Seattle Schools News

In some good news, a former SPS student, Mathew Law, joined the cast of the popular show about an elementary school, Abbott Elementary. The show has been recently nominated for a Golden Globe. From the Times:

At the same time, the public schools he attended in Seattle are where he first fell in love with movies. 

“I attended Greenwood Elementary, Whitman Middle, then Ballard High. … I had teachers who introduced me to Hitchcock in middle school.”

On December 4th, a West Seattle SPS student was killed by gunfire, the second Chief Sealth International High School student to be killed in a year.  Neither shooting occurred on campus: this one happened in the High Point area. According to the Seattle Times, this is the seventh teen murder in Seattle this year.  Sadly,

All of the victims were boys between the ages of 14 and 17, and all of their cases remain unsolved.

The Seattle Times has a story this morning about SPS,

Seattle schools must post list of union discrimination violations

This action stems from the churn around former Rainier View Elementary principal Anitra Jones. 

Seattle Public Schools will post notices across the district admitting that it unlawfully discriminated against union employees for engaging in legally protected activities and explaining how it will correct those violations.

A compliance officer with the State Public Employment Relations Commission sent the sample notice to the district last week. It’s part of an order in a decision issued last month in a consolidated unfair labor practices case that found former Rainier View Elementary School Principal Anitra Jones unlawfully discriminated against three of the school’s staff members for their union work.

While the cases dealt with Jones’ alleged treatment of the Rainier View employees, a hearing examiner directed the district to cease and desist from similar practices districtwide.

Apparently Jones put in negative comments in staff files as well as having more "intense" evaluations of two people because of their union activities. 

As part of the decision, the district must also withdraw the letter of counseling and the evaluations with the negative comments from the employees’ files. It must also conduct new evaluations for the impacted employees.

SPS must post the notices — in color and on 11-by-17-inch paper — for 60 days in “conspicuous places,” where it normally posts notices for union members, which likely means in more than 100 schools. The notice must also be read into the record at a School Board meeting and included in the meeting’s minutes.

Jones was transferred out of the school and has ended up in that place where all lesser principals go - JSCEE. 

I haven't seen this elsewhere but here's the story from KIRO-7 via a reader (thanks!). I think it is both sad and shocking. Do the Superintendent and Seattle School Board want to protect students or not?

SPD reveals derailed plan to return officer to Seattle high school

I'm going to reprint the entire article because I think it's that important.

Seattle’s Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr revealed that she was poised to put a police officer in Garfield High School just before the city and Seattle Public School’s new safety plan was announced on August 22.

“We were talking about what that would look like,” Rahr said. “We talked about what the officer would wear. I mean, it was pretty granular what this would look like.”

Instead, what was announced on August 22, was something different.

“Students may see a police presence around school perimeters and this is part of strengthening our collaboration between our schools and the police,” SPS Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones said in a news conference.

The city said in a statement that “the Seattle Police Department (SPD) will focus patrol officers, during critical times such as before school, during lunch, and after school, as staffing allows for the five focus high schools: Rainier Beach, Garfield, Chief Sealth International, Franklin, and Ingraham.”

But it turns out, that did not mean patrols circling the school during those times or parked and talking to kids as KIRO 7 spotted one day in October.

KIRO 7 showed you the numbers from SPD: zero patrols logged for Garfield, Franklin, Rainier Beach, and Ingraham. Chief Sealth had six.

“Why haven’t officers been logging their patrols?” reporter Linzi Sheldon asked.

“Because we have other ways of capturing the data,” Rahr said.

Rahr is talking about GPS data showing officers nearby. SPD provided data showing those instances did go up once the school year started.

“When they’re able to, they try to stay in the area where the schools are,” Rahr said. “The challenge is, they’re handling multiple other calls.”

“In my experience, just patrols in the area don’t really prevent things from happening,” she said. “Our preference is to do something that’s going to prevent a tragedy.”

And that’s why Rahr said she was talking to SPS about a ‘school engagement officer.’

“The goal of having an officer in the school is not to substitute for security,” she said. “It’s not to arrest kids… they’re there to become part of that family inside the building.”

It’s something two Garfield parents told KIRO 7 in October that they want.

“As a parent… I want to know that somebody is there all the time, not just doing patrols there, here and there,” Appollonia Washington, whose son attends Garfield, said. She is also Co-Vice President on Garfield’s Parent Teacher Student Association.

But putting police officers back in Seattle Public Schools is a delicate undertaking.

The school board removed officers from Seattle Schools in 2020 during a national reckoning with police violence spurred by George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed.

“We’ve got superintendents, school board, building principals,” Rahr said. “And then you have parents and students, and they are not on the same page.”

Rahr said she’s waiting for a signal from the district.

“We want to hear from them,” she said.

“If SPS were to prioritize this, how soon could you get an officer in Garfield?” Sheldon asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“That fast?” Sheldon asked.

“Yes,” Rahr said.

KIRO 7 reached out to SPS on Monday, November 25th to ask why the plan suddenly changed.

As of December 5, SPS had not provided a response to the question.

Expect an answer from this district? Good luck. 

Again, Superintendent Jones - what is the plan? You WILL make some people unhappy - that's just a given - but trying a pilot plan at one high school would signal you are at least trying to help.