Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Soup for Teachers: The Center School, an arts-based public choice school is under threat of losing fine arts classes due to budget constraints.  (Editor's note; if this happened, it fundamentally changes what this school was created to be. Website description of the school: The Center School (TCS or Center) is a small public high school with a focus on the arts and community engagement.) Tuesday, May 3rd at 9am students will be walking out of school (this will be an unexcused absence), over to Westlake, then taking the light rail to SPS in SODO. They will then protest and chant outside until someone comes to meet with them. Their goal is to let SPS know how upset they are with the budget and to demand action from the district to get all the fine arts classes back.  Parents are welcome and encouraged to join for any or all part of the walkout. Please share about it on social media and spread the word! Any press would be great.  Wednesday, May 4th...

A thought-provoking study on day field trips has come out from the University of Arkansas and is covered in Education Next .  (bold mine)  (One irony here is that the students were taken on a tour of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas that was founded by...Alice Walton of Walmart who I perceive as not a friend to public education.) Schools exist not only to provide economically useful skills in numeracy and literacy, but also to produce civilized young men and women who would appreciate the arts and culture.  More-advantaged families may take their children to these cultural institutions outside of school hours, but less-advantaged students are less likely to have these experiences if schools do not provide them. With field trips, public schools viewed themselves as the great equalizer in terms of access to our cultural heritage. Today, culturally enriching field trips are in decline.  A survey by the American Association of...

Just learned about the National Association for Music Education's Broader Minded : think beyond the bubbles program.  Music not only impacts academic achievement, it also shapes the way our students understand themselves and the world around them. Let's think beyond the bubbles and educate the whole student. They have good insights and arguments for supporting music in our schools.  Consider this going forward - as more and more time goes for testing.  

Two items of note: Your youth jazz story can become a KCTS film! Do you have a connection to a jazz program, jazz teacher or jazz student, and have an idea for a story you think should be told? The instructors at KCTS’s 9 Media Lab can help you tell it and share it with our viewers. Beginning in March, we will be offering free workshops to individuals interested in learning the fundamentals of video production to create their Jazzed! story. No experience necessary! Professional filmmakers will teach you how to tell your story about young jazz musicians and jazz education in Seattle. Participants will come to the 9 Media Lab and learn storytelling skills as well as how to shoot, produce and edit video. Final films may be shared with the community on KCTS9.org and considered for broadcast. The program is free of charge, but space is limited so sign up now! For more information and to register click here . Do you know someone who might be interested? Please feel free to forward thi...

(Forgot I wanted to fire this off so it's on the fly.) When we last left this discussion , the district had received a $1M grant from the Wallace Foundation to improve arts education in SPS.  The money was enough to allow surveys among parents and school staff, create a plan and then plan how to roll it out. The district did not get the implementation grant money (very few districts did) BUT the City of Seattle discovered more revenue from the Seattle Great Wheel and the Chihuly Museum.  We should all be grateful that Mayor McGinn and the City Council directed $500,000 towards arts education in Seattle Schools. The name of the plan is The Creative Advantage.   This program will be rolled out over several years so you may not see the impacts for several years.  However, discussions are starting in schools. SPS is encouraging you and I do, too - ask your principals, "What's the plan for arts at our school?"  Get your PTA to be proactive now and get ideas o...

I met the Mayor at a Starbucks (on the very day there were flash strikes at a few Starbucks but not the one we were in).  He was in an expansive mood and ready to talk Seattle schools. The Mayor always talks as "we" meaning his team at City Hall.   So he started by saying what "we"  have been doing.  It's a pretty long list: doubled the Families&Education Levy and helped support its passage launched a successful attendance campaign (with private companies and local celeb support) launched an Education Leadership Group, believing that many groups/entities are on the same education road.  It includes Superintendent Banda, reps from our community colleges as well as UW, a Labor Council rep, someone from the Gates Foundation, the Seattle Foundation, and United Way among others. worked on creating programs for pathways to careers, summer jobs  and summer food programs listened to Superintendent Banda's presentation on the district's new Strat...

