Seattle Schools Community Forum

Those two factors - a hot summer night and a full moon - might just set things off.  Word is that many Middle College supporters will be at the meeting and want to be heard.  Here are some updates from the supporters (and that includes me):

Finally sat down to listen to the Gates Foundation preschool grant discussion from last Wednesday Board meeting.  Many adjectives come to mind; disingenuous (Cashel Toner), tardy for the party (Director McLaren), integrity (Director Patu), rationality (Director Peters) and dumbfounded (for Directors Carr and Peaslee). Folks, our Board not only okayed a grant that had been signed off months before by the Superintendent (and more on that in a moment) but most agreed it lacked clarity in one key issue.  Astonishing. It seems that staff was able, somehow, to negate to the Board that going into Years 2 and 3 of this grant, it is completely unclear what will happen.  Both Sue Peters and Betty Patu asked, over and over, and yet no real answer. Here's the crux of the problem as both Patu and Peters pointed out. The district is doing this backwards.   The MOU with the City should come FIRST and then any agreements.  Because what IF an MOU with the City is n...

Between the issue of the Pre-K mission study junket and the appalling action (or lack thereof) on the issue of the Garfield field trip rape case, it's hard not to feel very angry.  As you may recall, in the e-mails about the Pre-K mission study, there was a lot of back and forth over where the money - about $2700 per person - was going to come from to pay for the trip.  Well, I found out where the "temporary" money came from.  I say temporary because there were funds used from one pot that will now have to be paid back to that pot by finding another pot of money. Here's how it breaks down (from SPS Public Disclosure): Budget codes that were charged Charles (Wright) - baseline funds (meaning not grant-funded) from the Office of Strategic Planning Keisha (Scarlett) - South Shore funds (Title I, I believe), “borrowed” due to the time crunch to get good flight prices, meant to be paid back Laurie (Morrison )– ditto Cashel (Toner) – Teaching and Learning, “bridg...

Corrections  I misspoke when I said that Jackie Bezos was Jeff Bezos' wife.  She is his mother.  She is the president of his family foundation.  I reported that two members of the Advanced Learning Committee were at the C&I meeting last week but I missed the name of one person.  That was Jeanne Thompson, the chair, of the APP Advisory Ctm and a member of the current AL taskforce. Updates The district is following other districts' in dropping the senior project for graduation.  They have waffled a bit saying individual high schools can still require them so you need to check with your high school to see what decision (if any) has been made.  You may recall that one high school student made creating a bill to get rid of the senior project her own senior project.  

As for the title of this thread, I am hearing some rumblings of a rather large change that may come to the district very soon.  I am trying to learn more and when I know for certain I will let you know.  I hesitate to say anything specific.  There are two reasons for me saying anything at all.  One, because I believe parents deserve a heads up early (if only to brace yourself).  Two, because I rarely get any credit or acknowledgement from the regular media, I'd like to be able to say I was the first one to raise the red flag. We have all seen the shifting sands of principal movement.   I asked the district some questions about this issue and here are the questions and replies.

In contrast to what is happening for Graham Hill and South Shore , here's the principal process that Wedgwood had (as reported on their webpage): Wedgwood is getting a new Principal. This is a really exciting time for us. The goal is to hire a new Principal that best meets the unique needs of our kids and our school. The Wedgwood BLT (Building Leadership Team, comprised of five elected staff members representing all grade levels and the PTA President) met with Kim Whitworth, Executive Director of Schools for the Northeast region recently to discuss the hiring process. Wedgwood’s hiring committee, limited to 10 people, will consist of the BLT (6 people), three additional Wedgwood staff (for diversity of position) as well as our newly elected PTA VP Davina Inslee. The District is currently working to recruit a pool of principals for Wedgwood and other schools. These candidates will go through an initial vetting process, then Wedgwood will be given six potential principals to ...

