Seattle Schools Community Forum

Now that the Board accepted money to open three of the City's preschool programs (with about 11 others opening in SPS sites previously run by other providers), the Seattle Special Ed PTA has this notice: Families with preschoolers, I urge our families with preschoolers to apply for the Seattle Preschool Program (SPP) at any site. http://www.seattle.gov/education/child-care-and-preschool/seattle-preschool-program Your child will still be due the services, modifications and accommodations on her/his IEP, of course.  Seattle Schools has partnered with the City of Seattle's preschool program. At this time the difference between an SPP classroom and a Developmental Preschool classroom is that your child will receive more than double the hours, in an integrated setting.  Lunch is provided.  And of course you get transportation. Please share this with any families you think may benefit from this new opportunity. That's a fine idea that ANY Seattle preschooler could ha...

Update: here's the Executive Committee meeting agenda .  There are no links to any documents but t he agenda packet is 90 (!) pages.   Kids, that may be a record.  Highlights include the City's preschool program.

I will add onto this thread soon about what the discussion was at the last Board meeting about the newest agreement with the City about their Seattle Preschool Program.  But a reader sent me a letter she had written to the Board that sums it up nicely but here it is in a nutshell: The District CANNOT be left on the hook for any kind of  operating dollars or administrative dollars for the SPP.  Period.   The Board  - via several members like Peters, Peaslee and Carr - have made that abundantly clear every single step of the way.  And yet District staff and the City now have it set up for the District to take on more costly work. I remind everyone that even the City  - in an e-mail about this issue - said that the District's "mandate" is K-12.  No one, for any reason, should take their eye off that mandate. 

Despite the fact that most Board committees only meet once a month, here's another meeting of the Executive Committee for June.  With just a single item on the agenda.  What's that?  Why the next City/SPS Preschool agreement, of course. The odd thing here is that the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole, which was two weeks ago, saw this particular partnership agreement rejected by the Committee to even move it forward for consideration by the Board. Now the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole two weeks ago never had this preschool agreement attached to their agenda so I can't compare what has changed from that one to the new one. From the BAR: Space/Facilities: Seattle Public Schools is experiencing significant enrollment growthand does not have adequate capacity to meet it. Given the opportunity that exists with SPP, the City will be leading conversations to identify space. I almost do not have to write one more single word on this subject because tha...

Following up on the op-ed by Robert Crunkshank and me, here the the Families& Education Levy minutes/Mid-Year report from May 15, 2015. There are several statements made that tie with what Robert and I are seeing. It's a little funny because there are more staff there than actual committee members.  Superintendent Nyland is on the committee as is Marty McLaren ( I didn't know McLaren was on the committee.)  SPS staff include Pegi McEvoy and Charles Wright along with Jonathan Knapp of SEA.

It's been a long day so I can only be brief here (but I'll write more another day).  Two fairly interesting things happened at the School Board meeting tonight. One, there is considerable support for the Middle College High School program , both from community and some Board members.  Speaker after speaker rose to support the program and ask that the Middle College High School at the High Point Neighborhood Center not be closed.  Especially moving was testimony from a former student, Paul Campiche, who said that these were not "throwaway" students and "people who are the most disenfranchised need the most help."  He had been thru the Middle College program, then went to Evergreen and is now in the Master's program at Antioch for counseling.  Peaslee, Peters and Patu (the Peter, Paul and Mary of the Board), in their Board comments, all said they want a second look at this decision (or at least more discussion).   The other Board members were fairl...

The Executive Committee Meeting meets today at 4:30 pm.  Here's the agenda with two very important items - the partnership agreement with the City about their Seattle Preschool Program and Charles Wright's $1M+ Start of School Transformation Project.   The agenda also includes the draft Board meetings' agendas for the next month.   The May 20th agenda is a huge slog of capital projects but also includes review of the Covenant Agreement of Sale for MLK to FAME, RTTT funding for more " community-school partnerships," an OSPI Math/Science grant for middle school science for $1.5M and, of course, buying more portables.  It also has the introduction of the Seattle Preschool Program Partnership agreement.  (Please note that for the draft agenda, not all items are live-linked.) The June 3rd agenda has the approval of the SPP partnership and RTTT funds as well as introduction of an item "Research Activity and Test Administration Procedure" (I'm th...

Monday, October 13th Curriculum&Instruction Committee meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm at JSCEE. There quite a jam-packed agenda here including discussion of Advanced Learning/Highly Capable programs and discussion about the Board endorsing Prop 1B, the City's preschool measure. I note that the name of this item has changed: BAR for P-5 Schools Aligned with Seattle Preschool Program Universal Pre-K Initiative It a bit amusing as the City rebrands the name of their preschool initiative over and over.  But again, pre-k is NOT the district's state mandate nor are they state funded for it.   At Publicola, there is one person saying that Cashel Toner, who is the district's person for Early Learning, has been working with the Gates Foundation on aligning SPS with this effort via a $750K grant.  (This person says there are e-mails to show this and I hope to see them soon.)  I can only say that in e-mails I have obtained, Toner is very in the loop with many City peo...