Seattle Schools Community Forum

This story from the Times on Roosevelt's Ruben Van Kempen , drama teacher and director extraordinaire who will be inducted into the Educational Theatre Association's Hall of Fame in San Diego this week.  One interesting item that most don't know - RHS offers the only full-time theater program in SPS with multiple classes.   His legacy (but he's not going anywhere) - this from a student: "He instilled a belief in me, a belief in following my passions and dreams. Whether I'd gone on to be an engineer or a teacher or anything else, I'd appreciate what he gave me at a really important time." An accomplished stage director as well as an innovative teacher, Van Kempen has trained and inspired dozens of theater professionals, working from here to Broadway. They include Chad Kimball, a recent Tony Award nominee in the Broadway musical "Memphis," as well as Noah Racey, a busy performer-choreographer who'll be the lead in the 5th Avenu...

My, but this was a year of change for Seattle Public Schools. Change at the top. The biggest news of the year was the sudden dismissal of the superintendent, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The Board, which had dragged their feet from June to March in response to the State Auditor's report, acted expeditiously between their receipt of a report from an internal investigation of the Regional Small Business Development Program and their decision to fire the superintendent. We can make all kinds of conjecture about why the Board decided to fire her, but we need to give strong credence to their stated reason: they no longer felt that they could trust her. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson had been losing the Board's trust bit by bit in a number of other incidents over the course of the previous three years. The "Pottergate" scandal was just the last step - a big one - that took her over the line. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was fired "without cause" and took a year's pay (over a qua...

Today's Seattle Times has a story about the re-opening of Rainier View and Viewlands . Director Maier is quoted. District-wide enrollment fell from 2000 to 2007. It has been rising since then. Closures in 2006, after falling enrollment, might have made sense, but how does Mr. Maier justify the school closures that HE voted for since the enrollment has been rising?

The Superintendent announced these principal assignments today: Appointments: * Kelly Aramaki to Beacon Hill International School (Susie Murphy is retiring) * Anitra Pinchback-Jones to Rainier View, which opens this fall * Lisa Escobar to Viewlands, which opens this fall * Dr. Robert Gary to Principal-on-special-assignment at Interagency Academy, joining Kaaren Andrews Note: Pinchback-Jones has been at Bagley Elementary, Lisa Escobar and Robert Gary have been at RBHS.   Also, the word is that Bryant will either have an assistant principal or head teacher and not continue having two principals. The following individuals have served in an Interim role this year and are officially being appointed as principal. In each case the ExecutiveDirector of Schools gathered feedback from staff, families and communitybefore making these recommendations: * Keven Wynkoop at Ballard * Kelley Archer at Stevens * Keisha Scar...

There was much of interest discussed at last week's Operations Committee meeting. I think the Capacity Management issue will be a bigger item of interest but as I stated previously, I'm still waiting for some documents to be on-line so that I can link to them. There were three documents related to Facilities (not including the monthly summary which is almost useless). Two were labeled "Annual Report" but I'm not sure anyone would think of them as reports. (One page, both sides? Considering all the work done in a year on facilities, how is that a report?) The first was was an annual report on " BTA Related Information ." It reviewed the work need to be done in seven weeks to get BTA projects done on Queen Anne, Rainier View and Viewlands. (The seven-week period was not specified so I don't know when they are talking about. Summer?) They point out that there are many unknowns in the work. Now look, I get that some of these b...

Before going over what was discussed line-for-line, I wanted to throw out some items that popped out to me as ah ha! or oddities or questions. One thing to point out off the bat - and please help me out if you know for certain - is that on the sheet entitled "SPS 2011-12 (Gap) Estimate Summary" (bundled in a group of documents) was a total list of losses from the state. It STILL has Highly Capable as eliminated. I thought that got put back by both the House and Senate. They budget in about $1.16M to reopen Rainier View, Viewlands and McDonald/QA. I had forgotten that basically McDonald and QA will have TWO opening costs because they are first in Lincoln and then go to their own buildings this fall. Interestingly, I hear that Broadview-Thompson could handle Viewlands for another year so maybe the district could consider waiting one more year and save that money. STEM update - $100k. Look for that to be on-going. STEM came along at a time when the district really di...

(Did anyone attend Tuesday's? I think Dorothy said she did. I looked at the PowerPoint and there is a lot of stuff that I wish I had heard presented. I'll have to tease it out in another thread. Here are my notes from the PowerPoint of the 2nd of last week's "integrated" work sessions (a mash-up of budget and transition plan). I did not stay until the end so help me out if you did. All the Directors were in attendance as was Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. They started at page 45 of the previous day's work session. They started talking about program placement and the new possible Accelerated IB program in response to the overcrowding at Garfield. It would be modeled after the program at Interlake over in Bellevue. (I'll just say here that I think it's done. The community would have to rise up, en masse, to prevent it. I just think there's way too much work already done for this to be just a "possibility." The question is whe...