South Shore K-8 is losing its award-winning principal, Keisha Scarlett.  Their new principal will be Dr. Laurie Morrison who had previously served as assistance principal and was the principal at Graham Hill Elementary.   Ms. Scarlett is going to be the district's "principal leadership coach." What is odd is that a survey was sent home Thursday night to parents about input on the principal.  It had also been available on the SS website but it's unclear for how long.  It seems odd to do that unless you didn't have any community input on the selection of a new principal.  (To note, the district's previous agreement with the New School Foundation that help to fund South Shore included a notation that New School had a say in the principal.  I wonder if the agreement with LEV has the same notation.)  There is also an article in the Rainier Valley Post on Graham Hill parents who are very unhappy with leadership changes at their school that see their ent...

There is an Audit and Finance Committee meeting today at 4:30 p.m.  Wish I could attend but I have an event.  Here's the agenda which has some interesting items: - adoption of the 2014-2015 budget book .  This might be interesting since the pick of MIF for K-5 Math adoption.  Of course, until a contract is executed, no one truly knows how much MIF will cost the district.  They had, according to their presentation at the last Board meeting, been willing to spend about $3.6M on enVision.  MIF is more expensive but, as has been pointed out, many of the items that staff pointed to as costs can be mitigated one way or another. - a loan from the Capital Eligible Program (CEP) to pay for the renovations at TT Minor for the Seattle World School .  They don't give a figure for this loan.  - one of my perennial favors is on the agenda - JSCEE Bonds annual update .  It's amazing how that building is the gift that keeps on taking from this distri...

It appears that the Washington State legislature NOT voting to change the teacher evaluation law doesn't entirely mean the issue is done.  Apparently Duncan is still mulling options and talking to Washington State officials.  Superintendent Randy Dorn is still willing to talk but apparently doesn't think the waiver will be granted.  We'll probably hear something by next week. I received an odd press release this week from the Association of Washington School Principals announcing that South Shore PK-8 principal, Keisha Scarlett , has been named Washington State 2014 Middle Level Principal of the Year.   This is great; Principal Scarlett is a good, effective principal who works very hard. What's odd is that a couple of things were left out/mis-written in the press release. First is that the school is in partnership with SPS, the New School Foundation and the City of Seattle.  Uh, the New School Foundation merged with League of Education Voters and took t...

Almost a year ago I did a thread on South Shore and compared it to the other K-8s.  I found in reading, SS is about the same as most K-8s but the math is worse.  So I did a comparison today with South Shore, Roxhill and Maple from 2009 to today and there seems to be two issues.  One, something seems amiss from 3rd to 4th grade at South Shore .  The children in third grade do really well only to see those scores drop (and I mean drop) by 4th and into 5th.  Two, there is a bit of a mystery about South Shore.  No one mentions the long-time partnership that started South Shore (with the New School Foundation and now LEV).  Not at their school website and barely in the district's own pages.  You'd think this would be some shining example of (1) what you can do with smaller class sizes and (2) public/private partnerships.   Why doesn't the district talk about SS more when confronting legislators over funding?  I note the district d...

Very busy week. Monday, December 10th Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee Meeting from 4-6 p.m.  Agenda Some interesting issues but there is not enough detail to know what they are specifically going to cover.  Work Session on Weighted Staffing Standards from 6-7:30 p.m.  Agenda Tuesday, December 11th  Work Session on Creative Approach Schools from 5-6:30 p.m.  Agenda Special Ed Advocacy & Advisory Council Meeting from 6:30-9:00 p.m., Room 2700 (2nd floor), JSCEE Community Meeting on Capacity and BEX IV from 7-8:30 p.m. pm at JSCEE. Wednesday, December 12th Executive Committee Meeting from 8-10 am.  No agenda available. School Board meeting at 4:30 p.m.  Agenda Of note: - Native American Education update - election of new President, Vice-President and Member-at-Large for the Board (nominations to be posted on Monday).  I suspect the president will either be Smith-Blum, Martin-Morris, Carr or Patu as they h...

A few updates: One - with less than 8,000 votes to count statewide, I-1240 appears to have passed .  (I'm sure it's true but I'm not the Secretary of State and in a position to officially call it.)  The margin appears to be 1.36% of the vote which is just under 41,000 votes.  A win for sure but certainly no mandate.  Two - Thanks to SPS Leaks for some very illuminating reading.  To whit: Lynne Varner gets it wrong in an Times editorial and SPS gently points this out to her.  I note that Varner says "sources" told her certain things about the departure of Superintendent Enfield.  So, as you see, journalists have sources and they don't reveal them (and sometimes not even by the order of a court) and that's how it goes.  (I, of course, still contend that I am not a journalist but I have sources.  I do get my hand slapped occasionally by readers demanding to know my source.  Not revealing them is how you keep your sources.) Thre...

