Seattle Schools Community Forum

Crosscut asks the question - Are Seattle schools prepared for heroin epidemic? They are talking about having the drug naloxone in schools as a quick remedy for someone who has overdosed on heroin.  Seattle police have successfully saved three lives in the last month. Locally, Mayor Ed Murray has repeatedly blamed heroin for contributing to the exploding homeless population. He and King County Executive Dow Constantine recently convened the Task Force on Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction, made up of political and health officials. Two representatives from Seattle Public Schools — Assistant Superintendent of Operations Pegi McEvoy and Executive Director of School Health Patricia Sander — are members of that task force, a recognition that schools must play a role in fighting heroin use. As early as summer 2014, board members of the National Association of School Nurses started discussing whether naloxone should be a part of schools’ response plans. Some are comparin...

From the Arizona Republic (another state that underfunds public education): Why didn't GE choose Arizona as its new HQ? 

I'm not sure how to view this news but if you have a student with an smart phone, tablet or computer, but I thought parents might want to know this is a possibility for their student. (You may or may not want your child to download Office 365 on his/her devices.) Through an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Seattle Public Schools is now able to provide Office 365 services to students and staff. The first wave of this adoption includes: Office ProPlus for staff and students Download Microsoft Office on up to 5 personal devices OneDrive for Business for staff Collaborate with colleagues and share documents online To get to Office 365, enter  office.seattleschools.org  in a web browser. Login by entering your SPS username@seattleschools.org and SPS password. Click on the links below to learn more, access frequently asked questions (FAQs) and training resources for these services. Office P...

A reader points out an interesting issue to the Nyland version of the early signing of the Gates Foundation grant. "I was checking out the agenda for the board mtg on Wed. and went to the technology document that was added.  It was sent from Nyland  on Sept. 18 , and section II clearly states that board action is necessary because the amount of money being addressed exceeds 250K. Kinda weird that the Gates grant flew through afterwards, with no board approval beforehand.  If Nyland wrote the memo himself there is just no excuse." So Nyland knew (or whoever wrote that BAR under his name) on Sep. 18th that any spending over $250K needed Board approval.  And yet, on September 26th, he signed the Gates Foundation grant for $750K and seemingly did not know this.   Hmmm. Looks like National PTA is getting in deeper with Gates/Microsoft - this is a tweet from one of the national heads: "Great day with  @ NationalPTA  advocates at...

A really great story appeared in the NY Times recently about a partnership between Rainier Beach High School and Microsoft to help with technology learning there.   I hesitate to say anything bad but there are some ironies in it. That teacher, Steven Edouard, knows a few things about the subject. When he is not volunteering as a computer science instructor four days a week, Mr. Edouard works at Microsoft . He is one of 110 engineers from high-tech companies who are part of a Microsoft program aimed at getting high school students hooked on computer science, so they go on to pursue careers in the field.  But Microsoft is sending its employees to the front lines, encouraging them to commit to teaching a high school computer science class for a full school year. Its engineers, who earn a small stipend for their classroom time, are in at least two hourlong classes a week and sometimes as many as five. Schools arrange the classes for first thing in the day t...

There will be a special free screening of a recently released documentary on teaching in the U.S. American Teacher on December 12 at 6:00 PM at Town Hall Seattle . Admission is free and open to the public, but seats are limited, and registration is required. Following the film Warren Etheredge, The Warren Report and the host of The High Bar , will facilitate a discussion with the filmmaker, Nínive Calegari, and an internationally-recognized teacher from Tacoma, Colin Horak. Doors open at 6:00pm and the film starts promptly at 6:30pm. Blurb provided by Microsoft Partners in Learning : Weaving interviews of policy experts and startling facts with the lives and careers of four teachers, American Teacher tells the collective story by and about those closest to the issues in our educational system—the 3.2 million teachers who spend every day in classrooms across the country. American Teacher shines a bright light on a real and imminent crisis in our educational system—how little...

If you wish to speak on the Board agenda on Wednesday, the 6th, be sure to call 252-0040 and leave your name, phone number, e-mail address and topic you wish to speak on. The agenda has several interesting items of note.  one is a renewal of an agreement with Microsoft for software.   There is one puzzling item which I'm sure someone here can explain to me.  "Allows District staff access to the most current version of MS Office for home use."   Does that mean so they can take it home?  Work from home?   a huge item - approval of the budgets.   General Fund for $577,741,503; ASB for $4.4M; Debt Service fund for $85M and Capital Projects fund for $101M.  Adding all those up you get roughly $770M.  That's a lot of dough. Final vote on the attendance policy. The change I see is this: This motion has been discussed at the 5/23/2011 and 6/27/2011 meetings of the Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee. On 5/236/27/2011, after ...