Seattle Schools Community Forum

  Opening the floor for suggestions on closing the SPS budget gap.  1. Obviously, for the Legislature to truly fund public education for every child. I'm not sure I believe this will ever happen but I do also understand why there is hesitation to give money to districts that are not doing well. I think any "ask" should be accompanied by "and here's how we will use those new dollars wisely." 2. No raises for anyone for two years. Most people don't get a raise every year anyway and maybe it will stem the hiring at JSCEE. 3. Again, for those in the back, CHARGE THE CITY for pre-k classrooms. Yes, I do keep up and I know the City has its own budget problems. But it's just ridiculous for the district to give over many, many classrooms to the City's pre-k program AND to allow the City to withhold payments to the district for the program operation until certain measures are met.  4. Sell off non-school property like Oak Tree or the professional buildin...

There was an interesting column from Seattle Times' writer Danny Westneat. It's called: School closures were another swing, miss for Seattle progressivism At last count, there were 627 comments. Clearly, he hit a nerve. I concur with much of what he puts forth. Upfront, I want to say that the Democrats allowed one subgroup of progressives to somehow say that their progressivism is what ALL Democrats want/believe. Meanwhile, on the Seattle School Board, that  progressivism was used against mostly white parents as a cudgel to silence them.  To say that if you disagree with the Board or their vision for the district, that it makes you a racist was wrong from the start.  Now that the plan to close schools in Seattle has failed, the district needs a new plan. Here it is: Do exactly the opposite. Seriously, everything about this botched effort was backward. Pursuing an upside-down approach that utterly fails is becoming a distressing hallmark of progressive governance.  Ki...

Has it just been a week since the last Board meeting? So what has happened? Actually, let's go back further and see what President Liza Rankin said on Facebook after the recall notice but before the Board meeting. I am comfortable being dismissive of efforts to maintain the status quo and undermine effective governance in service to students and not trying to weaponize the board as customer service for the loudest voices. There is a lot of air between Moms for Liberty and "progressives" who refuse to change for those who have been consistently and historically marginalized people supported via the democratic will of the people. Shades of Chandra Hampson (who probably wrote that) with that arrogant tone. Let's take that statement apart.  I know of NO ONE with a child in SPS who wants to maintain the status quo. There might be a few who are happy with their child's school now, but recognize all the churn happening in the district.  "Effective governance?"...

 Update: However, I see a couple of issues.    One, the Superintendent has already withdrawn those hearings at the district website. If you read Rankin's motion, the Board will withdraw the hearings if the Superintendent withdraws the preliminary recommendation. So it appears, the right hand does not appear to know what the left hand is doing.    However, Legal counsel Greg Narver had referenced Board policy 6883, School and Instructional Site Closures, several times at the Board meeting. While that policy does have the process for closures, it does NOT have any mention of what happens if the Board accepts and then rejects staff preliminary recommendations.    As well, I checked Washington State law and, like the Board policy, it says nothing about the process for the Superintendent to withdraw preliminary recommendations nor the Board withdrawing legally required public hearings. I cannot access WSSDA's (Washington State School Board Directors As...

  Public Testimony at the Tuesday, Nov. 19th Board meeting At each Board meeting, it feels like Rankin is getting more and more annoyed at having public testimony. This meeting she spoke of civility and said, " This public testimony is one-way facing, offered to public." Well, the Board has to legally have it at meetings so there's no offering to it.  She also said that if people want to interact with the Board, the Board will talk to community in the spring. Seriously. Well, the last "community meetings" were by invitation ONLY and not advertised to the public.  That's not public engagement.  The public testimony was very moving. There was not yelling or blaming but thoughts that resonated. One issue frequently stated was that Special Education students would NOT see good outcomes and get shuffled around... again. Sadly, there were a number of people who signed up to cheerlead for the levies. The Board was NOT going to ever vote against the BARs...

 Then we come to President Liza Rankin. She looked pale and seemed muddled (this may have been because she needed to get on a plane right after the meeting to attend the WSSDA conference in Spokane.) What happened in that period of public testimony was that the veil of SOFG got lifted from her and out came the real Liza Rankin (or at least the one I met many years ago).  She was crying and it was not just a few tears.  She said: - We don't have a system that welcomes all kids at every school.  This might be true, especially for Special Education students. However, she knows that not every school can serve every student. That would surely be financially impossible. It would have helped if she were a little more nuanced in her statements but again, she was crying.  - If the community can understand the challenges and see that at the center are our kids, they can be brought along and they can actually help us come up with stronger solutions.  And...