South Shore PreK-8 came up as a topic during a discussion over conversion charters .  I, like many, believe it would be a target (a willing one) for a conversion takeover.  I suspect you could get the parents or teachers to agree and I'm sure LEV, who now directs the foundation money that South Shore gets, would also be agreeable.  That leaves the community and the district that may not like the idea of losing a $73M building to a charter entity. One thing to keep in mind - ALL charters are their own districts .  If they take over a district building, they can decide the parameters - within the law - of public use just as SPS does.  If you use a school building for your local community meetings or Boy Scouts, you might have to find someplace else to go.  I also don't know what it would mean for the joint-use agreement that SPS has with Parks for SPS playfields.  I would assume if a charter group takes over the building and its grounds and is its ...

Monday, June 18th Continuing high school graduations .  Go get 'em, kids. Tuesday, June 19th  Continuing high school graduations .  But don't forget the sunscreen. Wednesday, June 20th Last Board meeting of this school year.  Agenda .  There appear to be a number of interesting items including the contract between LEV and the district for South Shore (and it looks more like a newish contract than a renewal because of the passage of time since the old MOU was created), vote on the Advertising and Commercial activities policy,and renewal of NWEA contract. Intro items include policy 2200, Program Placement (now called "Equitable Access to Services & Programs).  I haven't read this yet but Charlie tweeted that it did not appear to make understanding program placement any better.  Also, there is intro of the 2012-2013 Operations and Capital budgets which I really haven't looked at yet.  There's also always an odd item like the increase ...

Monday  Start School Later Seattle will meet on Monday at 5pm at the Wayward Coffee House on 65th and Roosevelt (parking available off the alley). Tuesday Audit&Finance Committee Meeting from 4-6 pm.  Agenda not available. Wednesday Executive Committee Meeting from 8-10:30 am.  Agenda .  Some of the topics include review of upcoming Board meeting agendas, government relations, "community engagement", Race&Equity policy, renewal of MOU with LEV for South Shore, and Creative Approach Schools update.  Note: there is a "real estate negotiations" discussion that will be closed and start at 10 am.  This is, once again, quite a full agenda and I find it hard to believe they can get it all done in 2 hours.  This all looks quite interesting and I hope someone can attend.   I'm also quite surprised at this idea of a "renewal" of the MOU with LEV when the original MOU was with the New School Foundation (an altogether different ent...

Did you know pizza is a vegetable ?  According to our Congress it is. The House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors on Thursday by passing a bill that abandons proposals that threatened to end the reign of pizza and French fries on federally funded school lunch menus. The scuttled changes, which would have stripped pizza's status as a vegetable and limited how often French fries could be served, stemmed from a 2010 child nutrition law calling on schools to improve the nutritional quality of lunches served to almost 32 million U.S. school children. Who got this pushed through?  Why our friends in the AFFI (American Frozen Food Institute) with members like ConAgra, Heinz, General Mills and Kraft.  The USDA wanted at least one-half cup of tomato paste on a pizza to qualify as a vegetable serving instead of the current two tablespoons.  Even Italians wouldn't call pizza a vegetable.  Boo to Congress. Heard back from on...

Last night was interesting because the Board meeting was split into halves; one half the shiny and prepped TFA folks and the other side ...the rest of us.    What was interesting is that TFA seemed to only want to clap when TFA folks spoke while the rest of us knew the (polite) drill and clapped for everyone.  You notice these things when you've been to a lot of these meetings. I'll just go over the speaker testimony and do a separate thread on the latter half of the meeting.

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%.

I got there about 5:10 p.m.  A lot of the Mayor's staff, district staff and a middle school rock band warming up.  For all those people, there was no one to officially greet you or tell you anything about the event.  (I get that they needed staff but seriously, it was a lot of people for a simple Q&A.)

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 ...