Seattle Schools Community Forum

Clearly a big, big week - the start of school year 2016-2017. Tuesday, September 6th Ribbon-cutting for two more schools, Arbor Heights (11am-noon) and Genesee Hill (1pm-2pm). Also, Washington Paramount Duty can still put your e-mail thoughts in their document to present to the McCleary Task Force for their meeting that day. See this thread for details. Wednesday, September 7th First Day of School - do double-check what time your child's school starts and best of luck to all students, parents and schools! Kindergarteners do not start until September 12th. School Board Meeting , starting at 4:15 pm. Agenda. It's a fairly short agenda so I would expect a quick meeting. Highlights: In the Consent agenda - mostly pro forma type items voted on en masse - one curious thing: BTA IV: Resolution 2016/17-4: Racial Imbalance Analysis for Magnolia Elementary School Renovation and Addition Project – (Ops, August 16, for approval) Approval of this item would approve ...

From SPS Communications: Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is excited to announce that starting in fall 2016-17, families will be supported with expanded childcare options in West Seattle. SPS in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation will be providing new childcare options in the Schmitz Park building as well as in the Genesee Hill and Lafayette Elementary buildings.

A heads up for tomorrow's BEX Oversight Committee meeting .  It will NOT be at JSCEE but is at the Genesee Hill School Library, 5013 SW Dakota St, from 8:30-10:30 am.  The meeting will be shortened in order for committee members to tour the building.  The public is allowed to come along. The agenda shows a project status review for the various BEX IV projects.   

I cannot attend the Operations Committee meeting today but wanted to alert you to a couple of things that appear on the Agenda .

Overview Schmitz Park Elementary is one of many schools that will be affected by new enrollment boundaries that were agreed on in 2013 but now will affect the school differently given the huge and continuing growth in SPS. Meaning, what was agreed to before is not going to play out as thought. Schmitz Park has been trying, very hard, to explain to district staff what is happening (and what will get worse).  This subject of enactment of these new boundaries came up at the Executive Committee meeting yesterday.  This is what my notes reflect: Flip Herndon said they were "between a rock and hard place."  He said there was no space at Alki for portables.  He said SP had space but not "infrastructure."  The interim director, Brent (something) said, "We really need to make these changes."    Director McLaren was there but said nothing. Here's what Schmitz Park sent to parents and has told the district (bold mine):

Went to the BEX Oversight Committee meeting this morning. In terms of notable people at the meeting, Director Sharon Peaslee was there, Lead Counsel Ron English was not. Issues mentioned/discussed - Seems to be some kind of portable placement issue for Blaine and Laurelhurst .  No specifics given. - Only $1M for technology left in BEX IV .  Head of Technology, Carmen Rahm, gave a presentation where he noted that 75% of SPS schools don't have wireless.  But he repeated, again and again, that for the here and now, you still need "wired" buildings for all kinds of reasons.  Meaning, to have a totally "wireless" building for technology is not the desired outcome. There was this interesting back-and-forth with Director Peaslee and Mr. Rahm over smartboards.  She was under the impression that they were $10K apiece.  He said no, you could get 5-6 of them for $10K.  I looked this up and it really depends on what you want to spend.  But the total ...

I went to the Board meeting two weeks ago and a couple of Work Sessions/Committee meetings.   This thread is the Board meeting and Operations Ctm. meeting. Here are the highlights: Board Meeting This was the one where the high school basketball teams were honored.  Very fun to be there (although the Garfield boys wanted to look as serious as possible).  Paul Apostle of HR said they were making "exceptional" progress to hire early in hard-to -fill posts like Sped and ELL.  There was a bit of mention for Genesee Hill which is now running about $2M behind.  As Chris Jackins pointed out, just looking at the site, you can see potential problems.  I'm not sure why this wasn't apparent sooner.  The later start for secondary schools had about 3800 signatures by then. One lone NW Center father spoke about the issue of where their program will end up.  He did say they didn't want to stay but that the district should "own" what they did in...

Monday, March 31st The final Strategic Plan Community Meeting from 6:30-8:30 pm in West Seattle at Roxhill Elementary. Tuesday, April 1st Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council meeting at 6:30 p.m. , JSCEE, Room 2700 Wednesday, April 2nd School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda .

