Seattle Schools Community Forum

Teacher of the year (hint: from SPS), what's in the Mayor's budget for public education, breakfast on the go and the bell times taskforce. Great news - the Washington State Teacher of the Year is Lawton's Lyon Terry .  From OSPI : Lyon is a National Board Certified Teacher. He has taught at Lawton since 2005 in 2nd, 3rd and multi-age classrooms, where he focuses on creating confident, hard-working and compassionate learners. Lyon wants his students to learn how to be both kind and smart. During his time a Lawton, 4th-grade writing proficiency rates on the MSP have risen over 10 percentage points.   Lyon has served in numerous leadership roles in his school and district, most often in the areas of writing and literacy, and also as a union representative. The Mayor announced his budget today.  I was particularly interested in the new Department of Education and Early Learning ( DEEL ). 

The AP is reporting that the State Supreme Court will announced on Friday that it would consider if the charter law of Washington State violates our state's constitution. I would say that's a rather large piece of news as I have been repeatedly told that it was "highly unlikely" this would happen.  Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 28th.  I just might have to go and listen. A King County judge had earlier ruled that parts of the law were unconstitutional and both sides asked to skip the appeals and go straight to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issue centers around our Constitution's wording about "common schools" and whether charters meet that specific definition (and therefore are entitled to be funded in that manner). NCLB letters are reaching mailboxes soon.  (SPS is holding back to see if their individual district waiver comes thru based on the district's belief that the CBA covers using test scores for teacher evaluation.)  Her...

Monday, March 10th Curriculum&Instruction Policy Meeting, 4:30-6:30 pm, Agenda Of interest: - an ask for a waiver for one school day for Lawton - update on Creative Approach schools - Math Adoption Progress report This week has two of the five Community Meetings for the Strategic Plan for each region.  I would take this opportunity to ask ANY question you want because the Strategic Plan covers it all.   Community Meeting; Southeast - 5-Year Strategic Plan South Shore K-8 from 6:30-8:30 pm Wednesday, March 12th Executive Committee Meeting , 8:30-10:00 am, Agenda Oversight Work Session: Human Resources , 4:00-5:30 pm, no presentation yet available Work Session: Data Access & Sharing , 5:30-7:00 pm, Presentation This is basically a lot of what was said at the committee meeting that they presented it at last year.  It is not good and I'm a little surprised at what got left out. First, they did NOT fully explain FERPA.  Like the HUGE change i...

From Lawton PTA: We want to invite you and your membership to attend a School Board candidate forum which will take place at Lawton Elementary   on Thursday October 24 at 6:30pm .  We invited both Suzanne Dale-Estey and Sue Peters to come and answer questions regarding their campaigns for school board in our region (District IV) and are happy to say both have accepted.  I think this is great and applaud yet another forum for voters to heard the candidates speak. That said, will we ever heard from the Blanford and Green in District V?  Even though it is clear that he will walk into office, it would seem important to hear from both of them.  Is Betty Patu not going to be questioned at all?  Even Michael De Bell, when he ran unopposed, was invited to all the forums and asked questions.  

Shauna Heath, the Executive Director of Curriculum and Instructional Support and Michael Tolley, the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, have told the Board and the public that they will form advisory committees this fall to explore delivery models and identification criteria for advanced learning programs. In the meantime, schools are moving forward on their own with changes in delivery models. We know that Wedgwood and Lawton are discontinuing self-contained Spectrum as the grades roll up. They claim to be using a cluster model, but it's unclear how closely they are following the cluster model described in literature. Whitman says that they will use a cluster model for 7th and 8th grade Spectrum this year. Again, it is unclear how closely they will adhere to the cluster model described in research. A number of schools, due to low enrollment, have never offered self-contained Spectrum. It is unclear what delivery model they are using. Shauna Heath has also ack...

The former Lawton principal, Christine Helm, has taken another job, assistant principal at Whittier Elementary, and the Lawton assistant principal since the start of school this year,  Dr. Neil Gerrans, will serve as the interim principal at Lawton. They will both be at the Lawton PTA meeting tonight to answer questions about the change. Does this change re-open the whole question of the structure of the Lawton Spectrum program?

This is likely to be one of my last posts on Advanced Learning.  Oh, not because I'm not interested or don't care.  But frankly, I'm tired of caring.  I'm tired of waiting for this district to at least have a program that is coherent and easy to understand.  So I'm done on advocating on this topic in any big way. This comes on the heels of having a small discussion with Dr. Enfield about Spectrum and then a longer meeting with Dr. Vaughn (the head of Advanced Learning) and Roger Daniels, consulting teacher.   These were good conversations and I did feel like they were listening.  But I don't think they really care that the program makes sense to parents.

UPDATE Thanks to comments, I'm going to refine this idea. It will require an organized campaign. The campaign will have to have people in each school working - face-to-face - to recruit folks to opt out of the testing. All students - regardless of program - should opt out of the MAP tests at all grade levels and in all schools. The boycott includes the state tests in grades 3-8 except in Title I schools . The boycott does not include the tests required to graduate high school. It does not extend to Title I schools which could be subject to sanctions under No Child Left Behind. The goals of the effort will be for the District to fulfill their commitments to students and families. The list of specific broken promises from the District will be developed. The boycott will continue until every promise has been resolved. I have advocated test boycotts to the advanced learning community a few times before. Seven years ago my threat of a WASL boycott by Spectrum students drove then-sup...

There has been a lot of confusion over the years about Spectrum - What is it, Whom does it serve, and Why do we need it. This confusion has been entirely the District's fault. The District created Spectrum. The District defined Spectrum. The District is responsible for the placement of Spectrum programs. But the District has been completely irresponsible when it comes to monitoring the quality and efficacy of Spectrum programs and the District has been completely irresponsible when it comes to enforcing the elements of Spectrum that define it. These failures by the District have recently come to a head at Lawton Elementary. All of this trouble - at Lawton and elsewhere - is entirely the District's fault. First, let's be clear about what Spectrum is. Spectrum is a program designed to meet the special academic, social, and emotional needs of academically gifted students. These students are identified by the District when they demonstrate that they have quantitative and ...

A roundup of news tidbits, big and small. Mayor McGinn didn't get his levy ballot in on-time (some kind of mix-up or put in the wrong box). So his vote never registered. Big whoops on his part. Peter Maier has his monthly community meeting tomorrow, the 13th, from 10:30-noon at the Bethany Community Church at 1156 N. 80th. Lawton has a new principal (yet another mid-year principal change). From the Magnolia Voice blog: "Beverly Raines has taken a family leave of absence for the remainder of the school year. Kathy Bledsoe started this week as interim principal and will remain at the school for the rest of the year. Bledsoe is no stranger to Magnolia, having been the principal at Blaine for seven years. She retired from the Seattle School District two years ago. This was Raines first year at Lawton and prior to coming to the school she filed a lawsuit against Seattle Public Schools, accusing the district of discrimination based on age and sex." The distric...