Seattle Schools Community Forum

Finally sat down to listen to the Gates Foundation preschool grant discussion from last Wednesday Board meeting.  Many adjectives come to mind; disingenuous (Cashel Toner), tardy for the party (Director McLaren), integrity (Director Patu), rationality (Director Peters) and dumbfounded (for Directors Carr and Peaslee). Folks, our Board not only okayed a grant that had been signed off months before by the Superintendent (and more on that in a moment) but most agreed it lacked clarity in one key issue.  Astonishing. It seems that staff was able, somehow, to negate to the Board that going into Years 2 and 3 of this grant, it is completely unclear what will happen.  Both Sue Peters and Betty Patu asked, over and over, and yet no real answer. Here's the crux of the problem as both Patu and Peters pointed out. The district is doing this backwards.   The MOU with the City should come FIRST and then any agreements.  Because what IF an MOU with the City is n...

Update:  I spoke with the Board office and they are likely to take five more people from the Speaker waitlist.  I believe President Peaslee may have some discretion in this area but that remains to be seen. Also to note, it appears that the Mayor and the Superintendent will be appearing at Rainier Beach Boys & Girls Club this morning .  I have not been able to find out why nor does this appear on the Mayor's published schedule.  I have another meeting so I cannot attend.  end of update Looking at the Speaker roster, it appears that the topic is "P-5 Schools Aligned with Seattle Preschool Program."   Out of 30 spots, all are on this topic, except for 4 of them for the 2015 State Legislative Agenda and on on Lunch/Recess Times.  (I have one spot about the preschool issue.) Then, there is quite a large waitlist of 30 people.  This may signal the Board may hear 10 more speakers as they tend to open it up if this many people are coming....

Monday, November 17th  College Application Event , 2:20 PM - 5:30 PM at Franklin High School. State of the District Speech at Group Health headquarters from 4:30-6 pm (with a wine reception to follow the presentation).  RSVP only.  Put on by the Alliance for Education (although, oddly, no mention of it at their own website).  Tuesday, November 18th State of the District speech at  JSCEE at 4 pm.  It is a 20-minute presentation that will be broadcast live streaming and on Channel 26.  I don't think there will be a wine reception. I think of the two dueling speeches (and their location/format) as the Snobs versus the Slobs. (No disrespect to anyone but when a state of the district speech - the first one, the main one - is not at district headquarters, you have to wonder.) Work Session DistrictScorecard/Operations Data Dashboard from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm.  Presentation  There are quite a few interesting stats in here but I may write...

  Summary : About the Gates Foundation grant for a preschool at Bailey-Gatzert.   Several on the Board want a more careful explanation about who is in charge of what (like curriculum, alignment, costs) while a few on the Board want to grab this opportunity.  There seems to be confusion over what early learning is in SPS.  The Board will not be voting on this grant until November 19th, well after the election vote on the preschool props, 1A and 1B. About the downtown school .  Some on the Board pressed for costs around finding room at other schools and the actual numbers for space for students in Central/downtown.  It is unclear what will actually happen but one thing that I believe is firmly settled is that the Board is not going to vote in to take on more debt to renovate the Federal Reserve building.  So unless some generous donor(s) come forward, it seems unlikely that the district will be given the Federal Reserve building.  However, the ...

(This is going to be an excerpt from the Audit&Finance Committee meeting held on Tuesday.  I note that this information is likely to be again discussed at today's Operations Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm.  Also at the Operations Ctm meeting, there will be a bell times analysis update , a Facilities Condition Assessment and Study and Survey by the group, MENG , 2015-2016 proposed growth boundaries adjustments and Title IX update. I also know that many of you are waiting for updates on MAP and other testing and I promise to get that up in the next day or so. It's been a very busy week to cover.) There were two rather extraordinary presentations (and a couple of just plain "huh" ones that I will also get to later) at the Audit&Finance committee meeting on Tuesday.  One was about Title IX and sexual harassment which I just covered in the Garfield field trip rape update thread posted today. The other was the discussion lead by Flip Herndon, the head...

