Seattle Schools Community Forum

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...

The Weekly had a couple of stories on SPS issues. The first one by Nina Shapiro was about the issue of reopening schools just after the district closed schools . It had a couple of interesting things that I hadn't known. "No one knows for sure why this turnaround has occurred, but one factor is surely an influx of students from private schools due to the recession. The state's 528 private schools have seen a cumulative drop in enrollment of about five percent this year, to 80,000 students, according to Judy Jennings , executive director of the Washington Federation of Independent Schools ." Really? I had heard that they had many more applications at private schools than space. But 5% is a lot. I wonder what it was in Seattle. "DeBell notes the district went to the city during its 2006 decision-making to ask for demographic guidance, but the city could offer none. Tom Hauger , manager of Seattle's Comprehensive Plan, says that the city does not keep infor...