Seattle Schools Community Forum

Most of my readers know by now that I am very interested in capital issues and funding.  I care for two reasons. One, every single student deserves a clean, well-maintained, safe building to call "my school."  It would be great if the technology is up-to-date and there is natural light and flow to the building to create an inviting atmosphere. Two, the taxpayers of Seattle vote in ever-increasing huge sums of money for these buildings.  And, yet the district does not maintain the system properly.  As well, the district has a very convoluted idea that they can move money around from BEXs and BTAs and claim all the work promised will be done.  I have disputed that claim for a long time and I still believe it. There has never been a transparent accounting of all the dollars in the BEXs and BTAs and what work actually happened.  Never. Yesterday, I received the notice of the upcoming BEX Oversight Committee meeting on Friday morning.  The notice in...

Tuesday, April 26th International School and Dual Language Immersion Programs Meeting Chief Sealth International Schools from 6:00-7:30 pm Seattle Public Schools invites families, community members and staff to share thoughts and ideas on our International School and Dual Language Immersion programs. The district is examining these programs in order to make recommendations about potential changes in the 2017-18 school year. Boundary Change Community Meeting Roosevelt High School from 6:30-7:30 pm Mayor's community conversation on education , hosted by SEA.  Van Asselt Community Center from 5:30-7:30 pm. Mayor's community conversation on education , hosted by SEA.  Northgate Community Center from 5:30-7:30 pm.

The simple answer is ... yes and no.  (I didn't say it would be clear, just simple.)

I attended the Operations/BTA IV community meeting at Roosevelt this week.  It was disappointing on several fronts. Attending staff included Charles Wright, Flip Herndon, Tom Redman, Joe Wolf, Richard Best, and Carmen Rahm (and a budget staffer whose name I didn't hear and can't find at the district website). There was a dizzying array of handouts.  I don't know if staff has something against trees or cannot devise a couple of handouts to cover the issues but this was overload.

Editor's Note; there are two important groups of meetings over the next three weeks.  One is for the Feb. 2016 renewal levies for Operations and BTA IV, the other group is for Bell Times Analysis.  If both issues are important to you, plan accordingly. I would love for staff not to eat up 30+ minutes explaining the levies and just give an overview and have more Q&A for the ENTIRE group (not just 20 minutes and then force everyone to ask any further questions one-on-one.)

To note about tomorrow, Monday, March 30th, it appears there may be a large number of teachers who may go to Olympia to lobby against SB 5748.   This is the bill that would likely get Washington State back its NCLB waiver and give those districts control of some Title One dollars.  It would also start us down the road of including high-stakes testing in teacher evaluation. So if your school sees a couple of subs coming in tomorrow, that's probably why. 

The first of the community meetings around BTA IV coming up in Feb. 2016.  It's at Mercer Middle School, 1600 S. Columbian Way from 6:30-8:30 pm. There is also one on Wednesday at Ballard High School , 1418 NW 65th St from 6:30-8:30 pm. There are more next week at other locations; see the district calendar.

 (I have very mixed feelings about these appointments.  Both men have good education skills.  Mr. Wright is the more worrisome of the two.  He has close ties with the Gates Foundation. He got onto the board of the Alliance for Education just nine months after he moved to Seattle a couple of years back.  That's something of a record for the Alliance to put him on their Board.  His resume shows that he has been something of a job hopper and frankly, I doubt he'll stick around longer than a year or two.  He looks like a real data guy and, for our concerns about student privacy data, he may be a key player to convince in order to protect those privacy rights. Mr. Herndon, like Superintendent Banda, comes from a small district where, according to the bio, they just passed their first (!) capital levy.  The enormity of the facilities and capital issues in SPS may look like a tidal wave to him.  On the other hand, he seems to support alternative...

Monday, August 12 Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee Mtg , 4-6 pm.  Agenda A lot of BARs for various partnerships with outside entities for services.  One, for Special Ed services via the Northwest School of Innovative Learning, caught my eye because I know they were being sued in 2011while a student in the Puyallup School District was in their school.  The student's family alleged physical mistreatment.  Might be good if the Directors know the outcome of that lawsuit. Also, some discussion scheduled for Policy 313, Student Assignment, Policy 2015, Selection/Adoption of Instructional Materials and Policy 2415, High School Graduation Requirements.   Wednesday, August 14th Executive Committee Meeting - 8:30-10 am.  Agenda Review of the upcoming Board meetings for August 21st and September 4th. Discussion around amending Policy 1400 and Policy 6114, and the next Board Retreat. Policy 1400 is "Meeting Conduct, Order of Business and Quorum....

