Seattle Schools Community Forum

Here's the district's info on the new link to The Source . The online student gradebook The Source and other student tools will now be one click away. Beginning Sept. 9 , the link to The Source will be replaced with “Student Portal” on the top right side of your school and the district webpages to access The Source and Schoology. See  yellow circle in the image to the left to see where to look for the link.

I'm following up on the story about a blind parent who is suing the district over changes to the district's website that does not allow her to access her students' information (and the company who created the website is now being sued by the district, with finger-pointing in both directions). As part of the settlement for recent litigation regarding website accessibility, our website provider agreed to migrate our public website to their latest software by Mar. 1 of this year. This migration only affects the district’s main web pages and the school websites for John Muir Elementary School, Washington Middle School and Garfield High School. In addition, the contract for our current website hosting services was terminated by the vendor and the district is seeking a new service provider. (Those are some pretty random school pages.  It would appear this fix is for the sight-challenged parent's effort to keep up with her students' work but what happens t...

  From SPS: The Source will be unavailable on Friday, May 23rd from 5:00pm - Tuesday, May 27th 6:00am for maintenance. This planned outage is required to upgrade PowerSchool to a newer version and improve performance and reliability. We apologize for any inconvenience. What field are incoming UW freshmen picking when they pick Engineering?  Number one (hugely) is Computer Science.   What's on your mind?

Someone asked a question in the Friday Open Thread about a Special Ed program and that led to SpedPTA president, Mary Griffin, to say this (and she calls it a rant alert and warning but really, it's a huge district-wide issue): I am not a fan of data sharing, but I am a fan of useful data collection and accessibility within the district. The district right now is suffering greatly from the lack of usable, easily accessible data.   Not having good data means that the Director of Special Education needs to spend two weeks going through all the student records identifying which students receive Special Education services.   Not having good data means they can't get their ducks in a row to even fill out the forms to request $12 million dollars to fund Special Education.  Not having good data interferes with enrollment predictions for next year and hampers communication about the location of classrooms.  Not having good data means even though t...

I noted that at the strategic plan community meeting I attended at Hale, several parents said they (and some teachers) have frustrations with using The Source/Fusion. One reader replied: As an SPS teacher I would love to hear what parents like/dislike about the Source & Fusion. Is it limitations in the tool (and if so exactly what aspects)? Is it that teachers don't update the Source? With Fusion is it particular tools not working, limited teacher usage, inconsistent styles of teacher usage, errors in posts, etc? Some families may be able to make comparisons to tools in districts they've moved from and/or private schools they have their children in. At least the Source allows grades to be posted more timely than the traditional gradebooks. What else do parents want/need to see in the Source (this could help those of us who read the blog some be more aware of changes to lobby for in the future... well, if teachers ever truly had any input into district technology decisi...

Before school started we heard about a new peer tutoring program at McClure. How's that working out? Before school started we heard that Whitman was going to dissolve their 7th and 8th grade Spectrum classes. How's that working out? How is transportation going? All smoothed out? Are the schedules for secondary students smoothed out? Do kids still need to fill their schedules with classes? What about the school software? Is that working now?

SPS Communications explained this about the technology issues on the first day of school: We needed to make the switch from our old computer system to Power Schools as the old system was failing. It began failing more quickly than we anticipated, so what was supposed to be an 18-month transition was compressed into six months. Our Department of Technology staff has been working around the clock all summer to get this done. We did transition to Power Schools on Aug. 26, two weeks later than initially planned due to some technical issues with the transfer. What this meant was, when staff came back to their schools in August, they had very little time for training. We are still trying to pinpoint the reasons for the problems people are having, but some appears to be a result of people not being familiar with the system. There are also more technical issues involved as well – for example, our Dept. of Technology staff have run numerous tests showing that students names that...

The Olympic View forum, held last night, was a small and quiet affair.  (I recall a comment that Bryant's was small as well - maybe schools in each region should join together and just do one for each region.) Before the forum, I debated Paul Guppy of the Washington Policy Center about the Families& Education levy.  (Poor guy, I feel for him because I know what it's like to be on the "no side of a school levy.  He did make some good points, though, about the district not using money wisely.) All the candidates showed up and there were about 30 people in the audience.  Each gave a one-minute statement and then they were given a question and answered in twos from their district. What I heard was the incumbents talking about accomplishments and the challengers stating the issues/concerns they saw and what they would address.  A couple of these one-minute statements stood out to me. Michelle Buetow made the point that despite all the changes, what hadn't...

Dr. Enfield has put forth a message for parents and communities about the district's focus for the future.  Here's most of it: I promised to listen and engage with the community around what we collectively want our schools to become. I heard four common themes, which will guide our work this year: great principals, great teachers, connected families and a responsive central office.

I have a report that MAP scores are now on The Source. My kids don't take the MAP, so I can't check. Can anyone confirm or refute?

So the Times had an editorial today asking that use of The Source be part of the contract negotiations. Yay. The Source is a valuable tool for parents and students and we, the taxpayers, paid for it. It should be used more than twice a quarter by teachers (the current teacher contract mandate). I've been told that some teachers just don't want to learn to use it or it's just one more thing in their busy day. It seems if teachers use it they could (1) save themselves from multiple e-mails from parents and (2) protect themselves by being able to say you regularly posted homework and grades (and the office puts in attendance). Students, particularly in middle and high school, can't really argue much if the teacher does this in a regular fashion. But uneven usage or little usage allows a student to tell mom or dad that "Oh, she hasn't updated the scores. I turned that homework in on time." or "Oh, the overall grade is low because he hasn't put ...

Have you noticed: this notice at every school's webpage: "If you came here to view Classroom Information & Homework, this information is now available on The Source. The move to this new system allows us to provide you not only general classroom and homework information but also attendance, state assessment information, class pages, and grades specifically for your student. (Grades are only available for students in grades 6-12 students at this time). The Source will be available to families on August 14th, but school schedules won't be available until September 10th. Click here to register and view The Source!" Good to know. In reference to The Source it would also be good to know what the district is going to ask teachers for in their new contracts. They currently only have to use The Source twice a quarter which is just not enough. If parents want to keep up with their student's work, then The Source has to be used more. that on the Schools page at the...