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.

Did you know that the district has rank ordered programs/support activities in district buildings ?  The reasoning is two-fold - for enactment of 1351 for smaller class sizes in K-3 and the growth in Seattle Schools.  Here's the list from a letter that Flip Herndon sent on Oct. 13, 2015 to "Seattle Public School Partners:"

View Ridge Teacher Takes Plea Deal The Times is reporting the outcome of a case of a View Ridge teacher who sent "sexually-suggestive text messages" to a high school girl who had volunteered in his second-grade class.  The male teacher was sentenced to two months in jail. He also surrendered his teaching certificate as part of his plea deal but will not have to register as a sex offender.  He will also not make an attempt to get his teaching certificate back and cannot have any kind of supervision of children except his own. Lowell Loses Its Principal It was reported to me Thursday night that Lowell's principal, Marion Smith, Jr., quit Wednesday with no little notice to the school community. I have asked the district if they knew sooner than that and, of course, how the principal replacement process will be handled.  Obviously, leaving at the end of the year makes it harder for the district to easily find a replacement.

Update: I had bad information about Interagency at Lincoln. Interagency was never at Lincoln.   The student incident with the plastic knife was a Sped student that is part of a Sped program based there. My apologies. Also, the info in italics is from a widely-sent e-mail and included the information about Ms. Powdlodowski. End of update The district plans to move Interagency from its somewhat secret location (until the recent incident with one of its students and a plastic knife) at Lincoln to across the street from John Hay Elementary.  Story from Queen Anne View. There is a online petition against the placement of Interagency across from John Hay Elementary.   The authors of the petition are Christina Economou, Janelle Fowler and Carmen Hagios. Some feel the district is trying to "sneak" the program into their area.  Here are some of their reasons:

  Summary : About the Gates Foundation grant for a preschool at Bailey-Gatzert.   Several on the Board want a more careful explanation about who is in charge of what (like curriculum, alignment, costs) while a few on the Board want to grab this opportunity.  There seems to be confusion over what early learning is in SPS.  The Board will not be voting on this grant until November 19th, well after the election vote on the preschool props, 1A and 1B. About the downtown school .  Some on the Board pressed for costs around finding room at other schools and the actual numbers for space for students in Central/downtown.  It is unclear what will actually happen but one thing that I believe is firmly settled is that the Board is not going to vote in to take on more debt to renovate the Federal Reserve building.  So unless some generous donor(s) come forward, it seems unlikely that the district will be given the Federal Reserve building.  However, the ...

(This is going to be an excerpt from the Audit&Finance Committee meeting held on Tuesday.  I note that this information is likely to be again discussed at today's Operations Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm.  Also at the Operations Ctm meeting, there will be a bell times analysis update , a Facilities Condition Assessment and Study and Survey by the group, MENG , 2015-2016 proposed growth boundaries adjustments and Title IX update. I also know that many of you are waiting for updates on MAP and other testing and I promise to get that up in the next day or so. It's been a very busy week to cover.) There were two rather extraordinary presentations (and a couple of just plain "huh" ones that I will also get to later) at the Audit&Finance committee meeting on Tuesday.  One was about Title IX and sexual harassment which I just covered in the Garfield field trip rape update thread posted today. The other was the discussion lead by Flip Herndon, the head...

From David Garrick, President of the Lowell PTA, in a message to Superintendent Banda, board directors, and others:

From Superintendent Banda to the Lowell and Hamilton communities: I am excited today to announce the appointment of Dr. Marion Smith, Jr. as your new principal. Dr. Smith comes to Lowell from Madrona K-8 where he was assistant principal during the 2011-2012 school year. He is committed to inclusive practices and will be a great fit for the Lowell Elementary School community. He has identified cultivating positive, constructive relationships with the community, supporting a foundation for continuous school improvement based on Lowell Elementary’s strengths and growth areas, and creating a shared vision for the future as beginning priorities as principal.  Marion Smith, Jr. served as the founding director of culture at Young Scholars Frederick Douglass, a K-8 turnaround school in North Philadelphia. He was previously dean of students at J.D. Smith Middle School in Las Vegas, and has also been a middle school English Language Arts teacher, high school English t...

The district (via Nancy Coogan) has announced that Greg King has (finally) submitted his resignation.  They are having a meeting on Tuesday, July 3rd 7 p.m. at Lowell to talk about " next steps in the principal hiring process. "  They are committed to having three staff and two parents on the committee. They state: We recognize this is a tight timeline.  If you cannot make Tuesday's meeting, please send your input on leadership qualities you would like to Nathan Fitzpatrick in HR at  ntfizpatric@seattleschools.org by Friday, July 6th. The District will work with staff and the community to make sure we find an excellent leader who is the right fit for Lowell.

From the Times : Although he hasn’t told his boss or his school, it appears that Lowell Elementary Principal Gregory King is moving to Detroit to work for former Seattle Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. A spokeswoman for Michigan’s Education Achievement System, where Goodloe-Johnson is the top academic officer, confirmed Monday that King is under contract to start there as a principal next week. SPS says they have no official letter of resignation. Talk about burning bridges; it seems Mr. King really doesn't care what SPS thinks. (And yes, this is news. Lowell will be getting a new principal.)

