Seattle Schools Community Forum

The district has a couple of ideas out there about what to do with HCC students. Boy, there are some doozy of ideas from staff.  This is all around the possible usese of the Thornton Creek campus. Here's the document from the district to Thornton Creek parents. First, the district says:

Boy, I saw a lot of happy and excited people today at both these new buildings.  At both ribbon-cuttings, they had the 15+ ribbon-cutters (SPS staff, Board members and legislators) cut bits of ribbon to give to students who were there as souvenirs.  (I didn't have time to take a tour in either building so I didn't get to ask about a couple of things in each building.  I also didn't find the library in either building.)

News from Thornton Creek: The Seattle school district has only budgeted Thornton Creek to have two 4th grade classes, two 5th grade classes and one mixed 4th/5th class for 2015-16, even though there are three 3rd grade classes and three 4th grade classes moving up.  Grades 4 and 5 are currently 140 students.  The plan would be to have 2 fourth grade classes and 2 fifth grade classes of 29 kids each, and 1 slightly smaller mixed age class for 4th/5th grade.   A group of concerned parents has created an online petition requesting a sixth class at 4th/5th grade. http://tinyurl.com/ohfqrxh

Tuesday, January 7th Work Session: Transportation Service Standards and School Start Times from 5-6:30 p.m.  No agenda/presentation available. Should be interesting given that many want a discussion on school start times and staff seems to be pushing back mightily.   However, President Peaslee is not moving an inch on waiting to have that discussion. Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council Meeting from 6:30 pm to 9:00 p.m., JSCEE Room 2700. Wednesday, January 8th Executive Committee Meeting , 8:30-10 am, Update- agenda School Board Meeting starting at 4:15 pm.  Agenda . Please sign up to speak on student data privacy.   The district is NOT happy over the unilateral move by OPSI in their agreement with the Seattle Times for Seattle student data.  Let them know you want a robust policy with teeth (currently none exists).   Need talking points?  Contact me.

 From SPS Communications: Seattle Public Schools will be asking staff, students, families for feedback on schools through an annual phone and email survey. Questions will include topics such as effective communication and school safety. The District will email or call all families the week of Jan. 13 and do a second round the week of Jan. 20. The calls and e-mails will be in the home-language spoken.  The family survey on our schools will be administered through School Messenger. The student and staff survey are paper based and will occur between Jan. 6 and 17.  We appreciate your participation in this year’s family survey. If you have any questions please email research@seattleschools.org . Fifth-graders at Thornton Creek have joined the discussion on the new Seattle game show, " What's Up with Bertha?"   (If you missed it, Bertha is the world's largest tunneling machine that is now stuck under the Viaduct. Why?  No one knows or, if they do,...

I wasn't able to attend the Executive Committee meeting this morning but Board staff were kind enough to give me the handouts (thanks Lily and Teresa). As a heads up, a couple of things from the Legislative agenda (aka School Board agenda). - November 20th.  The Growth Boundaries discussion/vote is the fifth Action item on the agenda.  Two items ahead of it will likely go quickly but the Special Ed item and possible closure of Pinehurst are likely to have some amount of discussion (and, with any luck, Pinehurst will be pulled off the agenda).  Altogether the Boar has 13 Action items to vote on (whew!) plus three Intro items.  One of those is acceptance of RTTT money for the three IB programs. I let you know this simply if you are trying to time your arrival (unless you want to come for Public Testimony but by then, it will all be over but the shouting).  If I had to call it, I'd say the Growth Boundaries discussion and vote will not start before 6:30 p.m. ...

Well, a report out from the public hearing last night that I believe is worthy of its own thread.  From reader Danny: I attended the Pinehurst K-8 (aka AS#1) public hearing last night. It was just that, a public hearing for public testimony. No more real information was gleaned from it other than how important the school is to the community of people who send their kids there. One testimony of note was School Board Director Peaslee waited patiently and testified last with no time limit and put on record that the options of temporarily locating at the Decautur bldg while waiting for a permanent co-location with Thornton Creek are absolutely viable solutions. She also stated that it doesn't make sense to close a program due to low enrollment while there are waiting lists and empty buildings in the district. She also stated that she had a conversation with Thornton Creek's principal John Miner who told her Pinehurst must be saved and is on board with the co-loc...

