Seattle Schools Community Forum

Good morning on the start of this Memorial Day weekend.  Please consider taking a little time to explain to your children why they have Monday off from school and the sacrifices that have been made for all of us by service members in our armed forces. Interesting article on the growth of Montessori-based public schools (both traditional and charter.) As a complete opposite to the Washington State Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court is taking a decidedly hands-off approach to school funding in that state.  From NPR:

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.

This Work Session had a larger-than-normal audience which is a good thing because now there are other witnesses to what was discussed.   Charlie and I both went and came armed with ideas for the Board to consider.  (He outdid me, of course, with his sheet with 23(!) questions.  He checked them off as they went along.  At least five of them got asked but not necessarily answered.)  I gave them a sheet with comments copped from Charlie's previous thread.  And, with apologies to all other programs, somehow Advanced Learning/Highly Capable got the lion's share of discussion. Michael Tolley started the session, outlining the higher level thinking.  However, the presentation, on slide 3, says that one goal of the process is to " include access to services and programs as a key component in boundary revisions."   To which Charlie wrote in the margin "except Montessori."  And, he's right.  Montessori is in neighborhood schools but i...

I'll try to hit the major points I heard along with quotes (and color commentary). Just upfront, it was discouraging.  It's now 2013 and so many questions - Special Ed, Advanced Learning, K-8s and others - lack clarity and definition.  What was troubling is the number of "exceptions" to current policies that are out there.   There was also the issue of the so-called Program Placement Framework?  Where is this and should this be guiding the decisions made? As well, the presentation used excerpted quotes from various policies - Board or Superintendent or WAC - to justify their work.  But it seemed somewhat random. Growth Boundaries link .  To find it on your own, go to the district website.  Look for "enrollment" under the Schools tab.  Halfway down the menu on the right side is the Planning for the future: Growth Boundaries. 

I swear, this post is not about Program Placement, but a lot of folks will think that it is. The District staff is making a new distinction, between things that are programs and services and schools that have a distinctive "curricular focus". All of the things that they will recognize as programs and services exist to address student academic needs. They are pretty much limited to special education, bilingual education, and advanced learning. Nothing else - including a lot of stuff that you might think are programs - is a program. Language immersion? Not a program. Montessori? Not a program. Same for alternative schools, STEM schools, and international schools. None of these are programs. They are each, instead, a curricular focus. So what? So this: since they are not programs, they will not be governed by the proposed policy 2020, Equitable Access to Programs and Services. In other words, the District won't be under any obligation to provide equitable access to any...

Prior to last week's Board meeting, there was a Board Work Session on the 2012-2013 Student Assignment Plan (vis a vis capacity management).  Highlights: they will be trying to link schools with fewer ELL services to those with more to provide more access to students who need those services they will be starting the new " World School " for SBOC at Meany.  I'm not sure exactly what this entails for Special Ed , they are going to try to do the same linking idea as for ELL students.  for Advanced Learning , they want to try to figure out what is a "real" ALO and what guidelines are given for schools that want ALOs.  Good question but you'd think AL would be able to answer that one right now.  Kay said she wants to see consistency in ALOs.  Tracy said the IB process at RBHS is moving along well. for International Education , they have feeder patterns set up except for needed two more elementaries for Denny.  The Superintendent said these woul...

From the NY Times, a story about a small school in Northern California populated by children of employees from Google, Apple, Yahoo and others and nary a computer in sight.  There are pens and pencils, paper and some knitting supplies. This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of about 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans. The Waldorf method is nearly a century old, but its foothold among the digerati puts into sharp relief an intensifying debate about the role of computers in education. "I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school," said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie, is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school. ...

A couple of stories caught my eye this weekend. One is a story about a woman who lived very, very frugally in Long Beach, OR. She died May 10th at the age of 98 and left behind $4.5M. She left behind no living relatives. From the story: She donated $500,000 to a public-school endowment and another $500,000 to a foundation to be used for student scholarships and grants to teachers. The rest she left to the city of Long Beach to build an indoor swimming pool. Bob Andrew, mayor of Long Beach, agreed it will take some study before the city accepts Oller's money. "It's a very generous offer, and we don't know in a small community what it takes to build the pool," he said. "We have to explore the process and talk to our citizenry. It's a wonderful surprise that someone felt that strongly about the community." What a wonderful woman. What a gift to the public schools in Oregon and to the town of Long Beach. The second story was from the sp...