Seattle Schools Community Forum

Tomorrow, Friday, April 1st.  Ironic because it's April Fools' Day (but who will be laughing?) Ironic that yesterday when Governor was signing the education opportunity bill to support more underserved students - he dubbed it the Student Sunshine bill, to try to wipe out the gray of decades and decades of injustice - it was at Aki Kurose Middle School.  (That selection of school was not random; Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos of the 37th picked it.) It's ironic because Aki Kurose was considered - just several years back - to be a "failing" school but now is a "growth" school with a steady rise over several years in test scores.  As well, they have falling discipline rates.  And, their principal, Mia Williams , was just named Middle School Principal of the Year for Washington State.   All these things that charters claim just aren't happening in public schools and yet, there you go. And think of what Ms. Williams and her staff could do with fully-fu...

 Update: from the tell-it-like-it-is pages of The Stranger, their view on the current charter school situation in Washington State. end of update. The Governor sounded more annoyed than upset at last night's press conference.  Basically, he asked why the legislature couldn't get its most basic duty done which was to produce the session's Supplemental Budget. Sure, they had hours of time to discuss charter schools and transgendered restrooms but fully-funding schools via the McCleary decision? Nah. The budget?  Ditto. So the Governor held true to his word when he said no budget and he would be vetoing bills and he vetoed 27 bills and signed 10 (most of them about public safety.)  None of them were the charter school bill which got to his desk late.  From Washington's Paramount Duty's Summer Stinson: The legislation can override each veto with 2/3 vote. Or legislature can reintroduce each bill. Bills sent to governor's desk within past five days ...

Update: Please call Governor Inslee and tell him he needs to veto this bill for two reasons.  The legislature did not get any real work done on McCleary and the bill will likely not pass muster with the courts (and does he want even more families to go thru what happened to charter families this year?) 360-902-4111 @GovInslee E-mail  end of update

Washington State Dems have one thing that we don't like to talk about - that's the state of public education.  It is a schism within the party that everyone knows about, snipes about but no one seems to want to find a way forward. While charters have seemingly dominated the conversation for months, McCleary full-funding for our schools has been assigned the "kick me" sign.  (The other big story? Pre-K.  We'll have to have a conversation about that.) On one side you have the big money people - League of Education Voters, Stand for Children, Washington State Charter Schools Association, DFER Washington, CRPE - all fixated on charter schools. And strangely silent on full funding for our schools.  What is means is that Governor Inslee may be in a very tight spot in a day or so.  He has consistently been against charter schools and yet, been quite coy lately on his stand.  It could come back to haunt him in this election year. On the other side, today I ...

Update 2: I did forget one key thing. From the get go, the former charter schools wanted reimbursement from the State from their costs, from Sep. 4, 2015, to run their schools if a new charter law came thru.  I found this fairly interesting given that the Court ruled the law unconstitutional and just because the legislature could find a financial fix, it didn't seem to me that the State owed them money. I cannot tell if this is still valid in this bill. 

From Cascadia Weekly : YOU HAD ONE JOB: With fewer than 20 days left in their short legislative session, a nearly paralyzed state House and Senate in Olympia passed watered-down education funding plans on razor-thin margins divided along extremely partisan lines hours before a cutoff deadline that would have stalled the bills in their houses of origin.

The Washington Policy Center had a whole article about how swell charter schools are doing, both in enrollment and outcomes. Over and over, charter supporters say there is "evidence" that students in former charter schools are doing better but they have given NO definitive, verifiable evidence. There are no baseline scores to say where the kids were before they came into the former charters and no explanation of what kinds of assessments were done (what? two months into school?) to show progress. What I DID find was the following about charter schools in Washington State.