Two Reports of Interest on Seattle School Board Agenda

Let me preface this by saying that this district is exhausting. And I know it's not just me. I saw on a SPS parent Facebook page someone who was just trying to understand the enrollment procedure from reading the Enrollment page at the district website. Another reader chimed in to say that she had to call that office and be walked through it. 

You have to wonder if the lack of transparency around how to do regular parent things in this district added to the enrollment loss. You know, like the straw that finally breaks the camel's back. 

At this point in my life, the frustration is two-fold. First, to see so little progress in transparency and accountability when that is always on the menu but never served. Second, just trying to keep up. For example, the agenda for Board meetings. 

If there is something of an emergency nature, of course you might expect something to be added at the last minute. But that's generally not the case. No, the crux of the new crop of items generally means someone is trying to hide something until the last possible minute.  For example, where's the documentation for the year that has been added to the Superintendent's contract?

The two reports on the current agenda - one of them springing up today - are the Enrollment Survey report about why parents like or leave SPS and new! a presentation for a "Highly Capable Services update." 

I do smile because I think the HCC parents coming to Board meetings and repeatedly pointing out how wrong it is to proceed on the conversion to neighborhood schools plan for HCC without any real explanation have hit a nerve in the district so good for them.

 

Enrollment Study Survey Findings

I believe this report was generated by the consulting firm Strategies 360. Kind of interesting to use them because I know them mostly as a political consulting group. 

Here's who they asked:

- Adults of currently enrolled children in SPS, 1015

- Adults of formerly enrolled children in SPS, 300

- Adults of children never in SPS, 105 

Questions

Why do caretakers' students remain enrolled in SPS?

Caretakers of current students have a positive view, or overwhelming satisfaction, of Seattle Public Schools.

That amount is 86% with 55% somewhat satisfied and 32% very satisfied. That leaves 13% somewhat/very dissatisfied and 1% not sure. 

But among former students that swings to 66% dissatisfied and only 32% satisfied. You have to wonder if these students went out into the world and found that their diploma left them not ready for college/work. 

What do people like in SPS?

Top 3 for current students: Positive student experience/community, dedicated/high quality teachers/staff and students receive a good education.

Top 3 among former students: community/friendliness, dedicated/caring teachers, school close to home

The similarity in answers for those top 3 point to schools creating community and teachers who are good at their jobs. But this seems to not hold up well.

Caretakers of current students say they are most motivated to stay enrolled in SPS due to the sense of community and belonging, close travel distance, high quality teachers, and friends.

This can't surprise anyone because parents look for that community for their children AND want to be close to home both for shorter transportation times AND friendships in the neighborhood. Both of these were at about the 73% mark. 

Interestingly, you see the cost of other schooling options up there at nearly 60% in the "highly motivating" category. This before good curriculum, SEL, and HC (but all of those are up to 50% highly motivating). 

So many parents would consider leaving if private school was affordable for them. 

So why do parents "disenroll" from SPS? 

Strategies 360 points out a 16% decline in Seattle households with children since 2017 as well as shrinking kindergarten classes. 

But what do current parents not like? The list is long.

Topping that list is lack of funding/class sizes, and "bad quality of education." 

Former students had this umbrella topic of "poor education, curriculum and teachers" that included ideological bias, not challenging, not advanced enough, and inadequate college preparation.

Among those adults who considered taking their children out of  SPS, the majority were worried about the "quality of education." That stat comes in at 58% with figures added from "strongly considered/moderately considered." Yikes! 

"Sense of lack of safety, bullying, etc" came in at 46%. That's a lot of worried parents. 

What seems concerning is that of the top reasons to consider disenroll their student, all the reasons scored above 40%. 

Page 12 is a busy but interesting page where they compare pre-COVID time,  COVID times and post-COVID time. For example, pre-COVID, there was a lot of motivation to leave from caretakers of former SPS students which dropped by 10% in COVID times but soared back up to 63% after COVID. 

What is also a bit of a shock on that page is that low on the list of reasons for these caretakers are housing costs, cost of living in Seattle, masking/social distancing, and online classes during COVID.

Overwhelmingly these caretakers left because of "concerns about the quality of education" and "curriculum." There were many other lesser issues but at the top of that list were safety and changes to HC services. 

Current parents said they want improved educational quality, improve school operations, and changes to current current curriculum/electives.

I want to point out that 10% said they wanted to see more equity and equal opportunity while 5% said that changing curriculum meant less "anti-woke" teaching, merit, not equity, and expanding extracurricular activities. 

I hope the Board thinks about this gap that is there over equity issues. That really needs to be openly addressed in the next Strategic Plan. 

The report ends with "areas for exploration" that include engagement with parents of early learners like pre-K. Well, the district has been partnering with the City on the City's pre-K plan which is now in many SPS elementaries so there's that. The list also includes:

- Engagement with community around curriculum and instruction. 

- Finding unaccounted for students and reengaging them. Okay sure but I think there is a lot more to those unaccounted students than just school is boring. 

- Create a taskforce that includes students, parents, and community members for specific groups of students of color and why they leave SPS at higher rates.

Wait, what? Where is that data in this report? 

- Partnering with City agencies to share data on planning for affordable housing for families. 

It will be interesting what the Board and senior staff make of these findings.  

Highly Capable Services Update

One thing I find interesting is the notation that this is presented by Dr. Rocky Torres-Morales, Associate Superintendent (on behalf of Superintendent, Dr. Brent Jones.  

Dr. Torres has been on leave for at least a year and now he appears to be back. I do not know why his name changed; he may have gotten married in that interim. 

There's a timeline of activities including in 2021-2022 having Universal Screening begin. 

Apparently in 2023-2024, they started developing neighborhood school services with reading and math, and CSIP support and alignment.

This year they are expanding to other content areas and targeted support for elementary neighborhood schools (coaching and PD). 

Next year, they will continue to move this work to neighborhood schools while still phasing out the cohort model. 

I do see that in Policy 2190 on Highly Capable, there is this included wording:

A description of the highly capable program goals and a description of the services the program will office, and an instructional program description."  

The page "Model Descriptions" seems somewhat inaccurate. For example it says prior to 2021, parent choice to enroll/access Highly Capable services. That is has ALWAYS been the case because parents have to okay their child being in the program. There is universal screening but notifying parents that their child is eligible does not mean the child is in the program. The district needs parents to opt-in.

And then the district is just plain disingenous:

Screening was not universal and often involved access to outside testing and educator recommendation. 

No, universal screening wasn't offered by the district. But to get into the program, students HAD to take the district's chosen test (plus take the state test). The "outside testing" was for appeals AND the district paid for any low-income student whose parent requested it.  

As for educator recommendation, that's not anything out of the ordinary for many highly capable programs. 

The "current model" has the bullshit explanation of how HC will work - "Each school has a plan detailed in their C-SIP how (sic) they will provide HC services to students."  

Those C-SIP are SO very pro forma. Half the stuff in there never happens in schools. I'll be interested to hear from parents what their student's school says about HC services. 

The "Highly Capable Data Trends" page which has students disaggregated by race is interesting and basically shows that across the bands, the number of students of color in the program are going up. Oh wait, except for white kids. That figure has gone down. (Their notation: "data for American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander not included due to sample size.")

As for Next Steps, I was astonished to see "hire the new director of Advanced Learning." They are moving to change this program without someone at the helm? Oh my.