Seattle Schools Community Forum

From SPS Communications: Family Input Requested: Bell Times Implementation  The Seattle School Board recently adopted a new bell time schedule for the upcoming 2016-17 school year. This change is meant to recognize and leverage research that has shown that teenagers may benefit from later start times resulting in more sleep, better health, increased academics and improved truancy rates.  

Tuesday, March 29th Special Education Regional Meeting Portion of the meeting for families is from 6-7 pm at Whitman Middle School 24-Credit Graduation Task Force 6:30-8:00 pm at South Lake High School Please join us to offer your feedback on how Seattle Public Schools could best serve students under the state’s new high school graduation requirements. Mayor's Conversation on Education meeting  Mockingbird Society, Treehouse, and YMCA of Greater Seattle from 6:30-8:00 pm The 2100 Building (2100 24th Ave S) , Community Rooms A and B Wednesday, March 30th Work Session from 4:30-7:30 pm Superintendent SMART Goal #5: Bell Times; and Work Session: Budget The Bell Times presentation has some valuable history of the bell times issue as well as current updates (including a request from the district for a summary judgment that may come April 1st pending from a challenge to the bell times around environmental impact issues.) From the presentation, Part Two of Implementat...

I attended this meeting yesterday, along with at least 60 parents (plus School Board candidate Leslie Harris).  Director Peters did a superlative job in handling the crowd. There were two topics; bell times and the QAE issue.

This Wednesday's School Board meeting sees the Superintendent's introduction to change bell times .  What has happened is that a large number of schools - primarily elementary schools - have shifted to Tier Two, leaving about 13 schools in Tier One (I think there are eight elementaries).  What appears -to me- to be happening is that the Super and staff are trying to get the "We want two tiers" out of people's minds.  Staff doesn't really want to have to suss out the real costs and present them to parents. (Do I think it is truly $8M for two tiers? No.) So how to divert parents off that idea? Whittle down the Third Tier to a handful of schools and let other parents attack Tier Three parents for being "selfish" to not think of the greater good.  Brilliant on the part of staff and not-so-lucky for the Tier Three people.  But I think so much time has gone by, that it's likely a done deal if only because people are probably now tired ...

It was a fired-up crowd that came to JAMS last night for the bell times meeting held there.   (Oddly, like a forewarning, there was a contingent of crows - by my rough count, about 50 - on the east side of the building when I came in. I felt like I was in The Birds.) I estimated the crowd at about 70 which was the largest number to attend a bell times meeting.  (Pegi McEvoy told me that the one last Friday night had about 30 people.) There were quite a few Sand Point parents there plus I know there were JAMS parents, John Rogers, someone who wanted to represent for Aki Kurose plus high school parents (who self-identified as such but not their schools). Here's my take, overall, about what is happening and you should keep this all in mind as we go forward. 1) Most important of all to remember is that the staff NEVER wanted to do anything.  In fact, they never even wanted to discuss this issue.  They had to be dragged by the Board to this time and place. ...

I'm a bit late on this one but the the taskforce on bell times released its report to the Board on Wednesday.  The upshot is that they voted that high schools should start an hour later with most elementaries starting 90 minutes later.  There were three minority reports. As I previously reported, Bellevue and Mercer Island are working together on this issues as well as Northshore and Lake Washington.  All these districts and Seattle School District are faced with the financial and logistic challenges that a change would bring. Recommendation: SCORE: [3.45] Modified Flip option             17 votes No Change                              2 votes Extended High School Day     0 votes (Non-voting task force members: 3)