Seattle Schools Community Forum

There have been a couple of stories about the school district appearing in the Seattle Times of late. Among them: Schools face $50M in 'glass palace' debt about the money owed on the purchase and construction of the JSCEE - a scheme that was doomed from the start. School board may ease ban on junk food about proposed changes in the district's policy on vending machine food. This was followed by a weird and misguided editorial (as all Times editorials about Seattle Public Schools are weird and misguided), The Seattle School Board has the budget munchies .

Dr. Enfield has re-arranged the org chart at the JSCEE. Here is the new org chart . She has also changed some of the job titles. None of this really changes anything. It appears pointless. It is, however, consistent with her stated priorities for the remainder of the year. She said that she would focus on: 3. Creating a central office that serves and supports schools • Reorganizing departments across finance, operations, and teaching and learning with a clear focus on being a results-driven organization. The only part of it that strikes me as even interesting - not necessarily significant, but interesting - are these two elements: 1. The Executive Directors of the Schools report to the Superintendent, not to the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning. Since the principals report to the Executive Directors for Schools and the teachers report to the principals, there aren't any school-based staff who report to Dr. Thompson. She is not the boss of them. She can...

According to the website, all systems are go and the building is operational.

From SPS: Due to a broken water main, the John Stanford Center is closed for the remainder of the day. Therefore, the Seattle Public Schools Work Session regarding the Strategic Plan has been postponed. The Executive Session has been relocated and the new location will be posted on the Board Calendar once it has been confirmed. The Board will now meet from 5-7 p.m. This meeting is closed to the public.

Did we hear that the Central Office is cutting jobs? I think that's what is going to be said tonight at the Public Hearing on the budget (which might just have an interesting twist, I'll let you know but I don't want to tip off our friends in the district who read the blog). But let's go check the employment page at SPS. There's a "Chief Talent Officer" in Human Resources who will report directly to the Superintendent. This used to be the Executive Director of HR but now we call it Chief Talent Officer. Salary? $118k-$163k. Then there's Executive Director of Schools which I think is a new position but, like the Executive Director of HR, may be a new name for an old job. This pays between $102-142k and the person reports to the CAO. Update: Executive Director is the new name for Education Directors. The district seems to have filled 3 of the 5 positions according to HR so they are advertising for two of them. All will report directly to Dr. E...

( Update: Tuesday 4ish. Well, gone are both the Executive Sessions and now only the Work Session form 4-5:30 about SBOC is happening. Hey, look at that, Meg, me and Dan D. all made the speakers list. We're also hearing from the head of the SEA and some teachers as well. Also, not picking on Hale but I note that we are spending about $600K to rebuild Hale's greenhouse. It has to be moved over by Summit because City Parks wants their land back where the current one sits. It's a great program but man, I could think of a lot of maintenance that could be done with $600K.) Talk about packing it in! On Wednesday, before the Board meeting, the Board is having not one but two Executive Session plus, in-between, a Work Session. The first Executive Session is called a " quasi-judicial hearing" (this under an RCW) for a student bullying incident. I'm thinking it was the cyber-bullying over at McClure but who knows? They are allotting 15 minutes for this so it...