Seattle Schools Community Forum

 From today's Seattle Times: As a seventh grader at Hazel Wolf K-8 in Northeast Seattle, Maxwell Adams didn’t have a laptop or a cellphone at school.   During science class, he sometimes looked at his classmate’s screen if he needed to see a problem in color, because the black-and-white printout his teacher gave him wasn’t sufficient. In history class, when assigned to create a PowerPoint presentation, he made a poster board instead. At lunch, he played football or basketball while some of his peers played computer games. Maxwell’s parents opted him out of technology at school — including state standardized testing, which is administered on computers. They are OK with him taking an incomplete if his teachers can’t manage to provide an activity in physical form. Grades are less important, they say, than retaining Maxwell’s ability to focus, shielding him from harmful content and protecting his privacy. His parents also don’t want him unsupervised on a device for hours per day,...

 Via the Department of Licensing for Washington State: A new Department of Licensing (DOL) mandatory training for younger drivers in Washington state aims to reduce collisions with emergency and first responders on the roadside. Starting Nov. 1, 2026, first-time driver license applicants under the age of 25 must pass an online course for work zone and first responder safety to get their license. The free course will be available to everyone starting Sept. 1. The new training is part of a larger effort to improve driving habits among younger drivers who typically experience more serious crashes than other age groups. The program also builds on previous DOL efforts to improve work zone traffic safety . Also: In the years ahead, younger drivers should expect the following changes: Starting Jan. 1, 2027, applicants age 18 — those born in 2009 or after — will be required to complete driver education. A new age group will be phased in each year after that until 2030. Applicants under a...

The biggest story is this one from KUOW: Seattle Public Schools audits HR department after complaints of a broken system Seattle Public Schools plans to begin an audit of their human resource practices. The step follows a pledge from SPS Superintendent Ben Shuldiner to reexamine how the district responds when teachers are accused of harassment or sexual abuse. In June, a request for proposals for a human resources internal audit was posted on Bid Locker, a submission platform used by universities and government agencies. Documents shared online lay out the scope and scale of the audit. Among the list of objectives is determining if investigations are conducted in a timely manner, and if "outcomes" are consistently applied. Other preliminary objectives outline assessing best practices with recruiting, hiring, promotion, and separation requirements. A scoring sheet for agencies that submitted bids ranks proposals from 13 different groups. Several are located in Washington stat...

Well, if there WAS one for the economics of Seattle Public Schools, he would win hands down. In his latest analysis of the SPS budget, it is again quite weedy and detailed. This is a very good thing and I hope senior management give it a good look. It's called: Cracking the Budget #2: The Central Office Grew.  Cutting It Helps But It Won’t Save Us His topline finding: SPS added 269 district-office FTE since 2014 — but strip out the recodes and restricted funding and only about 48 FTE are worth examining, worth $7.8M–$13.4M against a $23.7M deficit.   A recurring question in every budget conversation is whether the central office grew, by how much, and whether cutting it back would fix the deficit. This article digs into the state’s S-275 personnel data to answer that question with actual numbers. This is the second post in the Cracking the Budget series. (First was Chronic Underspend ). Summary In 2014, SPS served almost exactly the same number of students as it does today — a...

Update: I knew a new Legal counsel was coming. It appears it is Anita Khandelwal. She got her law degree from Yale. She is a former public defender (I'm impressed) and also worked as the director at King County Public Defense. She joined Pacifica Law Group (a very high-powered local law office) in Jan 2025. Interestingly she became partner there in one year. She has not updated her Linked In page for this move to SPS.  A highly experienced lawyer for SPS is great news.  Eric Guerci is also leaving but he was some kind of family hire. A position was created for him (which was not needed). Maybe Shuldiner noticed that Guerci was not useful and so streamlined Communications.  End of update There are two big stories locally. One is this discussion on Reddit: The superintendent is certainly shaking things up.   I just received word that Dr. Sarah Pritchett, the superintendent of human resources, has been placed on administrative leave. She was escorted out of the district...

 A worthy effort from the Editorial Board of The Seattle Times yesterday,  A high-stakes test for Seattle schools’ new boss: contract talks with teachers The Seattle School Board could not be any clearer: Current negotiations with the teachers union must finish with a contract that ensures the financial stability of Seattle Public Schools. That has not been the case in the past. So, this time, the school board put it in writing. SPS is mired in “a significant structural deficit,” its seven members said in a  resolution  approved unanimously last month. It directs Superintendent Ben Shuldiner to “address and eliminate” this problem. The Times is right; the Board is clear in this resolution (partial): NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board directs the Superintendent to continue to engage in collective bargaining in good faith and in a manner that reflects mutual respect, transparency, and a collaborative approach with the District’s labor partners; and BE IT FU...