Seattle Schools Community Forum

People have often asked me, "Why don't you run for office?"  The painful slog that is sometimes the Board meetings and/or committee meetings is one reason.  Today's Executive Committee meeting was one such experience.  Started at 8:30 am and ran probably till noon (probably because I left at 11:45 am).  This is Part 1.  Not that it wasn't chock-a-block full of news - it was.  But Brian Rosenthal from the Times left early (and surprisingly right before a good part) and Charlie, a twitchy guy on his own, was fairly chomping at the bit to get out of there. I'll start backwards because that's one of the most interesting parts. Good news - they picked the "focus group' community for the superintendent search.  For the most part, a good list with touches of greatness and one truly bad choice.   But I have faith in the abilities of the majority of the committee. Bad news - the process was a mess.  I hate to be this hard on the Execut...

Good story over at the Times about the heroic efforts on the part of Seattle University to help support Bailey Gatzert Elementary. In the past year, Seattle University has flooded the Central District's Bailey Gatzert — Seattle's highest-poverty elementary school — with nearly 100 trained student volunteers. The college students help younger children with the most basic of skills and give them after-school enrichment in subjects such as science, chess, literacy and video production. But that only scratches the surface of an ambitious initiative funded by the private university and aimed at everyone living in the Bailey Gatzert neighborhood. It includes health-care help from nursing students, legal help from law-school students, a full-time coordinator for the school's many assistance programs, and staff and faculty support for many facets of the initiative. On Monday, Seattle University will receive a top honor for doing so: the 2012 President's Higher...

The Seattle Times has a couple of interesting stories this morning. The first one is - big surprise - about state budget cuts. No new news here but they do have a poll going about what to cut. Currently, K-4 class size reduction money (14.8% of the vote), Initiative 728 (19.88%) and Initiative 732 (15.2%) are leading the cuts poll. The other story is great news for Bailey-Gatzert Elementary . Seattle University, which has provided tutoring for the last 20 years, is creating a project for $1M a year to help provide: more tutoring and after-school help, free legal aid to recent immigrants provided by the university's law school and free health assistance from the nursing school. The project aims to touch all aspects of the neighborhood's social, health and educational development, and will include assistance to Washington Middle School and Garfield High School. They are trying to model the services after the Harlem's Children's Zone in NYC. By working with the...