Seattle Schools Community Forum

I have heard rumblings about this program and this press release does little to assuage them.  The Alliance for Education, Seattle Public Schools, and the University of Washington College of Education on Oct. 24 announced the addition of the Seattle Education Association as the fourth partner in launching the Seattle Teacher Residency.  Urban Teacher Residency United, ( http://www.utrunited.org/ ), based in Chicago, is the national network of the highest-performing residency programs. UTRU Executive Director Anissa Listak said, “This is the first time we’ve seen a residency launch with this set of players at the table. It bodes very well for the success and efficacy of the initiative.”  My first question is - why is the Alliance for Education involved?  This is NOT their area of expertise at all.  I have to wonder about their growing role in SPS which I find troubling.   Urban teacher residency programs, pioneered over the last decade in B...

As you may recall, on the same day as the Creative Approach MOU was remanded back to the Board by a Superior Court judge, there was an interview in the Seattle Times with Jonathan Knapp, the new head of the SEA.  It was quite a nice profile and had some telling bits.   Here's Knapp on change in relationships: "Simply saying 'no' is no longer an option," said Jonathan Knapp, a shop teacher who crafted the approach as union vice president. "The climate has changed, and we have to be advocates for public education in a way that 20 years ago we didn't," Knapp said. "And the way that we do that is building relationships, not by confronting people and saying it's our way or the highway." I agree.  Being adversarial is not the way to build relationships and work for better academic outcomes for children.   However teacher Robert Murphy fires back: We've already compromised too much," said Robert Murphy, a Franklin High ma...

Teachers Eric Muhs (Ballard High School) and Jennifer Hall (West Seattle High School), candidates for Seattle Education Association president and vice president, respectively, will hold the first of several citywide coffee conversations this Monday, January 16th. Cafe Apassionato, Fisherman's terminal,  4001 21st Avenue West,  Seattle, WA 98199.  9 to 10:30 am. We are especially interested in meeting other like-minded Seattle Public Schools educators, but are also intent on opening new lines of communication between teachers, parents and other supporters of public education. Our website: www.socialequalityeducators.org

In a hard opening salvo for the School Board elections, the SEA voted no confidence in Board President Steve Sundquist .  The word is that it centers around his unwavering support for TFA. In other news, a raft of school board candidate forums have popped up so here's an update (please let me know if I missed anything): Tuesday, September 27th , Special Education PTSA School Board forum, JSCEE, 7 p.m. Wednesday, September 28th - Town Hall at 7:30 p.m., 1119 8th Avenue (at Seneca) The Stranger's forum with interactive input from the audience (both questions and reactions).  Free but ticket required (can print at home) Tuesday, October 4th , Bryant Elementary PTSA Candidate forum, 7-9 p.m., 3311 NE 60th Street Tuesday, October 11th - North Seattle School Board Candidate forum, Olympic View Elementary, 504 NE 95th St. from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., free childcare available. Tuesday, October 18th - West Seattle Candidate forum, Madison Middle School, 3429 45th Ave. S...

Tomorrow is a big day in Olympia as House Bill 1609 (the so-called "Great Schools" legislation) will hold a public hearing. LEV and Stand for Children are all for this bill which would overturn the teachers contract issue of using seniority for RIFs. Let me go on the record as saying I see both sides. I can see why, in the face of the lack of any known method of assessing teachers fairly, teachers would go with seniority. On the other hand, it does seem wrong that being a teacher longer than another teacher would necessarily be the game changer. It says absolutely nothing about your abilities (except that in all your years of being a teacher, you had done nothing to get kicked out). It's quite the dilemma. I also want to point out that in Seattle, the SEA signed their contract for 3 more years of continuing the use of seniority in RIFs. But I also want to point out that the School Board agreed to this and the district signed off on it. So don't put it all ...

Last story: shocking news but all this turnaround and transformation? It's just dawning on some ed reformers that it might not be so easy to find replacements for principals. This was also in the NY Times. The Obama plan for turning around low-performing schools has hit a snag: That policy decision, though, ran into a difficult reality: there simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over. Many school superintendents also complained that replacing principals could throw their schools into even more turmoil, hindering nascent turnaround efforts. And, guess what? They have to slow down the machine, allowing principals in place to stay on for three years instead of two. Although the program created an expectation that most schools would get new leadership, new data from eight large states show that many principals’ offices in failing schools still bear the same nameplates. About 44 percent of schools receiving federal turnaround money in these states still have t...

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...

