tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post497751955301176330..comments2024-03-28T23:38:22.511-07:00Comments on Seattle Schools Community Forum: SPS News Roundup ( the 6.3% Claim)Melissa Westbrookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17179994245880629080noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-36497618330396499682011-05-31T10:39:10.407-07:002011-05-31T10:39:10.407-07:00Maybe next time I'll post with a handle ... th...Maybe next time I'll post with a handle ... the wheels of justice grind slowly but I have to give them a chance to work. Filed a complaint on 5/4.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-34047050379615261772011-05-25T18:42:13.492-07:002011-05-25T18:42:13.492-07:00Really?
"...the same for all students, more ...Really?<br /><br />"...the same for all students, more or less,"<br /><br />You think education in this country, public, charter, private, is more or less the same.<br /><br />I have to disagree.Melissa Westbrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12588239576000641336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-26936693855208678962011-05-25T13:23:37.350-07:002011-05-25T13:23:37.350-07:00Anonymous, post that with a name. Good thoughts b...Anonymous, post that with a name. Good thoughts but give yourself a handle.Melissa Westbrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12588239576000641336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-17880076460604194102011-05-25T12:10:42.584-07:002011-05-25T12:10:42.584-07:00How interesting ... I'm not a conspiracy theor...How interesting ... I'm not a conspiracy theorist, BUT UAI/ANEA (Urban ... Alliance) not related to "The Alliance" - reached out to partner with and even tried many times to book that High Point facility to no avail. Then to find this meeting was hidden out in social media pages and happened in MY neighborhood kind of weirds me out.<br /><br />As to your question "How hard is it to create a parent committee?" Let me tell you, according to the district it is very hard, and it is likely that there will be a THIRD year in a row dealing with this funding issue because of it. <br /><br />NO ONE attending parent committee meetings for that program is a parent who doesn't also happen to be a district employee. All the other parents have thrown up their hands in frustration and walked away. The district claims its all legal, but I would also call that an ethical lapse as well, wouldn't you?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-44651961180257334392011-05-25T07:32:51.409-07:002011-05-25T07:32:51.409-07:00Uh, let me guess. It's election time? And Sun...Uh, let me guess. It's election time? And Sundquist is getting nervous.mirmac1https://www.blogger.com/profile/10183460709639638172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-83969784770092487422011-05-24T23:24:29.764-07:002011-05-24T23:24:29.764-07:00Also from the Enfield meeting (from the West Seatt...Also from the Enfield meeting (from the West Seattle Blog), confirming Metro passes next year for Denny kids INSIDE the walk-zone:<br /><br />"Though an invitation was extended to anyone in West Seattle with public-school questions and concerns, the bulk of the discussion involved issues unique to High Point, including transportation to Denny International Middle School, whose principal Jeff Clark was also among those on hand. Though Denny students in HP are technically inside the walk zone, it was noted that they will be provided with transit passes."<br /><br />----<br />Has anyone heard the reason behind this new bussing expense which is contrary to the NSAP/Transportatioon plan, and not offered to other Seattle Middle School students inside walk zones, in a time where every dollar counts?SPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12726295210572942506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-28434579668671249222011-05-24T23:15:13.260-07:002011-05-24T23:15:13.260-07:00Melissa,
I guess my point was that education is a ...Melissa,<br />I guess my point was that education is a service that is the same for all students, more or less, unlike health care. Kids need to learn reading, math, etc. and standards and norms are available. Students at private schools learn similar skills as public school students. Health care is based on the needs of the person and varies greatly. Do voucher schemes undermine public education or make it stronger or no effect? One could say that we are hostage to this mismanaged district because we have no choice unless we are able to move or pay for private. You and many others struggle valiantly to gain some level of control over the district and I thank and respect you for that, but it seems a better system is possible. <br /><br />Not too discouragedConfusednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-21901877279712940332011-05-24T22:38:18.124-07:002011-05-24T22:38:18.124-07:00Kathy - good question, but no, those are all fully...Kathy - good question, but no, those are all fully loaded costs and include benefits. <br /><br />There are expenses that are legitimate teaching expenses but don't appear as part of school budgets (staff on leave, subs) but I still think there's an awful lot of dissonance between the total for school budgets and the total for the Teaching expense segment.Meghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12795753563127975720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-82274378022204516282011-05-24T21:08:32.272-07:002011-05-24T21:08:32.272-07:00Hey, on the WS blog video I think I saw the elusiv...Hey, on the WS blog video I think I saw the elusive Cordell Carter!mirmac1https://www.blogger.com/profile/10183460709639638172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-20102618733832943392011-05-24T19:47:39.825-07:002011-05-24T19:47:39.825-07:00Meg,
