Seattle Schools Community Forum

Monday, November 26th Superintendent Banda's meeting with the Latino community from 6-8 pm at El Centro de la Raza. Feedback, concerns and questions are welcome. Tuesday, November 27th Work Session: Strategic Plan Guiding Principle s from 4:30-6:30 pm.  No agenda available. Work Session: Ethics Training from 6:45-7:45 pm.  (I'm not sure who this is for - the Board or staff or both.) No agenda available. Wednesday, November 28th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 pm.  Sign up first thing Monday morning if you want to speak. Agenda. Action items reflect the 2013 Legislative agenda, approval of "superintendent evaluation instrument: the CSIP approvals, voting in a new Policy 1400 about Board meetings. To note about Policy 1400, it appears the start time is to remain at 4:15 p.m.  It also changes the policy that saying that any changes in the prepared agenda may be requested by the Superintendnetn or a Board member and is approved by majority vote (an...

The 5:00pm start time for public testimony is a barrier to participation by working people. The board can reduce that barrier by shifting the whole meeting agenda thirty minutes later. The meeting would start thirty minutes later, public testimony would start thirty minutes later, and the meeting would end thirty minutes later. The Board would have to weigh the negative impact of the change on the internal stakeholders against the positive impact for members of the public. The board could also resolve the problem by restoring Petitions and Delegations. It was not that long ago that there were two opportunities for the Board to hear from the public at each board meeting. One was public testimony when people could address motions before the Board. The other was Petitions and Delegations when people could speak on any topic. When the Board consolidated the two speaking periods they promised that, if the change created negative impacts, the Board would restore the second session. Petit...

Keep in mind here, that I came in late and yet I still hit the wall at two hours.  But not to get ahead of myself. I came in as the Executive Committee was discussing the MOU with the Alliance for Education .  You might recall from the last Executive Committee meeting (Charlie and I were both present) that the Alliance wants to raise its fee to oversee school and ed groups finances from 5% to 7.5%.  This comes out of the General Fund.  Charlie had said he would do it for 5%. This really isn't the main focus of work for the Alliance so why is it such a big deal for them to keep on doing it?   Now the Alliance says that the cap at 5% was not enough.  I'll let them explain it: