Seattle Schools Community Forum

I like to listen to KUOW's Friday morning round-up of news.  It's generally lively and interesting. I only caught part of this morning's but the part I caught really bothered me because of what I heard. The discussion was about the alleged cheating by the Bellevue High football staff who were running a "diploma mill" for students they recruited for the football team.  It is alleged that those students were attending a private school that was being paid for by team boosters or someone else.  It does not appear the students went to real classes or even had teachers all the time.  Bellevue has had a winning football program for many years with, at one time, a 67-game winning streak. The pundits were asked about what should happen to the Bellevue program, given that Bellevue had won games with these students playing. ( I note KUOW also had the H.G. Bissinger, noted author of Friday Night Lights, about Texas high school football).  So in jumps Joni Balter who...

Garfield teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian weighs in on the issue of the benefits of recess in an op-ed at the Times. The average time Seattle students spend in recess has steadily declined over the past few years according to a May KUOW investigative story. What's worse, the schools with the shortest recess times enroll disproportionately more low-income students and students of color. I'll just weigh in and say I believe it is folly to cut unstructured play for students.  I think many of you might be too young to remember the children's singer, Raffi , but he had a great song called "Shake My Sillies Out."  I think recess is a good time for that and gives a needed outlet for kids and benefits the teacher with kids who more prepared to learn.

KUOW's Ann Dornfeld has done a three-part series on PE in public schools that is both informative and illuminating.  Some of what she reports is troubling. Part One - Seattle Area Kids Don't Get Enough P.E., but Who's Keeping Track? This was the most troubling part as we find that neither SPS nor OSPI is really tracking what is a legal requirement.  In fact, SPS almost has a "all the other kids are doing it" attitude. But a KUOW investigation found that few elementary schools in the Seattle area provide the required amount of P.E. In fact, not one of the eight Seattle-area school districts contacted by KUOW meets the state P.E. law. Who is keeping track of how much P.E. students are getting? Not Olympia’s state school officials. "We do not have a data collection mechanism in place," said Lisa Rakoz, the health and fitness education program supervisor at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. "We trust that school dist...

 Update:  apparently Tacoma School District is now reconsidering becoming a charter authorizer.   They had paused their letter of intent because of the lack of clarity around rules but now that the Board of Ed and the Charter Commission have cleared up those issues, Tacoma may change its mind.  What's interesting is their School Board had voted in unison against 1240 saying it would hurt their district's funding.  Not sure what changed.   They have missed the window to get authorization and would have to wait until next year to become an authrorizer.  (I suspect - because I've been to the Charter Commission meetings and heard this - that several Tacoma groups who want to open charters feel they might do better with a local authorizer than the Charter Commission.) As you may have heard, Spokane School District was approved as the only other charter school authorizer in the state of Washington by the State Board of Education.   Th...

Although neither the District nor the teachers' union have released details of the tentative agreement on a new contract, KUOW's education beat reporter, Ann Dornfeld, has a copy of the agreement and reported these elements, each of which is a compromise on the primary areas of disagreement: It's a two-year contract. The pay raise will be 2% in the first year and 2.5% in the second year. Test scores will be an element in teacher evaluations, but a smaller factor than currently. Elementary school teachers will work an additional 30 minutes, but with some flexibility about when that time comes. I don't have details about case loads for PTs, nurses, and counselors. I don't have any other details. I heard this on the radio; there's no story on the KUOW web site about this yet.

KUOW is launching a series of stories about young adults/teens coming of age who have autism.   It debuts Tuesday, November 13 with a call-in at 9:30 am (543-5869) or e-mail comments, weekday@kuow.org. It's an inspiring series and one that hits close to home for me.  I think as the number of people who are on the autism spectrum grows that it's important to learn about their challenges and help them find acceptance in our society.  

Just listened to Shannon Champion from Stand for Children talking about the charter school initiative on The Conversation.  A couple of things: - go back and listen to the tape.  She didn't answer virtually any of the actual questions that Ross asked.  You might want to keep that in mind going forward on this issue.  You won't get a straight, precise answer to questions like his question "can anyone open a charter school?" and the answer is "yes, anyone who follows the application process and has the background to open one."  She dodged that one. - I have gone thru the initiative (versus the charter bill legislation which is its template) - some interesting changes/additions/deletions but plenty for folks to have concerns with including the very controversial parent/teacher "trigger". - There will be organized opposition to this measure should it qualify for the ballot and it will NOT just be the union (or union supporters).  There ar...

