Seattle Schools Community Forum

Talk about backpedaling - Dr. Enfield is now saying test scores had nothing to do with Martin Floe's firing.   This is as reported by several Ingraham parents and staff. The press release certainly made it sound like this was the case but here's what Dr. Enfield says: Unfortunately, the Times article was not correct. While we did share Ingraham's test scores since we were getting questions about the school's performance, I never said that these scores were the reason for my decision. They were not. Additionally, I never spoke with Katherine Long so I am puzzled why she would attribute any quotes on this matter to me. I have not, and will not, reveal the information that was part of the evaluation process and eventual decision. I am legally bound not to do so. Katherine Long is the Times' reporter on the story.  I reread the story and Ms. Long did not attribute any quote from Dr. Enfield as given to her personally.  She quoted what parents said Dr. Enf...

Dr. Enfield has told us two things 1) Mr. Floe was fired from his job as principal of Ingraham High School because student test scores had stagnated. This was offered as the primary rationale for his dismissal. and 2) Students at Ingraham have been making gains on state tests at a higher rate than the district average. Ingraham's School Report shows 70% of Ingraham students making gains on the state reading test and 63% of them making gains on the state math test compared to 65% and 66% on the tests for the district as a whole. These statements cannot both be true.

The district, feeling the heat, has taken a couple of steps in the Floe firing.

We're Back!  So sorry, never happened before, cause to think of migrating away from here.  Onward. Community Meetings Tomorrow Carr – 8:30-10 am, Bethany Community Church Sundquist – 11 am – 12:30 pm, High Point Library Martin-Morris – 9:30- 11:30 am, Diva Espresso   Anyone attend the rally for Martin Floe at headquarters yesterday?  I note that Dr. Enfield is now saying they will put in an interim principal and then have a search that includes parents and staff in the fall for a permanent principal.   I find the stats they released to be somewhat weak given other schools’ performance.  Is this just the first in a line of principal firings to come?

From IHS PTSA: For Supporters of Martin Floe there will be a demonstration of support at the Stanford Center on Thursday 5/12 at 5:15 p.m.  Enfield deigned to give the community one 15 minute face-to-face meeting with parent and faculty representatives. FYI (Charlie alerted me to this): From School Board Policy B61.00 : "The Board of Directors shall:... Elect principals and teachers upon recommendation of the Superintendent." The Board retains final authority to hire principals. In addition, the Board has ALL of the duties, authority and responsibility. They LEND some of those duties and authority to the superintendent, but they reserve the right to recall any or all of those duties and authority. So, if Floe appeals, it will be the Board who decides.  There are 4 people who, I believe, want to be reelected and they are basing a decision on an interim superintendent's input.   They might want to think long and hard about this decision.

It was confirmed to me that Principal Martin Floe was fired (not RIFed). Some staff were worried this might happen (based on visits by the Ex Director, Bree Dusseault).  Today, the staff passed, unanimously, a resolution of confidence in Martin Floe's leadership. Principal Floe is appealing this decision, declining to resign.  The resolution: Whereas Martin Floe is a highly respected principal who has built Ingraham into a cohesive, caring and academically challenging high school; Whereas he sets clear policy direction for an achievement-oriented school; Whereas he maintains a balanced and holistic vision for the school; Whereas he maintains a safe and secure learning environment in which students and staff can work without distraction; Whereas he maintains an open-door policy for all members of the Ingraham community, including staff, students, alumni, and parents; Whereas he is marked by his excellent listening skills and positive attitude; Whereas he...

What the word? First up, the hacked grades story in the Times.  Right now it looks like it's at Chief Sealth, Ballard and Ingraham (all corners of the city).  Apparently some kids are blabbing about this and I'm sure someone is going to get caught.  (I love when kids think they will never get caught and then go tell someone what they did.  Kids, loose lips sink ships.)  The Times also reported that the City signed a deal with the Space Needle Corp for a  Chihuly glass exhibition hall.  This includes a $1M for a children's playground (yay for kids) and again, some kind of educational tie-in with SPS. The deal was sweetened with the addition of the playground, as well as arts-education programs at the Chihuly museum in partnership with Seattle Public Schools and other arts organizations. The New York Times had a story about rigor in high school classes.  This idea is taking on Supreme Court visions akin to what the definition is of pornogr...

I attended DeBell's (crowded) meeting yesterday.  I'll post about it later but would like to hear from others. Update:   Michael DeBell's meeting had about 13-15 people (at various points).  I like how Michael has people introduce themselves and then he writes down their topic and tries to get to everyone's topic.   There were several teachers and staff as well as Ramona Hattendorf from the Washington State PTSA.

