Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update: Changed headline so as not to upset the more tender-minded readers.  The original title, though, was verbatim and was spoken by a Taskforce member to Superintendent Banda. Charlie and I attended along with Joanna Cullen, a long-time Central resident and public education advocate. I honestly hesitate to put this up but I am because pressure needs to come to bear to end this situation (at least at the Mann building - there are other real and valid issues that the Taskforce is completely right about). (To note: there were at least 25 people in the room, most of whom I did not know and could not read their names from afar.  I apologize for those I can't name.) Bottom line from the meeting: To be clear - the district has said that the remaining groups in the Mann Building need to be out by Wednesday, September 18th. (This date is the one the district has to meet in order to get State dollars to help with the project. They will lose those dollars if they d...

There are four schools which are cheated by the District every year. They are South Lake, The Center School, The NOVA Project, and The World School. These are high schools which are not funded in accordance with the Weighted Staffing Standard used to fund every other high school. Instead of getting the funding that they are supposed to get, these schools get much, much less. High schools with enrollment under 800 are supposed to be funded with these staff positions: High School Staffing for schools with less than 800 students (AAFTE) Principal 1.0 Asst. Principal 1.0 Admin. Secretary (260) 1.0 Data Registrar (220) 1.0 Attendance Spec. (201) 1.0 Fiscal Specialist (220) 1.0 Activity Coordinator 1.0 Nurse 0.8 Counselor* (per 400 students) 1.0 Librarian 1.0 Academic Intervention Specs 1.0 These schools, however, are not allotted these staff positions. These schools are singled out to be intentionally underfunded. You might think it is because they are small schools, but Rain...

I let too much time go by and I now have to admit I'm just posting info from two BEX meetings from February.

So much to talk about and so little time to get to all of it.  But coming up: - School Board meeting - nothing like very small children singing "Help!" and saying, "when I was younger so much younger than today".  You mean like when you were a baby?  Adorable kids from West Woodland. Then there were the Nova kids who gave moving testimony about their trans-gendered struggles and but yet again, they find compassion and a home at Nova.  After that, it got quite interesting with a new parent group announcing itself (with one single issue), TFA and assorted other issues. - BEX - this is coming fast and there is a lot to cover - future permanent homes for Nova, SBOC and Lowell at Lincoln ; any thoughts? - a big uh, oh from Transportation (hint, we didn't save any money on the neighborhood plan) - one update - turns out, according to Publicola, that because of redistricting, that DeBell now lives in the 43rd and not the 36th.  They seem to think that b...

From the Seattle Times comes this story about how much money it is costing to review the Facilities department.  Sigh. Yes, it wasn't just the Silas Potter-connected programs but the whole thing is getting a good look-see.  From the article: While the district's initial consulting contract was $25,000, the scope of work quickly grew. The district extended the contract three times for varying amounts that now total $162,000, according to records obtained by The Seattle Times under the state's public records act. I have to wonder, out of all the things the Times could investigate, how they picked this one but fine. It's a great thing, frankly, because ALL of Facilities and Capital Projects should get this look.  It's disturbing to listen to Board Committee discussions on these topics and get worried about where the money is going.  From the article: The hiring of the consultants and the scope of their work indicate the department was more troubled than ...

UPDATED Monday, September 12 37th Democrats Candidate Forum (and Families & Education levy debate) at 7 p.m..m. at the Rainier Beach Cultural Center, 3515 Alaska St.  (Note:  I got my events mixed up; there is no F&E levy debate at this event.) Tuesday (new!), September 13rd Senator Scott White’s 3rd Annual Education Town Hall with Special Guests: Randy Dorn, WA Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Enfield, Seattle Public Schools Interim Superintendent Lauren McGuire, President, Seattle Council PTSA Please join parents, teachers, and neighbors for a Town Hall discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing public education in Seattle, and across Washington. This was kind of interesting last year but having Randy Dorn and Susan Enfield might make it more so. 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Nathan Hale High School- Performing Arts Center 10750 30 Ave NE, Seattle Wednesday, September 14 Board Work Session on the Series 5000 Board policies t...

The Board meeting was fairly entertaining and informative tonight. First up was a wonderful presentation about Special Olympics and soccer teams made up of SPS students from 7 of the 10 high schools that formed a league this year.  (Rainier Beach's team won the championship this year.)  Created by SPS Athletic Director Eric McCurdy, it is to expand to all 10 high schools this year.  Really hard-warming and a great community effort from both Special Olympics and the Seattle Sounders. 

Monday Curriculum and Instruction meeting from 4-6 p.m.  All the agenda says is " Board policies C and D."   "C" is Curriculum & Instruction and covers the following: curriculum (world languages, adoption of instructional materials, approval of supplementary instructional materials), instructional resources, instructional programs (online learning), Special Education and Staff Development. "D" is Students and covers the following: student assignement, student rights and responsibilities and discipline. I don't know what the meeting will cover but one reader said it may be about online learning. Wednesday Work Session: Distribution Services from 4-5:30 p.m.   Should be educational because I know almost nothing about this area. Public Hearing about the Debt Service Fund ( which services our bond debts like BEX and the debt on the Stanford Headquarters).  This is from 5:30-5:45 p.m. and it's short because it's likely to be only me an...

Okay, let me just state that when I took a head count at 7:00 pm at the meeting, it was about 75 people.  Imagine my surprise when I got up to speak and saw many more people had come in.  So yes, the crowd was larger than my 75 count. I'm just going to go thru some highlights, review what I was hearing from the first thread and let's see if we can find some ideas to put forth.  (Also, please do not hijack this thread on another topic.  I'm asking nicely.)

