Seattle Schools Community Forum

A bit of a slow week at SPS, probably because of the MLK, Jr. day off.  It's a good day to reflect on issues around race relations and our district, our city, our state and our country.  Maybe a good day to go see Selma.  (I read that one student - at a sponsored viewing of the movie - had said thank you to the producers for making it because he finally learned what "MLK" stood for - meaning, the actual letters, not the man. Amazing.) Looking over the Board agenda for the school board meeting on Wednesday, I found a compare and contrast moment.  The Times had a good story about the Creative Advance Initiative - arts in the schools program - and it's highly successful launch.  The Creative Advantage Initiative, a program paid for by the city of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools and the private Seattle Foundation, this school year helped 1,659 students in about 12 schools — mostly in the central part of the city — who wouldn’t otherwise have ...

In advance of the Board meeting, I wanted to point out a couple of things, some of which Charlie and I have pointed out in the past. One, just to let you know, the speaker list is NOT full so you can call up and still get on.  Two, staff has a bad habit of waiting until the very last minute - particularly on Intro items on capital issues - to fill in the blanks.   They like to leave "placeholder" notations.  That might be okay on Friday but not on the day of the meeting.  This is a public entity and the public has a right to know what the budget is and who is doing the work within 48 hours of a Board meeting.  This "last minute" fill-in stuff is a disservice to the Board for their oversight work and to the public.   Three, continuing on putting items with blanks on the agenda, I note that while JSIS's request for approval for their funding of IAs seems to be complete, the one from McDonald does not.  The wording of the document: PLEASE NOTE:...

I learned some new things at last night's Board meeting about the growth boundaries and decided to pull them out as a separate thread. 1) There is to be an added Work Session on growth boundaries in the next couple of weeks.  President Smith-Blum stated this but no date was given.  She also stated that a big concern for the Board is that "we don't compromise instructional quality" in these discussion. UPDATE: The Work Session will be AFTER the Intro of the plan to the Board, sometime between Oct 16th and Nov. 20th.  I wish it was before Intro, given we are two weeks out from that.   2) The Superintendent and various Board members specifically said thank you to all who have given comments on the boundaries.  It seems pretty clear that they ARE listening.  And, I believe the Board is listening enough to push back in some areas.  I'm not sure which ones but I believe the plan is definitely fluid. 3) One issue has risen to the top of my radar (t...

To start, I think that foreign language teaching is great and should be started in every elementary school. I would advocate for foreign language several times a week in every elementary versus what we have now which are four foreign language immersion elementary schools that are ONLY open to neighborhood children. I did a previous post on this subject that covers some of the history. JSIS started as a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "hey kids, let's open a foreign language school to honor a beloved superintendent." But, where was the discussion about funding, where those kids go AFTER elementary and how to expand the program? Nowhere.   Guess what? John Stanford International School was a wild success and left other parents clamoring for more. It took the district nearly eight years to bring a couple more schools on-line and then McDonald in the last couple of years. (They did also finally get around to figuring out a pathway to middle and high school although those...

Tuesday, March 19th Audit&Finance Committee Mtg (Quarterly Audit) from 4-6 p.m. at JSEE.  Agenda.   Items include: internal audits of transportation, maintenance and Ingraham High School (note: these may be regularly scheduled audits or something else.  I'll check.) Performance audit status risk management ERM (which I believe is Enterprise Risk Management, managing risks and capitalizing on opportunities) Wednesday, March 20th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda.   Note: the student performance is the Salmon Bay Marimba Group.   I love a good marimba band so I may have to go just for that. Items include: approval of a grant from OSPI to boost science teaching for elementary and middle school teachers. Per OSPI, Seattle Public Schools will partner with Renton School District, University of Washington College of Engineering, and the Institute for Systems Biology. The project will focus on professional developmen...

So we see the progress being made in preparation for the new K-5 STEM at Boren but it got me wondering; how are the other new schools doing? Sand Point? Queen Anne Elementary? Viewlands? Rainier View? McDonald? Did I leave anyone out? I seem to hear more about McDonald and Queen Anne so I'd love to hear from Sand Point, Viewlands or Rainier View parents but I'm sure we would like updates from all.

I had nearly forgotten that I had received a reply from Director Carr on the issue of the district considering partial funding for the IAs at McDonald for next year (despite the district saying previously that they weren't and it wasn't necessary to have IAs to have the program). I want to say upfront - the district created this program and after having sat through the Board Work Session on International Schools, I absolutely see the need for the IAs.  If the district wants the program to work, best practices would say have an IA in every room. However, there are two points to consider here. The main one is that that despite the popularity of the programs and the desire by many parents for access to them, they are ONLY available to children in certain neighborhoods.   This is not the fault of the parents but they also need to understand that they are getting something that other students have no access to.  And they need to understand that their program costs more ...