Could the difference be related to benefits ...Meg,<br /><br />Could the difference be related to benefits such as health insurance?Kathynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-78079706977027711592011-05-24T19:00:45.571-07:002011-05-24T19:00:45.571-07:00"Forgive my ignorance, but why would there be..."Forgive my ignorance, but why would there be a legal assitant from the General Counsel's office assigned to "teaching" budget?"<br /><br />The legal assistant who handles all of the special education issues is my guess. <br /><br />TICAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-51253016256776727502011-05-24T18:12:24.077-07:002011-05-24T18:12:24.077-07:00"School can be standardized and delivered by ..."School can be standardized and delivered by the private sector quite well, as our flourishing private school sector shows, but maybe we need to be open to alternatives."<br /><br />What? How do a myriad of private schools have standardized teaching? I don't see this point.Melissa Westbrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12588239576000641336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-62848375929798764982011-05-24T17:15:58.052-07:002011-05-24T17:15:58.052-07:00Thank you all for the explainer. I was being sarca...Thank you all for the explainer. I was being sarcastic about the "evil cabal", but sometimes it does sound a little conspiratorial here. I agree about Gates using his money in an undemocratic fashion. He has been criticized for this with his agricultural work as well. Hooking people into chemical agriculture and mechanized farming thereby reducing their sustainability. If the money comes to the district with strings attached, I suppose they should make sure that the elected board approves it or else reject it. Are tests excessive and harmful? I agree they need to be used carefully and perhaps teachers don't use them well, but if they identify kids having trouble or who are not being challenged, that sounds good. Privatization of schools is not like health care. School can be standardized and delivered by the private sector quite well, as our flourishing private school sector shows, but maybe we need to be open to alternatives. I believe France and other Euro countries will subsidize private school and they also provide decent public instruction. In fact that is how their health care works, a blend of subsidized private care and public health. <br />I've always felt hat our system is so decentralized on a national level that it creates disfunction in many local areas and, yes, there are groups with their own agenda or profit motivation ready to swoop. <br /><br />I appreciate this forum to get answers and help understanding the issues.<br /><br />Need more help laterConfused aboutnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-87360190159714303552011-05-24T16:47:05.761-07:002011-05-24T16:47:05.761-07:00Meg & Melissa -
every day, at every school, ...Meg & Melissa - <br /><br />every day, at every school, during every period, attendance is taken. <br /><br />attendance is taken electronically and it is taken by certified teachers. <br /><br />so you need student count by period by teacher -<br /><br />what is the distribution of that student count by teacher? <br /><br />if you order by student count and by teacher, you get all the teachers with 1 or 3 students ... <br /><br />maybe you want to add the teacher's endorsement, or, maybe you want to add what exactly the class is - obviously SPED teachers won't have many kids. <br /><br />my real point is that very rudimentary use of the attendance system (which many parents know is called "esis") results in 1 being able to figure out how many teachers actually have kids with them in a day or a set of days or a week ...<br /><br />I have a hunch that the data driven decision making makers have NO interest in this data, because it would show pretty clearly who is in fact a teacher and who is hiding in teacher land pay category.<br /><br />Data For Dum-ezAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-23792409986134579392011-05-24T15:11:38.296-07:002011-05-24T15:11:38.296-07:00The CIO's salary is funded out of capital and ...The CIO's salary is funded out of capital <em>and</em> operating - about $90K from operating (and I think total comp, including benefits, comes in at around $180K). I don't know why the funding is mixed, but given that IT is, in many respects, a mix of capital and operating issues, it seems legit. <br /><br />I don't know all the pockets that administration has been tucked away in. Some things that smell off may turn out to be perfectly reasonable. Some, though, may not. A legal assistant budgeted in teaching seems like a good thing to ask a few questions about. I would guess that there are host of little expenses like a legal assistant budgeted to teaching - under $100K total per line item, but adding up