Seattle Schools Community Forum

Tuesday the 21st sees the public forum for Summit Sierra charter school from 6-8 pm at Freedom Church, 9601 35th Ave. SW.   Unfortunately, the Summit site gives no detail on the format of the evening nor does the Charter Commission site.  From my experience, you sign in if you want to speak and are given a lottery number.  There are usually between 3-5 Charter Commission members there.  After they are introduced, then Summit has about 10 minutes to flesh out what their school is and how they will operate. Then, the public gets a chance to weigh in.  Hopefully, the Charter Commission will not allow what happened in the past which is that the charter school gets supporters to come, each gets lottery number to speak.  However, Green Dot had a staffer who collected all those numbers and Green Dot decided who would speak.  I don't have a problem with any charter being able to bring in supporters but it seems like whoever has the number that is dra...

The Bell Times taskforce has a meeting to day at JSCEE from 4:30-6:30 pm. The Taskforce has requested information from staff on the real costs of two versus three tiers and, in specific, how it would cost almost $20M to move back to a two-tier system.  The Taskforce is in the process of writing recommendations and needs the clearest, most up-to-date information in order to do their oversight job.  As someone who served on a district committee in the past (as we did not get full information from staff), I think it is vital that the Bell Times Taskforce receive the best information in order to make informed recommendations to the Board.  Some links to read: May 2012 SPS webpage on review of transportation. KPLU story on bell times

So sleep has restored my energy - here's what I heard and saw last night, starting with the two main takeaways.

The last Superintendent's Friday Memo on April 3, 2015 says this: Rainier Beach: The recent recognition of the Rainier Beach International Baccalaureate program is well deserved. Rainier Beach has benefitted from the state School Improvement Grants, Race to the Top grants, and support from many community partners. The district has supported the IB program as we do for all schools – during the first five years. That funding will continue for the next two years. And we are certainly hopeful that added state support will make longer term funding possible. As a result of community complaints, the Office of Civil Rights has opened a file on inequitable funding for Rainier Beach (furniture, curriculum, staffing). Our responses to OCR will show that we are funding Rainier Beach as well or (in some cases) better than other similar schools in the district.  I feel like there's something a little backhanded in that reply.  Maybe that's jus...

I finally had the opportunity to look over the Work Session presentation on " Resource Stewardship" and "LEAN." I don't really like PowerPoint presentations and understand that they are general outlines with the presenter to fill the points.  But I found this a confusing presentation. One, I felt there was a lot of filler.  I am big on getting to the point so explaining that improving processes would help with both the bottom line and customer service. Two, page 5 says there was a School Leader Survey in 2015.   How did staff get this done less than two weeks into the new year?  If  this was truly done in 2015, then kudos to them.  But another issue on the same page is what do these colors mean?  I know red is probably bad but again, not clear. Then there's the issue of LEAN.  Page 6 says "Define Value..from a Customer Perspective!."  That may work for business but if you ask a parent what "value" from their child's school m...

First up, the Board retreat on the 6th.  Apparently, I had been expected because Director Peaslee said something to the effect of, "wait for Melissa" and Director Peters and Michael Tolley (who ostensibly must read the blog and knew I was not coming) said, "She's not coming."  I'm sure there was a sigh of relief that no one from the "angry community " was there. I also learned via public disclosure documents that at least one director feels the need to pass on many of my e-mails to the Board to senior staff .  To note, there are about 13 people who get the e-mails you send via "schoolboard@seattleschools.org."   These include the Board, Legal, the Superintendent, Communications, a couple of cabinet people and a person in the Board office.  So now, if I'm writing to the entire Board, I'll just send it to the main e-mail address because it seems my e-mails get forwarded on anyway.  I don't really like it this way because I...

The agenda is now available for the Operations Committee meeting this week.  There are several items that could give insight about the direction of capacity management and capital renovations. One is the semi-annual BEX Oversight Committee report .  This is generally short and quite dry but who knows?  The Committee members may have some compelling insights (especially if they got asked their opinions on the acquisition of the Federal Reserve building). Two, is a report from Flip Herndon about that very issue of acquisition of the Federal Reserve building. Will the district put in a bid?  They discussed this with the Board in Executive Session.  Opening bid minimum on Dec. 5th was $5M with a $100K deposit required.   There are, so far, no bids on the building.  The government requires an all-cash payment for final sale. Three, there is the " Capital Semi-Annual report update " also from Flip Herndon. There will also be a Bell Times Task...

On the Center School incident, one odd thing that I noticed yesterday when I received a press update: the principal has been replaced. 

Teacher of the year (hint: from SPS), what's in the Mayor's budget for public education, breakfast on the go and the bell times taskforce. Great news - the Washington State Teacher of the Year is Lawton's Lyon Terry .  From OSPI : Lyon is a National Board Certified Teacher. He has taught at Lawton since 2005 in 2nd, 3rd and multi-age classrooms, where he focuses on creating confident, hard-working and compassionate learners. Lyon wants his students to learn how to be both kind and smart. During his time a Lawton, 4th-grade writing proficiency rates on the MSP have risen over 10 percentage points.   Lyon has served in numerous leadership roles in his school and district, most often in the areas of writing and literacy, and also as a union representative. The Mayor announced his budget today.  I was particularly interested in the new Department of Education and Early Learning ( DEEL ).