Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update:  here's the schedule for the district boundary meetings - there are only three and they are all less than a hour. Thornton Creek K-5 lunchroom Tues., Oct. 1, 2015, 6:30 - 7:15 p.m. 7711 43rd Ave NE Interpreters: Chinese and Spanish Schmitz Park Elementary lunchroom Mon., Oct. 5, 2015, 6:30 - 7:15 p.m. 5000 SW Spokane Street Interpreters: Spanish, Somali and Vietnamese Seattle World School Meany Building lunchroom Tues., Oct. 6, 2015, 6:30 - 7:15 p.m. 301 21st Ave E Interpreters: Chinese, Spanish, Somali and Vietnamese Also, a link to the map of the look of SPS in 2020 - wow is the word that comes to mind for those high school assignments.   It says it was approved in Nov 2013 and last updated 9/14/2015.  If you are in PTA, I would go to my PTA/PTO leaders and ask that this be a topic of discussion.  

From Beacon Hill parents: On Monday, June 8th, Lester "Flip" Herndon from Seattle Public Schools came to Kimball to let us know that SPS staff will now recommend to the School Board that Kimball-area kids stay assigned to Mercer Middle School for the foreseeable future, instead of Washington Middle School.

Tuesday, April 29th Work Session: Board Self-Evaluation/Superintendent Evaluation, 4:30-6:00 pm; Executive Session, 6:00-6:30 pm. Wednesday, April 30 Work Session: Special Education, 4:00-5:30 pm.   Agenda Work Session: Capital Projects , 5:30-7:00 pm.  Agenda not yet available. Friday, May 2nd Kimball Elementary Art Walk from 3 pm to 6 pm. Saturday, May 3rd Community meeting with Director Blanford , Douglass-Truth Library from 10 am to noon. To note: The District is still soliciting input from Sped parents via a survey .  Last date for input is May 11th.

 Update: Here is the Personnel Report to be presented, as part of the Consent agenda, at Wednesday's Board meeting.  It has a number of comings and goings including the departure of Bob Vaughan from Advanced Learning. Madison is losing its principal, Carlisle Henterson, and he will be replaced by Dr. Robert Gary, Jr as interim principal.  Dr. Gary has been at Madison previously as a teacher and interim assistant principal.  No info on whether Mr. Carlisle is staying in the district. (By coincidence, Mayor McGinn will be at Madison tomorrow for a media event around health services at that school.  This from our friends at the West Seattle blog .) Beacon Hill Int'l School is losing principal Kelly Aramaki who is being appointed the SE region Executive Director.  He's a great administrator and I think this is a good choice. Jo Lute-Ervin has been named interim principal for Kimball Elementary.  She's been a principal at many schools. 

Looks like the assistant principal at TOPS, Jeanne Kuban, is moving to be the assistant principal at Kimball.  The new assistant principal at TOPS will be Sarah Morningstar who was an assistant principal at RBHS.  I know Kimball is fairly large but I didn't know they needed an assistant principal.  So there's Bryant and Kimball with K-5s with assistant principals.  Does Lowell?  Any movement at your school?

There's a great program going on in several of our elementary schools called the Walking Bus, where families walk their children and other students to school. It's an effort to get kids more exercise, show them that walking is a viable way to get around and, of course, cut back on emissions. Nicole Brodeur of the Times had a column this morning about the program at Phinney Ridge which has been going on for 5 years (this one 10-year points out that that's half his life, very cute). I believe there are programs at Phinney Ridge, Lawton Elementary, Graham Hill, Sacajawea, Concord International and John Muir. Some schools do this every day and some, like John Muir, do a "Walking Wednesdays." I believe there is also a program in development at Roxhill Elementary. There is a group called "Feet First" that works to promote more walking in general. They have info there as well. We currently provide a Safe Routes to School program at John Muir and Concor...

I did not attend the Board meeting but did watch some of it from home. (I taped it but naturally got the wrong station for the first 30 minutes.) I only got the tail end of the public comment period. But there were two interesting comments. One was by Jane Fellner who is a long-time parent advocate in this district. She was telling the Board that Garfield is going to be overloaded next fall. She had looked at the enrollment data and they are getting 200 more students than the functional capacity. She said that Garfield would love to share its program with as many students as possible but that truly, the building does have a capacity. (This got commented on later. See Board member updates below.) Another was the ever-smart Meg Diaz who, once again, made an impact. (And Meg, help me out here to flesh out what you said.) What really stuck with me is her determination to make the Board understand that Central Administration has not cut back all that much and the data proves he...

I taped the Board meeting Wednesday to listen to public comment and see what the Superintendent might have to say this time around. I'll go in reverse order on these two. The Superintendent herself didn't speak much for her updates. She had Tracy Libros, from Enrollment Services, talk about how this enrollment season had gone, early data and what to expect before school starts in September. Highlights: during Early Registration, 84% of those registering were kindergarten students Enrollment processed 7,038 forms, 5,780 were for choice seats Notification of waiting list movement should start soon (but again, it depends on the school) there are 8 schools that have 6-10 K sibs on their waiting list, 6 that have 6-10, 3 with 11-15 and 2 with 16-20 Enrollment will be collaborating with principals to see if they can revise their enrollment to put in more kindergarten students (okay, but what does collaborating mean? Arm-twisting or promises for more resources? It's hard to...

Thanks to StepJ who let us know the district had posted a document about the kindergarten sibling waitlists . There are 148 siblings on the waiting lists for schools that are not their attendance area school. There is a fairly even city-wide distribution of siblings who didn't get their sibling assignment with the largest for Kimball at 19 and John Hay at 18. Here's the document summary : "The following chart shows results for non-attendance area K siblings who applied for their sibling’s attendance area school during Open Enrollment. In summary: • 556 non-attendance area K students applied for their older sibling’s school.2 • 73% of these applicants (408 students) were assigned to their sibling’s school. • 27% of these applicants (148 students) are on waiting lists for their sibling’s school. These results are in addition to: • Students assigned to their attendance area school their older sibling attends. • 132 K siblings assigned to the Option School their older si...