Seattle Schools Community Forum

I finally received one charter school's documents that I had requested via public disclosure; these were from Green Dot's Destiny Middle School.  Now it took some doing because initially a couple of charters did not want to give me anything, saying they weren't public schools.  When I pressed them on handing over documents that were created during the time that they were charter schools, then I got an okay but was put off to "March or April."  I'm still waiting for a couple of other schools.  (I note that Rep. Gerry Pollet also got this runaround which should tell you something.) Green Dot itself only sent them to me in hard copy which, of course, makes it more difficult to copy from and track.  They said they have to buy special "software" to send them to me electronically.  Guess what was in the huge stack of documents?  A letter dated October 2015 to a law firm saying that Green Dot would be sending them public disclosure documents...electron...

 Update : in yet another desperate effort, Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education put out this writing effort.   It's semi-hysteric tone sounds a lot like what comes out of the Washington Policy Center. To my great surprise, she is one of the few to still say this: Our law is one of the best in the country. What? All of this progress was threatened last September, however, when the state Supreme Court ruled the initiative unconstitutional. This innovative approach didn’t fit into a 1909 definition of “common schools”, leading the court to conclude that the schools couldn’t receive traditional public school funding streams. Right, that pesky state constitution.  Here's a thought - write an initiative or bill that is constitutional sound and you will have your charters.   And she makes the claim - without one single shred of documentation of data - that most of the charters are seeing massive improvement with their students.  Sayi...

As I have previously stated, I have had public disclosure requests in for some time to various groups including former charter schools in Washington State, OSPI, and the Charter Commission.  I am still awaiting yet another drop from OSPI. I had a very difficult time getting ahold of anyone from couple of former charters and gave up.  But, if they ARE public schools, there should be no mystery of who is their public disclosure officer and how to contact that person.

WA GOP gut bipartisan education legislation RELEASE: Jan. 27, 2016  (this came via Senator John McCoy but I'm not sure of its origins) Senate Republicans gut bipartisan McCleary bill

In what can only be called the pot calling the kettle black, ten Washington State legislators have filed an amicus brief (friend of the court) to the Washington State Supreme Court about the Court's ruling on the charter school law. Folks, apparently we may have a pissing match going on.  While I appreciate that there are some in the Legislature who really like charter schools, this kind of amount to telling someone their job.  Now perhaps some in the Legislature (maybe a majority for all we know), believe that the McCleary ruling (and all that has come after) was treading on the Legislature's delicate toes.  So maybe this is some of those legislators trying to toss this back into the Corut's face and telling THEM that they don't know how to do their jobs.  And maybe some are trying to be deliberately provocative.  It should tell us all that when January starts, charters may be the wedge to get McCleary done.  From the News Tribune :

Some items I have mentioned before and some items are probably new to most readers.