Thought I'd open a thread for anyone who attended that meeting to weigh in. As I posted elsewhere, I am baffled by the use of Wilson-Pacific fields for Lincoln High. Why not Woodland Park?  Or, near me, they are going to lid the reservoir near Roosevelt High.  Why not dedicate one of those fields to Lincoln? I said I think the district is doing the wrong thing on the Genesee Hill Elementary school design. I think the district is creating a monster problem - from the get-go, no less - with Wilson-Pacific. No lockers, no auditorium (for two schools!) and shared field?  Not exactly the same middle school experience as other SPS middle schools.  If there is no dedicated space for music in the middle school, I have to wonder what they can even offer.  It will certainly be lesser to Eckstein or Jane Addams. Just wanted to put up the Operations Committee meeting agenda for Thursday, March 21st from 4:30-6:30 pm. There are several capital items of interes...

Monday, March 17th The wearing o' the Green.  Happy St. Patrick's Day. To note: signups for public testimony for the School Board meeting start at 8 am this morning. Tuesday, March 18th Audit&Finance Meeting from 4:30-6:30 p.m.  Agenda Wednesday, March 19th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda . I see a LOT of audit update items here that I am unclear about -might be worth attending. Items of interest:   - the winning bid for the work for Lincoln comes in at $828k.  What's interesting is that the district decided it needed wainscoting in all the new toilet rooms.  What's more interesting is the variance in cost to do it with the company bidding highest for the overall cost bidding the wainscoting at the lowest cost ($972k for overall, $3500 for wainscoting) and the winning bid at $812k putting in the wainscoting at the highest additional price, $16k.  The average cost for the wainscoting was about $9500.  How...

Had a great time at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin this weekend.  Very inspirational and got to talk with two education heroes - Diane Ravitch and Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union.  More on this later especially about Common Core. To note, the district and bus drivers have reached a tentative agreement so there should be no bus drivers strike. Also to remember, this is the last week of Open Enrollment.   It ends at 4 pm on Friday, March 7th.

This can be an open thread on issues at your school .  I've heard from several schools that have concerns about academics and growth boundaries. UPDATE:   I am also hearing that hours for nurses are being reduced at schools to about 1 day a week (or less).  I'll have to check into this because while I love the idea of health centers at all the comprehensive high schools (and a couple of middle schools) via the F&E levy, I am dismayed that other schools will barely register a medical presence.  Anyone hear anything about this at your school? First up is Garfield .   The president of the Garfield PTSA contacted Director Smith-Blum with worries over class assignments at Garfield.  Apparently there aren't enough classes - in biology and Spanish - to help all the students trying to fulfill graduation requirements for college admissions.    Some students only have four classes and want to have a full compliment of classes. It seems to be ...

I'm not an architect so someone who know building design or construction, help me out. The West Seattle Blog has a report about the "preferred schematic" for the future Genesee Hill school where Schmitz Park will be moving.    The good: The design principles were described as including “really fit(ting) into the challenging site” where Genesee Hill Elementary now sits, and being “timeless” as well as serving as a “community resource … not just a place of learning … to be a community center, to allow for community access onto the site, to use as a park, if you will,” plus “to be sustainable … good steward of taxpayer dollars and good steward of our environment.” On the second floor, the library would be located in a way that would take advantage of the Mount Rainier and territorial views from that location.” Donelson said that the preferred scheme, even with some two-story buildings, would still allow nearby neighbors to maintain their views. The bad: ...

As previously noted, there is an Executive Committee meeting tomorrow morning.  Here is the agenda.    These agenda seem to be quite terse with topics like "government relations", "community engagement" and you have no idea what the specifics of that discussion might be. They are going to be talking about audience participation at Board meetings so if you don't like either the new Board meeting start time and/or 2-minute limit, you might want to let Board members know this. (schoolboard@seattleschools.org) There is to be an Executive Session of the Committee at the end of the meeting on "real estate matters". The Operations Committee also has their agenda available.  Looks like they will be looking at: - some capital issues including Genesee Hill.  - Tracy Libros from Enrollment will be speaking on enrollment, child custody and district attendance area transfers as well as the student assignment plan for 2013-14.  - short-term and intermedia...