This and That, Monday, October 13, 2025 Edition
First (and again), I have several comments just sitting in my box because they were sent anonymously. Pick any name or moniker for yourself if you want your thoughts to appear. No anonymous comments.
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!
Next, the Board had a Special Meeting scheduled for today and it appeared that it was for the Board to announce that they had narrowed down the list of semi-finalists for the next superintendent. That meeting has been cancelled. They spent last Thursday and Friday discussing the eight semi-finalists in Executive Session.
But now, there is a OPEN Special Meeting on Wednesday, October 15th from 4:30-6:30 pm at the JSCEE. It will be televised on the Seattle Schools You-Tube channel. Agenda here. The agenda does note that the Board "may recess into executive session."
I hope that the Board will at least announce how many candidates they are moving forward and possibly give names.
As a reminder, the Catherine Blaine K-8 PTSA is having a school board candidate forum on Tuesday, the 14th from 6:30-8:00 pm at Catherine Blaine.
👉 RSVP to Attend or Watch Live Here
From Seattle's Child:
The Alliance for Education is coordinating a "community-led gathering" on Wednesday, October 15th for candidates for school board, Seattle City Council, and King County offices. This is at Rainier Beach High School starting at 5:30 pm. There are many other groups that are part of this effort including the Washington Youth Alliance, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, Seattle Council PTSA, Latino Community Fund of Washington State, East African Community Services, and several others.
They list most of the school board candidates as participating except for Joe Mizrahi and Sarah Clark.
They are having a different format than most forums:
5:30-6 p.m. – Doors open, dinner is served
6 p.m. – Welcome from Rainier Beach students and ‘Two Sentence Take’ introductions of candidates
6:15-8 p.m. – Roundtable Discussions – pairs of two candidates rotate every 8-10 minutes to connect with small groups of attendees
Salima Specialties will cater a shared meal for candidates and attendees. It will be served buffet style and all items are halal. The menu is Pan-Asian street food comprised of samosas, fried rice, noodles and more! Drinks will also be available. The family-friendly, intergenerational event will be co-led by Rainier Beach students. Parents and caretakers should feel welcome to bring their children. There will be a supervised space with coloring pages and activities, or children can stay with their guardians throughout the event.
One Chicago mother, K. Hurley Wales, has provided a narrative of what has been happening in that community with ICE. It's devastating reporting and here's part of it:
At 9 AM, our school principal initiated our rapid response network and hundreds of parent, staff, and communities mobilized to patrol our school in support of our at-risk families and to allow our children to safely play and learn outdoors.
At 10 AM, ICE arrived fully armed near Ravenswood Elementary, a local public school where many of our friends go and teach. I spoke directly with my dear friend who teaches there immediately after it happened and, as you can imagine, she was terrified and traumatized.
As the day unfolded, at least 8 of our neighbors were detained, and there were dozens of confirmed ICE sightings outside local schools and businesses. Craig and I spent a collective 10 hours patrolling our daughters' school. Several schools went into lockdown, following the same protocol response we’d follow for an active shooter.
This is not how America should work, especially not traumatizing schoolchildren.
State Representative Cindy Ryu and Representative Gerry Pollet are having a Saturday morning discussion on Education and School Funding.
Following public outcry, the U.S. Department of Education has restored funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss, about a month after cutting it.
But rather than sending the money directly to the four programs that are part of a national network helping students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness, the department has instead rerouted the grants to a different organization that will provide funding for those vulnerable students.
“We don’t know what will happen” in future years, said Lisa McConachie of the Oregon DeafBlind Project, which serves 114 students in the state. McConachie said that with uncertain funding, her agency had to cancel a retreat this fall that had been organized for parents to swap medical equipment, share resources and learn about services to help students when they get older. She hopes to reschedule it for the spring.
“It is still a disruption to families,’’ she said. “It creates this mistrust, that you are gone and back and gone and back.”
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Curious Parent
Curious Parent