Seattle Schools Community Forum

School Board meeting highlights (thru Board comments).  Here's the full video :

I wanted to also update you on all the items discussed at the Curriculum&Instruction Committee meeting on Monday.  The agenda was jam-packed and Director McLaren did an admirable job keeping it moving.  Sadly, though, it meant truncated discussions.  (Note; this will not be inclusive of all items on the agenda.) Director Blanford, who is Chair of the committee, was absent so Director McLaren filled in with Director Peters also there as the third member of the committee.  I also noted that Rick Burke, Jill Geary and Leslie Harris, newly elected members of the Board, were also in attendance.

Monday, Nov. 10th Curriculum& Instruction Policy Committee meeting , 4:30-6:30 pm.  Agenda Among items of interest: Items Requiring Board Action on Nov. 19/Dec. 3 - BAR for Policy 3201, Disciplinary Appeal Council (McFadden/Sander) - BAR for Policy 2190, Advanced Learning (Martin)  - BAR for 24 Credit Waiver Application (Heath/Stoen)  Standing Agenda Items - MTSS - Special Education RC-CAP Also, policy on attendance, Native American Education Report, waiver of basic instructional materials,program evaluation&assessment, research activity and test administration and selection/adoption of instructional materials. That's a lot of ground to cover in two hours. Tuesday, Nov. 11th Veterans Day - No School

A bit of an exciting week as the district welcomes two new Board members. Also FYI, the district is looking for members for its School Wellness Task Force . Seattle Public Schools is seeking members for a Task Force to review, revise, monitor, communicate and evaluate policies and procedures governing school food, competitive foods, nutrition education, physical education and physical activity. The Task Force will operate for an 18-month period, December 2013 to June 2015. To be considered for the School Wellness Task Force students, parents, family and community members should complete and submit a nomination form by Friday, Dec. 13, 2013 . The invitation letter , nomination forms , and a complete description of the committee are available online .   Tuesday, Dec. 3rd Oath of Office from 5-6 pm in the JSCEE Auditorium.  It is open to the public.  Sue Peters, Stephan Blanford and returning Director Betty Patu will be taking the oath.  There are ope...

I am going to attempt to slog through all my notes but I expect Charlie, Kellie and Meg to chime in here as we were all sitting at the back taking notes.  (And, I had to take a phone call during part of the APP middle school discussion.)  Staff has done an incredible job in creating the various plans.  No one can truly know how long it must have taken and the tedious but important job of determining walk zones, ripple effects (if this, then that) and all the other issues they had to take into account. So why so messy and why so much confusion? My view (not shared by Kellie) is that the main flaw WAS the public engagement.  Kellie believes the problem was never truly expressed so the answers were always to be confusing and flawed.  I believe that I think I know what staff problem staff was trying to solve but that they never engaged their stakeholders correctly in the first place and so, never had real buy-in AND created mistrust. The old set-up for these...

At the Board meeting last night, the fate of the Pinehurst program was discussed. There was an Intro item on the agenda to end the program.  Before I left the meeting, I was handed a sheet that outlined the idea of AS-1 and Indian Heritage joining together.  It's a pretty thoughtful piece of work that would co-join the goals of both programs.  (They want to be at Lincoln for the interim and them move to W-P; that part confuses me because they want to be K-8 and that wouldn't work at that location.)  The Indian Heritage High school would be part of Ingraham which has the largest number of Native American students in the north end.  They would then move to the new Lincoln High (or again at W-P but it won't fit).  I think this could have legs but it would take more than one Director to get any traction. Ron English ran through the issues - that Pinehurst costs $8k per student compared to $5k at larger schools.  They could put Pinehurst at Va...

From the Board meeting last night: Native American Program The Superintendent announced the following: - there is a tribal history curriculum via a bill that was in the Legislature.  This school year that curriculum will be provided to 4th graders in the SW region (and other unnamed schools). Later it will be in 4th,8th and 11th grades across the district. - Gail Morris is the new director of the Native American program.  She is a member of the Muckleshoot family and has worked on the Washington State Indian Education Association. - the Native American parent advisory committee has been set-up and will be aiding the Superintendent In my remarks I gave the Superintendent full credit for finding getting things done for the program that seemed to stymy other superintendents.  (But I dinged the Super and the Board for not giving one iota of attention to Hispanic Heritage Month.  One notation in the school calendar but not one mention of it at any Board meeting, ...

I understand that the Superintendent is scheduled to have a long meeting today with Native American parents and leaders.  I'm sure it will be a compelling discussion and I hope he listens. Like all of U.S. history with Native Americans, the Seattle Schools' history doesn't have a whole lot to hold its head up about.  I'm not even part of that community, nor was it on my radar for many years but even I know that things have not been handled well. I can't give you the whole history of the Wilson-Pacific building and the Native American program.  But the program always did the best it could with a lousy building and underfunding.  Now that the building IS getting a rebuild, is it for the Native American program?  No.  Was there even discussion of keeping the program there?  If there was, it was on the down low.  And, they had to beg to save the beautiful and moving murals painted on the side of the building.  This was not graffiti - these ...

It's summer and yet it feels busier than ever. Saturday community meeting with Director Patu at Cafe Vita at 10 am. Concerning story about the use of Roundup and links to autism, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's from Nation of Change. The authors of the new review call for more independent research to validate their findings, stating that “glyphosate is likely to be pervasive in our food supply, and contrary to being essentially nontoxic, it may in fact be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment.” From Director Carr on the subject of the Management Letter from the SAO: Please be clear that the Board doesn’t respond to the SAO – our management team does. The SAO doesn’t require to response to management letters, only to findings. The management team is required to develop corrective action to the Board as we track all levels in A&F (findings, exit items, management letters) though they are provided some flow time to develop that plan (so we don’...

There are sometimes days doing this watchdog work that are defeating, sad and frustrating.  Today is one those.  I'll get to the issue at hand but a few thoughts first. I've said this before - I do truly believe we have some good and decent people working in SPS.  There are several up the food chain who are almost great but, like many a bureaucracy, have those whose work either drags them down or mires them in place. I've also said this before - anyone who works in leadership at SPS who does not read and heed the words in the Moss-Adams report of 2002 is doomed to failure.  Or, at least doomed to frustration. The echo in my head from that brilliant report (and I paraphrase here) -   It does not matter what structural or systemic change you bring to an institution, if the culture of bureaucracy at an institution does not change, nothing changes. This has been, and continues to be, the problem with our district. You really need someone at the top ...