Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case out of Oklahoma regarding charter schools. The issue is if a religious entity can start a charter school, complete with religious teaching based on freedom of speech. On the face it, the quick answer would appear to be no (separation of church and state). But the Catholic Church is arguing that religious groups should not be left out of access to public dollars. Given that they pay no taxes already, I find that argument ludicrous.  Here's the background on the case from The Seattle Times. On Wednesday,  the U.S. Supreme Court  will hear from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, which are arguing that they should be allowed to open the nation’s first religious charter school — funded with public money and embracing an explicitly religious curriculum. This is big. It challenges not only the traditional separation of church and state, but also laws requiring that charter schools be secular. Already, public m...

 Items of note from SPS 1) There are articles at the website with a large number of congrats to both students and staff for many awards and honors. There IS good stuff happening in SPS.  Amazingly they even included academic awards (National Merit Scholars).  2) But, in their own SPS way, they are not getting news out in a timely manner. This morning on Facebook they say this: S eattle Public Schools Needs You — Join our Strategic Plan Stakeholder Task Force!  We're rolling out a new five-year strategic plan, and your voice matters in this process. We want to hear your hopes for our district, your vision of success in our classrooms, and what our schools need to help every child thrive. We need families, students, and staff with voices that represent the SPS community to guide feedback collection, review strategies to help students, and examine our future budget predictions. How to Apply: Visit this link to fill out the application form:  https://maec.iad1.qual...

 From The Seattle Times.   N o criminal charges will be filed at this time against the owner of an SUV that rolled unattended onto a sidewalk outside Washington Middle School in the Central District last month, killing a 12-year-old girl, Seattle Police said.   However, police said Thursday the owner was issued a citation listing four parking violations in connection with her decision to leave the vehicle, a 2018 GMC Arcadia, unattended outside the school. Parking tickets are for infractions, which are punishable only by a fine. The issued citation includes violations that included parking in front of a fire hydrant, improper parallel parking and for failing to stop and secure the vehicle when parking, police said. One other piece of info in the story that I hadn't seen before is that the car also hit two other students as well. I assume they were not badly injured.  While the city apparently couldn't charge the driver criminally, the family would be able to sue civi...

First, here's the agenda from the Seattle School Board meeting where this issue was discussed. The "Enrollment Planning Update" is item IX. You can see that there is a "previous materials" link and a "presentation" link. They are different for sure. That's because the first iteration was informational and the second one is to make staff's case. One glaring omission in the second iteration was a heat map in the first that had interesting information.  Superintendent Brent Jones said yes, "we changed the deck a bit" and "it's an "evolving piece." I'm sorry but no Enrollment presentation should change that much in a couple of days. CLEARLY, the Superintendent and staff want their way, all the way, no matter what parents say.  During the discussion, it felt like "oh those parents, they just don't know what we know."  He also stated that " We may even sound defensive but we are just trying to exp...

 I started this post this morning and got 45 minutes into the 5 hour meeting and somehow lost what I wrote. Sigh. Trying again. The meeting started with all the directors present, including all three student members and what appeared to be a full house of spectators. The student directors are: Colin Bragg, Safiya Ilyas, and Sami Yoon.  Superintendent Comments Superintendent Brent Jones talked about attending the reopening of Rainier Beach High School (partial as the building is not fully complete). He said thank you to all who sent messages to the Legislature in support of bills that would help SPS. He's going to the Alliance for Education gala. For some reason, he played 3 minutes of the SPS show, First Bell.  The student board members talked about seeing off the Ballard High girls gymnastics team to state finals. They noted a LOT of comments from teens about feeling unsafe on public transportation (which is how most high school students get to school). As well...