Seattle Schools Community Forum

The first of the regional "Welcome Back" meetings with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and CAO Susan Enfield are this week. Monday the 20th is the Northeast meeting at Eckstein Middle meeting Wednesday the 22nd is the Central meeting at Bailey Gatzert Elementary Thursday the 23rd is the Northwest meeting at Hamilton Middle School All the meetings are from 6:30-8:00 p.m. Community Meetings Director Maier is having a morning meeting on Wednesday the 22nd from 10-11:30 a.m. at the Lake City Public Library, 12501 28th NE. Board Committee Meetings As previously reported, Audit and Finance is going to divide up their meetings to cover as much as possible. So there will be another Audit and Finance meeting (I'll check for which topic tomorrow) on Thursday the 23rd from 4-6 p.m. in the School Board conference room. Also I checked the Families and Education levy committee reports and I think I know the source of the concern over the Family Support workers. In a Powerpoint dated 9/17/10 a...

Just to let you know, the Regional Meetings will have something of a focus. Dr. Enfield will be presenting the new regional structure to parents and introducing the Executive Director for each region and staff representatives of each school in the region. There will language translation at all the meetings (with more languages represented in the Central and SE). There is no childcare available but there will be some coloring supplies available if you do bring your child. I can't say a lot about the other Executive Directors (I don't know them except for Michael Tolley and he came with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson) but the NE lucks out with Phil Brockman. Phil was a terrific principal at Ballard High and he is someone who will listen to parents. So he will be at the first meeting of the regional meetings this Monday the 20th at Eckstein at 6:30. This is all good as I think for most parents these folks were largely invisible and it's important to know who they are and what the...

I had written to Susan Enfield, our CAO, at the beginning of June to ask some questions. Here was my e-mail to her: "I was reading the Times recently and they had an editorial on Congress and the emergency public school aid. They referenced the school improvement grants here in Seattle and said this: "In Seattle schools teachers at Hawthorne Elementary, West Seattle Elementary and Cleveland High have agreed to be evaluated under a new system that holds them accountable for meeting student academic growth goals. In exchange, the teachers are eligible for extra compensation." I reviewed the SPS press release on this along with each school's fact sheet and I didn't see anything about extra compensation. Could you tell me where I might find information on this or did the Times get something wrong? Also, you may have heard (or read) that I pointed out my disappointment in your report to the Board on the Native American program issues. This is a pretty impo...

So I have lots to report on; BTA III Work Session, School Board meeting (well, not so much as I didn't really stay but I can say there were no School Board candidates there except Mary Bass; must be home watching tv), Transportation audit, Maintenance audit, Capital program audit by the State Auditor but no, they must all wait because of the magazine I picked up today. This month's Seattle Woman features something of "The Women Of Seattle Public Schools" and the cover is, naturally, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson with features on Tracy Libros (Enrollment), Susan Enfield (CAO) and Cathy Thompson (Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction which seems something of an overlap with Susan Enfield). The cover title : Seattle Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson & her changing district . First, great to let people know who is leading the district so I'm not complaining about the publicity. However, there are so many errors (mostly small but still), it was hard to read wi...

Tonight is the first Board meeting in a couple of months. Pretty full agenda but only 10 speakers signed up (including me). As Charlie noted elsewhere, the Curriculum and Instruction committee (more on this later) meeting on Monday had 3 Board members, lots of staff and 3-4 parents/community members. Charlie was the only SB candidate there. I put that in my notes because here we have the Board starting up with work, work that affects many students (they talked about giving high school credits to middle school students and the high school curriculum alignment among other things). Wouldn't you think that would be something candidates would want to get up to speed on? I'll be interested to see how many candidates from yesterday's primary who are moving on to the general election will attend tonight's Board meeting (besides Mary Bass). Agenda items include: -Superintendent's report with a MAP update - the first public report by our new CAO, Susan Enfield, on the...