I had been meaning to write this thread for some time now.  It's a worthy example of how Seattle Schools starts off with a good idea but cannot follow-thru with execution. I will be upfront and say I probably should have done more research so fill in the gaps if you know more.  But the issues are in very sharp focus right now and it is a program that is going to reach a stress level soon.

It was a lively meeting to be sure.  I stayed until after the discussion of the introduction of the TFA item.  Here are links ( Part 2 - testimony, Part 3 - rest of meeting). The testimony was more varied than I might have expected as TFA was not the only issue discussed.  In fact, testimony about Graham Hill's preschool led to discussion at the Audit & Finance Committee meeting the next day and Sherry Carr's community meeting yesterday.  I will sum it up here but it deserves another thread of its own as it is a larger part of the discussion about the budget. I am going to write a separate thread on the TFA testimony as it is quite telling to the discussion about ending the contract. 

Didn't see this posted at the SPS website but over at the Wallyhood blog there is notice of a meeting on Monday night to discuss options for parents who don't want foreign language immersion at McDonald.  The McDonald Elementary PTA and the District are seeking feedback from families who do not want to attend McDonald this fall because of the language immersion program.  A meeting with Seattle School Board Director Sherry Carr and Bree Dusseault, Executive Director for NW schools for SPS, has been scheduled for April 4, 2011 from 6:30-7:30 in the library at Lincoln . (4400 Interlake Avenue N.)  This meeting is an opportunity to present concerns and potential solutions to district personnel.  Please try to make this meeting if you are, or are considering, not attending McDonald due to the immersion decision. The district needs to see just how many families are affected by this decision. The two languages to be used at McDonald are Japanese and Span...

Before going over what was discussed line-for-line, I wanted to throw out some items that popped out to me as ah ha! or oddities or questions. One thing to point out off the bat - and please help me out if you know for certain - is that on the sheet entitled "SPS 2011-12 (Gap) Estimate Summary" (bundled in a group of documents) was a total list of losses from the state. It STILL has Highly Capable as eliminated. I thought that got put back by both the House and Senate. They budget in about $1.16M to reopen Rainier View, Viewlands and McDonald/QA. I had forgotten that basically McDonald and QA will have TWO opening costs because they are first in Lincoln and then go to their own buildings this fall. Interestingly, I hear that Broadview-Thompson could handle Viewlands for another year so maybe the district could consider waiting one more year and save that money. STEM update - $100k. Look for that to be on-going. STEM came along at a time when the district really di...

Look, I know it was NOT McDonald Elementary's decision to have foreign language immersion. That the district reopened several new schools and now finds them underenrolled is their fault. I get that putting in foreign language helps shore up McDonald and will likely help fill it (drawing students out of more crowded schools). But that doesn't change the fact that McDonald and JSIS are relatively close to each other (although I think B.F. Day is closest to JSIS) and so that region doesn't even get the benefit of spreading this programming out. Now, McDonald PTA is having a survey about which languages they should have (it's closed now). I'm trying to remember if they did this for Beacon Hill or Concord and I don't think so. The choices were Spanish and Japanese (as JSIS has) or Chinese. I have to say that if McDonald takes on a different language route than JSIS, then Hamilton will then have to add on a third language to their curriculum.

I attended the press conference today about the Transition Plan for 2011-2012. Tracy Libros was there along with the new(ish) head of Customer Service, Brandon Holst and Teresa Whipple of Public Affairs. The media was represented (in person) by me, Phyllis Fletcher of KUOW and Jerry of KING-5 tv. (By the way, I think KING-5, followed by KIRO-7, do the best job for tv coverage. KOMO and KCPQ always seem awol on these issues.) On the phone were reporters from the West Seattle blog, PI-online, Seattle's Child and The Stranger. Two of the most important things before Q&A. Again, as I posted previously, the deadline for issues/concerns to Board members in order to create amendments is FRIDAY, JAN. 7th (tomorrow), not Monday, the 10th. Steve Sundquist abruptly changed this date. Second, I asked and Tracy verified the following point. There used to be an amendment to the enrollment plan called the Waldman/Barnhart amendment. Basically it was a hold safe amendment. Yo...