Who's in charge in Seattle Public Schools? I ask that question because after Tuesday's Board meeting, it does not seem clear. At all.  The bottom line - to me - is that the process to close schools is broken. It didn't have to be if both sides had been open and honest.  The Superintendent and staff made a good decision initially by pulling back from their ridiculous first attempt, trying to close all the K-8 schools. Other districts, like Chicago, are doing their closures slowly and I think staff decided to follow suit. So they delivered the four school version.  But again, they made mistakes: 1) They thought that most parents whose school was not affected would breathe a sigh of relief and ignore the process. What I see happening is parents joining together across the district against closures.  2) A very SPS mistake was to think that if they wrapped the closures up in pretty paper, with words like "well-resourced" on it,  parents would go along. Basically, by ...

At Tuesday night's turbulent Board meeting, President Liza Rankin called for a recess so that she and the Superintendent could speak after her teary outburst about closures after listening to public testimony. The meeting was in recess nearly 20 minutes. He was scheduled to give a closure and consolidation update at the end of the meeting but here's what he said when they came back.  He stated he was going to give his "planned update." He said when the discussion began on a system of well-resourced schools, the Board gave him direction on what they wanted to see in a set of recommendations. He said: It is now clear that direction is shifting and I am considering withdrawing my preliminary recommendation. I will need to give it more consideration as to when it would come back, if it does.  I will need time to clarify the process as driven by policy.  President Rankin did not look at him and said, "Thank you, Dr. Jones." Superintendent Jones issued this update...

The first is whether any SPS schools will be closed tomorrow ; the district closed 14 today. It looks like several regional districts like Renton will be closed another day. I see nothing at the SPS website but I would guess parents are contacted personally. Boy those photos in the Times are jaw-dropping.  The second item is a story in the Seattle Times that I have seen elsewhere. Namely, Lincoln High School does not have a practice field. The district kind of set themselves up for problems because they knew that both Lincoln High and Hamilton International Middle School needed practice space. I understand they have been going to Woodland Park which is relatively nearby but still problematic. To note, the park at Wallingford is NOT big and any rejiggering of it would take away the main swath of park space from regular users.   The Times reports there is a community meeting tonight. From the Times: It’s a case of competing needs and perspectives in a growing part of Seat...

 Update: I see that the WSSDA (Washington State School Directors Association) is having its annual conference starting tomorrow. This should be interesting for President Rankin as I'm sure her colleague will have heard about the recall process. She on the WSSDA board. My favorite session? Creating a Coherent District. End of update   I see that 14 SPS schools, mostly in the NE, are closed today, because of the storm shutting down electricity. Updates as I see them. From the Seattle Times: All schools are closed in Bainbridge Island, Bellevue, Carbonado, Eatonville, Enumclaw, Federal Way, Granite Falls, Highline, Issaquah, Kent, Lake Stevens, Lake Washington, Mercer Island, Northshore, Renton, Riverview, Shoreline, Snohomish, Snoqualmie Valley, Stanwood-Camano, Tahoma, Tukwila and White River school districts.   First thing - I have not watched this  meeting but boy, did I hear from people.  Apparently, there were moving stories and tears and now....confusion...

In thinking about closing schools, we can see that large districts across the nation are talking about closing schools.  Boston's district dropped from 56,000 about 8 years ago to 49,000 today; they are talking about closing nearly half (!) their schools. In Rochester, NY, they are closing 11 out of 45 schools.  In El Paso, Texas we see a very dramatic drop in their district's population, from 61K ten years ago to just 49K today.  Comparing birth rates, while El Paso's has dropped 21%, they are still at a high of 5.9% compared with Seattle which has the lowest birth rate in the country at 2.6%. Seattle's rate has been dropping since 2016. So beyond smaller districts - which means fewer schools - what does it all mean? From Politico: The reason why curtailing immigration would send such large shockwaves through the American economy isn’t simply because the nation would be deprived of the economic benefits of immigration. It’s because the effect would be amplified by a...