to substantive amounts. I have not gone through the line item budget with a fine-toothed comb, so that's speculation on my part.Meghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12795753563127975720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-12693791792405957202011-05-24T14:40:18.276-07:002011-05-24T14:40:18.276-07:00Forgive my ignorance, but why would there be a leg...Forgive my ignorance, but why would there be a legal assitant from the General Counsel's office assigned to "teaching" budget?someonenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-75098574944449358222011-05-24T14:20:30.347-07:002011-05-24T14:20:30.347-07:00Great stuff, Meg but one question: isn't the ...Great stuff, Meg but one question: isn't the CIO funded out of BTA/BEX? I remember asking Ratchford about that and he said yup, his salary comes from there. <br /><br />Meg, whether you do or not, I'm sending this to the Board. THEY need to be asking these questions.Melissa Westbrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12588239576000641336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-23302015892581338242011-05-24T14:14:55.246-07:002011-05-24T14:14:55.246-07:00Excellent analysis, Meg. Thanks for doing it. I ...Excellent analysis, Meg. Thanks for doing it. I know the board has not listened in the past, but have you sent your thoughts to them anyway? Seems like it is worth another try.<br /><br />I do wonder about the amount of central staff in the budget. The core purpose of central should be capacity planning, especially expanding successful programs and reworking unsuccessful ones. But central appears to contain a lot of staff devoted to curriculum alignment and teacher support, money which teachers, parents, and students probably would prefer be spent on more teachers, especially in this time of tight budgets.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-63025266661133878002011-05-24T14:00:13.626-07:002011-05-24T14:00:13.626-07:00@Meg - fascinating - where you suppose those "...@Meg - fascinating - where you suppose those "missing" dollars actually are? Man there are just so many games being played at so many levels - you can't help but wonder if ANYONE really knows what the heck is going on with that budget - geeeez!someonenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-45777718456332251262011-05-24T13:13:43.256-07:002011-05-24T13:13:43.256-07:00Regarding the LEV event. This should be counted a...Regarding the LEV event. This should be counted as an in-kind contribution to the Steve Sundquist campaign for re-election. Like he gives a shit about parents in WS. Oops, only at election time.<br /><br />http://westseattleblog.com/2011/05/video-seattle-public-schools-new-leader-in-high-point<br /><br />WV: The Tool is shmobin the voters<br /><br />grumpyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-73220598464651147722011-05-24T12:49:18.292-07:002011-05-24T12:49:18.292-07:00In the FY11 budget, the Teaching budget is $359M. ...In the FY11 budget, the Teaching budget is $359M. <br /><br />But if you look at the FY11 line item budget and totted up the budget for every school in the district, the total for all schools comes to about $295M, over $60M <em>under</em> what the district claims it spends on Teaching. <br /><br />Which is… <em>weird</em>. <br /><br />The sum of what’s being spent in schools should come to <em>more</em> than just Teaching, since school budgets, in addition to carrying pretty much all teaching, includes principals’ offices (another $33M), and many expenses from the categories of Other Support and Teaching Support.<br /><br />That’s a lot of dissonance, to have the sum of all school budgets come to less than Teaching. What it looks like to me is that many expenditures that belong in Central Administration are budgeted elsewhere (Teaching, Teaching Support, Other Support, Unit Administration). A quick look at the line item budget turned up the following groups that probably belong in Central Administration:<br /><br />Professional development coaches. In late 2009, SPS reclassified all PD coaches from Central Administration to Teaching. This might have been a legit move for the coaches who were part of school faculties, but seems absurd for the coaches who do not have a school assignment (there are about 42 who don’t – let’s play nice and assume half of them have a multi-school assignment and therefore aren’t administration, but that still leaves us with 21 who are really administrators). Add around $2M to Central Admin.<br /><br />IT administration. SPS’s CIO, a top district administrator, and several managers in his organization are billed to Other Support (and the capital fund). While much of IT should be legitimately billed to Other Support, since it’s a district-wide expense, the management of it is an administrative expense and should be billed as such. Add around $1M to Central Admin.<br /><br />Consulting teachers for SpEd and Advanced Learning are billed to teaching. Do they teach students? Uh, no. Consulting teachers are administrators. Add about $1.4M to Central Admin.<br /><br />About $800K of the enrollment services budget is billed to teaching support. Really? Explain to me the support that enrollment provides to teaching, dudes.