Seattle Schools Community Forum

Press Release from the Lunch and Recess Matter group: Parents of students in Seattle Public Schools will attend the school board meeting this afternoon to express their frustration that the district has failed to act on their requests that the district provide their children with enough time to eat lunch and play at recess. They are asking the district to quickly ensure that kids get more to eat and play at school. Parents also pointed to a new study from the University of Washington that found students in Seattle Public Schools get only 12 minutes to eat their lunch, resulting in most of the fruits and vegetables going uneaten and putting students’ academic achievement at risk. “We came to the board in November telling them there is a serious issue affecting most of the kids in Seattle Public Schools, and very little has been done since then to fix it,” said Sascha Demerjian, a parent at Whittier Elementary School. “The district is currently finalizing schedule...

Apparently Whittier Elementary now has a 15-minute lunch and 15-minute recess (it had been a 20-minute lunch and a 20-minute recess last year). Given these narrow windows - and the time it takes kids to work through a line and get served - some of the kids who are eating the hot lunch (and this means the FRL kids) only get about five minutes of seated lunch time before being excused to recess. If this is true, it is out of compliance with District policy and procedure ( H61.01 ). Concerns have fallen on deaf ears at the school. Families are meeting on Thursday evening to determine a plan of escalation and action. Can anyone provide additional detail?

Remember that Leonardo DiCaprio movie, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?  The SPS version is, "What's Going on with Advanced Learning?"   What appears -to me - to be happening is that Michael Tolley and Shauna Heath are quietly making a lot of decisions behind closed doors and quietly spreading them out through the schools.  Spectrum principals, either on their own or thru Tolley and Heath, seem to be dismantling every single Spectrum program, whether popular and/or working well. It is now late April and at the time of year that staff loves because the end of the school year is nigh, you parents get distracted and the staff has the entire summer to continue to roll out whatever they are doing. That much of this is happening all the while the district has not one, but two AL taskforces, both dedicated only to APP makes it quite clear what is happening.  (The Taskforce that Charlie and I served on?  All APP, all the time.)  This district does not care f...

The Whittier Elementary PTA has put forth a petition to the Board to ask them to not add an additional kindergarten class next year (which would take away their long-time child-care program. From PhinneyWood.com Members of Whittier Elementary School ’s PTA plan to attend Wednesday night’s Seattle School Board meeting to oppose a proposal to add a fourth kindergarten class next year. Whittier, which is at 13th Avenue NW and NW 75th Street in Ballard, currently has three kindergarten classes of 23 students each. The letter from PTA Co-Presidents Lisa Melenyzer and April Brown states that 80 percent of this year’s kindergarteners live within the school’s attendance area, and that there was no waitlist for kindergarten at Whittier this year. The two say that there is room within the current three classes to add any anticipated population growth in the next few years. In the letter from the PTA: Please note that we are not suggesting that kids in the attendance area wh...

I have heard, more than a couple times now, of some dissatisfaction with the building leadership at Whittier. Would anyone with first-hand knowledge care to share what this is all about? Those who want anonymity can either use an invented alias as their user name or send me an email and I will re-post it. I just want to know what the deal is.