It was interesting to say the least and I can honestly say I learned something and walked away better informed. The auditorium at MOHAI was filled (and not just the usual suspects). I saw Councilman Tim Burgess as well as Board President Michael DeBell. (And Councilman Burgess was introduced as the brains behind this event. The Councilman has decided to step into Seattle education. Welcome, Tim.) So the moderator, Adam Porsch, works for the Gates Foundation and used to work in the D.C. district (but he didn't reference Rhee so I don't know if he worked with her). With him were Richard Barth, CEO of the KIPP Foundation; Timothy Daly, President of the The New Teacher Project; and Steve Barr, Founder and Emeritus Chair, Green Dot Public Schools. The discussion was organized around the guests giving a overview of their group's work, a few central questions and then questions from the audience. (Just as an aside, and I don't mean this badly, but there they were, ju...

It's Labor Day weekend and I decided to labor by reorganizing my upstairs files. Naturally, most of it is SPS information. It's a little overwhelming trying to look through and then decide what to keep. However, at the end, less paper and more organization. And you know what? You never know what you might find. I've found information that, at the time, was not so important and now, after the Auditor's report, might be quite useful. But all that requires more work before disclosure. However, I thought I would pass along some info that I've come across to put on your radar as we move towards planning BEX IV . Having done nearly all the high schools (sorry, RBHS, Sealth and Ingraham; although Sealth just got quite a nice upgrade) and a couple of middle schools, it seems like BEX IV will be heavy on elementary schools . (I do believe the district is likely to do either Eckstein or Whitman or Washington under BEX IV but given the huge amounts we need to spend now ...

I went back and looked at some of the items on the Board agenda for Wednesday. Before the meeting, they are having a Work Session on maintenance. I'll just have to make the effort to go because, on the one hand, they allowed the head of Maintenance to buy some new software and hire a couple of temporary(?) people to organize all the backlogged maintenance. (Yes, I know; it's 2010 and our district really has no idea how much needs to be done, where, and in order of need.) There was this idea that we would have one or two zone crews to go out and get one school's needs done in one shot. On the other hand, the district has just laid off 7 of the 14 maintenance workers (a pretty big hit for any department). So that backlogged maintenance? Either we are going to contract it out or there's going to be a lot of waiting. Now contracting it out has problems. First, the volume of work is such that it makes sense to have your own in-house people. Second, you can certainl...

Here is the Transition Plan that is to be presented to the Board next Wednesday. Reading through it quickly, I don't see any major changes. Transportation is Appendix A, right at the end. I certainly feel for all parents. It is a lot to absorb and considering some of it may change in a year or so, even more work is in store. There are also a few other items of interest on the Agenda. 1) Dr. Enfield's report is on curriculum alignment and STEM . Should be interesting. 2) interestingly (and maybe I just never noticed before) but they have the minutes of work sessions and the retreat on the Consent Agenda. Are there actual minutes of these meetings or just agendas? 3) Interesting capital items . One is for McClure to get some energy efficiency work done under a Washington State Department of Commerce grant. From the agenda item: "McClure Middle School was awarded a grant during the last legislative session under sponsorship of state Rep. Reuven Carlyle. The grant ...

Transition Plan discussion. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson started off the overview saying that transportation and grandfathering of siblings were two of the key issues for the Transition Plan that will be discussed next Wednesday the 16th at a Board Work Session. She said that "transition rules are for one year and may continue or change based on actual student enrollment". Meaning, " we won't know how the SAP is actualized until students are in the seats" and then they will make adjustments. My interpretation (and again, if you watched or were there, help me out) is that: the transition plan will be for one year only (but may extend depending on the outcomes of that first year. Does this mean grandfathering siblings for only one year? It might and that's a key question to ask Board members to get clarification on at the Work Session. I understand that no one knows how this SAP will work out but I worry about that "one year only" business as a up-front n...

The district proposes reopening 5 buildings to house new schools to help with capacity issues. We already know that Old Hay (which will be renamed soon using the previously used name Sharples) will be a K-5 Montessori. The district has some experience with Montessori (although not a full school) so it could be assumed they know what they are doing. So then we have Sand Point (original name was Pontiac), Rainier View, McDonald (and note it's Mc, not Mac), and Viewlands. All will be K-5s (likely). So the question is how to open these schools and as what? Should they open as full K-5s? Start with a couple of grades? I think just K is out because of two factors. One, for parents who already have a child at a different school (and if grandfathering for sibs at the original school doesn't happen), then you would have a mandatory assignment of two schools. Two, Lincoln is a big building and it would seem odd to have two little schools with just kindergartens as their start. ...