Yup, that's our district.  I am almost to the point that I would even take a well-run district with Ed Reform rather than this sloppy mess. Are these people that tone-deaf?  Yes, they are, the Board included.  What has got me riled up?  Going to the Operations Committee meeting today.  They had been scheduled to talk about BEX IV but alas, that was put off.  I could go into the other items discussed (before I left early because I was so irritated) but they're not that important. Here's what just blew me away: they want to move NOVA back into the Mann Building by September 2012.  They will then be renovating Meany for SBOC and SBOC will be housed at Lincoln (about 18 months to two years).   SBOC would move back to Meany in about 2014.

Lots of interesting information from this meeting of the BEX Oversight Committee on June 10th. Highlights: They still don't have the Committee Charge draft to open up applications for this Committee.  They really need new members as their numbers have been dwindling.  At some point this will be sent to the Operations Committee who will forward it onto the full Board for approval.  I'm thinking the earliest that information will be available will be sometime in August.  I am hoping that if you know someone who might like to serve, that you will forward the information to them.  We need more community members who know the district on the Committee.    The Committee, as constituted, as good input from construction professionals but they also need community to balance it out.  Asking this Committee to provide accountability when the only information they get is from staff is not plausible.  Barbara Kelley, an SPS parent, had a good idea about ...

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...

I, along with other citizens, had written to the State Auditor several years back, complaining about the BEX capital building program. When you write to the Auditor, they log your letter and make sure you get a follow-up (I know that seems odd to have a public entity actually listen and keep track of your concerns but that's just how the SAO rolls.) The letter said some points made in the audit like: District facilities staff was unable to provide all requested documents in a complete and timely manner. We could not always determine whether the documents did not exist or whether they could not be located. Project documents were not store consistently, and some were in multiple locations. But they also said this: We were unable to address your specific concerns related to the District's decision to select specific school projects for inclusion in its BEX III program because we discovered larger issues related to the BEX II projects. I find that interesting because I wondered...

I am going to create a one-sheet list of my suggestions for easy reading but here it is fleshed out. (I'll have the one-sheeter by the end of the evening.) As a preamble to what I would suggest the district should cut, I make these disclaimers: I have looked through all the documents available for 2011-2012 budgeting. They do not follow in a real and coherent fashion so it is not really possible to discern exactly what staff is saying. There was an initial listing , followed by another presentation and the Strategic Plan Budget Planning Tool followed by the Budget Balancing tool . I can't tell if the planning tools overlap. I know that the Board pushed back on some initial ideas (like selling the radio station at Hale) so naturally it fell to staff to look at other areas. Staff is right about the difficulty of planning when there are unknowns looming. What will the economic update forecast be on March 17th? What will labor partners have to say? I am going wi...

I had hoped to just put forth some ideas of what you might possibly advocate for the 2011-2012 budget. But there's a lot of pre-information that I think is important to put out there (dates, overview, etc.) so this first part is that information. The budget shortfall (gap) is $36.6M. Staff is recommending increasing the non-grant Strategic Plan spending by $321,476 but say that the impact to the gap is a decrease of $254,546 "due to things already assumed in the gap e.g. Special Ed. This is one statement that I have a hard time believing and even if it is so, that leaves $67k to increase the gap. The gap should not be increased at all for any reason . If we have no money, there is no money to expand. Timeline: It looks from the district's own timeline document that they are somewhat behind in the process. The Central Budget submittals were due between 1/18-1/28. I believe Don Kennedy, COO, said that staff was working over the weekend to have the final submittals to ...

UPDATE: Here's the Powerpoint link. Following up on my Summary thread, here are the highlights of the discussion. Steve started with a bit of a monologue about Board's role versus staff's (I'm going to have to have him repeat it for me). He did say something interesting that I'm not sure the rest of the Board would agree with, namely, that if the Board asked more questions than staff could answer in this Work Session, it is the job of the Audit&Finance Committee to prioritize them. It is unclear to me if he meant that if some of the lower questions didn't get answered, it was okay. It seemed that way. Frankly, with this kind of climate and for a budget, I think ALL Board questions should be answered. Overall themes: a struggle over what will take priority; the Strategic Plan or WSS for schools. frustration by several Board members but mostly Sherry and Michael over the lack of clarity in this presentation. The Board seemed very frustrated ove...

Did anyone attend DeBell's or Sundquist's community meeting yesterday? I attended Harium's. I was quite surprised that it turned out to be just 3 parents. One was an Eastlake parent and one was a Hale parent. I would have thought from posts here that more parents had issues and questions especially about the NSAP. I first brought Harium up-to-date on the issue of me being able to ask questions at the press conference. (I had received an odd e-mail from Communications that was written for the press.) I asked Harium if the Board had a policy on media access. He said no and he didn't think they needed one but the district should have a procedure. I agreed. It seems apparent that the district has no policy and was flying by the seat of their pants with me and just made it up as they went along. I don't want to drag this out but I do want to make clear: The press conference started late even though all the speakers were there. I was told, five minutes befor...

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 ...

Before the Board meeting yesterday, there was a Board Work Session on the Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center (better known as SBOC) which is a long name for the 6-12 immigrant school. SBOC has long been neglected and put in that "To Do" list for many Boards and many Superintendents. I think some of it was because that they just didn't know what to do (the needs are varied and large) and some of it was because they are an easy population to ignore given their parents may not speak any English nor have any understanding of how to navigate our system. Currently, SBOC is a transitional school. Students come and go, staying from 3 months to maybe a year. The idea is to get them to a place where they can go to a regular school. The basic change is to have SBOC be transitional for those students who do want to leave BUT be a real middle/high school for those who want to finish there. Basically, they would be a comprehensive ELL high school serving about 500 students...