internet, no working elevator for our wheelchair users, and no cafeteria or nurse refrigerator that had power. When our principal reached out to SPS about closing the school he was denied. How is that not enough to close the school? It wasn’t until there was a literal fire on the third floor - that’s when it was canceled,” said Parker.

An interesting side issue to this is that decades back, SPS absolutely was pressured to save old buildings and did. Franklin is one of them. But also, when SPS does not keep up with maintenance issues, this is the outcome even for buildings like Franklin that did see a major renovation in the '90s.  

From the West Seattle Blog, coverage of the Chief Sealth International High School community safety forum held last night at CHIHS.

Communication was the intent of the forum, organized by the Chief Sealth PTSA and featuring an onstage panel with school and city officials – along with Sealth principal Ray Morales and adjacent Denny International Middle School‘s principal Mary Ingraham, panelists were Seattle Public Schools‘ regional executive director of schools Chris Carter and executive director of operations Marni Campbell, Southwest Precinct commander Capt. Martin Rivera, City Councilmember Rob Saka‘s district-relations director Leyla Gheisar, and Seattle Parks‘ interim recreation-division director Brian Judd and interim deputy superintendent Daisy Catague.

What was left out is student voice and the students who did attend were not happy about that.  

Then Satomi spoke for the first time, with the observation that students’ voices weren’t being heard. Panelists offered suggestions of ways to get involved. They missed the point, Satomi said upon returning to the microphone later: “It shouldn’t be on me to find out ways to help my community – it’s important that you come up to us first – it’s really important that YOU are the one to take that first step forward.”

 That was underscored by what Sealth student Addison said next: “There are people dying; this is a dire situation. (This meeting) shouldn’t be something we do just one time, it’s honestly (disappointing) it’s taken three months” to have the discussion. She reiterated the point that students need to be brought into closer communication and collaboration.

“There has been some work done” since then, in response to the families’ concerns, Morales said. Campbell – whose portfolio includes school security – said that includes cameras, door alarms, and security staff. This week, she said, they’re finalizing upgrades/maintenance/adjustments on external cameras for Denny/Sealth, and they’ve “worked to identify doors to which they can attach alarms that would go off” if the doors were opened.

Judd spoke of a safety team on which the school district and Parks are now collaborating, as well as the much-discussed new camera system (replacing one that hadn’t worked for some time – apparently related to “budget constraints,” he said later). He also said the newly expanded squad of Park Rangers will be assisting with security at Parks facilities “all over the city.”

And I want to point out this comment:

She also recalled the security concerns raised by some community members before the combined Denny/Sealth campus opened – “they promised there would be four security guards (when it was built) but they didn’t” follow through … “we need to get police back, I don’t care what people say – without police I would not be safe going to my job … Mobarak, we lost, how can we prevent more?”  

SPS makes many, many promises during building but after it's all done? Gone with the wind.

 

Looks like high schools in Washington State still want graduation waivers from the state. From the Washington State Standard:

The board authorized school districts to grant waivers to individual students for certain graduation requirements after the Legislature established the emergency waiver program in 2021 to prevent students from being “unduly impacted by unforeseen disruptions to coursework and assessments that are beyond the student’s control.”

Through the 2022-2023 school year, the waiver allowed students to forgo up to two credits and the “graduation pathway” requirement. The Legislature established the pathway program in 2019 to allow for new avenues to graduate, including demonstration of technical skills. 

Under the current rules set by the board, districts are still allowed to waive one credit during the 2023-2024 school year. School officials are asking the board to continue waiving graduation pathway requirements for this school year as well. 

Scott Friedman of the Association of Washington School Principals told board members during a meeting last week that there are three ongoing obstacles to completing graduation requirements: “credits, classes and mental health.”

Speaking of SOFG, I found this podcast/blog, Unravelling Education with Danielle Ford, a former board trustee in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is very stream of consciousness so her podcast is a bit hard to track. But midway, through, she starts talking about SOFG guru, AJ Crabill. Here are some notable statements:

- “Student outcomes won’t change until adult behaviors do.” …”oh cool yeah that doesn’t even say anything.

But I bet you have suggestions of how I could fix my behavior right? For the kids? And if I don’t adjust my behavior to your standards, then I’m harming kids. Gotcha. I’m all caught up.” 

- I’m finding it hard to believe that all of these people at the same time, just happened to think this nothing quote was revolutionary, inspiring, and insightful enough to blast it everywhere.

Every time I saw it somewhere new, I’d get a little more pissed off because I knew exactly what it was.. You see, I’m a marketer. You can’t market to a marketer ok? This is a sales tactic used in the business industry to introduce a personal brand. This wasn’t to market a governance model, it was to market him. The name. AJ Crabill.

- Here’s how this works in the online space… sometimes a person will pay to join a mastermind or network of influential people who are going to help them launch their new course or product or service or whatever. Or there’s a revenue share or affiliate commission or something. The strategy is to get this person in front of a mass audience in a short amount of time, seen many times by each individual, with something “sticky” or memorable.

- February 2021- AJ is Training the Salt Lake City School Board where 1 member told Fox news that “He was insulting. During our December meeting, Mr. Crabill deliberately shamed members of the SLCSD in a scheduled meeting in front of the public’

- March 2021- AJ is Training the Los Angeles Unified School Board and the community starts fighting back on him and the governance model. 

-During the training Ashley Paz coached her and 2 dozen others to admit how they failed students. 

“They made us go around and tell how we let children down. And you’re in the room hearing everyone repeat this self-flagellating mantra. It was the weirdest thing and it was promoted as, “This is what we do with school boards all across Texas.”

Following the Seattle Times' story on declining enrollment in Seattle Schools, I now see almost 550 comments. That's way above their average. Several notable ones:

- SPS knows why students are fleeing. But by commissioning a study, they can put off any reckoning for another year.

-  Gifted education such as HCC is a canary in the coalmine that signals to parents whether a district is serious about academic rigor. Change has to come from voting in a school board willing to overthrow the race to the bottom mentality and re-introduce academic rigor.

I would add that I'm hearing rumblings at Ballard High that parents are hearing from their students that late work is accepted in near all classes with no penalty (except in AP classes). And, some students can retake tests for a better score. I hope those teachers understand this will NOT help students one bit in college/university.  

- Pay attention, SPS. Do you really want to be known as offering an education limited to the lowest common denominator?

- I don't view it as "dumbing down academics". I see it as "de-prioritizing academics" or "overemphasis on non-academic issues".  Society needs to stop expecting the schools to fix everything "because the kids are already there". Teachers are experts in teaching, not psychology, social engineering, psychiatry, etc.

- We are not considering public schools for the following reasons:

1. Concerns about safety and the inability to properly address destructive or problematic behavior in the schools. 

2. The lack of academic rigor. We are concerned with the dumbing down of graduation requirements, the removal of highly capable cohorts and advanced classes. It’s especially problematic teachers are encouraged to pass all student and that there are no consequences for failure or poor work ethic. 

3. Lack of predictability and certainty around which school will be open, when you learn about preferred choices (like a bilingual program), school closures, school consolidations, etc. 

No money needs to be spent on any further study. The product SPS is now delivering is sub-par. They are teaching to the lowest common denominator and enough parents aren’t willing to sacrifice their own children’s education or safety.

- The real mystery is: will SPS leadership acknowledge that frustrations over rigor (or lack thereof), behavior, focus on ideology instead of academics, removal of accelerated learning opportunities and general lack of confidence in the leadership are items they can change? And then, will they change?