It's a map, map, map world. You saw the map I put up yesterday about the most highly paid public employee in each state (mostly sports coaches of some sort).  More interesting maps have crossed my path and some you might share with your children. ArtsEd Washington , a group that supports arts education in public schools,  has a map showing all the school districts in the state.  It does give you pause in terms of how many tiny districts there are and the state spending that entails.   They are also sending a survey on arts education to every school board candidate in the state.  From Twister Sifter (funny), "40 maps that will help you make sense of the world."   Your kids might like some of these. Also of interest to kids, the first school in Seattle opened on August 15, 1870.   From HistoryLink : On August 15, 1870, Seattle’s first public schoolhouse opens. (Seattle's first school, opened in 1854, was a tuition-based or private school. ...

I recently had good conversations with both Carri Campbell, Visual&Performing Arts Program Manager for SPS, and Calandra Childers, Communication and Outreach Manager for the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs about what is happening in arts education for Seattle Public Schools. I want to thank them both for their time and efforts.  Both conversations were enlightening and heartening.  (After speaking with Ms. Campbell, I now live in the fear that, like many other really good people who join SPS, she'll leave.  I hope not because she's a gem.) Part One is about what has happened with the planning.  Part Two will be about what is to come. Background: SPS has had a five-year partnership with the City of Seattle - called the Arts Education Partnership - to help build a system and share resources to put arts in all our schools with the understanding that arts are not just a creative outlet but can develop life/job skills.  They have had so...

I just got back from a news conference where it was announced that the City of Seattle will be investing $500,000 in arts education in Seattle Public Schools.   This will advance the already established partnership between the City and SPS called The Creative Advantage. (That's Mayor McGinn's mom, Joyce, looking at students' artwork.  The boy to her right is McGinn's brother, Kevin.  McGinn is the boy hiding at her left side.) The goal is one hour of music and one hour of visual arts per week for every single student in SPS by 2020. The investment dollars came from something of a surprising source - admission tax revenue from the Great Wheel on the waterfront and the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum was higher than expected.  So thank you tourists for those dollars.  The $500k will be invested over the next two years to start rolling out the planning done under the $1M Wallace Foundation grant.  The Central district will be the first to see some doll...

Precisely what I thought might happen with the Wallace Foundation grant to develop a plan for arts education in Seattle, did happen. The district received about $1M to develop this plan about 18 months ago.  At the time I thought, well, great but what if you plan and don't get any money to carry it out? Yesterday it was announced that the Wallace Foundation declined to fund the SPS plan.  The district's communication says: While we’re disappointed that Seattle did not fit the Foundation’s research criteria and needs, we know this plan is right for our community. That's a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.  While the district forges ahead with a pilot, the fact remains there is no money to follow-thru district-wide.  Why didn't the district create the plan to meet the criteria and needs even if it was not exactly what the district wanted?  In these cash-strapped times, that money would have been a boon and the arts program could have reached more students....

Yesterday, Superintendent Banda and Mayor McGinn announced a new partnership called " Evening Community Meetings in School Libraries " that would open every school library for use by community/neighborhood groups.  The cost would be $15 for meetings held after school hours. From SPS Communications: Any local community group or nonprofit organization is eligible to sign up, but the libraries are not available for business or commercial uses, nor for events that have admissions or fees. Reservations will be available from 6 – 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday during normal school calendar academic business days.  Visit http://tinyurl.com/9ltgx4q where you can sign up for a user account, submit a request for space, and read the Seattle Public Schools rules and regulations (including the payment process and insurance requirements).   The fee is $15 plus any applicable custodial or heating and cooling costs. Rental does not include use of computers in the lib...

From Nick Licata's Office: I recently came across this interesting article ( http://www.studio360.org/2012/may/04/can-obamas-turnaround-arts-initiative-save-schools/ ) published by Studio 360 describing the Obama Administration's $14.7 million Turnaround Arts Initiative ( http://turnaroundarts.pcah.gov/ ). The initiative seeks to utilize arts education to improve eight of the nation's worst performing schools over the next three years. One can argue whether that is nearly enough to address our educational system's needs, but underlying it is a belief that I share: we need to go beyond testing students in reading, writing and arithmetic. That is a concern I had upon learning that none of the arts organization applicants for Families and Education Levy (F&E) 2012-2013 funding were deemed qualified to receive funding. Although other types of organizations were also not chosen because they couldn't guarantee measureable results, there was uncertainty over how t...