Seattle Schools Community Forum

Monday, March 17th The wearing o' the Green.  Happy St. Patrick's Day. To note: signups for public testimony for the School Board meeting start at 8 am this morning. Tuesday, March 18th Audit&Finance Meeting from 4:30-6:30 p.m.  Agenda Wednesday, March 19th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda . I see a LOT of audit update items here that I am unclear about -might be worth attending. Items of interest:   - the winning bid for the work for Lincoln comes in at $828k.  What's interesting is that the district decided it needed wainscoting in all the new toilet rooms.  What's more interesting is the variance in cost to do it with the company bidding highest for the overall cost bidding the wainscoting at the lowest cost ($972k for overall, $3500 for wainscoting) and the winning bid at $812k putting in the wainscoting at the highest additional price, $16k.  The average cost for the wainscoting was about $9500.  How...

There are sometimes days doing this watchdog work that are defeating, sad and frustrating.  Today is one those.  I'll get to the issue at hand but a few thoughts first. I've said this before - I do truly believe we have some good and decent people working in SPS.  There are several up the food chain who are almost great but, like many a bureaucracy, have those whose work either drags them down or mires them in place. I've also said this before - anyone who works in leadership at SPS who does not read and heed the words in the Moss-Adams report of 2002 is doomed to failure.  Or, at least doomed to frustration. The echo in my head from that brilliant report (and I paraphrase here) -   It does not matter what structural or systemic change you bring to an institution, if the culture of bureaucracy at an institution does not change, nothing changes. This has been, and continues to be, the problem with our district. You really need someone at the top ...

Tuesday, March 19th Audit&Finance Committee Mtg (Quarterly Audit) from 4-6 p.m. at JSEE.  Agenda.   Items include: internal audits of transportation, maintenance and Ingraham High School (note: these may be regularly scheduled audits or something else.  I'll check.) Performance audit status risk management ERM (which I believe is Enterprise Risk Management, managing risks and capitalizing on opportunities) Wednesday, March 20th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda.   Note: the student performance is the Salmon Bay Marimba Group.   I love a good marimba band so I may have to go just for that. Items include: approval of a grant from OSPI to boost science teaching for elementary and middle school teachers. Per OSPI, Seattle Public Schools will partner with Renton School District, University of Washington College of Engineering, and the Institute for Systems Biology. The project will focus on professional developmen...

As if to only reinforce the idea that the real action of the district is at committee meetings, there was the Audit&Finance committee meeting yesterday. On the upside, I think this district has made tremendous strides in bringing in some bright and capable people as district staff.  Duggan Harmon, head of Finance, Richard Staudt, Risk Management, and Andrew Medina, Internal Auditor, and Ronic Lirio, also in Finance, all come across as quite knowledgeable about their area of expertise within the district.  I think they are all capable of laying out the facts clearly to the Board.  I do not hear the hedging that I used to with, say, Don Kennedy, the former COO/CFO. There was an update of First AME and their compliance with the contract wording for the sale of MLK, Jr. building to them.  There were members of the First AME board on-hand to listen.  District staff went through a chart that showed areas of compliance for use for youth-centered activities for...

Not enough time to do this justice but some thoughts from yesterday at Denny/Sealth and today at Lowell at Lincoln (and McDonald) and key points from the Board meeting.

There are a couple of folks who, as a result of the state auditor's report on the ASB fund should find themselves suddenly no longer employed by Seattle Public Schools. First, the fiscal specialist at Garfield High School. Whoa! Some VERY bad findings here including about $56,000 in cash and checks left laying about and $169,000 in unpaid invoices. On top of that, about $12,000 that had just gone missing. That person should not be surprised to lose their job over these offenses. Second, numerous procedural and internal control failures around an $80,000 contract with the Urban League for mentoring - WHICH CAME AFTER THE RSBDP SCANDAL and all of the promises that everyone would be good. These failures were committed by the Executive Director of Schools in regard to Cleveland High School. There is only one person who was the Executive Director of Schools responsible for Cleveland High School last year. I don't really see how this person can keep that job after these failures...

Audit&Finance Committee (Audit) - from June 7, 2011