Seattle Schools Community Forum

From The Olympian story on the Legislative Special Session (thanks to Michelle Buetow for the tip): Special session will be different, and Gregoire said she wants to set up negotiations between the “five corners” – meaning her office and leaders of the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House and Senate. She said she won agreement from all four caucus leaders to stick to a script or list of bill topics they can address; no one will go outside that list without agreement of all “five corners.” The list includes completion of a supplemental operating budget; a supplemental capital budget also dubbed a “jobs” bill; bills needed to implement the budgets, including revenue measures; a constitutional amendment to limit state debt; bonds to pay for pieces of the jobs package; a local transportation revenues bill that failed to pass Thursday; and a bill to repeal Initiative 728’s class-size improvements in favor of a different school funding formula. This is interestin...

Well, that didn't take long.  In today's Times, there is a story by Rosenthal about TFA that has the unmistakable stamp of the Times and their support of ed reform.  Much was left out.  There's a lot that he could have fleshed out by asking parents or teachers or yes, even bloggers.  He did not print any reactions/comments even if had them.  He has a whole "activists' reaction and yet does not quote one single activist .  In fact the ONLY non-TFA supporter he does quote is Betty Patu.  The only parent he quotes is Lauren McGuire. This article does nothing but support TFA.  

Since the holiday break in December, the Board meetings have been somewhat sleepy affairs with the speakers list not being full and just a little jousting as the School Board adjusts to its new make-up. Tomorrow night (and two weeks in the future) should be somewhat different.  What's the difference? Well, for one, the Board is finally voting on the now infamous Policy 1430 - Waivers of Basic Instructional Materials Policy.    There were two amendments, one of which is incorporated into the new policy wording.  That amendment came from Director Peaslee and would allow schools an appeal to the Board should the Superintendent deny a waiver request.  I am glad this is part of the policy even as I believe it will be a rare day when the Board would override the Superintendent's decision.  The other amendment, to allow for district funding for schools that cannot afford to pay for materials on their own, was dropped by Director Peaslee.   However...

At this Wednesday's Board meeting, an Introduction is on the agenda to end the contract with Teach for America.  It was brought forth by a majority of Directors who were at the last Curriculum & Instruction meeting.  They need to decide on this issue by March 31st by the terms of the contract.  Voting to end the contract means they would not hire any more TFA and the current TFA recruits would finish their contracts. I don't know who wrote the item on the agenda but it says this: Fiscal impact to this action will be zero. This is because the Teach for America contract does not include direct costs to the district; the $4000 teacher match requirement is funded by private donors through The Seattle Foundation. The revenue source for this motion is N/A. This is WRONG.  For the umpteenth time, TFA costs our district money.  How?  Well, as proven by district e-mails, it cost HR more time to process TFA applications,  it cost principals/execu...

The Seattle School Board will soon consider terminating the District's contract with Teach for America. There is disagreement about this on the School Board, so we are likely to hear a discussion of the question with Board directors advocating for each side. This is good and healthy. This is what democracy looks like. I welcome a full discussion regardless of the eventual conclusion. I will, however, be deeply disappointed if the discussion is not honest. We have already seen the start of a dishonest discussion. This dishonest discussion needs to be stopped and it is the other Board directors who need to stop it. They need to stop it by exposing the dishonesty the moment it appears. When the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee met and decided to advance this motion to the full board, one of the Board directors, Harium Martin-Morris, spoke against the termination of the Teach for America contract. Mr. Martin-Morris made one of the most loathsome and dishonest statements I ...

This evening the Board Curriculum and Instruction Committee met as a committee of the whole. Five board members were in attendance. A majority of them want a motion to terminate the district's contract with Teach for America. The motion will appear as an introduction item at the March 7 board meeting and as an action item at the March 21 board meeting. The deadline for terminating the contract for next year is April 1.

Forgot to post this interesting agenda (it was not available when I put up the weekly list of meetings on Monday). The meeting starts at 6 pm.  I would guess it would be in the auditorium rather than the Board conference room as there will be sure to be many interested on-lookers. Topics: Approval of Waiver of Basic Instructional Materials Policy Teach for America contract Classroom technology guiding principles This should be a fascinating conversation with not-your-usual crowd for a C&I meeting. Please someone, go and take notes.  I would love to hear who on the Board speaks up for TFA.  After the info that was given to them on the additional costs of TFA (which Peter Maier never tired of saying didn't exist) and the lack of hires by our site-based hiring teams, I'll love to hear a justification for keeping this program.  I'm sure they will do so because I can imagine the pressure from the charter crowd (the up-the-food-chain people like Jon Bridge and...

Well look at this - a Broad superintendent going behind a School Board's back to hire more TFA (as they lay off more real teachers ).  This is in Cobb County Georgia.   Unbelievably, they are paying $8k per TFA per year (as opposed to SPS's $4k per year and Federal Way's $3k per year). (Thanks to all who posted links or wrote to me.) 

From Dora Taylor over at the Seattle Education blog: The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is scheduled to mark-up a bill to reauthorize ESEA (formerly known as No Child Left Behind) next Tuesday, October 18 at 2:30 p.m. ET.   At the markup, critical amendments will be offered by Senators that will have a powerful impact on the future of student access to prepared and effective teachers. Your Senators need to hear from you today!

So in a wrap-up to last week's Board meeting (which I left at half-time), here's some highlights:

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.

About TFA – what a long, strange trip it has been.   It seems apparent at this point that our former superintendent didn’t have any real donors lined up – she just assumed they would materialize.   Another in the long list of mistakes she made. It’s good to have that settled except that the press release doesn’t make it clear whether Seattle Foundation is paying for two years or one .   I tried to get confirmation from Communications but they said they didn’t know and I should ask the Foundation and I have been trying with no success.   It might be good to iron out that point. One delicate issue is that the Seattle Foundation named several donors.     Among them are two that have contributed heavily to the campaigns of the directors running for reelection. I would just gently point out that it is one thing to have campaign supporters who you know care about particular issues or programs.   It’s another thing altogether to have campaign ...

