Seattle Schools Community Forum

Friday memos , the gift that keeps on giving.

A reader sent me this and said there were 2-3 of these around signage at Thurgood Marshall.  I am told the Board knows about this. I was kind of surprised to hear an HCC parent at Soup for Teachers say this: I agree with the sentiment (and I'm an HCC parent) but I wouldn't do it this way. Let's not shame kids. Okay, HCC parents, do you think your child is enrolled in a "apartheid" program?  Here's what the dictionary says (after explained it means "a state of being apart," an Afrikaans word. "Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation..." There is no enforced separate in HCC.  The program is open to anyone.   The program is not just one race, there are many, many Asian students (despite attempts to make that sound like it does count which baffles me.)  Of course, there is underrepresentation by black, Native American and Latino students and that needs to change.  But apartheid?  

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:

I asked some pretty direct questions on this topic but got less-than-direct answers.  However, it seems apparent that it was the Superintendent's call on the waiver for social studies for Thurgood Marshall's HCC program. From my e-mail to SPS Communications:

The Friday Memo of August 26 includes this FAQ sheet on the new Superintendent Procedure 2190SP and the waiver request from Thurgood Marshall for blended HCC/General Education social studies. The FAQ sheet includes some strong points. Among them:

I'll just start by saying that I'm not surprised. You cannot have a district policy and/or a procedure about a program that does NOT clearly define all the elements/parts of that program.  If you are going to have ill-defined parts of a program, then at least the policy and/or procedure should say, "At this time and place, we are allowing principals to define the Spectrum program and/or ALO program at their school as they see fit for their community." Because that seems to be exactly what is happening.  Advanced Learning, as an office, seems now to only exist to test.  That's it.

The principal of Thurgood Marshall Elementary School is asking the Board to change the policy that governs Highly Capable and Advanced Learning. She wants the Board to amend the policy to allow delivery methods other than self-contained classes for Social Studies among other changes. The principal has solicited support from the Thurgood Marshall community to lobby the Board to make the change. Here is her letter to the Thurgood Marshall community:

Long ago, I used to say that having a great school is like a three-legged stool partnership with teachers/staff and parents and principal.  After my personal experience and years of listening to parents' experiences at other schools, I revised that because the biggest leg really is the principal. I feel that way because the principal sets the tone, the focus and usually has a lot of ability in creating a staff for the school.  Many successful principals, like many successful schools, appear to get more leeway because of their abilities.  (This harkens back to former Superintendent Olfchefske's "tight/loose" theory that if a school is doing well, loosen up that grip, if not, tighten up.)  This ability for some principals to have greater control certainty looks true in a column at the Times about one reporter who about to become a Seattle schools' parent. 

From SPS Twitter at about 2:30 p.m.: Franklin HS and Thurgood Marshall Elementary are in shelter-in-place after shots were fired in nearby neighborhood. SPD looking for suspects. Students were released on time when school ended.  For Thurgood students who normally walk home, parents were asked to come and pick them up.

This story from the Times on Roosevelt's Ruben Van Kempen , drama teacher and director extraordinaire who will be inducted into the Educational Theatre Association's Hall of Fame in San Diego this week.  One interesting item that most don't know - RHS offers the only full-time theater program in SPS with multiple classes.   His legacy (but he's not going anywhere) - this from a student: "He instilled a belief in me, a belief in following my passions and dreams. Whether I'd gone on to be an engineer or a teacher or anything else, I'd appreciate what he gave me at a really important time." An accomplished stage director as well as an innovative teacher, Van Kempen has trained and inspired dozens of theater professionals, working from here to Broadway. They include Chad Kimball, a recent Tony Award nominee in the Broadway musical "Memphis," as well as Noah Racey, a busy performer-choreographer who'll be the lead in the 5th Avenu...

Henry Ford famously claimed that people could get their Model T Ford in any color they wanted, so long as the color they wanted was black. Why black? It didn't reflect heat or light and therefore dried faster than other paint colors. That's how much he looked for ways to speed production; he wanted the paint color that took the least time to dry. Where will north-end APP end up? It can't stay in Lincoln forever - the District needs that building as an interim site for the World School, NOVA, Eckstein, and all of the north-end elementary schools that they want to expand. Where can it go? You can look around the north-end for available buildings or building sites. I can only think of three: John Marshall, Wilson-Pacific, and Cedar Park. After that, you could do some real outside the box thinking and imagine the District buying property like a failed motel on Aurora or the parking lot of the Calgary church. You could even think WAY outside the box and consider building a s...

Okay, let me just state that when I took a head count at 7:00 pm at the meeting, it was about 75 people.  Imagine my surprise when I got up to speak and saw many more people had come in.  So yes, the crowd was larger than my 75 count. I'm just going to go thru some highlights, review what I was hearing from the first thread and let's see if we can find some ideas to put forth.  (Also, please do not hijack this thread on another topic.  I'm asking nicely.)

First up are two pieces of good news from the northwest corner of the district. My Ballard reports that a Salmon Bay student, Leo Pfeifer, won recognition by C-SPAN for his documentary, "Homelessness: An American Crisis."  He is one of 30 students to be recognized out of 1,100 entries and won 1 of 4 second prizes ($1500, not shabby).   On Friday, he and his cameraman, Ian Derby,  will be honored at an assembly at Salmon Bay and presented with a check.  From the district's website, Ballard High band director, Michael James, was selected as one of five directors from around the country to receive a full scholarship to the Lincoln Center's Band Director Academy.  He was chosen based on the quality of recordings submitted to the Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival.  More jazz band honors for SPS. Also, Bryant and Thurgood Marshall won the City Finals in the 2011 Global Reading Challenge .  They advance to the Video Conference final with Canada...

