Seattle Schools Community Forum

The district has a couple of ideas out there about what to do with HCC students. Boy, there are some doozy of ideas from staff.  This is all around the possible usese of the Thornton Creek campus. Here's the document from the district to Thornton Creek parents. First, the district says:

Soup for Teachers had a notice up at their Facebook page about the upcoming community meetings on Growth Boundaries.  These meetings were announced back in August but they are coming up fast.  Here's the schedule: Join us at one of five community meetings this fall to learn more about the upcoming school boundary changes for the 2017-18 school year. Interpretation services will be available; see the schedule below for languages. ( Download the meeting flyer, including translations. )

Rep Reuven Carlyle shared this e-mail he received today from an SPS student: Dear Sen. Carlyle,  today on the first day of school my mom told me to write to my state legislator because I came home so upset.  I expected my first day of 8th grade to be awesome, but I walked in the door to find that the school was packed with over 1200 kids. Hamilton is a gr eat school and I love the teachers and fellow students, but when 3 of my 6 classes were in portables and I had to sit with 5 other people at a 3-4 person desk, it did not feel like the school that I looked forward to coming back to. 

I've had several emails from parents pleading for info on waitlists.  I truly have none beyond what the district says but I did hear from someone in the know.   Here's an opening remark: The waitlist is a dead end! Do not give parents and students false hope with the creation of a waitlist. 

From SPS Communications :

Over at the Community Forum for HCC (APP) in Seattle Schools, there are some concerned parents asking questions about capacity in the building. I'll preface that Hamilton is a bit of an anomaly for middle schools.  It has a fairly small footprint and even a renovation didn't add that much more capacity.  It always seemed to be apparent that there would not be much breathing room in the building. From the HCC blog:

It's quite the mash-up of topics for this week's Board Work Session on Wednesday the 24th from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm: Early Learning/Seattle Preschool Program 4:30 pm- 6 pm SMART Goal #4 - Early Hiring 6 pm - 6:45 pm SMART Goal #6 - Customer Service 6:45 - 7:30 pm Each of the presentations is quite different. Early Learning starts on page 3 of the agenda.  Staff claims that there are 60 students in the three SPS-located City Pre-K.  But they also claim that there is space available at all three locations.  Which naturally begs the question - what is the stated class size limit for these classrooms? (Answer: 20 students per class so I'm unclear how there is still space available.  (The graph shows 20 students in each location.)  They also don't say that it has taken months for the two City-enrolled SPS classrooms - Original Van Asselt and Van Asselt - to get to this level.   Then, there are pages of "data" that I'm not sure adds much to the...

The minutes from the last Operations Committee meeting shed some light (if somewhat dimly.) From the December 17, 2015 minutes: FACMAC:   Resurrecting FACMAC was discussed. Dr. Herndon explained that the FACMAC was a superintendent advisory committee working on the operational side which is different than the BEX Oversight Committee, is a professional advisory board appointed by the Board of Directors. The committee expressed concerns that the former FACMAC had been primarily run by two people and did not represent the school district equally. Dr. Herndon will be discussing the committee with the superintendent in the next few months when current workloads have lessened. 1) Which "committee" expressed these concerns - BEX Oversight or FACMAC?  2) Who were the two people?  (I have my own thoughts but I don't really know.) 3) Finally, it would be GREAT to see FACMAC back but that "discussing in next few months after workload lessens" doesn't exactl...

This week sees the reopening of schools after the holiday break. This week is a big work week for many who will be attending and closely watching what happens when the Legislature starts its short session on Jan. 11th.   Updated: see Thursday for details. Wednesday, Jan. 6th School Board meeting , at JSCEE starting at 4:15 pm.  Agenda

This meeting turned out to be more interesting than I thought but that was mostly due to parents who asked some fairly pointed questions about the waitlist.  Ashley Davies, the director of Enrollment, was the lead for the evening.  (Flip Herndon was at a Work Session and it will be interesting to see if he handles any of the other community meetings.) There were about 50 parents who came to Ingraham for the meeting.  There was an issue right from the start because Ms. Davies had brought copies of the Board-approved 2009 SAP and the 2013-2014 Transition Plan which are the documents the district is attempting to combine AND streamline.  The issue was there was no current document available and Ms. Davies did not convey that point to parents.  She did not say when it would be (but the board was told "before Friday.")

The District issued a statement today about the growing capacity needs in SPS and how the Seattle Legislative delegation worked to secure funding to help meet those needs. I'll post the entire statement but one caveat - for some reason they changed Rep. Reuven Carlyle's statement but I'll post the first one in red and the updated one in black.  I do not know why this change occurred. One thing I learned is that state money went to accelerating the timeline for Arbor Heights.  

Update: for one, turns out there's someone from the Gates Foundation on the Committee.  I'm sure that's a bit voice for charters.  His name is David Wertheimer. What seems to be the explanation for this "mandate" for investment in charter schools is the idea that (1) SPS isn't building new schools (wrong) and (2) that school facilities could be built into housing. On the first issue, we all know SPS is opening up every building they can (and those are some schools that have been closed so long, they might as well be new) and, as well, the district IS opening two new schools at the Wilson-Pacific site.  I have no idea why someone would say the District isn't building new schools if they didn't know for sure but you'd have to ask members of the Committee. Now if the City thinks that having charters will serve all these new students, they clearly don't know charters.  For one thing, charters are deliberately smaller so any idea that a char...

It was suggested to me to have a "Throwback Thursday"where we revisit what the district was going to do at a previous place in time.  (Luckily this reader also provided the topic.  Also, because district staff have a bad habit of not dating documents, I'll guess this was about 2009.) Here is the Future BEX IV list, circa BTA III. 

