Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Friday Memo for January 6 doesn't have much in the way of news, but it does form a pretty nice round up of the news from the past month. For example:

Let's start with this disclosure: I agree with Director Geary. Here's what she said at the Board meeting on January 4, 2017 during a discussion of the CSIPs and, specifically, the description of advanced learning services in those CSIPs:

Here is a list of 42 schools that fail to adequately address their plan for serving advanced learners in their CSIP. Is your school on the list? Does it belong on the list? UPDATES INDICATED IN RED You can find all of the CSIPs here .

A very busy week before the holiday break next week.

I met with Wyeth Jessee last week (it was arranged thru Communications so there was a Communications person in the room who was not part of the conversation.)  He was the former head of Special Education and now, thru a realignment,  has a new role.

To save you some time, there was virtually no talk about any changes to the overall program. Spectrum was not even mentioned.  Whatever is to become of AL programs is something that Teaching and Learning is choosing to keep a mystery. What was interesting is that Director Burke, who chaired the meeting, had people write down questions (even the audience, though none of our cards got read but we handed them in.) There was a huge group of SPS staff there including Stephen Nielsen, Clover Codd, head of AL Stephen Martin, and all the Board members. Shauna Heath lead the discussion which I found interesting given the presence of Mr. Martin who spoke very little.  She did say that HC was "big" part of her department.  They say they are dedicated to "everyone who wants to get in, gets in." Highlights:

On Tuesday, April 12, the OSPI sent Dr. Nyland an eMail reminding him of the requirement that districts and school achieve a participation rate of 95 percent on the state proficiency assessments. The message included a table naming the 49 schools in our district that did not meet the 95 percent participation rate on one or both tests.

My e-mail to the Board (via the schoolboard@seattleschools.org which means I sent it to senior management as well):

The recent $1.5 Billion prize in the PowerBall lottery made a lot of news. A lot of people who don't normally buy lottery tickets bought some for that drawing. I didn't because, as my brother succinctly told me, buying a ticket does not significantly improve your odds of winning. Needless to say, I didn't win the big prize. I didn't think about what I would do with the money if I won. That's what you buy when you buy a lottery ticket, right? You buy the license to dream. I didn't buy a ticket so I didn't have license to think about how I would spend the money and I certainly didn't presume that I would win and start spending the money before the drawing. That would be crazy, right? Yet that's what Seattle Public Schools does on a regular basis. They draw up all of these initiatives - Targeted Universalism is the latest one - which, I suppose, are all very high-minded and well-intentioned, but are predicated on one or more fantasies.

This just got put on the agenda for tonight's Board meeting (thanks to reader Lynn for the heads up): Motion to Amend the Agenda – Superintendent Nyland has requested that a motion to amend the agenda be made to add an introduction item to accept a grant from the City of Seattle in the amount of $510,017.58, in the form of a Memorandum of Agreement, and to amend the 2015-16 Transportation Service Standards, to implement the ORCA Card Passport Program Enhancement for Free and Reduced Lunch Secondary students for the 2015-16 school year.  Given the time sensitivity of this item, the motion to amend would include a waiver, for the purposes of this motion only, from the requirements that the item be posted to the district’s website at least three days in advance of the meeting, as discussed in Policy No. 1420.

This week sees the reopening of schools after the holiday break. This week is a big work week for many who will be attending and closely watching what happens when the Legislature starts its short session on Jan. 11th.   Updated: see Thursday for details. Wednesday, Jan. 6th School Board meeting , at JSCEE starting at 4:15 pm.  Agenda