I haven't been keeping up as much as it seems that things change daily but here is what I believe the latest is. The Senate now has put out their proposal for trying to close the state budget gap (although still haven't closed it). In terms of education, they would protect more of what most of us would want protected. They would cut about $16M less than the House for K-4. They would transfer $25 from the State Need Grant (which would have to come from somewhat and I think higher ed has a big bullseye on it). Neither the House nor the Senate would make cuts to levy equalization or highly capable education. Also, I got a heads up on a real Lallapalooza of a bill ( HB 1025 ) that is being put forth by about 15 legislators led by Rep. Crouse. It is all loosely about education issues and includes highly capable, asthma/anaphylaxis, PE, drivers ed, school safety and civics classes. It also includes a passage about storm water drainage. (I'm guessing they all got in ...

As I previously reported, I attended the Town Hall last night on the legislative session coming up and what impacts it might have for public education. The speakers were Rep. Scott White (who becomes Senator on Monday when he gets sworn in) and Directors Sherry Carr and Peter Maier. It was hosted by Principal John Miner of Thorton Creek who told the crowd he had been had TC for 25 years. Wow. I would say there were about 50 people in attendance including Seattle Council PTSA reps, Stand for Children reps, and SEA reps. There were several handouts. They had the letter that MGJ sent to the Seattle delegation. There were some interesting sentences that I'll put in here: "Thus, while we began this year with a balanced budget for 2010-2011, we must now find an additional $5.24 million to end the year balanced." Now initially I thought, "How did this happen?" but I know that at least $2M of that is because of the Auditor's finding over the Small Business w...

So it's the eve before the ballots are opened. The committee that got formed in opposition to the levy, Committee for Responsible Education Spending, wanted to get issues out there. We wanted parents especially to be better informed about levies and the specifics about this one. I'd like to think that we accomplished that goal. I want to thank the members of our committee for their hard work; Dorothy Neville and Meg Diaz (two crack spreadsheet and data analysts), Eric Muhs (Ballard high science teacher), Ken Berry (IA at Van Asselt Elementary) and Charlie Mas. It was very helpful to have staff on the committee who could lend their voices as those with feet on the ground and in our schools. I ask going forward that each of you consider each future levy carefully. Each levy IS a tax and we are dependent upon our friends and neighbors who don't have children in SPS to help us pass levies. There are those people for whom $48 a year (plus all the other levies and initi...

Thanks to Another Mom for this alert. (Please note: italics mine.) "Earlier this week, we noted that district negotiators said they would seriously consider the latest SEA proposal, which attempted to address our mutual interests in quality teaching while not misusing student test data to fire teachers. District negotiators returned Thursday and did indeed engage in a serious conversation with SEA to explore our proposal. The session concluded without any tentative agreements being reached over adopting the jointly developed Professional Growth & Evaluation process, but the district did choose to add an extra day of negotiations on Monday. The bargaining teams had not planned to resume contract talks until Tuesday. SEA supports moving forward with the historic progress already achieved through the jointly negotiated Professional Growth and Evaluation plan. SEA's proposal on Tuesday suggested carving out middle ground by recognizing the district's inte...

Maple Elementary and West Seattle High School are the newest schools to take a vote of "no confidence" in the Superintendent. Maple voted 17 yes, 1 no and 2 abstaining. West Seattle voted 35 yes, 3 no and 4 abstaining. I do want to echo what someone else said in a different thread. We don't know, right off hand, how many SEA represented staff are at each school. I don't believe most of these votes are technically SEA votes. I would call them straw votes. However, that these staff members, and a fair number at every single school, got together and took a vote tells me two things. One, there are a lot of brave people are out there because I can believe this could have repercussions for some and two, that enough staff from each school made the effort to take the vote. I am a bit surprised that the SEA is waiting until early September to vote as a whole. They said they want to wait and see how the Superintendent handles the negotiations. Fair enough and mayb...

Just talked to John Dunn at the SEA. The forum this Saturday is for SEA members ONLY to bring them all up to speed on the various education reform issues. (It also is not at St. Mark's.) He did say that if there were events for the public, he would be sure to let me know so I can post those items here if readers are interested.

The Weekly has an article about the Alliance and its efforts to interject in the teachers contract negotiations. (For the record, I hate the photo they used - terrible idea.) It's not as well-fleshed out as I would have wanted given that Nina Shapiro doesn't mention that the Seattle Organizers Coalition existed long before the Alliance's and that the Alliance very calmly sat at that table gathering information from us before they created their own "coalition". The Alliance's attempt to put ALL student outcomes on teachers is nothing less than disgraceful and their undermining treatment of the Seattle Organizers Coalition is shoddy. (Please note: this is my opinion. I know that many in the Seattle Organizers are not appreciative of this treatment but they tend to be less vocal than me.) From the article: While the group's ideas are not necessarily new, its effort to influence the negotiations is. And the coalition may have the political clout to do j...