Good story over at the Times about the heroic efforts on the part of Seattle University to help support Bailey Gatzert Elementary. In the past year, Seattle University has flooded the Central District's Bailey Gatzert — Seattle's highest-poverty elementary school — with nearly 100 trained student volunteers. The college students help younger children with the most basic of skills and give them after-school enrichment in subjects such as science, chess, literacy and video production. But that only scratches the surface of an ambitious initiative funded by the private university and aimed at everyone living in the Bailey Gatzert neighborhood. It includes health-care help from nursing students, legal help from law-school students, a full-time coordinator for the school's many assistance programs, and staff and faculty support for many facets of the initiative. On Monday, Seattle University will receive a top honor for doing so: the 2012 President's Higher...

This is a bit early but I happened to be at the district website and decided to check the agenda for this Wednesday's Board meeting. I'm a bit perplexed. One item is the district asking OSPI for a waiver for Cleveland High to be exempt from the 150-hour state requirement.  It is now an ALE (alternative learning experience) school versus a traditional school.  Under OSPI an ALE school does not meet the 150-hour requirement and so only gets 90% of funding that traditional schools receive.  The district wants Cleveland to get that extra 10% (about 300k) for this year.  What's perplexing is that they explain how they created Cleveland two years ago with a block schedule.  They knew the block schedule would mean less class time and yet they went ahead.  Now, they are unhappy they don't get full funding. OSPI recognizes that block schedules cannot meet the 150 hour/credit requirement, and therefore is willing to grant waivers for schools doing a block sch...

The Seattle Times has a couple of interesting stories this morning. The first one is - big surprise - about state budget cuts. No new news here but they do have a poll going about what to cut. Currently, K-4 class size reduction money (14.8% of the vote), Initiative 728 (19.88%) and Initiative 732 (15.2%) are leading the cuts poll. The other story is great news for Bailey-Gatzert Elementary . Seattle University, which has provided tutoring for the last 20 years, is creating a project for $1M a year to help provide: more tutoring and after-school help, free legal aid to recent immigrants provided by the university's law school and free health assistance from the nursing school. The project aims to touch all aspects of the neighborhood's social, health and educational development, and will include assistance to Washington Middle School and Garfield High School. They are trying to model the services after the Harlem's Children's Zone in NYC. By working with the...

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...

Among the items on this week's Board meeting agenda: - update on STEM from Dr. Enfield - transfer of $1.4M from BEX III (savings) for a new roof at Bailey-Gatzert* - amendment by Director Martin-Morris for the new SAP: "I move that the special program assignment preference for Thornton Creek 5th graders applying to attend Salmon Bay be renewed for three years (2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13) without transportation." (This doesn't preclude any other directors from putting in an amendment but Harium is the most likely one to put forth one.) -introduction of an item to pay $800,000 over three years for technical services from NTN for STEM start-up (Dan D. points out that the district cherry-picked some data here to strengthen the case for New Technology Network.) -introduction of the high school language arts adoption . (They include survey results which are meager to say the least and also very difficult to read. I don't believe the word got out to parents or student...

The amount of change being proposed for the Central cluster is mind-boggling. By my count, 8 schools in the cluster are affected by the current proposal. And, on top of that, the proposed changes to the APP program, which affect students from all over the city, is part of the mix. Add in the couple of proposed changes to the Queen Anne/Magnolia cluster and the whole thing is messy. Out of the whole thing, I think the proposed closure of the Center School is the worst idea. With Summit either being closed or reduced to a K-8, the closure of the Center School would leave only Nova as an alternative school option for 9-12 graders. Not all students who want/need an alternative high school learning environment will do well in Nova's program. The Center School differs greatly from Nova and provides some students the small 9-12 alternative option they need. I don't know enough about all the other schools and programs (T.T. Minor, Bailey-Gazert, Thurgood Marshall, Montlake, Lowell...