Perusing the BEX IV presentation and then what was presented to the Mayor's Educational Leadership Team yesterday, I see some things that I don't understand. BTA has been about major maintenance like roofs and yet there are five roofs to be replaced under BEX IV.  That is troubling because BEX is about renovations and yet there are roofs and other "major preventative maintenance" under BEX IV.  What is really troubling is the "major preventative maintenance" at $18M has no list of projects.  Basically, it looks like a fund for something.   Those five schools with roof replacements scheduled are Eckstein, Franklin, Gatewood, Laurelhurst and Whitman.  However, checking the BTA work from previous years shows that Laurelhurst received a new roof in 2002, Whitman in 2006, and Eckstein in 2010.  This is district data at their website.  How could this be wrong?  Or, how could these almost new roofs need replacement? I note - just as an observat...

Monday, October 15th Superintendent Banda will be busy as he bounces from the Seattle Special Education PTA meeting and the Seattle Council PTA meeting .  Both are from 7-9 p.m. The Seattle Council meeting is in the auditorium but it is unclear where the Special Ed PTA is meeting.  I'll find out and post it. The Seattle Council PTA meeting includes Q&A on I -1240.  It also includes a presentation of the BEX IV levy. Tuesday, October 16th Operation Committee Meeting from 4-6 p.m.  Agenda .  To note, Pegi McEvoy will give an update on the BEX IV levy to the group.  Other items include the Student Assignment plan for 2013-2014. Wednesday, October 17th School Board meeting.  Agenda . A rather important one as this will introduce the BEX IV levy list AND the Board will vote on a resolution of a NO against I-1240.  I suspect quite a run for the speakers list especially from those supporting charters and the downtown folks. To get ...

BTA II and III work is starting up for the summer.  BTA is the major maintenance work done on schools (painting, roofing, HVAC, etc).  Among the schools where work is being done: Work is being done at: * Adams, Bagley, B.F. Day, Bryant, Coe, Gatewood, Gatzert, Green Lake, Hawthorn, Hay, Leschi, McDonald, Montlake, Olympic Hills, Olympic View, Thurgood Marshall and View Ridge elementary schools; * Jane Addams, Broadview-Thomson, Salmon Bay and Orca K-8 schools; * Franklin, Rainier Beach, Roosevelt and West Seattle high schools, and at the * Boren, Fairmount Park, John Marshall and Wilson Pacific buildings. More detail on work done at each school is available at bta.seattleschools.org . What's on your mind?

UPDATED Monday, September 12 37th Democrats Candidate Forum (and Families & Education levy debate) at 7 p.m..m. at the Rainier Beach Cultural Center, 3515 Alaska St.  (Note:  I got my events mixed up; there is no F&E levy debate at this event.) Tuesday (new!), September 13rd Senator Scott White’s 3rd Annual Education Town Hall with Special Guests: Randy Dorn, WA Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Enfield, Seattle Public Schools Interim Superintendent Lauren McGuire, President, Seattle Council PTSA Please join parents, teachers, and neighbors for a Town Hall discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing public education in Seattle, and across Washington. This was kind of interesting last year but having Randy Dorn and Susan Enfield might make it more so. 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Nathan Hale High School- Performing Arts Center 10750 30 Ave NE, Seattle Wednesday, September 14 Board Work Session on the Series 5000 Board policies t...

I was only able to hit two of the four Board committee meetings last week (and not the work session either but Charlie covered that one).  I went the the Audit portion of the Audit and Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.  This was a good meeting and especially so because of the arrival of the A&F's two new volunteer public advisors (looking for one but got two and that's even better).

