Seattle Schools Community Forum

A very nifty flowchart from our friends at the Seattle Education blog (Sue Peters and Dora Taylor) showing the "lines of influence" both nationally and locally.  They created this awhile back and admit it needs updating like the line between Gates and the Alliance, that Goodloe-Johnson is gone, and there are even more connections than ever in 2013.

Monday, Feb. 25th Open Enrollment starts today and ends on March 8th.  Info on enrollment. Wednesday, Feb 27th Oversight Work Session :  Technology Services - 4 pm - 5ish Work Session: Budget - 5:30- 6:30 pm Saturday, March 2nd Board Retreat - no details available about where or when.   A few words on the retreats.  The Alliance for Education has been gracious enough to sponsor Board retreats, probably for the last several years.  Usually this has been in the form of finding a site (although I don't know why they pay for an off-site rather than using one of the many SPS sites for free), food, printing, etc. However, at the last Board retreat, the Alliance staffer sat at the table, with the Superintendent and the Board.  This was not the norm.  She then gave input during the discussion.  I was completely dumbfounded as this retreat is for the Board, the Superintendent and the staff.  I asked the facilitator (also paid for by t...

It's a doozy . The first head of the Alliance, Sue Tupper (who coincidentally ran the No on 1240 campaign for the WEA), said this: "When the organization started, there was great sensitivity to needing to take the cues from the school district, rather than coming up with an agenda and then imposing that agenda on the school district," Tupper said. Exactly.

I couldn't stay long (darn cold) but I did make some remarks and heard other interesting remarks. First up was Wayne Barnett of the City Ethics department who gave a concise and lively wrap-up of what has been happening with this joint ethics venture between the City and the district.  This is a mid-term report as they are in the middle of the 3-year process. He said that everyone at JSCEE had been given the ethics training as had all the principals. In terms of advice, as of now about 80% of the contacts had been via phone or e-mail.  He said they have slightly less active than at the City level but that is to be expected (given the relative sizes of each). Investigations.  He stated they received their 100th call this week.  He said about a quarter of all calls had launched investigations.  He said about 60% of those calls did not fall under their jurisdiction but that the City had been pleased to act as a liaison between the district and the callers t...

A few updates: One - with less than 8,000 votes to count statewide, I-1240 appears to have passed .  (I'm sure it's true but I'm not the Secretary of State and in a position to officially call it.)  The margin appears to be 1.36% of the vote which is just under 41,000 votes.  A win for sure but certainly no mandate.  Two - Thanks to SPS Leaks for some very illuminating reading.  To whit: Lynne Varner gets it wrong in an Times editorial and SPS gently points this out to her.  I note that Varner says "sources" told her certain things about the departure of Superintendent Enfield.  So, as you see, journalists have sources and they don't reveal them (and sometimes not even by the order of a court) and that's how it goes.  (I, of course, still contend that I am not a journalist but I have sources.  I do get my hand slapped occasionally by readers demanding to know my source.  Not revealing them is how you keep your sources.) Thre...

" On a mission to ensure every child in Seattle Public Schools is prepared for success in college, career and life ." That's what is says at the top of the Alliance for Education home page . With that mission, the Alliance has no business with anything outside Seattle Public Schools. This includes private schools, schools in other districts, and, of course, any charter schools should they appear. That mission statement is repeated on the web page for their Strategic Plan . C'mon. You had to know that they would have a strategic plan , didn't you? I suggest you read it. It is an illuminating document. This tells what the Alliance sees when it looks at itself in the mirror. It may be a different vision of what you and I see when we look at the Alliance.

twere evenAs a reminder, Director Carr and Director DeBell have community meetings tomorrow morning (see Seattle Schools This Week thread for details). Also the district is having an event, co-sponsored with WSU on Sunday, the 19th at Garfield from noon-4:30 p.m.  Imagine U @ College! is a unique program that educates people on the benefits of a college education, how to apply for admission and pay tuition, and how to be successful in college. For the first time, WSU is partnering with Seattle Public Schools to make the program available to all students and families in the District. The program is free and lunch will be provided to the first 500 attendees.   A second Seattle Imagine U @ College! Program will take place the following day, Nov. 19, at Garfield High School. This one will provide similar workshops for all Garfield High School students. This program includes a family night at Garfield beginning at 6 p.m. or more information about I...

