Seattle Schools Community Forum

State Superintendent Randy Dorn is having a press conference this morning to talk about his funding plan for McCleary    He says: “I want to make sure that every student, from Cape Flattery to Clover Park to Clarkston, has an equal opportunity to a basic education,” Dorn said. “That isn’t happening today. My plan will ensure that.” Also from OSPI, the announcement of math and science partnership grants to seven districts including Seattle. The grants will be used to help increase student achievement in math and science. Specifically, the grants allow for partnerships between schools and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculty at institutes of higher education. State funding for the projects totals $1.9 million, to be split among the grantees. Awards, which have yet to be determined, range from $500,000 to $1.5 million and will be distributed during the course of the three-year grants. The MSP grant program is part of the federal Title II, Part B sect...

It looks like the NWEA (the company that gives the MAP testing ) had a "denial of service" attack today.  This was at about 11 am and they sent a message out about the attack saying, "MAP is currently unavailable.  We apologize for the inconvenience."   Don't know any SPS schools were giving MAP today. I was doing some research on FERPA and found this clause: A school must inform eligible students of how it defines the terms "school official" and "legitimate educational interest" in its annual notification of FERPA rights.  Did anyone read their FERPA form carefully for this info?  Was it included? As to who on the Board might have requested the staff memo about charters schools , I got a little clarification but it's still a bit unclear.  Apparently someone senior thought the Board should know about the Oct 1 deadline for districts to file a Letter of Intent to become charter authorizers, told the Board and then Director McLar...

From the Washington State Charter Commission: The Charter School Commission (the Commission) announced today that four (4) non-profit organizations have submitted proposals in the second round of applications to open high-quality public charter schools in the state of Washington. Each applicant was asked to put forth a comprehensive and rigorous plan to meet the needs of the student population they wish to serve. Proposals were due by 5:00 PM on July 15 th .  The Commission has received proposals from the following organizations (organization, school name, location): Bilingual Charter Academy, Bilingual Charter Academy, Clark County Charter Schools of Sunnyside, Sunnyside Charter Academy, Sunnyside The Ducere Group, The Village Academy, Pierce County Green Dot Public Schools Washington State, Seattle Charter School, South Seattle

There's a teenaged-boy with autism missing in our are. Please take a look at this photo in case you see him. In one big difference between Seattle and Spokane school districts (in addition to Spokane being a charter authorizer), apparently they don't feel the need to expand at the administrative level nor give raises.  From The Spokesman-Review: As Redinger (Spokane's superintendent) said in Friday’s Spokesman-Review article, “It used to be you moved to the district office for the pay increases. We’ve shifted that. We have changed how the principals operate within the district; they move in and out of the district office to do work.” Principals now have input on curriculum decisions. And their pay is increasing 1.5 percent without setting off a chain reaction of increases at the central office. When she was hired, Redinger was touted as an energetic change agent, and she’s followed through. She’s thinned the bureaucratic layers, even though a state audi...

It appears that the Washington Charter Commission must have gotten a flurry of submissions because the final count is 28 letters of intent to apply to become a charter school. (I spoke to Spokane School district - the only school district authorizer in the state - and they received three letters of intent .  They say they have one unused building in their district currently so that may be up for grabs among the three applicants, if they follow thru on applying.) I would be surprised if half of the letters of intent applicants follow-thru, given the heavy lift that is the charter application.  So I'm guessing there will be about 16 applications for 8 charters.   Newest entries to the Charter Commission:

 Update:  apparently Tacoma School District is now reconsidering becoming a charter authorizer.   They had paused their letter of intent because of the lack of clarity around rules but now that the Board of Ed and the Charter Commission have cleared up those issues, Tacoma may change its mind.  What's interesting is their School Board had voted in unison against 1240 saying it would hurt their district's funding.  Not sure what changed.   They have missed the window to get authorization and would have to wait until next year to become an authrorizer.  (I suspect - because I've been to the Charter Commission meetings and heard this - that several Tacoma groups who want to open charters feel they might do better with a local authorizer than the Charter Commission.) As you may have heard, Spokane School District was approved as the only other charter school authorizer in the state of Washington by the State Board of Education.   Th...

Honestly, they have some of the most entertaining posts over at the WPC.  Omit details, pump up (to the point of near explosion) any point they feel they must - it's all good fun. So they have one post about how a Highline School Board director, Susan Goding,  wrote - on her education blog how she thinks charter schools will hurt districts.  I can only say that she is entitled to her own professional opinion (indeed the state directors association came out against 1240).   She also explains how Highline has many of the programs that Spokane addresses in their application (and so does Seattle).  Almost seems like Spokane is too lazy to do any of this development of programs on their own. But the WPC?  Not buying it. This article is a clear attempt to discourage implementation of the new charter school law. This statement shows an elected school board director actively campaigning to influence school districts to deny their students access to char...