Public Education News Roundup - July 11,2026
The band brings together students from schools throughout the greater Seattle area to entertain in upwards of 20 parades and community celebrations each summer. Its energetic performances and choreography have garnered hundreds of first-place and sweepstakes awards and entertained audiences throughout the Puget Sound region as well as in British Columbia, California, Hawaii, and Washington D.COM.The All-City Marching Band is under the direction of Dr. Marcus Pimpleton, who is in his 33rd year with the band and his 23rd year as director.
From the West Seattle Blog:
The Seattle Schools All-City Marching Band is a signature sight and sound of summer. And this year the All-City Band celebrates its 75th anniversary! You’ll of course see them in the West Seattle Grand Parade on July 18.
The band also invites alumni to perform with them in the Chinatown Parade on July 19 and in West Seattle at this year’s Band Jam, which is also free to spectators, 6 pm Friday, July 24, at Nino Cantu Southwest Athletic Complex (2801 SW Thistle).
The Block Party drew a remarkable—and diverse—array of civic leaders, including School Board directors; Seattle City Councilmembers; Deputy Mayor for the City of Seattle Brian Surratt; and the Director of the Department of Education and Early Learning, Dr. Dwayne Chappelle. Also joining? Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, who seems to be everywhere these days.
Throughout the evening, parents and community members inquired about topics like school safety, school repairs, and technology. One woman introduced herself as a mom from “the badly-in-need-of-repairs Washington Middle School,” for example.There was one issue everyone agreed on: when asked about the recent change in Seattle Public Schools’ smartphone policy, the answer was unanimously positive.
In a call with disability rights advocates Thursday, officials from the U.S. Department of Education tried to ease concerns about plans to move the agency's special education offices to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The effort seemed to fail.
"Today's briefing left more questions than answers for parents and educators," says Chad Rummel, who leads the Council for Exceptional Children, and was one of many disability advocates who attended the call. "Today we heard that there is no clear and transparent plan around the move to HHS."
Acting Assistant Secretary Kelly Rogers said:
"The U.S. Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA. Period."
Yet Rogers also said in the same breath that staff at the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) — many of the people actually responsible for supporting states and schools in implementing IDEA — would be moving to HHS. She said she would continue to oversee that staff from her perch at the Education Department "with additional support by HHS."
Rogers did not share a specific timeline for these changes to take effect.
"The concern is not that IDEA disappears overnight. The concern is that the administration is preserving IDEA at the Department of Education on paper, while moving much of the work that makes IDEA real for families somewhere else," said Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. "For students, that could mean more confusion, slower guidance, weaker monitoring and less accountability when services are delayed or denied."
Here's a head shaker:
Newhouse, from the Education Department, denied that the changes would affect how staff do their jobs. "A different building, a different floor, or a different desk doesn't change their job responsibilities and commitment to serve students with disabilities every single day."
So why move anything then? Did they run out of room in the building that the Department of Education is in? Hmmm
Additionally, the work for supporting the civil rights of students is being moved to the DOJ. And we all know how objective they are.
SPS asked city’s homelessness team for help. The solution is illegal
Last summer, a Seattle Public Schools official emailed the city team that responds to homeless encampments about a revolving cast of people in RVs and tents that lined the street leading to the district’s Sodo headquarters.He said the RVs and homeless people forced staff and families to walk by scenes of drug use and panhandling and returned no matter how often the city’s Unified Care Team targeted the area to be cleared. Ted Howard, the schools’ accountability officer, asked for “lasting solutions.”Emails obtained by The Seattle Times show they landed on a popular one in Sodo: large rectangular concrete barriers, often called ecology blocks or eco-blocks. Private businesses and residents have installed them throughout the industrial district to take up parking spaces and right-of-ways used by people living in RVs.
But the ones installed by the district are illegal.
Apparently, only the Seattle Department of Transportation can do the permitting for these eco-blocks and SPS did not get a permit.
The school district, under the guidance of the Unified Care Team, used public money to buy and place them anyway, in violation of city law. The total project cost the school system $26,400, the district said.A spokesperson said the department was reaching out to the school district to understand its role in the eco-blocks after The Seattle Times asked about the emails. The enforcement process would start with a warning.A spokesperson for the school district said it placed the eco-blocks following the advice of the city’s Unified Care Team and would follow the city’s advice about removing them.
The article says that SPS was concerned about RV parking near schools but also at headquarters.
“Each time families and staff are greeted by scenes of panhandling, open drug use, yelling, and instability, it communicates, intentionally or not, that the area is unsafe, and by extension, that our schools and city are not doing enough,” Howard, the school official, said.
Seattle Schools appealed the results of a trial that ended up with a loss to them at the cost of an $8M award (not to mention lawyer fees). From The Seattle Times:
A King County Superior Court judge on Tuesday denied Seattle Public Schools’ request for a new trial in a case involving a former math teacher who hit a student and threw him out of a middle-school classroom in 2018.
The district sought a new trial after an $8 million verdict Nov. 6, arguing, in part, the jury had been improperly instructed and had relied on the former student’s attorneys’ emotional appeals.
Judge Sean P. O’Donnell addressed those and other arguments in December but kept open a misconduct allegation a juror made against the foreman, a former trial lawyer with experience in discrimination cases.
O’Donnell ruled Tuesday the evidence did not support granting a new trial nor did it support the contention that the foreman used his background to influence the jury.
In answering the jury questionnaire, the foreman gave information that was accurate, including where he’d worked and that he had a graduate degree, according to O’Donnell’s order. The district’s lawyers did not follow up to clarify, the judge wrote.
On whether the foreman used his experience to influence the jury, O’Donnell said Tuesday jurors had mixed responses. But “the majority was clear that this was not the Presiding Juror’s motive or that their verdict was a result of this alleged misconduct,” O’Donnell wrote.
Another local education non-profit bites the dust - this time it's CCER (Community Center for Education Results). This was the non-profit group that had the Road Map Project. It started in 2010 to great acclaim and expectations.
The Road Map Project is a community-wide effort aimed at improving education to drive dramatic improvement in student achievement from cradle to college and career in South King County and South Seattle.
The project builds off of the belief that collective effort is necessary to make large-scale change and has created a common goal and shared vision in order to facilitate coordinated action, both inside and outside school.
They had several sources of real money to try to see successes but achieved only minor ones.
CCER says:
As part of this transition, South Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC) will continue on by owning the methodology and codebook that are critical to any community-driven data system. With SESEC’s leadership, we ensure this important work remains rooted in community collaboration, advocacy, and collective action. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed to SESEC's future growth and are confident it will continue to serve as a powerful partner in advancing educational opportunity and equity for young people and families.
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