The Our Schools Coalition, an Alliance for Education project funded by the Gates Foundation, wants to kibbitz once again on the negotiation between the teachers' union (SEA) and the District as they wrestle over the collective bargaining agreement. And they want you to tell them what they should agitate for. Provide your input here . Just in case you question the propriety of their kibbitzing in the process, they have this blog post to justify it. Only that blog post doesn't give any reason that we need Our Schools Coalition to serve as the voice of the community in addition to the democratically elected board which has the duty to serve as the voice of the community to relay our priorities to the negotiators.

I have heard rumblings about this program and this press release does little to assuage them.  The Alliance for Education, Seattle Public Schools, and the University of Washington College of Education on Oct. 24 announced the addition of the Seattle Education Association as the fourth partner in launching the Seattle Teacher Residency.  Urban Teacher Residency United, ( http://www.utrunited.org/ ), based in Chicago, is the national network of the highest-performing residency programs. UTRU Executive Director Anissa Listak said, “This is the first time we’ve seen a residency launch with this set of players at the table. It bodes very well for the success and efficacy of the initiative.”  My first question is - why is the Alliance for Education involved?  This is NOT their area of expertise at all.  I have to wonder about their growing role in SPS which I find troubling.   Urban teacher residency programs, pioneered over the last decade in B...

I'm confounded by the Alliance for Education. I don't know what it is anymore. At one time the Alliance was all about fundraising for Seattle Public Schools. It raised money for the District through it's own events and promotional activities and it acted as fiscal agent for school-related causes. That's it. No politics, no policy, just raised money for the District.

This week, Orlando, FL is hosting the U.S Conference of Mayors.  According to Reuters, "hundreds" of mayors endorsed "parent trigger" laws... "...aimed at bypassing elected school boards and giving parents at the worst public schools the opportunity to band together and force immediate change." Well, it does force change but is it change the only outcome parents create?  Generally so.  The adage "be careful what you wish for" surely applies here to those parents. I called Mayor McGinn's office and they are going to let me know if he voted on this issue and if he did, how he voted.  It will be a great disappointment if he voted yes.   Parent trigger laws are in place in several states including California, Texas and Louisiana and are under consideration in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. So far, though, the concept has never successfully been used to turn around a school. Though it has not yet been shown t...

Here are some recent tweets from the Alliance for Education: Dave Murray  ‏ @ ReporterDMurray "Parent trigger" bill narrowly clears Michigan senate by a 20-18 vote. Parents can petition for charter conversion, turnaround plan. Retweeted by  Alliance 4 Education Educators4Excellence  ‏ @ Ed4Excellence Instead of pitting schools against each other, we should learn from great ones, district or charter. Peter Cipparone:  http://bit.ly/KFR2mn Retweeted by  Alliance 4 Education Maybe it's my bias or some hypersensitivity, but these tweets strike me as a little more than just re-broadcasting news. They strike me as supportive of charter schools. Maybe it's me, but it seems that all of the news about charter schools shared by the Alliance for Education is coming from sources that are favorable to charters. If the members of the Alliance board want to support charters that's their personal business, but the Alliance is supposed to support S...

 Monday, April 30th  Seattle Council PTSA meeting: Navigating SPS: Steps for Positive Advocacy JSCEE from 7-8:30 p.m. Speakers: Ron McGlone, SPS Ombudsman, Adie Simmons, State of Washington Ombudsman, Bernardo Ruiz, SPS manager of Family and Community Engagement Tuesday, May 1 Community Conversations with ELL and Special Education Directors  6-7:30 p.m. at Jane Addams K-8, 11051 34th Ave NE Please join Veronica Gallardo, Director of ELL and International Programs, and Becky Clifford Interim Executive Director for Special Education at one of their upcoming Community Conversation hours. Wednesday, May 2nd Board Work Session on International Education from 4-5:10 p.m. at JSCEE School Board meeting from 6-9 p.m. Agenda .  This is one of the last meetings at 6 p.m. as on June 6th, Board meetings will start at 4:15 p.m. with public testimony at 5 p.m. Announcement of an offer to a superintendent candidate with a final approval - if accepted by the...

