Seattle Schools Community Forum

There's an article in the Times this morning about IB funding, particularly at Rainier Beach High School.  It reflects a pattern in Seattle Schools that truly has to be addressed.  That pattern is for the district - with a flourish and applause - likes to roll out new and "innovative" programs that are usually wildly popular.  And fund them with seed money and then expect them to continue on (finding the funding themselves.) I truly dislike that the district - and many school boards - like to start programs that they have no idea how to continually fund.  

A bit of a slow week at SPS, probably because of the MLK, Jr. day off.  It's a good day to reflect on issues around race relations and our district, our city, our state and our country.  Maybe a good day to go see Selma.  (I read that one student - at a sponsored viewing of the movie - had said thank you to the producers for making it because he finally learned what "MLK" stood for - meaning, the actual letters, not the man. Amazing.) Looking over the Board agenda for the school board meeting on Wednesday, I found a compare and contrast moment.  The Times had a good story about the Creative Advance Initiative - arts in the schools program - and it's highly successful launch.  The Creative Advantage Initiative, a program paid for by the city of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools and the private Seattle Foundation, this school year helped 1,659 students in about 12 schools — mostly in the central part of the city — who wouldn’t otherwise have ...

Quite an interesting and packed agenda for the Audit and Finance Committee meeting on Thursday.  (It's also interesting that the Executive Ctm meeting, normally in the morning, is at the exact same time so it won't be possible to attend both.) Items of interest : Washington State Auditor’s Office Entrance Conference (Technow)  Always interesting to hear from the Auditor.

In advance of the Board meeting, I wanted to point out a couple of things, some of which Charlie and I have pointed out in the past. One, just to let you know, the speaker list is NOT full so you can call up and still get on.  Two, staff has a bad habit of waiting until the very last minute - particularly on Intro items on capital issues - to fill in the blanks.   They like to leave "placeholder" notations.  That might be okay on Friday but not on the day of the meeting.  This is a public entity and the public has a right to know what the budget is and who is doing the work within 48 hours of a Board meeting.  This "last minute" fill-in stuff is a disservice to the Board for their oversight work and to the public.   Three, continuing on putting items with blanks on the agenda, I note that while JSIS's request for approval for their funding of IAs seems to be complete, the one from McDonald does not.  The wording of the document: PLEASE NOTE:...

To start, I think that foreign language teaching is great and should be started in every elementary school. I would advocate for foreign language several times a week in every elementary versus what we have now which are four foreign language immersion elementary schools that are ONLY open to neighborhood children. I did a previous post on this subject that covers some of the history. JSIS started as a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "hey kids, let's open a foreign language school to honor a beloved superintendent." But, where was the discussion about funding, where those kids go AFTER elementary and how to expand the program? Nowhere.   Guess what? John Stanford International School was a wild success and left other parents clamoring for more. It took the district nearly eight years to bring a couple more schools on-line and then McDonald in the last couple of years. (They did also finally get around to figuring out a pathway to middle and high school although those...

Tuesday, March 19th Audit&Finance Committee Mtg (Quarterly Audit) from 4-6 p.m. at JSEE.  Agenda.   Items include: internal audits of transportation, maintenance and Ingraham High School (note: these may be regularly scheduled audits or something else.  I'll check.) Performance audit status risk management ERM (which I believe is Enterprise Risk Management, managing risks and capitalizing on opportunities) Wednesday, March 20th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda.   Note: the student performance is the Salmon Bay Marimba Group.   I love a good marimba band so I may have to go just for that. Items include: approval of a grant from OSPI to boost science teaching for elementary and middle school teachers. Per OSPI, Seattle Public Schools will partner with Renton School District, University of Washington College of Engineering, and the Institute for Systems Biology. The project will focus on professional developmen...

I couldn't stay long (darn cold) but I did make some remarks and heard other interesting remarks. First up was Wayne Barnett of the City Ethics department who gave a concise and lively wrap-up of what has been happening with this joint ethics venture between the City and the district.  This is a mid-term report as they are in the middle of the 3-year process. He said that everyone at JSCEE had been given the ethics training as had all the principals. In terms of advice, as of now about 80% of the contacts had been via phone or e-mail.  He said they have slightly less active than at the City level but that is to be expected (given the relative sizes of each). Investigations.  He stated they received their 100th call this week.  He said about a quarter of all calls had launched investigations.  He said about 60% of those calls did not fall under their jurisdiction but that the City had been pleased to act as a liaison between the district and the callers t...