A reader asked for a separate thread on the district possibly creating an annex at Lincoln for Hamilton overflow.  From my original post: From a parent who attended the SCPTSA meeting on Monday, Flip Herndon told several parents that they are considering an annex for Hamilton.   There is space at JAMS and Eckstein but rather than admit the enrollment made a mistake by sending 5 feeder schools to Hamilton, the smallest, least flexible middle school, they are going to plow ahead with an un-workable and expensive facilities solution to an enrollment planning goof. My only comment is that these issues are and have been known to the district.  Why it feels like capacity management appears to have no real vision or explainable thought pattern is troubling.   Comments from capacity expert, Kellie LaRue:

From a parent who attended the SCPTSA meeting on Monday, Flip Herndon told several parents that they are considering an annex for Hamilton.   There is space at JAMS and Eckstein but rather than admit the enrollment made a mistake by sending 5 feeder schools to Hamilton, the smallest, least flexible middle school, they are going to plow ahead with an un-workable and expensive facilities solution to an enrollment planning goof. At least two letters in support of the Africatown MOU say that Africatown should be returned to "Horace Mann upon completion of the renovations."   One of these was from the head of the Seattle/King County branch, Gerald Hankerson.  I asked him about it and he said that former Superintendent Banda gave an "verbal agreement" this would happen.  And if it doesn't? Is Africatown going to sue the district? Those of you with suggestion that more room for Garfield could be found at Mann may just be out of luck. Why would Director McLa...

Monday, Jan. 5th Community meeting with Director McLaren 6:00 PM - 7:45 PM at  Delridge Branch Library, 5423 Delridge Way SW Tuesday, Jan. 6th Paramount Duty conversation at JSCEE from 6:30-8:30pm The speakers are: Tom Ahearne,  the trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in the McCleary case, will speak on how Washington State is not meeting its “Paramount Duty” to fully fund education. He will also talk about the latest “contempt” decision on holding our legislators accountable. Andrew Nicholas  from the WA State Budget and Policy Center will talk about the challenges of financing basic education and the reforms to the revenue system that can make that possible. Event is FREE, but seating is limited.  RSVP at:  https://paramountduty2015.eventbrite.com Wednesday, Jan 7th School Board meeting, starting at 4:15 pm.   Agenda

An article in the Seattle Times answered a question that has been itching me: "Where will new charter schools find space in Seattle?" And a closely associated question: "Why can't the school district find space?" Summit charter high school acquired the Asian Resource Center for about $4 million and will put their 9-12 school there. Their first freshman class will enroll 120, so I have to believe that they expect to have upwards of 450 students when they are fully enrolled. I'm sure their charter school application has the correct number. The building had been for sale for two years. So, help me out here. This is a downtown building suitable for use as a school that has been for sale for two years for a fraction of the cost of the Federal Reserve building, and the District had either no knowledge of it or no interest in it. Can someone explain that to me? Moreover, the building is in the International District, which is the part of downtown with the gr...

Tuesday, September 30th Meet Superintendent Nyland from 6 pm - 7:00 pm at New Holly Community Center, 7054 32nd Ave S Wednesday, October 1st Meet Superintendent Nyland from 8:30 am-9:30 am at John Muir Elementary, 3301 S. Horton St. School Board meeting , starting at 4:15 pm (note: there is to be an Executive Session on Potential Litigation from 8-8:30 pm Agenda On the Consent Agenda are various Board policies that have been revised.  Of note is that the Board will not be posting their agenda three "working" days before the meeting but three days.  Under the old policy, you could see the agenda on Friday (with Friday, Monday and Tuesday being the three "working" days) but under this new policy, you may not see the agenda until Sunday.  Action Items (partial) Race to the Top money for Pre-K-3.   Parents, we need to have a very serious talk soon about the district's PreK-3 Action Plan.  I did not know this existed until today (and it's in i...

The Seattle Times is reporting that, for the first time in 100 years, Seattle is growing faster than the suburbs that surround it.  During 2011-2012, Seattle's population outpaced King County's by 25%. Seattle is the 8th fastest growing city in the U.S. of the 50 largest cities (Austin, Texas is number one). So was this - as the district's freelance demographic consultant said a couple of years back - caused by families who might ordinarily have moved to the suburbs but didn't (either they wanted to stay and/or the recession)?  Or is it just temporary?  Car culture suburbs or dense, walkable city? I can only say you can't swing a dead cat in this town without encountering construction.  I live by Roosevelt and that light rail station work is really heating up.  Ditto on downtown (the Mercer Mess is still the Mercer Mess), Ballard and Capital Hill.  If it continues, SPS will have some hard decisions to make.  Double-shifts for high schools?...

I attended the Board Work Session yesterday on Capital Programs and Plans.  It was both informative and annoying. Attending were Directors McLaren, Patu, Blanford, Peters, Peaselee and Martin-Morris.  Director Carr, like at last week's Board meeting, was not in attendance.  Staff included Superintendent Banda and the head of Capital/Facilities, Flip Herndon.  Dr. Herndon gave the entire presentation. There was a good laugh before the meeting when Director Blanford said that he had a lot of people asking him if he was Richard Sherman or Marshawn Lynch of the Seahawks (the only similarity is that they are all three black men with long hair - they don't look like each other at all.)  I later asked Director Blanford if anyone asked him if he was Lawrence Fishburne - a joke based on an entertainment reporter who this week was interviewing Samuel L. Jackson and thought he was Lawrence Fishburne.  Jackson's reaction was priceless. Dr. Herndon did two good th...