Seattle Schools Community Forum

The majority of high schools, comprehensive and alternative, will start at 7:50 am (ten minutes earlier than last year) and end at 2:20 pm.  This includes Cleveland STEM, World School and South Lake. The outliers are Center School (8:30 am-3:10 pm), Chief Sealth (8:40 am- 3:10 pm), Hale (8:40 am-3:10 pm) and Nova (8:30 am - 3:00 pm).  So Center School I get because of its location.  Sealth because it's a joint campus with Denny and the district promised to not have the middle school and high school kids come to school at the same time.  Nova?  Well, it is a project-based alternative school so I get that. But Hale? It lives a charmed life and has been able to keep their late start for years (and to this day).   (I personally have never seen any advocacy from Hale's administration for this kind of benefit for other high schools. ) Also, how is that it's okay for Nova, Hale and Sealth all to deliver 10 minutes less a day to students than other high sch...

From School Start Later-Seattle: As a brief update, the school board approved transportation standards for next year that will move us to a 3-tier system in order to save approximately $3 million.  It was impossible to get the school board to consider putting secondary schools in the later tiers and elementaries in the earlier tiers. The good news is that Sharon Peaslee, board president has introduced a resolution to make analysis and community engagement on start times a high priority and then to decide, based on feedback whether to flip elementary and secondary start times for 2015.   The resolution will be introduced on 3/5 and voted on 3/19. We need to win this vote in March otherwise the district will halt any further progress on the issue. Thank you for all of your recent emails.  They made a major impact and helped bring Peaslee's resolution to the table. Please write to board directors and urge them to prioritize analyis and community engagement on start...

Out of Florida via Ed Week : A new Florida bill would ensure that the state's high school students have a little more time to catch up on their sleep. Filed by state Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican, the bill would make it impossible for any Florida high schools to begin the school day before 8 a.m. starting with the 2014-2015 school year, reports the Tampa Tribune. A recent Education Week story highlighted this issue, with a look at some research on the subject and efforts to highlight the value of later start times. Sleep deprivation is considered a widespread health problem for adolescents, it notes. While the exact benefits of adequate sleep are hard to pinpoint, a May 2012 study found that, for middle school students in Wake County, N.C., a later start time correlated with a 2 to 3 percentile point jump in standardized math and reading test scores. According to the Education Week story, experts recommend that high-school-age young people get around nine ho...

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...