This Work Session had a larger-than-normal audience which is a good thing because now there are other witnesses to what was discussed.   Charlie and I both went and came armed with ideas for the Board to consider.  (He outdid me, of course, with his sheet with 23(!) questions.  He checked them off as they went along.  At least five of them got asked but not necessarily answered.)  I gave them a sheet with comments copped from Charlie's previous thread.  And, with apologies to all other programs, somehow Advanced Learning/Highly Capable got the lion's share of discussion. Michael Tolley started the session, outlining the higher level thinking.  However, the presentation, on slide 3, says that one goal of the process is to " include access to services and programs as a key component in boundary revisions."   To which Charlie wrote in the margin "except Montessori."  And, he's right.  Montessori is in neighborhood schools but i...

From SPS Communications: Seattle Public Schools will host two community meetings to present information on projects funded by the Building Excellence IV (BEX IV) Capital Levy. The levy was passed by voters in February 2013. • Wilson-Pacific Elementary and Middle School projects These projects are to construct a new elementary school building and a new middle school building on the Wilson-Pacific site, both scheduled to open in the 2017-18 school year. The meeting will be presented by representatives of Seattle Public Schools capital projects team and Mahlum Architects. The meeting will include information about the projects’ early design progress. 7:30–8:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Wilson-Pacific Seamat Center 1330 N. 90th St. • New Thornton Creek Building project This project is to construct a new elementary school building, scheduled to open in the 2016-17 school year. The meeting will be presented by representatives of Seattle Public Schools capital projects team an...

U.S. Department of Ed official to visit Cleveland High School today to promote "transformation efforts."  From SPS: Brenda Dann-Messier, who heads the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education, will visit Seattle’s Cleveland STEM High School on Tuesday, April 30, spotlighting the school’s transformation efforts aimed at promoting educational excellence for its students. As previewed in President Obama’s State of the Union address, the administration is proposing $300 million for a new High School Redesign program, which would fund competitive grants to districts partnering with postsecondary institutions, businesses and non-profits to help ensure that all students graduate from high school with college credit and career-related experience.   The irony here is that Cleveland was not created to be self-sustaining (because it got rolled out too quickly because of MGJ's ego) and the school actually needs the very kind of grant th...

I had understood that the district was reviewing the plan for Thornton Creek.  What I believed I had heard was that it did not appear to the community that the district had considered all options.  (I also believe there were real differences of opinion within the community about what would be the best plan.) The district DID do analysis and here it is.  There is a comparison of two projects - the one at Cedar Park and the one at Thornton Creek. The analysis for Cedar Park was versus using Lake City property (an old school building that has been coverted into offices).  They still believe Cedar Park is the better option (cheaper) but looking at the breakdown, CP would have to have 8(!) portables to be viable.  I am also confused at the high price to redo Lake City as it is a lovely building that just needs some renovation (although it needs a gym)  and yet is is double the cost of updating CP.  And Lake City would have double the classrooms....

What are you hearing at your school about the levies?  Is there a big push on?  I know that at least 20+ schools have endorsed it. Yesterday, the Times had an op-ed from the head of School First, Greg Wong, in support of the levies but it had one day on their webpage and is now gone to their file area.  Kind of odd.  The election is less than a month away and ballots are coming your way next week.  And, yet this seems to be a decidedly low-key election.  Does the district NOT want to call attention to it? I go on record as saying I support both levies.   (FYI, I find it unlikely that either levy will fail but if one or both did, the district can come back again in a couple of months.  It would cost a lot of money.  If that didn't pass, at least for Operations, I'm sure the State would step in with some funds.  The district could not suffer a loss of 25% of its Operating budget.) But there are definite rumblings against BEX...

Let's start this conversation about BEX (again).  I like the BEX staff that I know.  They are bright and hard-working.  A few of the very problematic people are gone and that is truly a good thing.  That said, I have never been confident in the choices that the BEX staff has made over the years. Here are my problems with how BEX staff works.  One, there never seems, despite their use of the word "scenarios", any real evidence that you see them saying "if A, then, B but what about this ripple to C".   No school is an island and there are ramifications to all these choices and it's NOT just about capacity.  

As I started this thread, I went to look for the handouts that were available.  Here is the link to the agenda for the handouts.  However, I am very annoyed that I cannot easily locate the one that I thought was the most interesting.  What this means is tomorrow I have to call Tracy and then have someone send me the link because, of course, you can't find a darn thing at the new website.  This also means sending a letter to the Susan Enfield (and the Board)  to request that every single thing staff hand out be posted.   (Sorry to be grumpy but it's tiresome to have to do this multiple times in a week.)  More on the interesting handout at the end of this thread. 