Way back when, David Letterman used to give celebrities about $5,000 to make a short film for his "Holiday Film Festival."  My favorite was one with Bette Midler who made a film about a boozy barfly laying out her life and views and she always ended with, "Why bother?" The Lady Di one was about Bette's character explaining how Diana came to the U.S. for the first time and "she brought 2 trunks and 15 suitcases.  She went to...JC Penney.  And I said, Lady Di, why bother?" And so I say about the media in Seattle on Seattle Schools, why bother?

KUOW's Phyllis Fletcher has created a series running this week called Paramount Duty:K-12 Education and the Recession.   From the KUOW website: In "Paramount Duty," I report on how the recession has affected children, parents, teachers and school districts. I produced this series with assistance from Mike Babb and Anita Rocha from the UW Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology; Shannon Harper of the West Coast Poverty Center; Doug Haddix of Investigative Reporters and Editors; and NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.  The stories will air on Monday on Weekday at 9 am and on Tuesday-Friday on Morning Edition (5am-9am).  Topics: Monday - Auburn School helps Kids Eat on the Weekend Tuesday - Homeless in Mount Vernon Thursday - Staying After School (teachers helping kids catch up) Friday  - The Ask (districts lobbying for support in Olympia) It sounds interesting and I'll be most interested in Friday's report because I'll like to hear what legislators s...

You'll have to read it to believe it.  KUOW has fired/let go UW professor Cliff Mass.   If you're not familiar with Professor Mass (he of the perfect radio voice), he did a regular feature on Friday mornings about the upcoming weather in the Puget Sound.  He usually added some kind of science feature to his work and it was usually related to the weather/science.  I actually didn't hear him do this all that much.  He was usually on between 3-5 minutes. But I guess sometimes he talked about fuzzy math.  (He was part of a small group that successfully sued the district over the math curriculum only to later have it reversed on appeal.)  And I guess that made some people (like UW which owns KUOW) mad.  Read about it at his blog and how he matches it to the firing of Principal Floe.  He makes some very strong points about how other "regulars," who are on much longer also provide commentary.  If you like Professor Mass' work on KUO...

The 10 am hour of Weekday on KUOW 94.9 FM will feature the head of TFA, Wendy Kopp.  This is interesting that Ms. Kopp does not appear to be here on a book event and she was here just last month.  I'm thinking this is about setting up shop (with money from the Gates Foundation) and firing up the troops. I predict a huge call-in.  Call 543-KUOW or e-mail  weekday@kuow.org. We'll talk after the show.

KUOW's The Conversation will be featuring a segment called " Teacher Seniority versus Skill ." That sets the tone right away. Here's the blurb: When schools lay off teachers, it's last hired, first fired. But should seniority be more important than skill when it comes to the tough choices? We'll hear about a proposed change in state practice. Plus, what makes a great teacher, anyway? Who's the best teacher you ever had? What made them great? Call us and share your stories. You can e-mail a comment to conversation@kuow.org Or call in during the show - 543-KUOW or to leave a comment on their feedback line - 221.3663

This past week we saw something I had never seen before, a complaint about Board-adopted materials, Brave New World as a 10th grade Language Arts text. Dorothy, Mel and I were in the auditorium and heard the presentation by both sides, the Board's questions and the answers. Phyllis Fletcher from KUOW was also there. I had gone over to Ms Fletcher when she entered the room and congratulated/thanked her for her story on the matter from that morning. The story described the problem at the root of the matter and fairly and accurately represented the perspectives of each side. That contrasts starkly with other stories written about the situation. The story in the Times didn't misrepresent the situation, but didn't explain it either. Consequently there were 207 comments about PC or totalitarian efforts to "ban" the book before I posted a comment that stated the actual situation. The story in the P-I , however, was just plain wrong. The headline read: "...

I actually have several other posts to write but something happen this morning that I wanted to share. First, I received a phone call from Mary Bass. She just wanted some feedback from me on what I think I'm hearing here and other places about her performance as a director. We arranged a time to speak later. Then, I'm listening the weekly news round-up on KUOW. I knew they would likely be talking about the primary election results so I was interested. There was Joel Connelly from the PI, Eli Sanders from the Stranger and Joni Balter from the Times. They were discussing how Joe Mallahan and Mike McGinn were behind the learning curve about being the mayor and needed to come up to speed. I decided to call in and see if I could mention that the same holds for the School Board candidates (as well as mention my discussion with Mike McGinn about his viewpoint about the schools). So they were more interested in the my conversation with McGinn and I explained that I talked to him...