Seattle Schools Community Forum

A very busy week before the holiday break next week.

From the National Education Policy Center: BOULDER, CO (September 12, 2016) – From an innovative rural school in Vermont to a school serving international refugees in California, 20 inspiring schools are being acknowledged as 2016 “Schools of Opportunity.” Based at the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) sponsors the annual Schools of Opportunity project, which identifies and recognizes excellent public high schools that actively strive to close opportunity gaps – the differences in opportunities and resources that drive the well-known achievement gaps. “Children learn when they have opportunities to learn,” said NEPC Director and CU Boulder Professor Kevin Welner, co-director for the project. “When those opportunities are denied, they fall behind.” Following last year’s pilot of the project in just Colorado and New York, this year’s recognitions considered high schools from coast to coast. “The project offers an alternative way of assessing sc...

The Times is reporting that the district is using the Bill Clinton school of language to explain what the word "support"means in matching funding from the Alliance for Education for the IB program at Rainier Beach High School. The Times includes footage of the Alliance event where the announcement was made by President Patu.  It must have come as quite the surprise to her to learn what "support" means.  Despite great fanfare at the announcement that Seattle Public Schools had made an agreement to fund International Baccalaureate (IB) classes at Rainier Beach High earlier this month, the district says promising to support that program does not mean giving it extra money.

From SPS Communications: The Alliance for Education and Seattle Public Schools today announced a multi-year agreement to sustain the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Rainier Beach High School, which has been at risk of being discontinued at the end of the current academic year due to lack of funds. The Alliance for Education has pledged $50,000 per year in philanthropic funds for each of the next three school years – 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019 – for a total of $150,000. This pledge has been made possible through the early support of the Thomas B. Foster Endowment and the John Stanford Fund. Seattle Public Schools will fund the remaining costs of the program and will be examining mechanisms to sustain the program beyond the 2018-2019 school year.

KPLU's Sound Effects has created a wonderful, vital piece of work in Renaissance Beach, a story about the turnaround of Rainier Beach High School.  It is told thru the eyes of staff and students and is truly compelling.

Somehow I missed this but PBS had a story in June.  on the International Baccalaureate program at Rainier Beach High School.  I am glad they are getting this notice.  The International Baccalaureate program, once thought of as a college preparatory curriculum exclusively for the rich, may also help students at struggling schools. The NewsHour’s April Brown explores how the program has transformed one high school in Seattle.

There is an issue going on with Sand Point Elementary and the sudden pulling of a grant from the Families & Education levy because SP's principal is leaving.  The school planned staff around that grant and are now scrambling because of the rescinding of the grant.  The school is looking for answers and so far no one - from the City or the District - has any to give them. This could mean dire things for other schools who may get F&E grants and then see them taken back should they lose their principal. I have never seen any documentation mentioning this nor did the Department of Early Childhood and Education staff at a recent Board Work Session on the levy mention this possibility.  I'll have full details after I get some answers to queries I have put to various stakeholders. Today I will be attending an odd sort of panel discussion on charter schools at UW via the Evans Schools of Public Affairs.  It's called Charter Schools: Problems and Poss...

 Wednesday is the next School Board meeting .  Agenda includes: proposed calendar for 2015-2016 everything on the Action and Intro lists is about capital projects save one on " Plaques, Name Plates and Donor Walls" that the Superintendent has asked to be postponed until May 20th This should be one short Board meeting.  As well, since the overwhelming majority of the agenda is capital projects, well, you can come and talk to the Board and Superintendent just about anything.   Thursday is the Operations Committee meeting starting at 4:30 pm.  No agenda is yet available. There are no Saturday Director meetings this week. Of note: - Rainier Beach High School principal, Dwane Chappelle, was named Metro Principal of the Year for 2014-2015.   Congrats to to Principal Chappelle doing yeoman's work at RBHS. - Roosevelt AP Human Geography teacher Richard Katz has won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the National Council for Geographic Educat...

From Rainier Beach High's IB coordinator,  Cambrie Nelson: Dear interested community members, Rainier Beach High School students are transforming the very nature of education in South East Seattle . Equipped with the new International Baccalaureate Program and their personal experiences as educational muses, our youth are surging ahead to become some of the most potent global leaders in the region and beyond. A cohort of students have been selected to pursue a unique opportunity in Barcelona, Spain this summer-- the International Baccalaureate World Conference. For a week in July, these students will join 200 other change-makers from across the world in Global Action Teams to examine the theme of "Technology in the Global Society".

Happy First Day of Spring! The Teenaged Brain: Spock versus Kirk via NPR . Mukilteo Education Association at Mariner High School in Everett speaks out about SBAC testing of 11th graders. Look who was on both the local and national NBC news - students at John Rogers Elementary.    They did a class project on who is on U.S. paper money and found not a single woman.  So there's now a petition to get a woman on the $20 by 2020 (getting rid of Andrew Jackson who apparently didn't even want to allow paper money).  But who? Via KING-5 Via NBC Nightly News Womenon20s campaign NY Times article on this subject by notable women Update: want to learn more about Rainier Beach High's IB program?  Here's your chance: Join us for food, fun, and community: When: Saturday, March 21st from 1:00pm-3:00pm Where: El Centro de La Raza, 2524 16th Ave S Dear guardians, families, and community members, Join your neighbors for a free meal to learn about how to suppo...

Again, high school graduations are continuing so congrats to all students and their families. As well, Thursday is the last day of school for all students so enjoy these last days.  Wednesday, June 18th School Board meeting, starting at 4:15 pm.  Agenda .