I had nearly forgotten that I had received a reply from Director Carr on the issue of the district considering partial funding for the IAs at McDonald for next year (despite the district saying previously that they weren't and it wasn't necessary to have IAs to have the program). I want to say upfront - the district created this program and after having sat through the Board Work Session on International Schools, I absolutely see the need for the IAs.  If the district wants the program to work, best practices would say have an IA in every room. However, there are two points to consider here. The main one is that that despite the popularity of the programs and the desire by many parents for access to them, they are ONLY available to children in certain neighborhoods.   This is not the fault of the parents but they also need to understand that they are getting something that other students have no access to.  And they need to understand that their program costs more ...

 (I know this is going to make many angry.  I'm sure the McDonald parents will be quite angry and I even know some of them.  My intent it to explain and to report on budgeting in the district.  If the Board is making decisions to benefit one program at the expense of others, then that deserves discussion.) Background:  When our district created John Stanford International School, there was big excitement.  This was to honor a fallen superintendent and it was a modern step forward for our district.   And, it was a huge success and a highly sought-after school. But there were a couple of big issues and one secret.  The issues were the creation of more of these popular schools AND where do the elementary students go after K-5?  I guess when they started JSIS, that seemed far away. But like all issues, the chickens came home to roost and there was a push for more schools and they were created.  And, they finally had Hamilton beco...

I had been meaning to write this thread for some time now.  It's a worthy example of how Seattle Schools starts off with a good idea but cannot follow-thru with execution. I will be upfront and say I probably should have done more research so fill in the gaps if you know more.  But the issues are in very sharp focus right now and it is a program that is going to reach a stress level soon.

I attended the press conference today about the 2012-2013 Transition Plan and short-term capacity management options.   (I also listened to the public input from the Board meeting about this issue.) It was actually a full house of reporters so look for something on the tv news.  There was nothing new but here are some of the highlights:

Prior to last week's Board meeting, there was a Board Work Session on the 2012-2013 Student Assignment Plan (vis a vis capacity management).  Highlights: they will be trying to link schools with fewer ELL services to those with more to provide more access to students who need those services they will be starting the new " World School " for SBOC at Meany.  I'm not sure exactly what this entails for Special Ed , they are going to try to do the same linking idea as for ELL students.  for Advanced Learning , they want to try to figure out what is a "real" ALO and what guidelines are given for schools that want ALOs.  Good question but you'd think AL would be able to answer that one right now.  Kay said she wants to see consistency in ALOs.  Tracy said the IB process at RBHS is moving along well. for International Education , they have feeder patterns set up except for needed two more elementaries for Denny.  The Superintendent said these woul...

Issue #4: The urgent need for additional elementary capacity in the northeast. Possible solution A: A new attendance area elementary school eventually located at the John Marshall site (the building needs significant renovation). The program will meet at the Lincoln site until the building is ready. Possible solution B: A new option elementary school eventually located at the John Marshall site (the building needs significant renovation). The program will meet at the Lincoln site until the building is ready. The option program could house a new program or it could house the language immersion program now at JSIS, relieving the overcrowding there and providing more equitable access to language immersion. Variation: The new option enrollment language immersion school at John Marshall could be a K-8 providing language immersion through middle school and providing some relief to the north-end middle school capacity crunch (see Issue #1). Possible solution C: Reo...

(Update: It is with great sorrow that I pass on the news of the sudden death of Senator Scott White who was found dead in a hotel room while attending a leadership conference.  There was no evidence of foul play and an autopsy will be performed to find the cause of death.  Senator White, who had two small children, was a Seattle legislator - Laurelhurst, Northgate, Broadview, Wedgwood, Lake City and Greenwood - who cared deeply about public education.  It is a loss to Seattle.) The Seattle Times has come out with a story about the brouhaha at JSIS over the pledge of allegiance.  The Times does not cover the issue the way we first head it with some parents believing that it is wrong to make undocumented students to recite the pledge.  The Times covers the story as JSIS being a global school and that it is nationalistic to recite the pledge and so hurts the goals of the school. It seems that many parents understand that any child can opt out and as long as t...