I attended the forum on standardized testing on Monday night at Thornton Creek Elementary.  There were about 40 people there including parents and teachers.  I sure wish more people had attended as it was a great discussion.  I wish someone from the district could have been there to see that this is how you have a public discussion.  Kudos and thanks to Chris Stewart for putting this on (and her speakers as well).

Parent Chris Stewart has organized an evening for parents to discuss standardized testing.  With the changes in the state test and the newness of MAP testing, it is a good time to talk about the issues.   Issues to explain: parent education goals of testing benefits of testing costs of testing parental rights national perspective Issues for feedback: are these the best way to meet the district's academic goals? what you might like to see in SPS ideas on testing frequency for different age groups She will have different speakers on the issues speaking about 10 minutes each and then an hour for discussion with the entire group (no breakout groups).  (Note; there is not going to be discussion of testing for the Advanced Learning program.) The meeting is Monday, April 4th at Thornton Creek Elementary, from 6-8 p.m.  

I started this in Charlie's thread's comment section but it got too long. So, to add to the discussion, here are my notes (I left as Charlie arrived). From my notes: -the Board office has two new hires so both Joan Dingfield and Pam Oakes are gone. I'll miss them; they are nice people. One new thing; the addition of the first 5+ people on the waitlist to the agenda so you can get an idea of where you might be on the waitlist -Lots of energy from TOPS parents who very calmly and clearly explained their issue about transportation. Over 50% of their students will lose their transportation, mostly from the southend. They are asking for a community stop model for buses so their students can continue on. Their hope is for the district to fulfill this request for 3 years. (This time request has something to do with a promise the district made, I believe.) - it was pointed out that a member of the BEX Oversight Committee is doing business with the district and this has not...

Among the items on this week's Board meeting agenda: - update on STEM from Dr. Enfield - transfer of $1.4M from BEX III (savings) for a new roof at Bailey-Gatzert* - amendment by Director Martin-Morris for the new SAP: "I move that the special program assignment preference for Thornton Creek 5th graders applying to attend Salmon Bay be renewed for three years (2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13) without transportation." (This doesn't preclude any other directors from putting in an amendment but Harium is the most likely one to put forth one.) -introduction of an item to pay $800,000 over three years for technical services from NTN for STEM start-up (Dan D. points out that the district cherry-picked some data here to strengthen the case for New Technology Network.) -introduction of the high school language arts adoption . (They include survey results which are meager to say the least and also very difficult to read. I don't believe the word got out to parents or student...

[Updated 6:30 pm with links to appendixes.] So I was wrong about there being a meeting at 4 pm today. It was just a media briefing which has already happened. See Cooper on list of school-closure “final recommendations” on the West Seattle Blog for details. I'm reading the West Seattle Blog post myself right now and will add more to this post in a few minutes. Full document of final recommendations is online on district page. Changes from last time: AS#1 is not closing but Summit is. However, AS#1 must create a restructuring plan and transportation is now limited to two clusters (North and Northeast). "If AS#1 does not meet the metrics outlined in the restructuring plan we will evaluate discontinuing the program for fall 2010." Thornton Creek is not moving and expanding to K-8 ; instead a new traditional K-8 will be in Jane Addams building. TT Minor General Ed program moved to Lowell. TT Minor Montessori still moving to Leschi. And a bunch of the options discussed...

First, a quick thanks to Beth Bakeman for allowing me to join the Seattle Public Schools community blog. As I mentioned over on my recently-shuttered Chalkboard blog (aren’t closures all the rage these days?), I’m excited to join a vibrant online community focused on our schools. ----------------------------- When it comes to Thornton Creek’s proposed move to the Jane Addams building, ends up we can’t trust the ground beneath our feet. Or rather, the ground poses a snarl for the possible move. I learned at a school meeting last night that the Decatur building (Thornton Creek’s current home) and Jane Addams building ( Summit ’s current abode) are both due to get new floors over the summer 2009. According to Thornton Creek’s principal, in order for the district to replace the floors, staff will have about 24 hours from that last dismissal bell to vacate the building for the summer. And because Jane Addams is getting a floor makeover, too, it means that theoretically,...