Keep in mind here, that I came in late and yet I still hit the wall at two hours.  But not to get ahead of myself. I came in as the Executive Committee was discussing the MOU with the Alliance for Education .  You might recall from the last Executive Committee meeting (Charlie and I were both present) that the Alliance wants to raise its fee to oversee school and ed groups finances from 5% to 7.5%.  This comes out of the General Fund.  Charlie had said he would do it for 5%. This really isn't the main focus of work for the Alliance so why is it such a big deal for them to keep on doing it?   Now the Alliance says that the cap at 5% was not enough.  I'll let them explain it:

Or it seems like they want to be. In the latest batch of public disclosure documents, it appears that Director DeBell did not, as he claims, sit around by himself during the holiday break in December writing up Policy 1620.   He has said that Erinn Bennett, Board Office manager, and Holly Ferguson, SPS Governance, helped him shape it. But he left out that he asked for guidance from both Don McAdams, consultant to the Board (going on 5 years now) and Karen Tollenaar Demorest, Vice President of Programs at the Alliance. Now why them and not say, other duly-elected Board members, is a question only he can answer.

Went to the Alliance for Education breakfast today. It was a packed house despite the fact that there was another breakfast fund-raiser going on for King County Dems and the Mayor was off making a policing announcement.  Yay to the Ingraham band who showed up (and, poor things, had to stay until the end to play us out).  Yay to Maple Elementary's dragon dancers and spoken word performers (but next time, give the kid doing rap the microphone).  Impressions: - kind of subdued, almost like people are weary of talking about education - nice round of applause for Susan Enfield but nothing out of the ordinary despite her departure - Dr. Enfield called the Alliance "Seattle's local education fund".   - Sara Morris of the Alliance said the Alliance was both "a critic and a friend to the district" and "the independent guardian of funds."  She also spoke of Seattle someday becoming the "envy of the nation."  I wonder how we get there if we ...

I filed an Ethics complaint against Director DeBell for his participation in the discussion of the MOU with the Alliance for Education despite the fact that he sits on the Alliance board. The District's Ethics Officer, Mr. Wayne Barnett, dismissed the complaint because Mr. DeBell's service on the board of the Alliance is ex officio . That is, he isn't there as himself but as the president of the school board and therefore there is no conflict of interest because in both capacities his duty of loyalty is to the District. Mr. Barnett also cited analogous decisions by the federal Department of Justice. This is, it would appear, well-traveled ground in the Ethics business and it has been determined that situations like this are not conflicts of interest. In short, exceptions are made when the person's ties to the other institution is a direct consequence of their work for the District. Case closed.

People have often asked me, "Why don't you run for office?"  The painful slog that is sometimes the Board meetings and/or committee meetings is one reason.  Today's Executive Committee meeting was one such experience.  Started at 8:30 am and ran probably till noon (probably because I left at 11:45 am).  This is Part 1.  Not that it wasn't chock-a-block full of news - it was.  But Brian Rosenthal from the Times left early (and surprisingly right before a good part) and Charlie, a twitchy guy on his own, was fairly chomping at the bit to get out of there. I'll start backwards because that's one of the most interesting parts. Good news - they picked the "focus group' community for the superintendent search.  For the most part, a good list with touches of greatness and one truly bad choice.   But I have faith in the abilities of the majority of the committee. Bad news - the process was a mess.  I hate to be this hard on the Execut...

It isn't that hard to create the illusion of consensus where none exists. All you have to do it use multiple voices. The Gates Foundation has essentially pulled the same trick. Rather than speaking with a single voice, the voice of the Gates Foundation, it speaks as a chorus. Their message is carried by their proxies: the League of Education Voters, the Alliance for Education, the Our Schools Coalition, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, Washington STEM, A+ Washington, Excellent Schools Now, Partnership for Learning, Teachers United, Crosscut, the Washington State PTA, and more. They are all mouthpieces for the Gates Foundation, yet when they each speak it creates the illusion of a broad consensus, but it actually just one voice, multiplied. There are many finger puppets, but only one hand. So even if all of them speak it still counts as only one person, only one vote.

The Alliance for Education's 10th annual community breakfast will be at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle on March 29. This is one of the big community fundraisers for the Alliance. Last year they raised $220,000 at this event. The Alliance has about $11 million in cash and securities and raised about $7 million in contributions last year, so this breakfast is not completely insignificant, but it is mostly for show. The bulk of the Alliance's fundraising is done at the Gates Foundation, not with the general public at all. Unlike a lot of my friends, I do not believe that the Alliance for Education is the debil, although they have become a puppet organization for the Gates Foundation. I am glad to hear that anyone - Gates, Broad, Phillip Morris, or Darth Vader - wants to contribute to public education. Now, I may think that some of their contributions are misguided, but - with the exception of a handful of specific privateers and profiteers (Goldman Sachs, I talking abou...