Seattle Schools Community Forum

Good news from The Road Map Project.  One of their efforts is to make sure that as many eligible students as possible sign up for the College Bound Scholarships .  Looks like it paid off as a record 91% of eligible students signed up (as compared with 74% lat year).  Thank you to everyone who reminded a kid or their PTA. The scholarship will cover students who pledge to graduate from high school, demonstrate good citizenship and seek admission to a college. The area covered includes South Seattle, Auburn, Federal Way, Highline, Renton, and Tukwila.  Tukwila signs up 100% of all eligible students while Auburn climbed from 38% to 67%.  Over 3900 student signed-up.  The Seattle schools covered are Secondary BOC, Merce, Aki Kurose, Orca, South Shore, Washington and Denny.  Secondary BOC, Mercer, and Aki Kurose enrolled 100% of their eligible students.  South Seattle schools overall went from 91% to 95%.

There was a thoughtful column about bilingual education in Sunday's Seattle Times by syndicated columnist, Esther Cepeda. From her column: Education policy has rarely garnered our collective attention as it does now. One aspect that needs more attention, though, is the question of how best to educate students whose native language is not English. It's a politically charged topic that rarely focuses on research and instead pits those who don't want to spend resources on instructing children in any language other than English against those who believe bilingual education is a civil right. Okay so let's stop there because there are a couple of issues. One, should the American public education system be educating children in their native language and two, is it a civil rights issue? Ms. Cepeda argues that it hurts the whole educational system's performance if non-native speakers struggle because of language barriers. The U.S. Department of Education's Nati...

Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. the Board is having a Work Session on BTA III . This will be the first opportunity to hear what projects have made the preliminary list and the Board's reaction. The first one on the list should be the $11M that was on BEX II for Secondary BOC that was taken, in its entirety, for the Garfield project (which is now almost $20M over). Secondary BOC asked to NOT be put on BEX III because they thought it would happen again. Keep in mind, the district did manage to build a new, albeit at $14m modest, building for South Lake High School so yes, they could do it for Secondary BOC. I'm not advocating a new building since the decision has been made to co-house them with Nova at Meany. BUT, since those two schools are moving and moving in with another program both of which require science labs and other high school facilities, then that building should get a good chunk of upgrading to support them. On a personal note, I have been and will continue to advocat...