Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Board has been blindsided by a few program placement shenanigans (Middle College, EEU, Interagency, etc.) and got the idea of pulling back program placement authority from the Superintendent. That would be a shame because in the District's governance model, with its management/policy dichotomy, program placement is solidly on the management side and belongs among the Superintendent's tasks, not the Board's. That said, this same governance model expects the Superintendent to follow the Board's policy and, when it comes the program placement, Dr. Nyland has been an extremely naughty fellow with policy violations all across the horizon. So this becomes just another episode highlighting the district's fundamental governance flaw: the Board's only way to discipline the Superintendent is to fire him. No one is happy about how he has handled Program Placement, but no one is unhappy enough to fire him over it. What to do?

Good News 3-D Lego making at Cleveland High's STEM program. Chief Sealth wins gold in the Youth Division for their video, Riffing on a Dream at the Social Justice Film Festival. In the film, inspired by a project called  Question Bridge , 13 students sat down in front of a camera and gave their unscripted answers to questions from classmates to prompt racial dialogue within their school. The SPS story does not name the young filmmakers but you know their names, please let me know.  Monday, Nov. 24th No school for elementary and K-8 for parent/teacher conferences. Work Session two-parter from 4:30pm-8:30 pm Part One - Evaluation of the Superintendent (open session) - 1 hour Part Two - Evaluation of a public employee (closed session) - 3 hours  I would urge you to write to the the Board at schoolboard@seattleschools.org with the subject line "Superintendent review" and let the Board know what you think.  I think Nyland is an experienced administrator ...