Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update: well, I guess my haranguing  did something because the open windows in the Sisley home by Roosevelt High are now covered and nailed shut.  Yesterday, I did three major items on my "to-do"list. One, I wrote a letter to the Mayor about the HALA report and my neighborhood of Roosevelt/Ravenna.  I dropped the letter - with photos - off at City Hall for both the Mayor and City Council. Two, I wrote a letter to the City Council about what I believe the City is doing to infiltrate the workings of Seattle Schools.  I now realize I left out one important point (but I did tell the Board this point) - that this infiltration is likely being aided and abetted by senior management, primarily Superintendent Nyland.  It is, in some policy cases, hard to discern who Nyland works for - the Mayor or the School Board. Three, in taking photos to give to the City Council about the issue of the Sisley slumlords in Roosevelt, I discovered that one house (facing 6...

Below is a letter I dropped off today - in person - to each City Council member.  It details what I believe is a pattern for the Mayor - via his Department of Education and Early Learning (Families and Education levy and the City Preschool Program and, more recently, the HALA report on housing, in trying to insinuate the City more and more into the workings of Seattle Public Schools. Dear City Council Members,

Update: for one, turns out there's someone from the Gates Foundation on the Committee.  I'm sure that's a bit voice for charters.  His name is David Wertheimer. What seems to be the explanation for this "mandate" for investment in charter schools is the idea that (1) SPS isn't building new schools (wrong) and (2) that school facilities could be built into housing. On the first issue, we all know SPS is opening up every building they can (and those are some schools that have been closed so long, they might as well be new) and, as well, the district IS opening two new schools at the Wilson-Pacific site.  I have no idea why someone would say the District isn't building new schools if they didn't know for sure but you'd have to ask members of the Committee. Now if the City thinks that having charters will serve all these new students, they clearly don't know charters.  For one thing, charters are deliberately smaller so any idea that a char...