Kelly Aramaki, the award-winning principal at John Stanford International School, is leaving at the end of the school year to move to Beacon Hill International School.  From a letter to parents: It’s with this utmost admiration and confidence I have in this school community that I have decided that the timing was right for me to leave the school at the end of this year in order to help our district continue to grow and strengthen international education. About one month ago, Dr. Susie Murphy, the principal who led the transformation of Beacon Hill Elementary School into Beacon Hill International School (BHIS), announced to her school community that she was retiring. BHIS is now in its third year as an international school with Mandarin and Spanish immersion programs up to 2 nd grade. Dr. Murphy and the dedicated staff at BHIS started something very exciting for a student population very different than ours; 65% of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch and 40% of the...

Look, I know it was NOT McDonald Elementary's decision to have foreign language immersion. That the district reopened several new schools and now finds them underenrolled is their fault. I get that putting in foreign language helps shore up McDonald and will likely help fill it (drawing students out of more crowded schools). But that doesn't change the fact that McDonald and JSIS are relatively close to each other (although I think B.F. Day is closest to JSIS) and so that region doesn't even get the benefit of spreading this programming out. Now, McDonald PTA is having a survey about which languages they should have (it's closed now). I'm trying to remember if they did this for Beacon Hill or Concord and I don't think so. The choices were Spanish and Japanese (as JSIS has) or Chinese. I have to say that if McDonald takes on a different language route than JSIS, then Hamilton will then have to add on a third language to their curriculum.

From the Wallyhood blog (the blog of Wallingford where B.F. Day, JSIS and McDonald are located), a post on the school reports. The blog points out the differences in scoring between JSIS (a 4) and B.F. Day (a 2) as well as the number of free/reduced lunch students at B.F. Day versus JSIS. Here's an interesting stat from the blog entry: While many folks don’t think about B.F. Day as a Wallingford school since it sits on the other side of Aurora, last year 23% of B.F. Day’s students were from Wallingford, and that number more than doubled to 48% this year due to the New Student Assignment Plan. They also provide a link to an interesting study that I forgot about from 2000 of parent involvement at JSIS and its outcomes. What is fascinating is how quickly the comments got vicious (and it points out a big issue of how parents feel about their school versus the data on its performance). One parent spoke of how he/she felt that B.F. Day gets a bad rap versus JSIS when it comes to ...

To JSIS principal, Kelly Armaki, who won the 2010 Milken Educator Award for Washington with a $25,000 cash prize. Good for him and good for JSIS. (One slightly sad note: the OSPI website story says that he works to connect Spanish immersion students with native Spanish speaking ELL students. This is great but if you will recall from the NSAP discussions, fewer native speakers will be able to go to JSIS because it is an attendance area school, not an option school.) As well a shout-out to Lowell Elementary, Stevens Elementary 2nd grade and South Shore Elementary for creating altars for Dia de Muertos at Seattle Center. I'm sure that was a great project for kids, both interesting and educational. There will be altars at the Center House and a candlelight procession from the Center House to the International Fountain at 7 p.m. on Saturday. As well, there are other activities on both Saturday and Sunday. For those who may not know, Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a tradi...

I attended Sherry Carr's Community meeting this morning where the topic was largely the Transition Plan and its implementation. Apparently there is a new draft of the plan and, as has been reported elsewhere, it seems some changes are afoot. (There were other parents at this meeting and so if you were there, help me out.) Topics at her meeting: She did a quick update on the issue of taking BMI measurements in PE classes . She said that she had pushed back on this because of the sensitive issues about it and that Dr. Enfield agreed to think about making it opt-in (rather than opt-out). Apparently this will be discussed at the next Board Curriculum and Instruction meeting. The overwhelming point by most parents was that they had been promised that all would be clear once the Transition Plan came out and that is not true. Sherry concurred and said that she thought the Board would see more data at the last Board meeting and that didn't happen. (Just as an FYI, after each Bo...

I've culled these bits and pieces from around the district from newspapers and the district website. Adult Sexual Misconduct: What All Staff Members Need to Know and Do Wednesday, June 18 8-10 a.m John Stanford Center, Auditorium 2445 Third Ave. S. Good to know that the district is requiring this course given the recent problems at Broadview-Thompson and Rainier View. Flags Taken from JS International From the North Seattle Herald Outlook, a story about an American flag and two koi flags being stolen from John Stanford Int'l School. From the article: "Fujino, whose daughter attends the school, explained that her mother donated the two flags to the school last year as a traditional Japanese gift. They symbolize the wish for the good health and growth of children during the month of May. (The Japanese national holiday of Children's Day falls on May 5). The flags, which are about 40 years old, were a gift from the great-grandparents to the grandparents in ...