This and That

The West Seattle Blog has coverage of a local meeting where President Gina Topp was in attendance. 

Among many other updates, Topp said that the application time for district superintendent closed September 15th, and, as of right now, they have "41 qualified candidates" and she says "we are super excited about that number."  


As I previously reported there is to be a Board Special Meeting on Friday, September 26th from 2:30-6:30 pm. Here's what the agenda says: 

Executive Session: To evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for public employment.

Action Item - Selection of candidates for Superintendent interviews. 

I will put out a query as to how many candidate portfolios of the 41 applicants that the Board will review and how many they will pick to interview. My impression is that they would interview 2-4 candidates. 

 

 Interesting thoughts from The Seattle Spiral, a Substack on Seattle Schools on math; she uses a NY Times story on algebra in middle school as a starting point. (I am gifting a link so you can read the story.)

The biggest surprise yet is not that people in college still do Jell-O shots, but that large numbers of incoming freshmen often have taken linear algebra and Calculus 3 (yeah, the course after AP Calculus BC, often viewed as the tippy-top of high school math) before they even arrive on a top 50 college campus.

These courses are taught at community colleges, so clearly they would have taken them there, right? Nope. There are private schools and even public schools around the country that are pushing ahead into this hardcore STEM approach, but meanwhile many public school systems, namely Seattle Public Schools and SF Unified, like to dither about and have silly discussions about whether middle school kids really need access to algebra in middle school at all.


The Seattle Times' editorial board writer Claudia Rowe has written a book, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, has been longlisted for the National Book Award for nonfiction. The National Book Award is one of the top American book awards. She has written about youth and government policy for 34 years. She has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. 

Congrats to Ms. Rowe.

 

From Facebook (link to webinar):

May be a graphic of text that says 'PRESENTED PRESENTED BY FRIENDS OF HICAP SEATTLE SEATTLE HIGHLY CAPABLE INFORMATIONAL WEBINAR Friends of HiCap Seattle will host a webinar this upcoming Friday, Sept 26th from 12- 2-1pm on the current state of Seattle Public School's Highly Capable (Hc) Program. 12-1PM 26 SEPT This webinar is intended to inform families on how to navigate the 2025-2026 dentification process and describe existing HC services available in SPS schools. For more details and a zoom link, please visit the calendar of upcoming events at hcseattle.org' 

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