The long-running saga of the neighbors versus the district over the cutting down of trees in a grove nearby Ingraham High School has finally ended. According to the Stranger Slog , some of the trees were felled today. The district had initially wanted to cut down 50+ trees but it's now down to 27 (and they plan on replacing some trees but not with the same variety). From the Slog: "There were some verbal protests, but that's about all," Redman, who was supervising the work, said. "Weather permitting, we are going to try to finish cutting all the trees today." "Ingraham is only a precursor to many more trees being lost," Zemke said in an email. "Unfortunately trees have no standing in Seattle and no voice. Neighbors and others who want to keep our city green with trees must be their voice." Save the Trees is currently working with a group of tree advocates called "Save Our Urban Forest Infrastructure" to create stron...

I started this in Charlie's thread's comment section but it got too long. So, to add to the discussion, here are my notes (I left as Charlie arrived). From my notes: -the Board office has two new hires so both Joan Dingfield and Pam Oakes are gone. I'll miss them; they are nice people. One new thing; the addition of the first 5+ people on the waitlist to the agenda so you can get an idea of where you might be on the waitlist -Lots of energy from TOPS parents who very calmly and clearly explained their issue about transportation. Over 50% of their students will lose their transportation, mostly from the southend. They are asking for a community stop model for buses so their students can continue on. Their hope is for the district to fulfill this request for 3 years. (This time request has something to do with a promise the district made, I believe.) - it was pointed out that a member of the BEX Oversight Committee is doing business with the district and this has not...

I attended the press conference today about the Transition Plan for 2011-2012. Tracy Libros was there along with the new(ish) head of Customer Service, Brandon Holst and Teresa Whipple of Public Affairs. The media was represented (in person) by me, Phyllis Fletcher of KUOW and Jerry of KING-5 tv. (By the way, I think KING-5, followed by KIRO-7, do the best job for tv coverage. KOMO and KCPQ always seem awol on these issues.) On the phone were reporters from the West Seattle blog, PI-online, Seattle's Child and The Stranger. Two of the most important things before Q&A. Again, as I posted previously, the deadline for issues/concerns to Board members in order to create amendments is FRIDAY, JAN. 7th (tomorrow), not Monday, the 10th. Steve Sundquist abruptly changed this date. Second, I asked and Tracy verified the following point. There used to be an amendment to the enrollment plan called the Waldman/Barnhart amendment. Basically it was a hold safe amendment. Yo...

(Did anyone attend Tuesday's? I think Dorothy said she did. I looked at the PowerPoint and there is a lot of stuff that I wish I had heard presented. I'll have to tease it out in another thread. Here are my notes from the PowerPoint of the 2nd of last week's "integrated" work sessions (a mash-up of budget and transition plan). I did not stay until the end so help me out if you did. All the Directors were in attendance as was Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. They started at page 45 of the previous day's work session. They started talking about program placement and the new possible Accelerated IB program in response to the overcrowding at Garfield. It would be modeled after the program at Interlake over in Bellevue. (I'll just say here that I think it's done. The community would have to rise up, en masse, to prevent it. I just think there's way too much work already done for this to be just a "possibility." The question is whe...

Part 1 ( this part is not as fascinating as Part 2 but may have info you might be interested in. I'll bold key words so you can skip to what you care about.) Charlie was right (I lost count how many times I have written that this year but his streak continues). The Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday morning was very, very good. I was the only member of the public there which I think might have somewhat influenced what was said (or how forcefully it was said). I'm not sure it was me personally but that there was a John Q. Public in the room. Michael DeBell is the head of the Committee and Kay Smith-Blum and Steve Sundquist are the other members. The cast of staff coming in and out was quite amazing. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was there for most of it as was Holly Ferguson, head of policy and government (I always forget her exact title) and Noel Treat, the new head of Legal. The first thing I learned is that this is where you get an advance look at upcoming Board meeting age...

I attended the BEX Oversight Committee meeting on Friday. As usual, interesting stuff. No Board member attended. Here's a recap. the problematic Small Business Hub program seems to be dismantled and nearly shut down. What is interesting is that they absorbed all the 4 employees into the Facilities department. I don't want to be unkind but why? If that program is no longer going to exist, why did we need to keep four people? (This is the program that the State Auditor called out for having morphed from a policy that the Board created to make sure the district did outreach to small/minority businesses wishing to do business with SPS into a $1M a year, 40 class program. Most of the people attending these classes never did any business with SPS which is why the audit said it was improper use of capital funds.) Nearly 2 million dollars will leave our Operations budget and go back to Capital. So we don't even have to wait for the state to cut funding to our district - we do it do...

