Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: response from SPS Communications: In the McCleary versus Washington state ruling, the state Supreme Court directed the state Legislature to provide ample, equitable and dependable basic education funding. Because the state has failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation to fully fund education, Superintendent Randy Dorn has brought a lawsuit against multiple school districts including Seattle Public Schools.

From the Everett Herald : Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn knows school districts use local levies to pay teachers and principals because they don’t get enough money from the state to offer competitive salaries. He is convinced it is illegal for them to do this.

I finally received one charter school's documents that I had requested via public disclosure; these were from Green Dot's Destiny Middle School.  Now it took some doing because initially a couple of charters did not want to give me anything, saying they weren't public schools.  When I pressed them on handing over documents that were created during the time that they were charter schools, then I got an okay but was put off to "March or April."  I'm still waiting for a couple of other schools.  (I note that Rep. Gerry Pollet also got this runaround which should tell you something.) Green Dot itself only sent them to me in hard copy which, of course, makes it more difficult to copy from and track.  They said they have to buy special "software" to send them to me electronically.  Guess what was in the huge stack of documents?  A letter dated October 2015 to a law firm saying that Green Dot would be sending them public disclosure documents...electron...

I'll start with what I think is coming next.  A big fat fight in the legislature - one that will take time and energy away from the work of McCleary.  (Despite what Republicans think, a one-pager to the Supreme Court with some dates and thoughts on funding are unlikely to change minds on the court.)  The legislature starts its short two-month session on Monday, Jan. 11th. I think there will be at least one charter school bill in the legislature (I'm hearing there may be two which would make it interesting.  I'm also betting one of them will have Rep. Eric Pettigrew's name on it.)  Now, there are three major issues with the current law that would need to be fixed, two of them constitutional, and I think those two come with so much baggage, that a bill can't be created, vetted by both legislators and the public, amended and then passed.   It could happen but I think that's not likely. I think the charter schools will be opening their doors after the ho...

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn announced this morning that he will not seek reelection.  He said that he will continue to fight on to see schools fully funded because of his "extreme frustration" over the system of funding public education. But such a system doesn't exist to day, and I see little, if any, progress toward creating one." He calls out the Governor, the Legislature and even the Supreme Court for not imposing "sanctions meaningful enough to compel the Governor and Legislature to act." 

This is one of the funnier press announcements I have read in a long time. In a ruling Sept. 4, the Washington State Supreme Court declared the initiative that established our state’s charter schools to be unconstitutional. This ruling potentially affects more than 1,000 students who have already started the 2015-16 school year. “Even before the initiative was finalized, I warned the drafters it was unconstitutional,” State Superintendent Randy Dorn said. “And after the initiative was passed, I sent a letter to key education leaders in the state legislature expressing my concerns. “But now that school is in session, we need to do everything we can not to disrupt the education of the students caught in the middle of this argument.” This is the second time in two months that the state Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of our current education system. Dorn urges the governor to call a solution-oriented special legislative session to fix the charter school law and to addre...

Want to understand where we are on McCleary?  Here's a good wrap-up from the Coalition to Protect our Public Schools.  Will the Supreme Court order the Legislature back into session?  I doubt it given there were so many extra sessions already.  I think the Supreme Court has seen what "action" looks like from the Legislature. No, I think the Court will probably act on one of the McCleary-requested actions (see below).   That will get the Legislature's attention.

State Superintendent Randy Dorn appears to be quite upset about the opting out of the SBAC in Seattle high schools.  So much so that the Times granted him an op-ed to write about SBAC where he says "few 11th graders are grappling with refusal to take the test..."   That would be almost a thousand juniors opting out of testing in the largest school district in the state.  That's not "a few" student "grappling" with anything. Then the Times has a new story updating how many more SPS juniors have opted out.

According to this story in the Seattle Times , State schools superintendent Randy Dorn is threatening to withhold funding if Seattle's Nathan Hale High School doesn't administer the SBAC tests to 11th graders.

According to the OSPI web page , the superintendent of public instruction: "is the primary agency charged with overseeing K-12 public education in Washington state. Led by State School Superintendent Randy Dorn, OSPI works with the state’s 295 school districts to administer basic education programs and implement education reform on behalf of more than one million public school students." Yeah. But what does he do? What tasks are required by the duty to oversee K-12 public education in Washington State? What basic education programs does the OSPI administer? What education reform does the OSPI implement? Honestly, I've been through the list of stuff that the OSPI is supposed to do and I'd say that about half of it looks redundant and useless and the other half looks mechanical. It looks like a bureaucracy that runs itself for little purpose other than to run itself. I doubt that the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn, has much actual work to do ...

Randy Dorn, our state Superintendent of Public Instruction wrote a guest column for the Times. You'll never believe it, but he argued in favor of fully funding public K-12 education.

There are some education news items we could get to like Randy Dorn's idea of a two-tier diploma or the Gates Foundation and yet another education initiative (one part is $45M to study 3700 teachers to figure out what an effective teacher is which reminds me of the Supreme Court Justice Potter on a case about pornography said, "I know it when I see it"). I also have some interesting research on BTA III after going over the final project list. However it is Friday so talk about anything. If you aren't at Twilight Moon (I would be if I were a tween but frankly I don't care how dark Forks is, vampires can't go out in the daylight. First rule of being a vampire.), here's something to do with the kids under the category "now for something completely different". It's called Smash Putt , sort of a Rube Goldberg version of mini-golf (indoors). It's only open for families this weekend and next (they serve alcohol at other times). There cle...