From SPS: On Monday, Dr. Enfield said: “deciding whether to create a stand-alone school for APP students or to house the program in multiple sites with existing neighborhood schools is a big decision, and not one I take lightly. Given our upcoming change in leadership, it is also not a decision that I would be here to defend. I am asking that incoming Superintendent José Banda work together with staff and the community on how to move forward with both program placement and capacity.”  Read letter from Dr. Enfield to Lowell at Lincoln families. For the 2012-13 school year, the District will: • Separate the two Lowell schools. The Lincoln site will now be “APP at Lincoln,” much like our other programs housed at interim sites, such as K-5 STEM at Boren. This means that Rina Geoghagan and Gregory King will no longer be co-principals, but instead serve as principals of their own buildings. The two schools will also have a separate budget structure. • Keep APP at Linco...

According to the Detroit Free Press  Gregory King has been hired as a principal for one of the elementary schools in the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan, the school district of struggling schools administered by Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The press release from the EAA referred to his twenty years as a teacher and a principal and that he won an award in Atlanta. It doesn't mention his service in Seattle and it certainly doesn't mention his recent ethics violation. EAA elementary school principals will be paid $120,000 a year. And that's in Detroit. I guess Lowell should be looking for a new principal.

I just wanted to make a couple of things clear on this issue and then move on.  I'm going to rely on the words from the Times' article of March 23, 2012 by Brian Rosenthal to make several points abundantly clear. It is a very dangerous thing to have people in authority who have legal responsibilities then look away or shrug when behavior issues between staff and children are brought to their attention.  It is a danger to the accuser, the accused, the child(ren) and to our district.  Everyone needs protection and attention must be paid.  There are two huge reasons why this particular case is concerning.

In an effort to try to understand the issues around APP elementary placement, I had gone to the Lowell at Lincoln coffee chat last Thursday.  As it turns out, the principal, Rina Geoghagan,  did not want me to stay.  (I did point out that I was on the Advanced Learning committee and this was one way to learn more about their community.  I had no laptop and was not going to blog about it.) Alas, she thought it "inappropriate." And so I left (as is my good girl manner) but not before I realized that she had called a security person to  - smilingly - watch me leave the building.  (He did not escort me out.  It is unclear if this person actually works at Lincoln or was someone the principal brought from downtown.  Either way, it is the sign of a green principal who seems more worried about herself than her school but that is the Lowell at Lincoln community's problem.) So I visited the APP Community blog to see what the discussion might be.  I...

This is an interesting parallel story in NYC to the one here in SPS.

I see we have come to a sorry place where, once again, the district says things like "handled", "controls are in place" and they "investigated" and all is well. Problem is, we've heard that before - with the Hill scandal, with Silas Potter, etc.  For those of us who are community members and taxpayers, it's a sad thing to see schools that are probably not working as well as they should.  It's sad to see, once again, that the focus is off academics because, once again, the district has a crisis.   Parents, are you really willing to turn away so easily?  All parents, not just Lowell parents should speak up because if you think things like this just happen at other schools, you'd be wrong. This is your district and you have a right to ask for better.  If you accept every decision and explanation - without question - you will not get better from this district. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

The Times talked to parents at Lowell.  They also talked to Susan Enfield via SPS Communications.  I can appreciate how tired the Lowell community must be.  First one split, then another, then a felon goes on a field trip, then Principal King says he's leaving, then he's staying and now this investigation that calls out both of Lowell's principals.  It's a lot. And there are questions: What led a special investigator to conclude that Principal Gregory King and Assistant Principal Rina Geoghagan mishandled the report? If they did mishandle it, why were they not fired? And why were the investigation's findings released after the close of the district's open-enrollment period? What led the investigator was the evidence which was fairly clear-cut in terms of both principals being told about a behavior issue by one IA by a couple of staff members.  The principals never did an investigation and then, when the district got wind of it, they both proceeded ...

As the story at Lowell comes out, there are definitely some lessons learned and some people who come out looking good, bad, and mixed. Here's the central absurdity: two employees were investigated for failure to report inappropriate behavior and the only evidence against them was their report of the inappropriate behavior - the one that satisfied their requirement to report. The people who accused them were the people to whom they made the report - a report that those folks dismissed out of hand. It makes my head hurt to think about it.

Now we know a few more things about the situation at Lowell and I just have to ask Dr. Enfield and Mr. Apostle a couple of questions: This was in the comments section on the thread about the release of the investigation report.  Last year, Gregory King shared with the entire staff during a staff meeting, a "This is my life" power point. In it he revealed that his father had been killed by white racists when he was just a young boy, I believe at age six. His brother was killed as a teen ager, also by presumed gang activities. We knew that he had gone through what would have a major impact on his phyche. All year, when we saw teachers bullied, and his own outbursts, ranting at the staff, we all somewhat excused him, as we knew that he had suffered much in his growing up years.

I first up want to make a couple of statements about this report (which really turns out to be three reports.) Memo #1 about whether 4 employees fulfilled their mandatory reporting obligations. Memo #2 is about Lowell Elementary School: complaints by two employees.  Number three is a letter to HR head, Paul Apostle, in response to the assertions of Rina Geoghagan and Gregory King about the Report (memo #1).  One, there are only two people are named - Rina Geoghagan and Gregory King, both administrators at Lowell.  Everyone else gets a code.  It does make it difficult to follow the narrative. Two, I am deeply saddened at this outcome as it leaves a lot of questions and for the Lowell community much worry. Three, there is something to be learned here starting with the basics. Every - single - person in SPS needs to know the protocol about reporting issues around adult and student interaction. Every - single - administrator MUST be trained on the protoco...