OSPI announced its list of 2010 Washington Achievement Award winners . There are several Seattle schools on the list (a couple notable for being named in two places) but there aren't many. From OSPI: The Washington Achievement Award: Is awarded collaboratively with the State Board of Education (SBE) and based on the Washington Achievement Index. Celebrates schools for overall excellence and special recognition in: language arts, math, science, graduation rate, improvement and closing achievement gaps. Honors schools at an annual ceremony hosted by the SBE and OSPI. OSPI uses statewide assessment data from the past three years to make their selections. OSPI wants to recognize the efforts of schools and their families into making good schools happen. So what SPS schools are on the list? Overall Excellence Bryant* - Concord Int'l* - Coe - Hay* - Loyal Heights* - McGilvra* - Montlake* - Schmitz Park - Mercer* - Blaine K-8 Language Arts Nova Math Loyal Heights - Schmitz Park Sc...

I have no doubt that the district's first choice to ease the overcrowding is to move the APP students to one school, say Ingraham, or just say, go to the high school that is your attendance one, we'll have AP for everyone there. Maybe that would be the easiest and fairest thing to do - just send kids to their neighborhood high schools. So "Anonymous" wrote this questions which I thought were good (but Anonymous, give yourself a name - no anonymous posts here). 1) How did the district decide that IB and AP are equitable options? Are they not 2 completely different teaching styles of advanced academics? Yes, both can provide quality accelerated acadmics, BUT aren't they very different philosphical / learning models? What if you have a north end student that does not want to follow the IB model? What if they prefer AP option? Will Ingraham be adding more AP classes for these kids to choose from? I don't know that I think the district thinks they are e...

Charles Mudede, a writer for the Stranger, reported that his 8-year-old daughter was removed from her APP classroom at Thurgood Marshall and placed in a non-APP classroom at the school because a hair care product she was using purportedly sickened the teacher. I won't make conjecture about anyone's motivations here, but I have to believe that there could have been another resolution than removal from APP. The weird thing about this - other than everyone feeling the need to lawyer up - appears to be how uninformed school officials appear to be about the situation. Reports about the situation are thin.

The Weekly's Nina Shapiro did two stories on SPS this week. One was about the Native American funding audit issue that I mentioned in the story on the Audit and Finance Committee meeting. The only thing here I feel like she missed was saying it was discovered by an "internal audit". That's true but it was by the State Auditor and not by the district itself. The district's explanation? District spokesperson Patti Spencer-Watkins says the district, in many cases, simply failed to keep accurate records on students who had left Seattle schools. In a few other cases, she says, students may have been Native American, but weren't enrolled members of federally-recognized tribes. Some context was provided by a comment by "Indian Educator" I run a similar program using funds from the same source. The program guidelines are quite clear: A "qualified" student is one who is enrolled in a state or federally recognized tribe or whose parent o...

This was a comment posted on the APP Blog by Meg Diaz. People need to read this, so I'm just stealing it. Hey, it's on a blog, it's in the public domain, there's no copyright protection and information wants to be free. Thurgood Marshall is getting eviscerated. The ALO program will take the worst of it. The ALO program is somewhere over 85% FRL. The influx of the APP program has reduced the "school" FRL to 44%. SPS, starting in 2009-10, said that 1) schools can receive EITHER Title or LAP money, not both, and 2) that a school needs to be above 55% FRL to receive Title money (side note: both Title and LAP funds are intended to help kids who are living in poverty, performing below grade level or both). As a result of this brilliant policy change, Thurgood Marshall will lose nearly $200K in Title money, and yet the ALO population that was there before APP flooded into the building does not need the resources any less than they did before. The loss of title money...

The new start time proposal that will be presented at the School Board meeting tomorrow night not only returns to the 8:00 am middle school/high school/K-8 start time and the 9:15 am elementary school start time, but it also includes a return to some very vague language about which schools are impacted. The proposal says: Designated Elementary and K-8 Schools 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM Middle Schools 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM Elementary Schools 9:15 AM to 3:25 PM (With individual exceptions to accommodate shared school bus service) So does that mean that Lowell and Thurgood Marshall are back on the early start time list? Or are some other unsuspecting elementary schools going to be added? And which K-8 schools had enough influence with Ruth Medsker to get off the early start time list? And how about this interesting tidbit: "Individual schools may request a waiver from these times provided that the requesting school funds any additional transportation cost." So if your PTSA can rai...

A friend said that she might get a chance to meet with a Board member about the proposed APP split and asked me if I could sketch out the reasons that the split should not go forward at this time. I'm a habitual self-plagerizer, so once having written something I cannot resist the temptation to re-use it. Here is what I sent as reasons that the District should not move forward with the split. At the elementary level the primary reason that APP should not be split as part of the Capacity Management plan is the simple fact that the idea represents really poor capacity management. The plan tries to get 434 students, the number the District wants to put into Thurgood Marshall (see Appendix H, page 80) into a school that can only hold 366, the functional capacity of Thurgood Marshall (according to this report). That just isn't sound Capacity Managment. I suppose that they will manage somehow. They will probably repurpose an art room or a music room as a classroom. Ironically, in th...