( Update: Here's a link to a Bob Herbert column about teacher assessment. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is urging her members to accept some form of evaluation that takes student achievement into account.) If you hadn't heard (and with all that has happened, you could have missed it), the Seattle School District and the Seattle Education Association will be negotiating a new contract likely starting in early April. This will replace the one-year contract that was easily agreed to last year. This negotiation is likely to be more of a multi-year contract and it will be a very tough negotiation. The district has no real money to offer teachers so all those issues of what teachers do with their day, when and for how long are are on the table. Parents and communities can't be at the table but that doesn't mean we can't have a voice. For the past couple of months I have been part of a coalition group to form a joint values...

Yesterday, the teacher's union, Seattle Education Association (SEA), and the Seattle Public Schools (SPS), reached a tentative agreement on a one-year contract. A summary of the agreement will be posted on the SEA web site next week and the full agreement (with the actual contract language) before the end of the month. Here are some key features: For all staff: BLT decision-making authority and seniority rights remain intact Two flexible use personal leave days The contract is for one-year, and a new contract will be bargained in 2010. For certificated staff: Learning Improvement Day (LID) restored A 1% pay raise The District's performance pay proposals have been removed The District's proposals for "flexible staffing" have been removed A $1,500 ESA national certification bonus All special education staff will get ten additional IEP hours For classified employees: Two additional paid professional development days (equal to a 1% pay raise) 201 and 220 day classifie...

As I mentioned elsewhere, contract negotiations between the district and the SEA (Seattle Education Association) have resumed. The deadline is August 31st and if they don't reach a contract, well, we could have a strike. The issues are myriad and the district has a job on its hands convincing the teachers both from what the tide is nationally and some of the district's own handiwork. Some of the issues: apparently classified staff haven't had a raise in quite awhile the national trend towards teacher assessments. This is very touchy to teachers, Bill Gates recently chimed in (discussed in a previous post) and I think parents have mixed feelings. teacher pay teacher use of The Source And many others (and chime in here). I think the district hurts its negotiations with the teachers by crying poor (close schools, lay off teachers/staff) and then hiring staff at headquarters. The newest parent/teacher group, Stand for Children has an online petition for parents to sign i...

Tomorrow marks exactly one month until school starts (sorry). The district, as usual, powers down during the summer but there are things starting up as well as things that should be showing up (and aren't). For example, the teachers union, SEA, has resumed contract negotiations with the district. Their deadline is August 31. The union has a general meeting scheduled on that day. (More on this issue in a separate thread.) Keep in mind that if they don't reach agreement, we could have a strike. No one wants that to happen. The Board is also powering back up and has an Executive Committee meeting tomorrow with different committee meetings coming at the end of the week and into next week. The next School Board meeting is Wednesday, August 19th. Director Carr is having a community meeting next Saturday the 15th (no details on where). What's missing? Well, what's up with the new Student Assignment Plan and specifically, the boundary maps ? I had spoken to T...

Inaction As possible evidence that there seems to be a scramble on downtown, there is no agenda yet for next week's Board meeting. I generally find that it is up by Friday so that people can see what is on it and figure out if they are eligible to speak (per Board rules). I'll keep checking in see if it comes up by the end of the day. Action (This is a post I wrote from another thread but if this is to happen we need to get the word out now.) SEA Education Rally Wednesday, June 3, from 5 to 6 p.m. JSC, 2445 3rd Ave. S. I would support going to the the SEA rally simply because: - we are all concerned about the layoffs whether you agree with everything the SEA says - there are likely to be many teachers (i.e. bodies) - go to make the statement that we are unhappy with the direction of the district - it is one of the last times before school lets out to get a large group together There could be hundreds of people at the rally and it would really send a message. Also because it...

Notices came out yesterday and 172 teachers, counselors and other certificated staff have been RIF'ed. Most are teachers. In years past, many teachers have been rehired due to retirements or attrition but with the poor economy that may not be the case this time. That number represents about 5% of the 3,000 certificated staff in SPS. From the Times : "Along with 33 first- or second-year teachers whose contracts were not renewed a few months ago, that means that 205 of the district's certificated employees now need to look for work." "High schools had 54 of the 172 layoffs. Middle schools had 29, elementaries 61 and K-8s 20, Spencer said. Six teachers on leave also were notified they no longer have jobs. Staff members at 17 schools — those that are part of a joint union-district effort to close the achievement gap — were largely exempt from layoffs. Among them are Rainier Beach, Cleveland and Chief Sealth high schools and the middle and elementary schools that feed...