<br /><br />So, with hardly any looking at all, I have about $5M that should probably be in Central Administration… which adds not quite a full percentage point. But I turned that all up only looking at a few of things. There are smaller potato items (grants manager billed to teaching, a program manager billed to principals’ office, etc) that I suspect may really add up.<br /><br />Overall, I think there’s at least $10M of Central Administration expense shoved into other expense segments. That’s make 6.7% closer to 8-9%. Which would mean SPS might have shrunk its administrative burden some, but not by a lot.Meghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12795753563127975720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-29895950701780948482011-05-24T12:11:38.791-07:002011-05-24T12:11:38.791-07:00Bird, I'll pick a fight with Bill Gates any da...Bird, I'll pick a fight with Bill Gates any day of the week. (Well, it wouldn't be a fight but probably a spirited discussion.)Melissa Westbrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12588239576000641336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-67809720641690991042011-05-24T10:53:48.746-07:002011-05-24T10:53:48.746-07:00Evaluating teachers' performance makes sense. ...Evaluating teachers' performance makes sense. Linking it directly and solely to test scores does not. <br /><br />Teachers need to get out in front on these issues and propose things that make sense, instead of throwing stones at every idea that they hate (which is every idea). <br /><br />Unions are a problem, because they are intransigent by nature. They protect the weakest, and every parent who has had a teacher who just should not be teaching becomes anti-union. The response to parents is that we just don't appreciate how wonderful that teacher truly is. All teachers are above average, as Garrison Keillor would say.<br /><br />Fact is, some are great and I bow to them. Truly. Some are atrocious. And most do a good job in a tough profession.<br /><br />It'd be great to reward the awesome ones. But at least, get rid of the lousy ones. Teachers I know point out that you can fire teachers. Fine, but it doesn't happen. They persist, and afflict scores of new kids each year. Wouldn't be tolerated in any other profession.<br /><br />Change is coming. The best change would come from teachers who see the writing on the wall an take the lead in creating a system that evaluates and focuses on improving performance in every teacher, and in firing the ones that are really bad and can't or won't improve.<br /><br />Stop the WhiningAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-9915898291115919292011-05-24T10:36:11.691-07:002011-05-24T10:36:11.691-07:00Need an explainer,
I'd recommend reading Dian...Need an explainer,<br /><br />I'd recommend reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-American-School-System/dp/0465014917" rel="nofollow">Diane Ravitch's book</a>for some context.<br /><br />Is Gates and company an evil cabal? <br /><br />I wouldn't say that.<br /><br />I would say that Gates and his money are everywhere you turn.<br /><br />If you find yourself in a debate where people point to the wide variety of organizations all clamoring for reform, you'll find, generally speaking, that they all have taken Gates or Broad money. It does make the whole reform movement seem rather like a Potemkin village.<br /><br />And, of course, the fact that his money has bought into just about every institution makes it rather hard to combat when you think what they are pushing is a wrong turn.<br /><br />I think that most of what they are pushing is unproven and expensive. It is definitely distracting the district and draining resources from well proven methods, for instance, greater supports for struggling students like summer school. Such methods yield good results, don't enrich a bunch of businesses and non-profits, so, consequently, they don't have a built in lobby advocating for them.<br /><br />I don't want to pick a fight with these organizations, but it's pretty clear that many of them want to pick a fight with me, as they see parents and citizens as a problems to be overcome.<br /><br />It's notable that Paul Hill, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education came out saying that the public reaction to Martin Floe firing "gives a blueprint for resistance," and he didn't mean that in a good way. <br /><br />The head of the Allliance, told the baord, after the removal of the Superintendent because of the Potter scandal, that they should listen to the public less. Remarkable.<br /><br />Endless thanks to Charlie and Melissa for their reporting without which I'd know absolutely none of this.Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16540428343439198125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28765366.post-86029279204554208982011-05-24T10:34:44.482-07:002011-05-24T10:34:44.482-07:00Ed reform is about much more than that.... it come...Ed reform is about much more than that.... it comes from Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics and its about sucking $600B/year out of public education and into private/company pockets...<br /><br />and its about reducing education back to what it was when it started... for the majority of students, giving them only enough skills to be good workers and consumers....<br /><br />Plain and simple....Sahilahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11610179287237833742noreply@blogger.com