I have no doubt that the district's first choice to ease the overcrowding is to move the APP students to one school, say Ingraham, or just say, go to the high school that is your attendance one, we'll have AP for everyone there. Maybe that would be the easiest and fairest thing to do - just send kids to their neighborhood high schools. So "Anonymous" wrote this questions which I thought were good (but Anonymous, give yourself a name - no anonymous posts here). 1) How did the district decide that IB and AP are equitable options? Are they not 2 completely different teaching styles of advanced academics? Yes, both can provide quality accelerated acadmics, BUT aren't they very different philosphical / learning models? What if you have a north end student that does not want to follow the IB model? What if they prefer AP option? Will Ingraham be adding more AP classes for these kids to choose from? I don't know that I think the district thinks they are e...

Once again, checking for one thing led to another. I went to Roosevelt's web page and there's info on their enrollment issues. From the principal: Starting next week, we will need to make some adjustments to some students schedules in order to accommodate an influx of new students to RHS as the result of the new assignment plan. We have several classes that are extremely full and closed to some students who need those classes. As a result, we have been provided with some additional staff to create new sections of classes and thus reduce the overcrowding in those classes. Starting on Monday, October 4, we will be making some adjustments to a few students who are currently enrolled in 9th Grade Science, Biology and/or Algebra 2 Honors. We are taking volunteers who may want to change their schedule. Please see your counselor if you would like to volunteer to change your schedule. In addition to the volunteers, we will need to randomly select other students ...

Look, I get that most of you don't have the time or inclination to fact-check as Charlie and I do (and we still get it wrong sometimes). But please, please do NOT say something as fact unless you can give actual valid numbers. There was a great discussion going at the thread about Garfield being overcrowded and whether this means the high school APP cohort should be split and where they might go if they had a two-high school cohort or even just shoot them off to their area high school. I think there were some great ideas/analysis (and I hope the district/Board reads it and considers it). However, there were a couple of places where I read things stated as fact (without real numbers backing it up) and assumptions (without explanation of why that assumption could be true). To whit, there was this: "Splitting up APP at the high school level would make many more AP classes available in different high schools." Of course it would be a plus if more high schools had more A...

On Friday, I attended the BEX Oversight Committee meeting (so did Director Kay Smith-Blum). There were only 3 members of the actual committee in attendance but about 7-8 staff. (It was interesting because one member of the committee said the staff didn't need to stay but apparently they all wanted the tour even though the building isn't finished. They had no other work to do?) We met at Hale and had a good tour. First impressions: I feel like the building is going to be far better to navigate than the old one. (The old building had so many hidey spaces I couldn't believe an adult had designed it. It has a functional feel to it with not a lot of "design" feel to it (as opposed to say, Hamilton). The color scheme seems to be beech-toned wood, brown and ...white. Yes, white floors in the halls, white cabinets (great for an art room) and white lockers. (A joke was made about how bad the red, white and blue school colors looked at the old school but at least ...

This month's BEX Oversight Committee meeting was held at Hamilton Middle School where we all got to go on a tour before the meeting. It was very interesting. The building looks pretty great. It has an old-school with new stuff kind of feel. Lots of cherry-stained wood which gives it a warm glow. From my tour notes: The building was originally designed for 725 but now can take up to 900 students (and up to 100 of those being Special Education students but they don't know how many will be assigned there). The building administration moved in just this week on Wednesday. Because of that anyone who wants to see their area of the building is to be allowed in. So if you want a look at that part (the south side) of the building, you can go in. It is designed with class "clusters around a general area where there is a sink to wash your hands (if you don't want to go into the bathroom), water fountain, etc. The Special Ed area can be fully self-contained (and the...

I've attended a few meetings and received some information from other sources that may be of interest. First Item - Math Placement Apparently the district math department (via MAP scores) sent out honors math placements to middle schools based on winter MAP scores . The placement lists were done BEFORE all 5th graders had taken the Spring test. Teachers had been assured that the Spring MAP exam would determine placement . I was told that, for example, at one school 80% of the kids would have qualified using the Spring scores versus about 50% with the Winter scores. There seems to be an issue with seats but if we have qualified kids, they all should get the placement. The district will probably get a lot of blowback on this issue but may try to dodge it some other way. Second Item - Facilities I attended the BEX Oversight Committee meeting on Friday. I was particularly interested in hearing what was happening with South Shore. I arrive a few minutes late and wo...