This and That, December 5, 2025

Update:

The Seattle Times has a good profile of Board President Gina Topp.

One key item noted in the article is that, coming up at next week's regular Board meeting, is the election of officers. The ONLY qualified person is Topp. Rankin has done it, Briggs would be a disaster, and Mizrahi and Song need more time (plus the two newbies, Smith and LaVallee).

As well, the story has a photo of Topp at a Rotary Club event pledging allegiance to the flag. Funny thing, somewhere along the way (probably Hampson era), the Board stopped doing the pledge at their Board meetings. This was done for decades. Maybe the land acknowledgment is the substitute. I do recall a long-ago Board meeting where there were many kids in attendance because they did a presentation of some sort (an school activity which has also gone away) for the Board. We rose to do the pledge and at least three kids looked panic-stricken as they did not know the words.

The story also includes this:

Then she heads over to The Collective, a social club near Lake Union, to brainstorm with community members about how Seattle Public Schools could improve, during an event organized by the Alliance for Education and South Seattle Education Coalition. The event ended just before 8 p.m. 

end of update

The Seattle Times' webinar event on December 8th has lost one director, Joe Mizrahi. That decision got made because state law would not allow a quorum of directors at an event where they would be discussing district issues. Mizrahi stepping aside makes sense, given he is already on the board. 

There's a Reddit page for Seattle Schools' parents that might be of interest. 

As you may have heard, the current president has led a vicious attack on Somali Americans, calling them "garbage." While it appears true that some Somali American citizens in Minneapolis did have a fraud scheme during COVID to rip off the government, however like any other case, it should not be a stain on all Somalis.

“Comments saying that a population stinks — coming from a foreign head of state, a top world military and economic power — that’s never happened before,” said Paris lawyer Arié Alimi, who has worked on hate speech cases. “So here we are really crossing a very, very, very important threshold in terms of expressing racist … comments.”

Seattle Schools reports that Somali is the second most spoken foreign language in the district, after Spanish.


An update from SPS on graduation dates because of the construction of the new Memorial Stadium. That location used to host many graduations and thus the changes for this year.


A couple of national stories have crossed my desk.

One is about how a Jewish group is bringing back a lawsuit, that failed for a Catholic Church, to have a publicly-funded religious charter school. The school would be a virtual one.

The resulting case could become the next major test of whether the Constitution permitsgovernment funding to establish religious charter schools. It would resolve a question the Supreme Court failed to decide when it deadlocked 4-4 last spring in the Catholic case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, reportedly because of her longstanding personal and professional ties to a Notre Dame law professor who had advised the petitioner in its early stages.

The group’s legal team — led by Becket, a prominent nonprofit religious-liberty law firm — is preparing for the state board to reject the application, setting the stage for a federal lawsuit and, potentially, a precedent-setting ruling at the Supreme Court.

Oklahoma has fewer than 9,000 Jewish citizens. 

One of the most prominent opponents of public funding for religious education is Rachel Laser, a former leader in Reform Judaism who now heads Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She argues that efforts to erode church-state deportation ultimately serve to advance the domination of Christianity in government. 

“As a Jew and the leader of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I feel obligated to point out that such a case would be using Jews to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda that is not ultimately in Jews’ best interest,” Laser said.

“Despite their loss earlier this year in the U.S. Supreme Court, religious extremists once again are trying to undermine our country’s promise of church-state separation by forcing Oklahoma taxpayers to fund a religious public school. Not on our watch,” Laser, the president of Americans United, said in a statement.

Have you heard about this latest curriculum model that is spreading throughout the country? It's "classical education" and it started in private and charter schools.

Families in Miami-Dade seem increasingly interested in having their children study the classics — think Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 

As classical education charter schools like True North move into communities, amassing waitlists of potential students, Miami-Dade County Public Schools has decided to gradually implement a classical curriculum at a district-run neighborhood school. 

“We have to be very competitive. We are in a world of choice,” said Miami-Dade schools superintendent Jose Dotres, who said he was inspired to take this new approach after touring True North.

The curriculum focuses on “exploring the ideas that shaped Western Civilization,” according to the school website, with an emphasis on grammar, dialectics and rhetoric. Lessons often connect across multiple subjects, so students can see how ideas fit together. The classical academy is advertised to parents as “Timeless Education for a Modern World,” and the school website offers tours for interested families.

The Florida Department of Education now offers a Classical Education Teaching Certificate, and a test known as the Classical Learning Test offers an alternative to the SAT and ACT. Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill requiring state schools to accept the CLT as an alternative college entrance exam. Private classical education schools that center their curriculum around the Bible are popping up all around the state, while classical charter school companies focused on civics are gaining steam.

The Florida Department of Education now offers a Classical Education Teaching Certificate, and a test known as the Classical Learning Test offers an alternative to the SAT and ACT. Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill requiring state schools to accept the CLT as an alternative college entrance exam. Private classical education schools that center their curriculum around the Bible are popping up all around the state, while classical charter school companies focused on civics are gaining steam.