I will be taking a short break for a few days as my family will be happily attending the graduation of my youngest son from his university.  We are very proud that he was accepted to the Evans School of Public Affairs at UW to work on his Master's. I am disappointed to report that teacher Jesse Hagopian narrowly lost to Jonathan Knapp for president of the SEA .  The vote difference was 45 votes out of 1,342 cast.  About 54% of the SEA members voted which was apparently nearly twice what they have had in past elections.  There is to be a runoff for the treasurer's spot between Jennifer Matter (Knapp slate) and Dan Troccoli (Hagopian slate).   According to OSPI, Rainier Beach High School will continue to receive a federal grant to help improve academic outcomes. Ballard High School students won two awards for short films at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY).  Song for Anna by Lucy Harstrick, Isaiah Hoban-Halvorsen, Josh Vredevoogd...

From SPS Communications: "Students attending high school or middle school throughout the Puget Sound region are invited to get a taste of computer science and basic programming at Puget Sound App Day 2014, set for Friday, May 23 at Rainier Beach High School. Everyone is welcome to attend from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 23, regardless of prior computer science knowledge or experience, although registration is required. Since the event is being held on a school day, schools should follow their own district’s field-trip guidelines when registering their students. Sponsored by Seattle Public Schools’ Career and Technical Education, App Day is a programming event where students learn to create apps and games on their own devices – Windows phones, Androids, iPads, laptops or whatever they have brought with them. Rainier Beach High School computer science instructors, University of Washington computer science students, and engineers from the UW and Microsoft will circulate t...

 Update: Congratulations to the Cleveland High School girls basketball team - now the 3A state champions !  They beat Bishop Blanchet High School, 54-45. Congratulations to Garfield High School's  boys basketball team for winning the 4A state title overland Richland, 68-59! Congratulations to Rainier Beach High School's boys basketball team for winning the 3A state title over Eastside Catholic, 47-45!  It is RBHS' third straight state title.   No other team in state history has won three titles in a row. End of update. All three Seattle schools won their basketball game last night and are playing in championship games today. Good job and best wishes to the Cleveland girls basketball team, the Rainier Beach HS boys basketball team and the Garfield boys basketball team! (The Garfield game went off without any incident from either side.  There had been concern about the issue of racially-charged tweets by a few ignorant Issaquah High students.)

Interesting story from The Classical (an independent sports website) about Rainier Beach High School and its history of basketball dominance. Locally, it's known as the best place to get Vietnamese food. It is perhaps less well known as an astonishingly fertile cradle of basketball talent, although it's that, too. This is a place that has produced more current NBA players than just about any other place on Earth—as many as Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx combined. This jumped out at me: Those most recognizable student is 6’7” senior and Louisville commit Shaqquan Aaron, who moved all the way from California to go to high school at Beach. Strange as it this seems if framed in a non-basketball context, such a thing would have been entirely unthinkable a few years ago.  This, too: As something of a last-ditch attempt to turn things around, the school began offering classes from the prestigious International Baccalaureate program, a route that had actua...

Read this guest column by Colin Pierce, IB Coordinator at Rainier Beach High School, that appeared in the Seattle Times Education Lab. You can comment there on the Seattle Times site.

 Update: First, still nothing about the charter applicants and the upcoming Charter Commission meeting.  Still odd. Second, there was an article this morning. about public school funding throughout the country that may give some insight into why our state legislature drags its feet on fully-funding education.  To whit: nearly all states doubled or tripled the amount of money spent on public schools from 1970 to 2010; but the growth has been uneven But the biggest per student spending has been in nine states, with seven of those in the NE Seven of ten states with the least growth in spending are - you guessed - in the West and yes, Washington State is one of them. Despite what Washington Policy Center wants to tell you (they regularly say that the average WA State student spending is about $12k), according to Ed Week, Washington State spending is about $9,497 (adjusted for inflation from the 1969-70 rate of $4,794).    The top six states spend ab...

There are no real or urgent capacity issues in the southeast part of the city. Consequently, a lot of the people there are puzzled by the changes proposed for that part of town and Director Patu is reported to be preparing an amendment to the Growth Boundary plan that will call for the deletion of any changes for the Southeast. What is going on in the Southeast - and, more to the point, why?

 Updated for Thursday the 22nd - see below for details of Charter Commission meeting and Audit and Finance Committee meeting. One update before I start.  When I check the agendas for various District meetings, I generally only check once for committee meetings.  I check more often for Board meetings because (1) things change quickly and (2) there is notification embedded in those Board agendas to alert me to changes. Sadly, this did not happen for the Operations Committee meeting last Thursday.  When I put up last week's list of meetings, the agenda for that meeting was available and I duly noted important items.  But then I find out that they added an item that several of us had been asking for and yet didn't show the agenda to be amended. It's sad to continually ask the district to be transparent.  Unless, of course, you don't want people to know what you are discussing and when.  This particular agenda item was about student data privacy....

From the Audit & Finance Committee meeting today comes news of the first Open Enrollment Data. As stated in the headline, SPS enrollment looks to go over 50,000 for the first time in decades, to just over 51,000. That is based on an increase of 1300 students for next year.  Interestingly, it is NOT at kindergarten where projections show a lower number, just under 300 students.  The real increase is at 6th grade at about 160 students.  Oddly (and I mean I don't get statistically how this happened), they got all the high school numbers right on target.  The highest projected change for high school is at the sophomore level with more than 100 students. Tracy Libros, head of Enrollment, said she thought the enormous growth line of birth-to-K may be stabilizing.  Director Carr noted the change in 6th grade.  Dr. Libros said that Jane Addams is doubling the number of 6th grades classes and adding one 7th grade class.  They attracted many Spectr...