Seattle Schools Community Forum

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

Earlier in the month the Board had a Work Session on BEX IV.  Here are some highlights and commentary. The beginning of the meeting saw staff go over the input from the BEX IV community meetings .  It was surprisingly thin.  All that was said was that there were 510 oral and written comments and that Option #2 received the most yes votes (although I later saw the numbers and it was close between #2 and #3).   Director Martin-Morris had to ask about how this informs the Board what the community is thinking on this issue.  Pegi McEvoy said that info in was in a Friday update that had been published two weeks prior.  Here's a link to the webpage on the community meetings for BEX IV. Head of Capital Building projects, Lucy Morello, said they would be carrying over some major maintenance from BTA III.  This puzzles me.  I thought we had a separation of BEX and BTA precisely so that each has its own discrete area.  This goes to the issu...

Via Director Peaslee, new info from Ron English, legal counsel for the district about the Lake City property (and thank you to Mr. English for this detailed explanation). It's quite long and detailed and I am printing it in its entirety.   I still have my three main issues with this idea: - should the district be in the property management business at all?   It is not a core purpose of the district. - Mr. English's statement says that the district's real estate adviser says:" annual returns over a 20 year period of at least $400,000 can be expected and that the negotiated agreement represents a fair result to the District. "   However, there is no guarantee for the amount the district could earn and we have all seen what effect downturns in the economy can have on deflation of real estate.  My advice would be that if the district goes down this road to make NO plans around this money.  Meaning,"oh, we have $400k from this so we can pay for Progra...