Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: of interest this week is the Board Work Session .  The topic? HR.  More on this in the thread, Seattle Schools This Week to come. end of update Neither Roosevelt nor Garfield placed in the top three for the Essentially Ellington competition in NYC but congrats to all these musicians for getting there and representing Seattle. The Times has two articles of note on Seattle Schools. One is about librarians and libraries in SPS.  A group of SPS librarians did their own research on funding for libraries and the fruit of their work is troubling.   For many libraries, the library fund is very dependent on the PTA.  From the article:

In one of the stranger press releases I've ever seen come from SPS, comes this one today on field trips.  It starts with this general district-wide information below:

At least that's an LA court's ruling. Once again, this is not about what happened.  The teacher who raped this child got three years in prison.  (And we can hope he never teaches again.) It's about the district's responsibility for the actions of this teacher.  In this case, it appears there was little to none BUT the district took the opportunity to portray the victim as a wanton harlot. (I'm not exaggerating  - read on.) (I'm also going to say that I find it hard to believe that a sexual relationship that went on for six months was unnoticed by any other adult in the school.  Hard to fathom.) NO district should treat any student this way, CYA or not. From KPCC :

 Anybody get a call from the Gates Foundation survey folks?  My household did. According to my son, they asked some general questions and then got very specific.  What did he think of the efforts of the Gates Foundation in public education?  What did he think about the Gates Foundation's efforts around Common Core? They really need a poll to figure out what they are doing wrong?  I am assuming the Gates Foundation is doing the poll because 1) they fund everything and 2) who else would fund a poll on them? From SPS Legal about Title IX (bold mine): At this point the staff commitment is to create the very best Title IX program we can, complete with notices, training, and effective responses to incidents. This requires a clear chain of responsibility. Our first step was to create a Title IX web page, designating the key individuals. We are updating it frequently. We've recently provided sexual harassment prevention and response training to every school a...

Update:  I viewed the footage this morning.  Beyond fascinating. Here's what I take away from what was said: - For whatever reason, there were only two Board members who even seemed concerned around the central issue for the district to consider (at this point, I'll let Charlie take over): The District wasn't sued for a rape, but for the utter failure of the chaperones, the utter failure of the field trip approval, and the utter failure of the District's response to the report. That's all the Board should have been considering and that's all that would have been in the court case.  The girl's lawyers might gone to court contending there was an assault but it would have been predicated on the belief that it would not have happened (or been far, far less likely to have happened) if the district had done its job. Sherry Carr came the closest when she said they should not ever be talking about whether two students had or didn't have consensual...

Monday, October 13th Curriculum&Instruction Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm at JSCEE. There quite a jam-packed agenda here including discussion of Advanced Learning/Highly Capable programs and discussion about the Board endorsing Prop 1B, the City's preschool measure. I note that the name of this item has changed: BAR for P-5 Schools Aligned with Seattle Preschool Program Universal Pre-K Initiative It a bit amusing as the City rebrands the name of their preschool initiative over and over.  But again, pre-k is NOT the district's state mandate nor are they state funded for it.   At Publicola, there is one person saying that Cashel Toner, who is the district's person for Early Learning, has been working with the Gates Foundation on aligning SPS with this effort via a $750K grant.  (This person says there are e-mails to show this and I hope to see them soon.)  I can only say that in e-mails I have obtained, Toner is very in the loop with many City peo...

What is the case about? Our goal was to ensure that in the future, District students are safe by having the District recognize the problems that led to our daughter’s sexual assault and recognize the deficiencies in the District’s Title IX compliance. 

From SPS:   Below is the announcement on the district’s field trip procedures and the Garfield High School mediation. **Please note, the school district will not be providing any interviews.** District continues to improve overnight field trip procedures

According to a couple of my sources, other SPS high schools, primarily thru their teachers, are pulling back on field trips. What are the issues? - the official list of forms at the district website are gone (note: I could not find the webpage that describes what the district is doing BUT I put in "field trip" into Search and I found a 67- page document with all the forms.  It is quite a formidable read (both because of format and length). - according to my source, the official checklist is not complete, with multiple forms required have never existed (and may not exist at all) - some teachers have been told that they need food handler permits - the district wants to see maps/plans on how chaperones will account for all the students...4x a night What a mess. But frankly, it is a mess made at the hands of management, not the teachers.  (Granted the teachers on the Garfield trip did not do well but if procedures and protocols had been followed, the trip might have ha...

I attended Garfield's PTSA meeting last night.  There were about 65 people in attendance.  It was a bit odd because they chose to have the lights down so as to put the agenda and supporting documents on a big overhead screen.  It was pretty dark and made the remarks even more gloomy. I was fairly astonished and dismayed at what both Principal Howard and Director Blanford said on the subject of the Garfield field trip incident.  Some of it was contradictory and some was incoherent.  I think they made a confusing situation even more confusing.  But, as Principal Howard told the crowd, he got himself a lawyer and got advice from that lawyer on what to do. I can only say that loose lips sink ships and I was more than surprised at the comments from both men. There were three handouts, two quite interesting. Letter from Principal Ted Howard to Garfield parents Letter from Garfield PTSA to Superintendent Nyland, Michael Tolley, Sarah Pritchett and Ric...

Principal Ted Howard II and the Garfield PTSA sent out this message today. It's confusing because he says there will be no field trips "for the current school year" (which would be 2014-2015) but then says it may change in Jan. 2015, depending on the recommendations of the taskforce.  Apparently he didn't check the link to the taskforce because they won't have recs until Oct. 2015.   Maybe he meant January 2016.  I have already heard from parents who have had students go on successful trips in the past.  Will he actually say no if the Garfield Jazz Band is again invited to the Essentially Ellington competition?  I find some of the "suggestions" for future field trips both surprising and sad, mainly because I can't believe they weren't in place already.

One story is absolutely horrifying and appalling and ties right into the situation around the Garfield field trip incident.  The other story is about how treating more kids as "gifted" makes them perform better.

Update :  there is one Director Community meeting tomorrow - with Director Carr - from 8:30-10 am at Bethany Community Church with  a hard stop at 10 am as the Board also has its Board retreat tomorrow from 10:30-3:00 pm at JSCEE.  I would put up the agenda but it is not available.  Why it isn't available is always a mystery (although here's the Board agenda for the next school board meeting). I'll lay odds there will be discussion of preschool (which staff does want to do) and bell times (which staff doesn't want to do).  Good luck, Board members. End of update. (No, I am not officially back but I feel for Charlie.)  I see a lot has been happening. It appears that the district IS creating a taskforce on Prevention and Response to Sexual Harassment (PRSH), apply by September 26th. The district also wants public comments on the new 21-page Superintendent's Procedure on Sexual Harassment. I also note that there is a district narrative of the...