Seattle Schools Community Forum

Monday, April 29th Special meeting of Audit& Finance .  One single thing on the agenda - potential RIF presentation by HR head, Paul Apostle. Also, if you wish to speak at the School Board meeting on Wednesday, you can start calling/writing at 8 am on Monday. Tuesday, April 30th Charter Commission Meeting in Bellevue from 10 am - 5 p.m. at the Bellevue Arts Museum.  Agenda .  Open to the public (and people do come and go). They will be having an Executive Session first thing until 10:40 am.  They will then have a presentation about "charter school research findings" from the CRPE's Robin Lake.  (I have heard Ms. Lake speak before and she's a charter cheerleader. I'll be interested to see what the reaction is from the members.) Public Comment is at noon.  They are electing officers and any bets that Steve Sundquist won't be chair?  Mayoral forum from 6:30-9:00 pm at Garfield High School.  

Monday, April 8th Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee meeting from 4-5:30 p.m.  Agenda .  The agenda includes two items with "BAR" and a topic.  (Anyone know what that acronym means?)  A Math Adoption Progress report will be presented as well as discussion of Board Policy #2190 around Advanced Learning.  Community Meeting for the Strategic Plan at Ballard High School from 6:30-8:30 p.m. (Interpreters available in Spanish and Somali) Tuesday, April 9th Community Meeting for the Strategic Plan at Aki Kurose Middle School from 6:30-8:30 p.m.  Interpreters available in Spanish, Somali, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tagalog, Amharic and Tigrigna Special Education Advocacy & Advisory Council meeting from 6:30-9:00 p.m. Regular Meeting Agenda includes: 6:30 - 7:30 - Open Forum & District Updates Regarding Special Education 7:30 - 9:00 SEAAC Working Group Session Wednesday, April 10th Executive Committee Meeting from 8:30-10:00 am.  ...

Just added to the School Board meeting agenda today is an Introduction item to allow for "Authorization for a Reduction in Force" by Human Resources.   From the item (red mine): The District is projecting some budget and program changes for the 2013-2014 school year that will not allow it to maintain its current level of programs and services. In order to maintain expenditures within a level of anticipated revenues, i t is necessary for the District to make changes to programs and services and possibly complete a reduction in force of certificated staff. Therefore, it is necessary to give timely notice to people in certificated and classified positions that those positions are being eliminated. For certificated staff, these notices need to be delivered on or before May 15, 2013.  There is no indication of what programs or services they are talking about or the number of cuts. It states that this Action Report will be reviewed by the Audit and Finance Committee on...

From our friends at the West Seattle Blog : An urgent message from the MMS Counseling Department….. Dear MMS Families, Every year, we have to fight to keep school counselors in our schools and plead with our school district and state to put children’s well-being at the forefront of their priorities. Because elementary school counselors are not put in the WSS (Weighted Staffing Standard), we have had a huge RIF (Reduction-in-Force) in School Counselors across the district that will leave many Elementary Schools without a Counselor. If the district were to put elementary school counselors back in the WSS(Weighted Staffing Standard), each elementary school would be funded for a counselor based on weighted staffing funding allocation. They have chosen not to fund counselors in elementary schools and force schools to come up with a way to fund counselors. Many schools do not have the money so they had to let go of their counselors. This move by the district is all in t...

From Dr. Enfield: Due to ongoing budget limitations, the School Board on May 2 authorized a very limited Reduction in Force this year. Given our growing enrollment and our priority to protect funding that directly affects our classrooms, we have worked hard to ensure we maintain and retain the backbone of our District – our employees. Unfortunately it is necessary for us to reduce our staffing in a few areas by up to 45 positions, including 17 Classified and 28 Certificated staff, primarily in the areas of counseling, Physical Education, Music, Career Technical Education and English Language Learners. Affected staff members in these positions were notified during the past several days about this RIF.  In total, we also eliminated 11 Central Office positions. Although this is a limited Reduction in Force compared to previous years, it is not easy and has a tremendous impact on those employees who will lose their position.  I want to thank those staff m...

Tuesday, April 10th Director McLaren Community meeting at Delridge Library from 1:15-3:15 p.m. Audit&Finance Committee Meeting (audit) from 4-6 p.m.  Agenda includes MLK FAME covenant compliance update where we find out if FAME is honoring its agreement with SPS,  a 2010-2011 Financial, Federal and Accountability audit update (not sure what this is),  ALE policy update a "special attention" item from Director Carr called "A&F operating rhythm." BEX IV meeting at Mercer Middle School from 6:30-8:00 p.m.   Eckstein's meeting seem to focus more on capacity issues especially Lowell at Lincoln.  Denny's meeting seemed to focus on issues around Arbor Heights/Roxhill.  I was a little surprised as I didn't see as many parents from Alki, Lafayette or Schmitz Park as I thought might come out.  It will be interesting to see the focus from the communities in the Mercer area. Wednesday, April 11th Executive Committee meeting from 8-11 ...

I may have missed something so please help me out if you know the answer to this confusion. I was just putting in a public disclosure request for RIFs - the categories, schools and subjects (if secondary schools).  I wanted to give the request some context so I looked for the district's own numbers. Here's my confusion.  First, there is one presentation from a work session on April 27th .   Then, there is one staff presentation from May 4th and one to the Board on May 5th .  The one on May 4th matches the April 27th Work Session presentation. But they don't match in numbers or categories with the May 5th one. April 27th/May 4th both say they will RIF 30 certificated individuals (27.5 FTE).    It also says they will RIF 49 Classified staff (42.05 FTE - 13 SAEOP FTE and 36 paraprofessionals).   So if you wanted to add them all up, you get 79 people RIFed from throughout the district.   But the May 5th one says 36 peo...

By request by a reader: Indeed, today I met a teacher friend that theoretically now confirms 3 local districts supposedly practicing the technique of giving negative evaluations to older (read "non-reform" and/or expensive) teachers to help force them out as a combo cost-saving/pro-reform move. What I am hearing is that while some schools are not having RIFs, many first-year teachers are not getting their contracts renewed.  (If they get an unsatisfactory in just one area, they're out.)  I have also heard that the teacher assessments are having a rough first implementation with some older teachers only getting one visit to review their performance and even stellar teachers are getting an "overall proficient" rating.   Teachers? Parents, ask at your school about RIFs.  I'd like to develop a list of them.

A request was made for a thread on this topic.  Let us know what is happening at your school. One person commented they were interested in how this might affect Garfield and Ingraham.  From a discussion I had with Martin Floe, it does not appear that Ingraham will have any RIFs (or very few).   I do not know about Garfield.  (I did ask Mr. Floe about TFA and he gave one of his trademark hearty laughs.  Then he said that there isn't much movement of teachers out of his school and he didn't anticipate any RIFs.   It is one hallmark of a good school when teachers don't want to flee.)