Seattle Schools Community Forum

  Update: from the district on Sped this year. A lot of good stuff including regional meetings and revamping the Deaf/Hard of Hearing program (thanks to the huge efforts of School Board candidate, Laura Gramer). However, there was also this gobbly-gook about having "96% of FTE Sped staff positions filled by start of school" and yet they say they have 19 more to fill and hope to have 10 more by the start of school.  And, that last year they had 42 at the start of school. What exactly does that all mean?  They will hire 10 more people by Thursday?  And what's the actual number this year? Also, they mention SEAAC but not the Sped PTSA.  Not good. end of update

My first piece in this series was about how the City and other outside forces seem to be lining up to takeover the district, piece by piece. This thread is about legally mandated programs for students that have been an issue for the district for a very long time, namely, ELL, Special Education and Advanced Learning. I'm not going to go into a dissection of each because I'm not qualified to speak fully on ELL or Sped. (And I'm not looking for another discussion on Advanced Learning.  Please do not go off-topic on this point.) The issue is that our district has consistently either failed to provide services, provided partial service or failed to provide services in a timely manner for all of these programs at one time or another.  This has happened for many years.  The district has been under review for both Special Education services and ELL services by OSPI over the last year.  To be fair, I know that ELL and Special Education services are expensive and it...