Seattle Schools Community Forum

Great story about Chief Sealth's water-bottle filling station from the West Seattle Blog . The CSIHS Green Team has been “recognized as a 2015-16 Conservation Champion for their work to get water-bottle-filling stations.  Not only did they get the green light to purchase filling stations at Chief Sealth, additionally they convinced the school board to pursue a $200,000 grant for filling stations in every single Seattle Public School.”

From SPS Communications : Students from Ballard, Roosevelt and Garfield high schools won top  honors in the prestigious Washington State Solo and Ensemble Contest held April 26-27 at Central Washington University. Students from Ballard, Roosevelt and Garfield high schools took first place in their categories. I note that these schools (and I include Chief Sealth Int'l which also won an award) won a large number of awards, both group and individual.  Congrats to all the students, teachers and parents! Also, Roosevelt student Benjamin Briggs was a semifinalist at the English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition in NYC in April.  The public is invited to the Naramore Art Show's closing reception and awards ceremony May 10 at the Seattle Arts Museum. The show, which ends May 12, features the artwork of about 200 young artists from Seattle Public Schools' middle and high schools . The event will start at 6 p.m. as the organ...

Seattle Public Schools won a million dollar competitive grant from the Wallace Foundation for arts education planning. You will recall that the approval of this grant was rushed by the board so the work of planning our arts education program could begin right away. A four-week delay in getting started was regarded as intolerable. The grant was presented for introduction and action at the same board meeting on July 6, 2011 . So, nu? It has been nine months of the year gone by now. How is that arts education planning going? Did it get off to a fast start? Was this another case when the staff rushed the Board to vote with a false urgency and then, once they secured the vote, all of the urgency drained away and the work stalled? Or did the District get right to work on the arts education plan and they are making rapid progress? Does anyone know?

Arts Corps, the largest nonprofit arts educator in the Seattle area, has some job openings for 2-4 teaching artists in the pilot for their new program Creative Schools Initiative for middle schools.  From their website: Through the Creative Schools Initiative, Arts Corps will provide high quality integrated arts experiences in schools. Teaching artists will be placed in middle schools where they will work closely with teachers, staff and students in the school day and after school, in order to enhance student learning and create an arts-rich learning environment. Contact Hillary Moore, Creative Schools Program Manager:  hillary.moore@artscorps.org , 206.722.5440 CLICK THE LINK FOR PDF:   Creative Schools TA Job Description

Tuesday, April 10th Director McLaren Community meeting at Delridge Library from 1:15-3:15 p.m. Audit&Finance Committee Meeting (audit) from 4-6 p.m.  Agenda includes MLK FAME covenant compliance update where we find out if FAME is honoring its agreement with SPS,  a 2010-2011 Financial, Federal and Accountability audit update (not sure what this is),  ALE policy update a "special attention" item from Director Carr called "A&F operating rhythm." BEX IV meeting at Mercer Middle School from 6:30-8:00 p.m.   Eckstein's meeting seem to focus more on capacity issues especially Lowell at Lincoln.  Denny's meeting seemed to focus on issues around Arbor Heights/Roxhill.  I was a little surprised as I didn't see as many parents from Alki, Lafayette or Schmitz Park as I thought might come out.  It will be interesting to see the focus from the communities in the Mercer area. Wednesday, April 11th Executive Committee meeting from 8-11 ...

Let your budding artists at home know about this one .  From Google: The Doodle 4 Google competition is now open to all K-12 students in U.S. schools (including homeschoolers). Parents, teachers, or after school programs may submit doodles on behalf of their child or student as long as they are accompanied by a completed and signed entry form. Like last year, we do not have a cap on number of submissions from one school, family, or after school program but we still require that only one doodle is submitted per child. In the case of duplicate submissions by a single child, we will accept the submission that arrives first as determined by the "received by" date. Completed entry forms must be received by March 23rd.  Judges include singers Jordan Sparks and Katy Perry and children's book author, Holly Black, and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi (of The Spiderwick Chron...

I did not know this but there is an e-newsletter, Arts eNews (Seattle Public Schools Visual and Performing Arts eNews). In the Dec-Jan issue, there is a survey about arts in SPS. Gotta say, a good newsletter with a LOT of grant funding opportunities for both teachers and students. Here's a link to the e-news page (with a link to subscribe).

From our fellow bloggers at the Stranger Slog: Seattle students will lead the mayor in talking about arts education tonight, and you can go out and support and listen to them. It's the sixth annual Arts in Education Forum—a student-directed forum. The event is from 6:30 to 7:30 with a reception starting at 8 at Seattle University's Pigott Auditorium, 1017 E Marion St. Admission is free . Three current and former SPS students will be participating in the the discussion.

So following up on yesterday's thread, is foreign language instruction and/or arts instruction part of basic education? Kids could live without having either and could be educated without either. But that's not really the point (I know it is for Tea Party people - the "basics" and nothing else). But I would say for 21st century learning, a foreign language is going to be very useful. And not just learning the language, but the learning that comes from finding out where a country is on the globe, its culture, etc. are all part of a 21st century America. Arts. Well, how do we live without them? The world and the school experience would be so much less without music, theater, video production, painting, etc. Arts like sports is something that keeps kids in school. But it's a cost. So should the state help at all?

There was a short article in the NY Times about a link in NYC schools between those who do well academically and arts offerings. (Is it the chicken or the egg?) From the article: "The report, which analyzed data collected by the city’s Education Department from more than 200 schools over two years, reported that schools ranked in the top third by graduation rates offered students the most access to arts education and resources, while schools in the bottom third offered the least access and fewest resources. Among other findings, schools in the top third typically hired 40 percent more certified arts teachers and offered 40 percent more classrooms dedicated to coursework in the arts than bottom-ranked schools." Here's a link to the full report .