Seattle Schools Community Forum

Despite the fact that most Board committees only meet once a month, here's another meeting of the Executive Committee for June.  With just a single item on the agenda.  What's that?  Why the next City/SPS Preschool agreement, of course. The odd thing here is that the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole, which was two weeks ago, saw this particular partnership agreement rejected by the Committee to even move it forward for consideration by the Board. Now the Executive Committee meeting of the Whole two weeks ago never had this preschool agreement attached to their agenda so I can't compare what has changed from that one to the new one. From the BAR: Space/Facilities: Seattle Public Schools is experiencing significant enrollment growthand does not have adequate capacity to meet it. Given the opportunity that exists with SPP, the City will be leading conversations to identify space. I almost do not have to write one more single word on this subject because tha...

I attended a meeting today at the Cascade Parent Partnership school at Wilson-Pacific.  The meeting was called by Superintendent Banda who was in attendance as was Facilities chief Flip Herdon and NE Ex. Director Kim Whitworth.  The school had just finished a spelling bee and there were plenty of parents and students in attendance. 

 Updates: - there were full tables and most were about one school or area.  There was a Coe table, a Beacon Hill table (with some hard facts about the changes for that area), a TT Minor table, Montlake, etc. - I found these to be people who knew their facts and, if they didn't, wanted to find out more.  One man pushed back against the format, asking why staff couldn't explain who thought up the boundaries and explain them.  He was told they just wanted "comments and feedback."  I don't think many were satisfied with that answer. -Rep Jamie Pedersen was there and he spoke as a father of four (one in school).  I think he's getting a good picture of the issues. Takeaways : - this region HAS had a lot of push-pull from the district.  I honestly had not realized how bad it has been.   And, like other regions, the boundaries are NOT taking into account established "community boundaries or geographical features.  For example, one are...

I've now heard of two neighborhoods that are not happy with boundary changes. Members of the Hawthorne Elementary community is not happy about having their middle school assignment changed from Mercer to Aki Kurose. Members of the Georgetown community are not happy about having their elementary school assignment changed from Maple to Van Asselt.

Earlier in the month the Board had a Work Session on BEX IV.  Here are some highlights and commentary. The beginning of the meeting saw staff go over the input from the BEX IV community meetings .  It was surprisingly thin.  All that was said was that there were 510 oral and written comments and that Option #2 received the most yes votes (although I later saw the numbers and it was close between #2 and #3).   Director Martin-Morris had to ask about how this informs the Board what the community is thinking on this issue.  Pegi McEvoy said that info in was in a Friday update that had been published two weeks prior.  Here's a link to the webpage on the community meetings for BEX IV. Head of Capital Building projects, Lucy Morello, said they would be carrying over some major maintenance from BTA III.  This puzzles me.  I thought we had a separation of BEX and BTA precisely so that each has its own discrete area.  This goes to the issu...

I knew about this investigation and the results.  I had being holding off on raising the issue until next week out of courtesy to the superintendent search.  The Times got the info anyway.   (I don't have a total for the amount of money that is likely gone/missing but I think it is around $20-30K which is a great deal of money for Van Asselt.) From the Times : Seattle police are investigating the possible misuse of school funds by a former principal and a parent coordinator at Van Asselt Elementary School. Former Principal ElDoris Turner retired March 16, two days after being placed on administrative leave following the release of an ethics investigation that found a "gross waste of public funds." The parent coordinator, Ramona Fuentes, was fired Tuesday, according to the school district. The investigation, conducted by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, found $30,000 in unexplained cash withdrawals from an unauthorized school bank account ...

The District is dragging out a number of decisions that should have been made already. In most cases they should just make the decision because they have only a single viable option. There's no decision to be made. 1. Re-open John Marshall as an elementary option school and the site of north-end elementary APP. They need to bring north-end APP up north and there is no other building that will hold the 500 students in the program. John Marshall would allow space for the APP students and a small general education program as well. That would help to relieve some of the overcrowding in the northeast. Enrollment in the general education program should be by choice only. That would bring a lot of advantages. It would give preference to APP siblings and keep families together. It would allow the District to cap the enrollment of the gen ed program so they aren't guaranteeing enrollment to two different groups. It would evade any need to alter the attendance area boundaries. If the ...

The School Board had some interesting moments last night and I'll write an update on that later. But I did want to call out some really great acknowledgments last night from both the district and the Board. The Family Support Worker program had a segment where they acknowledged four groups (among many) who have been a huge help in their work.  They are: Theraputic Health Services which has provided a full-time mental health worker at Madrona K-8 since 2009.  They allowed Madrona staff to be part of the interview process.  The director at THS, Norm Johnson, was noted as someone who went out of his way to help (he also organized a conference for FSW going into the MSW program at UW).  In receiving the praise, he said not to just look at what is offered in their brochure but if you need something, ask about it.   What a guy and what a great organization. The Assistance League of Seattle and their Operation School Bell program provided new coats and ot...

Unlike the last round of closures that had lots of South and Southeast schools involved in the proposals, this round has relatively few. The Rainier Beach / Aki Kurose proposal for co-location I believe has merit. There is some research that 6-12 schools can be good for helping students otherwise at risk of dropping out reach graduation. Rainier Beach staff and teachers seem to be working very hard to improve the academics and keep a small community-school environment where the teachers know everybody. I believe a 6-12 configuration would address the concerns about the building capacity and allow those teachers to continue their good work, while also bringing Aki Kurose, a school that needs to be restructured according to NCLB, into a school that is on the upswing. I'm surprised that the African American Academy closure proposal is not receiving more opposition than it is. We may still hear more, but from what I have read and heard from south end parents and activists, some peop...

This thread was missed last Wednesday when the other open threads were created, so I'm adding it now. Would love to hear from Van Asselt and AAA parents, community members and staff about the proposed recommendation.