Questions and Answers - NSAP Q: Jane Addams only has a 3-year commitment as a K-8. There is concern that we won't be able to attract parents in January if they don't believe the program will continue. A: Dr. Goodloe-Johnson initially seemed confused (even though it was a pretty clear question, maybe she forgot where she was or the circumstances in the new JA creation). Anyway she said there were 3 factors to consider. One, the comprehensive school report. Two, enrollment at JA. Three, we are going into year 2 of the NSAP. Geographic zones are going to be drawn for option schools. There may be a boundary issues for Garfield. Between November and January we should know. (So the enrollment number analysis plus the geographic zones created should give us the answers to what tweaks may occur for the NSAP. This would be a good time to stay tuned in and not zone out during the holidays.) Q: Will boundaries for neighborhoods be redrawn? A: That's always a question mark...

( Update: feel free to talk about the NSAP plan here as well.) It's a little early but this thread was requested. Any Sand Point, McDonald or Queen Anne Elementary parents out there who could let us know how their buildings feel, how organized the school feels, how that first day went, etc?

It's Labor Day weekend and I decided to labor by reorganizing my upstairs files. Naturally, most of it is SPS information. It's a little overwhelming trying to look through and then decide what to keep. However, at the end, less paper and more organization. And you know what? You never know what you might find. I've found information that, at the time, was not so important and now, after the Auditor's report, might be quite useful. But all that requires more work before disclosure. However, I thought I would pass along some info that I've come across to put on your radar as we move towards planning BEX IV . Having done nearly all the high schools (sorry, RBHS, Sealth and Ingraham; although Sealth just got quite a nice upgrade) and a couple of middle schools, it seems like BEX IV will be heavy on elementary schools . (I do believe the district is likely to do either Eckstein or Whitman or Washington under BEX IV but given the huge amounts we need to spend now ...

Dr. Enfield visits Olympic View Elementary PTA on Thursday, the 14th at 6:30 p.m. if you've been wanting to hear her speak or ask a question. From an SPS press release: "Green Lake Elementary Principal Cheryl Grinager will become principal at McDonald Elementary; Coe Elementary Principal David Elliott will be the new principal at Old Hay School, and John Hay Principal Dan Warren will become principal at Sand Point Elementary. Grinager, Elliott and Warren will continue as principals at their current schools while working with members of their respective new school communities in preparation for the 2010 school openings." "Families and staff at Coe, Green Lake and John Hay elementary schools and The Center School will be notified when a hiring timeline for a new principal has been developed. The first step will be for instructional directors to meet with the school community to identify the desired qualities and characteristics for their school leader." I literall...

Transition Plan discussion. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson started off the overview saying that transportation and grandfathering of siblings were two of the key issues for the Transition Plan that will be discussed next Wednesday the 16th at a Board Work Session. She said that "transition rules are for one year and may continue or change based on actual student enrollment". Meaning, " we won't know how the SAP is actualized until students are in the seats" and then they will make adjustments. My interpretation (and again, if you watched or were there, help me out) is that: the transition plan will be for one year only (but may extend depending on the outcomes of that first year. Does this mean grandfathering siblings for only one year? It might and that's a key question to ask Board members to get clarification on at the Work Session. I understand that no one knows how this SAP will work out but I worry about that "one year only" business as a up-front n...

I attended two community meetings with Board members this weekend. I stopped in first at Sherry Carr's meeting and there were about 5 people there. They were first talking about Memorial Stadium so I was, of course, happy because it is an issue that matters to me. I was able to put in my plug for (1) not giving away the farm and (2) protecting the integrity of the Memorial Wall. (The MOU is up at the website and I'll start a separate thread on it.) Then a mom spoke about her concern over the new PE plan to measure the BMI of every SPS child starting in 3rd grade. She said that she had concerns over it being hurtful and detrimental to children and that this needs evidence-based research on why we would do it as a district. She stated that PE teachers are not health-care providers and really don't have a good way to communicate to either parents or students about the measurements. And, she pointed out how much time it would take to measure and record every student (th...

I had heard that McDonald parents had a meeting with the head of International Instruction, Karen Kodama, on Saturday. And boy, I thought, how fair is that to these other reopening schools? Who knew you could just ask for a meeting? And mostly I thought it unfair to Sand Point who seems to have no real focus yet. (Rainier View and Viewlands aren't opening for awhile and McDonald seems in the lead for foreign language immersion and Old Hay has Montessori.) Luckily, I have a friend who steered me straight. The McDonald parents did set up a meeting with Ms. Kodama but they also had the courtesy to invite Sand Point parents. Ms. Kodama apparently did not talk about specifics but did talk about what an international school is and said she was there unofficially. She also said every elementary should have foreign language (she and Kay Smith Blum will get along well). There was also a meeting with De Bell and Carr to go over McDonald's survey results about their school. Sand ...