There was much of interest discussed at last week's Operations Committee meeting. I think the Capacity Management issue will be a bigger item of interest but as I stated previously, I'm still waiting for some documents to be on-line so that I can link to them. There were three documents related to Facilities (not including the monthly summary which is almost useless). Two were labeled "Annual Report" but I'm not sure anyone would think of them as reports. (One page, both sides? Considering all the work done in a year on facilities, how is that a report?) The first was was an annual report on " BTA Related Information ." It reviewed the work need to be done in seven weeks to get BTA projects done on Queen Anne, Rainier View and Viewlands. (The seven-week period was not specified so I don't know when they are talking about. Summer?) They point out that there are many unknowns in the work. Now look, I get that some of these b...

I, along with other citizens, had written to the State Auditor several years back, complaining about the BEX capital building program. When you write to the Auditor, they log your letter and make sure you get a follow-up (I know that seems odd to have a public entity actually listen and keep track of your concerns but that's just how the SAO rolls.) The letter said some points made in the audit like: District facilities staff was unable to provide all requested documents in a complete and timely manner. We could not always determine whether the documents did not exist or whether they could not be located. Project documents were not store consistently, and some were in multiple locations. But they also said this: We were unable to address your specific concerns related to the District's decision to select specific school projects for inclusion in its BEX III program because we discovered larger issues related to the BEX II projects. I find that interesting because I wondered...

Here's my new recommendation; forget the Board meetings . Watch them on tv if you must. Everything is already decided and nothing you say really makes a difference. The exception to that is if your message is directed to the wider audience and the Superintendent and School Board are just spectators. Go to the Work Sessions and the Committee meetings. That's where best information and action can be found. The Audit and Finance Committee meeting was no exception. Sherry Carr is the Chair of this committee but the meeting started while she was involved in a discussion elsewhere with Noel Treat. Peter Maier and Michael DeBell, the other members, were present and started the meeting. They started with a Financial update from Kathie Technow who is the Accounting Manager. She was going to answer some questions that Sherry had from a previous meeting. Peter said there was a lot of info on enrollment data that would need more breakouts to use for budgeting. A lot of murmurin...

I attended the BEX Oversight Committee meeting on Friday. As usual, interesting stuff. No Board member attended. Here's a recap. the problematic Small Business Hub program seems to be dismantled and nearly shut down. What is interesting is that they absorbed all the 4 employees into the Facilities department. I don't want to be unkind but why? If that program is no longer going to exist, why did we need to keep four people? (This is the program that the State Auditor called out for having morphed from a policy that the Board created to make sure the district did outreach to small/minority businesses wishing to do business with SPS into a $1M a year, 40 class program. Most of the people attending these classes never did any business with SPS which is why the audit said it was improper use of capital funds.) Nearly 2 million dollars will leave our Operations budget and go back to Capital. So we don't even have to wait for the state to cut funding to our district - we do it do...

This Board work session was dubbed for the new plan for facilities, " Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Initiative (SIMI) . All the Board members were present as was the Superintendent. This meeting was not to ask anything of the Board but to give them a review and update. (Note: this thread is long and I apologize but if you do choose to read the whole thing, you will have a better understanding of what the district is doing for our facilities.) Glossary Maintenance Direct - what used to be called Regular Maintenance PM Direct - Preventative Maintenance SIMI - Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Initiative APS - Asset Preservation System APP - OSPI term - Asset Preservation Program BMAR - Backlog of Maintenance and Repair TCO - Total Cost of Ownership The reason you should be interested in this thread is two-fold. One, it explains how each school will now be filing maintenance requests and two, it is a sobering reminder of the state of our SPS infrastructure. Fi...

There had been a placeholder in tonight's Board agenda for what they are calling "Acceleration of BTA III for New Student Assignment Plan". Basically, it should be titled, "How the Hell Do We Get This Done?" Here are their ideas: Seattle Public Schools has several options for financing the work required. These include: Internal financing such as borrowing from the Capital Eligible Projects fund (CEP) and Short-term public financing such as Revenue Anticipation Notes. Internal Financing Internal Financing offers the lowest total cost of borrowing. The District can borrow from CEP reserves. The CEP fund balance as of January 31st, 2010 was $13.9M. Based on anticipated property sales for this year, the CEP fund has the capacity to lend $8.5M to the BTA III program this year. Revenue Anticipation Notes Although the District has the ability to use Revenue Anticipation Notes to fund the $8.5M needed to accelerate construction on the ...