Seattle Schools Community Forum

The reporting on the School Board meeting will be in two parts as there was major discussion around the Gates grant for a preschool at Bailey-Gatzert and discussion around funding a downtown school building. Part One. It was an evening of back-and-forth about the Gates Foundation grant for a preschool at SPS, curious claims on room at that school (for preschool AND for downtown kids) and not one, but two, mariachi performances.  Director Blanford was not present for the majority of the meeting (but came in later).

From SPS Communications, some VERY good news: District directs career-planning firm to destroy all student data Seattle Public Schools previously partnered with a company to assist students, parents and school counselors in career planning and to create authentic High School and Beyond plans, a state graduation requirement. The company, ConnectEdu, was in business from 2002 until April of 2014, when they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The district immediately contacted them to request that all student data be destroyed per the contract; however, since they were protected under bankruptcy laws, the data was not destroyed at that time but was fully secured. Graduation Alliance then purchased ConnectEdu, and Seattle Public Schools contacted Graduation Alliance immediately to verify again that the data was secure. In late September, Graduation Alliance contacted families about this data, which raised concerns. The district notified the compa...

About ConnectEdu , their college/career division was acquired by a group called Graduation Alliance.    Some other activists and I are looking into this as the FTC had said they were not going to allow ConnectEdu to sell student data. SPS students (and their parents) should have each received an e-mail in the last week, telling them they can take their data off or leave it, should they want to access GA's services.  I was also told that GA had sent a letter to every parent, telling them this and introducing their company. If anyone got such a letter, could you scan it and send it to me?  I'd like to see what they said. I am going to be on hiatus again over the next week but will try to keep up especially if there is breaking news.  It would be great if anyone attending the Work Session on the Federal Reserve building could take careful notes (especially on the recommendation) and either send them to me or write up a report yourself and send it to me. Wh...

  Update : so there is definitely something amiss here. One, the FTC had made ConnectEdu promise NOT to sell off student data assets and yet that appears to be what happened.  Only the new company, Graduation Alliance, may have gotten away with it because they seem to have bought the entire ConnectEdu and so got bit just the data but the entire company.  Two, I asked SPS a number of questions but only got this reply: Thanks (sic) you for bringing this to our attention. We are working with the new company to resolve this quickly and ask them to comply by not selling the information. Well, I don't think the company is selling the information but they surely bought it up and did NOT return it to the district as was promised.    From a thread in June 2014 from KUOW: After learning that the company had filed for bankruptcy and was looking to sell, Rahm said the district tried to end its contract with ConnectEDU and have all student data on the site deleted...

When we last left this story, ConnectEDU, a company that had an interactive program to try to connect middle school students with info on college/career.  From the story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday: In July 2013, the well-known foundation awarded a nearly $500,000 grant to ConnectEDU to develop an interactive program to help students master literacy under the Common Core standards that many states use to guide how public school students are caught.   The money came with some conditions, including a promise to only use the funds for the development of the new technology as well as a timeline requiring benchmarks to be met along the way. The grant, paid out in two installments, was set to expire this December.  I pause here to note that I didn't remember that the Gates grant to ConnectEDU was around Common Core. ConnectEDU filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year.  Apparently since then, ConnectEDU has not answered the Gates Foundation's questio...

 Stories from KUOW and Politico (highly recommended) and information I learned about what's in a TFA contract today about student data.  One is the KUOW piece about ConnectEDU and SPS .  It fleshed out what I had reported and had a couple of interesting comments.   Again: For the past three years, the school district has uploaded middle and high school students’ names, grades, addresses and demographic data to the website ConnectEDU. Students were able to add additional information, such as where they’d like to go to college, and how much they want to spend on tuition. The ConnectEDU privacy policy said that if the company was ever sold, users would be notified and allowed to remove all personally identifiable data from the site. After learning that the company had filed for bankruptcy and was looking to sell, Rahm said the district tried to end its contract with ConnectEDU and have all student data on the site deleted. The company’s lawyers ...

It's been a busy weekend and day for education news (as always). First, SPS Communications put out a press release about the continued growth in Seattle Schools.  As I reported last week, the district projects to be about 60,000 students by 2020.  School by school projections here . Seattle Public Schools has released its annual spring enrollment projections for the 2014-15 school year. An estimated 52,400 students are expected to attend school in the district this fall – an increase of 1,300 students over the year ending in June. This continues the five-year trend of enrollment growth that began in 2009, after a decade of declining enrollment. During the last five years, enrollment grew by more than 5,000 students – from 46,000 in 2009 to 51,000 this year. Next year’s expected enrollment growth of 1,300 students means the district will be serving 6,400 more students next year than in 2009.   Remember ConnectEdu , the company that SPS used to try to help middle/hi...

Update:   it seems that despite the fact the ConnectEdu has declared bankruptcy last week, they may trying to forge on.  I will ask about the contract that SPS has with this organization and the SPS student data they have. End of update. The district recognized some Nutrition Services staff as part of School Lunch Super Hero Day.  This week is School Nutrition Week so thank a kitchen staff member for watching out for students at your school. It is also PTA Teacher Appreciation week so please do thank your child's teacher for their hard work.  May 6th is National Teacher Day.   It is also Choose Privacy Week as observed by the American Library Association .   It's a time for discussion about "privacy rights in the digital age."  Something for everyone to think about considering the district has is using ConnectEdu and havd kids sign up WITHOUT previously explaining to parents what it is and what student information is being put into th...