Shuldiner: Great News and WTH (What the Heck)

 What have we got on the good side? From his weekly Superintendent's Newsletter, dated September 27th:

- Yesterday, more than 60 high school students came to the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence (JSCEE) to spend their Saturday with me and other district leaders as part of this year's Student and Superintendent Advisory Board. It was awesome.

For an hour we discussed topics that were meaningful to our students. We talked about safety and security and the use and misuse of artificial intelligence, specifically large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. I heard students discuss their desire for more rigorous instruction, and I listened intently around the availability or lack of availability of programs and classes, as well as many other important topics.


- I also want to talk about the "October Shuffle." As many of you know and have experienced, the district has a history of moving teachers from one class to another in October to make up for enrollment imbalances. Over the years, this has prompted teachers to be taken out of classes well into the semester, causing students to start over with a new teacher and sometimes even be combined into other classes.

Clearly, this is not good for either our students or staff. This is why last school year we made such a concerted effort to not only get through our open enrollment, waitlists, and transfers as soon as possible, but also do a very diligent and thorough June adjustment, with a series of mitigations, so that we could get the most accurate staffing possible and, if we needed to move educators, do it over the summer rather than during the school year.

Well, I am happy to report that this hard work has paid off. For our "September Shuffle" (yes, we are moving even quicker), we are only removing 3 General Education FTE (full-time equivalent) classroom teachers from their current classroom, and we are adding 4.8 FTE for a total net change of only +1.8 FTE.

For Special Education, we are adding 2.5 FTE certificated staff and removing 1 FTE, and we are adding 3 FTE Multilingual certificated staff during the "September Shuffle."

I do want to be clear that these numbers are much more dynamic. We do staff adjustments every two weeks for Special Education because IEPs and individual needs can change so rapidly. But the large-scale balancing is now finished.


- Seattle Public Schools invites students, families, staff, and community members to participate in the first Superintendent Community Engagement Meeting of the 2026-27 school year on Tuesday, Sept. 29, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Thornton Creek Elementary School. These meetings provide an opportunity for community members to share feedback directly with district leadership on issues that matter most to SPS schools and students.

The Sept. 29 meeting will focus on three topics identified as priorities through last year's engagement process: academic rigor, school design, including neighborhood schools, option schools, dual language programs, and Highly Capable services, and school safety and security. Feedback gathered during these discussions will help inform future conversations and district planning.



- Beginning Jan. 4, 2027, Seattle Public Schools will transition away from the current one-to-one iPad model in kindergarten through second grade and move to a classroom-based approach to technology access. The change reflects the district's commitment to developmentally appropriate learning experiences for its youngest students. (editor's note - more on this in a separate post)

And then there is this on the bad side:






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