This and That, Tuesday, June 10, 2025
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I see where all Portland Public Schools closed three hours early on Monday due to the onset of high heat in that area. I didn't see that SPS did that; did any individual Seattle schools do that?
Only about 15% of the buildings in Oregon’s largest school district have air conditioning, including all six of the high schools that have been modernized in the past 15 years, plus Faubion K-8, Harriet Tubman Middle School, Rosa Parks and Forest Park elementaries and a handful of buildings that offer early childhood education or specialized services.The massive $1.8 billion facilities bond that the district’s voters passed last month originally included at least $190 million to pay for deferred maintenance, like upgrading heating and cooling systems.
But, unfortunately, Portland schools are also at high risk from a seismic event so much of that bond will go for that effort.
Stick out that sticky heat, Seattle. The heat wave is almost over.
Tuesday will be the last day the Seattle area will see temperatures in the 80s this week, with Seattle expecting a high of 81 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Soon after Superintendent Chris Nesmith started the job, he dove into census and income data provided by The Opportunity Atlas to get a clearer sense of the realities for Elma graduates.
The route they took is one allowed by Washington state since 2021, but used by only a handful of districts outside of career-and-technical-education classes: Students may demonstrate their mastery of academic skills and concepts in nontraditional ways — like using calculations done in a mechanical engineering class to cover algebra credits, or technical writing to satisfy English — rather than hewing to a set amount of time spent in a specific classroom to earn a passing grade.
That flexibility doesn’t come easily. In Elma, it meant overhauling the way teachers assess their students, and some have embraced this more enthusiastically than others, Nesmith says.
Yet, while test scores have shown only modest gains, college enrollment among Elma High School graduates jumped by eight percentage points in just two years, to the highest rate ever recorded.
And in 2024, tiny Elma — along with the Miami-Dade County schools in Florida and Compton in California — was named a national District of Distinction in preparing students for “future-focused career pathways.”
I briefly looked at that "Opportunity Atlas" which comes via the US Census; it looks interesting.
The other story is, once again, about putting SPD officers into Seattle Public Schools.
Amid the usual arguments about the merits of putting an armed police officer on a school campus, the proposal is caught up in another debate: whether money from the city’s Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy, which is on the November ballot, should pay for police officers in schools instead of more mental health, violence prevention and student support services. The debate also focuses on whether the School Board and district had worked with communities on alternatives in the years since the program was disbanded.
Those are two good questions:
- where does the money come from?
- what have the district and the Board done since the shootings?
Police Chief Shon Barnes, a former school resource officer, said while he thinks the program could be up and running by the start of the school year, he would not want an officer returning to SPS until there is a policy, a clear code of conduct and consensus on expectations among the police department, the school system, students and parents.
“I think where we’ve seen these programs go wrong in the past is that there’s no clear guidance or guidelines around it,” Barnes told The Seattle Times last month.
Citing his experience, Barnes said he supports the role when it’s done correctly.
“Correctly means it’s done in partnership with folks,” he said. “We know why they’re there. They’re there for safety and security. They’re there to establish relationships, and they’re there to provide a school as a sanctuary for students.”
And
When those relationships exist, parents, students and educators are more likely to share information, or intelligence, with SROs that can avert school violence, Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers said.
Principal Tarance Hart explains:
Hart, the Garfield principal, said a school engagement officer could complement resources added to the school this academic year. Those resources include staff from Community Passageways, a violence interrupter program that works with students, as well as a restorative practices coordinator and two additional security specialists.
The district also ran a pilot program last year that posted a patrol at the Teen Life Center near the school and brought in additional police before and after school and during lunchtime.
What an expert says about guidelines for the SRO role:
F. Chris Curran, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida’s College of Education, said that when an agreement says that an officer won’t be involved in school discipline, everyone needs to know what that means.
Does that mean they won’t be involved in suspending students, but can reprimand them for running in the hallway or for using profanity? How do they respond if students are fighting?
“I don’t know that we want to tell the SRO, “Don’t break up the fight,’” Curran said. “If you’re the nearest adult, we want you to break up the fight. It’s what happens next. Do you stabilize the situation and hand it over to school personnel or do you go into a law enforcement mode and respond like you would if these were adults?”
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