I was wondering where local TFA was all this time. We'll find out out tonight's School Board meeting as it looks like at least five people who signed up to speak are TFA.  One, Lindsay Hill, is the executive director of TFA in the Puget Sound area, and another is one of the teachers hired for SPS, Kenneth Maldonado.  I note that there are still four places left on the speakers list. I also note that the action item for the conditional certifications has changed under Alternatives: Do not authorize application for conditional certificates for these candidates.  This is not recommended as these candidates have been through the school-based hiring process and were recommended by the school-based team to be hired.  Failure to authorize a conditional certificate would result in a school-based decision to hire a particular person being overturned.  Furthermore, failure to authorize will require a new hiring process, which could result in disruption to the...

I would really like to hear from folks who disagree with me. They may be cautious about commenting here on this blog. No one likes to feel like they have been shouted down, attacked, or had their integrity or intelligence insulted. So I would like to create a safe space for people who have another perspective so we can discuss these things in a civil, courteous, and respectful manner. Towards that end, I'm going to try an experiment. Here at Save Seattle Schools, we delete spam comments and unsigned, anonymous ones, but it is not our practice to edit or censor comments for content. This is a free forum. On this thread - just this one - I will remove any comments that are not civil, courteous, and respectful. I want to create a safe space for people to disagree. We'll see how it goes. In particular, I would like to hear from people who either support any of the School Board incumbents for re-election or support the hiring of Teach for America corps members as teachers in o...

Tuesday, September 20th @ 7:30 pm the 43rd Legislative District Democrats will be voting on endorsements , including three School Board seats. The 43rd LD meets at University Heights Community Center, 5031 University Way NE  Wednesday, September 21 Community Meeting with Director Sundquist , from 11 am to 12:30 p.m. at the Delridge Library, 5423 Delridge Way SW Presentation by PASS (the principals' association) to the School Board on goals for this school year, from 5:30 -5:45 p.m. at headquarters (right before the School Board meeting) School Board meeting, 6-9 p.m.  Agenda is fairly short so it shouldn't be three hours.   There are some facilities acceptance items, approval of the High Point Promise Neighborhood application (which seems like a good deal as the money, $455,472 is "in-kind" from existing grant dollars and is for services at West Seattle Elementary and Denny Middle School), the postponed Conditional Certification for two TFA teachers, in...

 Thanks to Mirmac 1 for this update. The Daily Kos had a story about one woman's story about Apple's program to have customers donate old iPads to TFA teachers.  Her story of getting passed around at Apple corporate reminds me of my efforts to figure this out.  From the story: After being passed around on the phone from one corporate office to another, I finally asked Jerry in marketing if Apple knew that Teach for America recruits weren't really teachers -- that their claim of "Teach for America takes well-trained teachers—referred to as "corps  members"— was completely false, and that the campaign was deceptive.  I said it would be great if Apple  were offering donated iPads to real teachers, but the company is misleading donors when it tells them their donation will go to a Teach for America "teacher." The marketing guy then said this.  "We paint with a broad brush when we use the term teacher ."  He said he considered hi...

From Dr. Enfield's office: The Seattle Foundation President and CEO Norm Rice today announced funding for Teach for America in Seattle Public Schools. I want to thank The Seattle Foundation and all the donors for their support. Please see the attached announcement for more information. From the district press release: The TFA teachers receive a typical first-year salary from the District and are members of the Seattle Education Association. They will, however, receive additional support from TFA during the school year. The Seattle Foundation will cover the $4,000 fee per teacher paid to TFA– an estimated $20,000 total. This fee is used to offset the cost of training. “We know that an exceptional teacher in every classroom can help close the achievement gap and increase the academic success of all of our students. Teach for America brings even more exceptional and motivated teachers into our classrooms,” said Norman B. Rice, President and CEO of The Seattle Fou...

Not enough time to do this justice but some thoughts from yesterday at Denny/Sealth and today at Lowell at Lincoln (and McDonald) and key points from the Board meeting.

I sent the Board my remarks in advance which is something I don't normally do.  I did it because I felt very strongly about them and wanted to the Board to be pondering these issues in hopes that they will actually speak up about them at the Board meeting. In brief, they are: despite Dr. Enfield's promises, we still do not know who is paying for TFA .  I think she may believe that the donor(s) himself can just pay TFA and remain anonymous.  The contract with TFA reflects that SPS is to pay TFA.  There is nothing about money passing to TFA from a third-party.  This lack of transparency is deeply troubling.  It almost feels like any kind of change or program can be bought and installed at SPS if you have the money. The overhaul of Board policies (tonight it's the Series 4000 ones) seems to have some urgency to it that I am missing.  That many of the policies use the word "should" instead of "will" also makes you wonder about the teeth to the policie...

I attended the Denny/Sealth press conference and ribbon-cutting for Denny today.  The Superintendent had a press conference and I was glad I attended.  (Can I just say that boy I miss Linda Shaw and Phyllis Fletcher when they aren't there?  Most of these reporters are clueless.) The Superintendent had a lot of pep rally points that we've heard from her focus for this school year.   But there was some more up-to-date info on certain subjects. Highlights: She was asked about capacity management in West Seattle.  She said that they had a team of staff and community working to help work on this issue (she didn't say but I assumed she meant the Demographics Taskforce).  She said that the district wanted to be "prepared in advance and not just reacting to enrollment changes." She also said capacity management also includes related programs needs and I was grateful that she acknowledged that issue. Again on capacity managment, she said that they had he...