Seattle Schools Community Forum

Well, whoops - it appears that thousands of Northshore students, grades 7-12,  were accidentally sent spam emails that contained porn.  This was not a hacking issue.  The Times reports that the district's tech department was able to block anymore e-mails from coming in and shut down the students' Gmail accounts temporarily. Also on the subject of Northshore, I had written how that district was going to revamp their long-standing highly capable program despite parents' displeasure.  Apparently the parents won the day as their board voted to keep the program the same. Good story from KUOW about music in Seattle Schools via Seattle Music Partners.  The story covers students at Bailey Gatzert, Leschi, Madrona and Lowell.

Hillary Clinton 's event at Rainier Beach High was a bit odd. There were hundreds of people waiting outside when I got there about ten to six. (I was press so I got in early.)  They had the event in the gym and had cordoned it off so much as to dilute the capacity by at least half.  Then, they allowed people in so slowly - over the course of 2+ hours - that they didn't even fill it .  There was room for at least 100 more people. But the crowd was enthused and certainly included a fair number of young people (which is somewhat contrary to whom she seems to gather in other areas of the country.)  She did mentioned Rainier Beach and its IB program saying, "It makes me so proud to see what this school is doing with the IB program." I certainly think there is pride in the turnaround at RBHS but the fact that they have lost the principal who was the leader AND the district doesn't fully support the program financially makes those words ring a bit hollow. She also sa...

I attended the "listening tour" last night by members of the Legislature who appeared to want input on how to fund McCleary but had their own Senate bill that they presume will solve this issue.  I'll have a separate thread but the kid speakers did it best (along with the panel of teacher/principal/superintendents.  (One guy got thrown out of the room for interrupting and I had to ask a couple of legislators have a confab while I was talking if they might stop talking.) Readers, I have a question for you - district or District when I am talking about our "district?"  I go back and forth but it seems I should be more consistent.  I'm thinking upper-case but I note that the Times goes lower-case. The district has a blurb for parents about Schoology.   A couple of things to wonder about: 1) nothing is mentioned about student data privacy and 2) just like The Source, Use is optional for our teaching staff.

Press Release from the Lunch and Recess Matter group: Parents of students in Seattle Public Schools will attend the school board meeting this afternoon to express their frustration that the district has failed to act on their requests that the district provide their children with enough time to eat lunch and play at recess. They are asking the district to quickly ensure that kids get more to eat and play at school. Parents also pointed to a new study from the University of Washington that found students in Seattle Public Schools get only 12 minutes to eat their lunch, resulting in most of the fruits and vegetables going uneaten and putting students’ academic achievement at risk. “We came to the board in November telling them there is a serious issue affecting most of the kids in Seattle Public Schools, and very little has been done since then to fix it,” said Sascha Demerjian, a parent at Whittier Elementary School. “The district is currently finalizing schedule...

I finally had the opportunity to look over the Work Session presentation on " Resource Stewardship" and "LEAN." I don't really like PowerPoint presentations and understand that they are general outlines with the presenter to fill the points.  But I found this a confusing presentation. One, I felt there was a lot of filler.  I am big on getting to the point so explaining that improving processes would help with both the bottom line and customer service. Two, page 5 says there was a School Leader Survey in 2015.   How did staff get this done less than two weeks into the new year?  If  this was truly done in 2015, then kudos to them.  But another issue on the same page is what do these colors mean?  I know red is probably bad but again, not clear. Then there's the issue of LEAN.  Page 6 says "Define Value..from a Customer Perspective!."  That may work for business but if you ask a parent what "value" from their child's school m...