Seattle Schools Community Forum

My Northwest is reporting that the Governor is saying this: Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday that he will not sign any bills coming his way if legislators in Olympia do not finish the budget on time.  "This morning I let leadership know that they should not expect me to sign bills until they reach a budget agreement," Inslee said.  "Doing a budget is their first job. They need to do their first job," he said. "Then, and only then, can we start to look at these bills that are not going to be signed unless we get a budget."

 Update: What's the torque that the Republicans are going to use to try to do this? The levy cliff that districts face. So let's threaten to throw 1M+ traditional school students over a levy cliff to save 1,000 former charter students. I urge you to write your legislator or Governor Insee (his Twitter handle is @GovInslee) Again, I know the Supreme Court is watching.  end of update There's a great commentary over at the Washington Policy Center over what is going on in the legislature.  I'm not the biggest fans of WPC; I don't have a problem with them taking a stand but sometimes their education voice is not factually correct and overwrought. But boy, do they get it right in their commentary on some in the legislature trying to weasel in a charter school bill that will likely be many things, among them: unconstitutional, not vetted properly by either legal experts and lacking any public discourse or input. Now I'm sure those legislators would ...

It's March 3rd and there is now just one more week until the end of the session on March 10th.  A new bill - 6670 - a so-called "title-only" bill that is a placeholder (along with HB 3000, also a placeholder) for something to come.  Here's 6670 - in its entirety - Sec. 1. This act may be known and cited as the public schools that are not common schools act. This Hemingway-length legislation is brought to us by the usual suspects in the form of Senators Fain, Mullet, Litzow and Hobbs. A little backstory on what this is and how it is happening comes to us via the Tri-City Herald which seems to take a dim view of this type of legislation (bold mine).

 Update : in yet another desperate effort, Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education put out this writing effort.   It's semi-hysteric tone sounds a lot like what comes out of the Washington Policy Center. To my great surprise, she is one of the few to still say this: Our law is one of the best in the country. What? All of this progress was threatened last September, however, when the state Supreme Court ruled the initiative unconstitutional. This innovative approach didn’t fit into a 1909 definition of “common schools”, leading the court to conclude that the schools couldn’t receive traditional public school funding streams. Right, that pesky state constitution.  Here's a thought - write an initiative or bill that is constitutional sound and you will have your charters.   And she makes the claim - without one single shred of documentation of data - that most of the charters are seeing massive improvement with their students.  Sayi...

Remember all that hair-pulling and finger-pointing when the Washington Supreme Court issued its ruling on the charter school law right before school opened last September? Well, I sat down and watched the interview with Chief Justice Madsen on TVW . (You should watch the whole thing.  She is quietly deferential to the other branches of government and careful about what she says.  The second half of the show was Rep. Matt Manweller and Rep David Frockt talking about the McCleary issue.  Rep. Manweller could not have been more disrespectful to the Court.  It's fine to disagree but if anyone is taking this to a constitutional crisis, it's some in the legislature.) But I digress.  That point I wanted to make was brought up when host, Austin Jenkins, asked about that timing of the ruling? Chief Justice Madsen pointed out the average time for most cases to go thru the Court and that the charter school case was, indeed, about average at 90-120 days. Then she sa...

Public disclosure requests can sometimes yield the oddest things (seemingly not related to your request, no matter how narrowly you tailor it.)  Such is the case with my public disclosure request from OSPI around charter schools. One e-mail in one batch was from sent in late Nov to various people in education from several districts including SPS about a meeting to discuss how to get attract more people of color to  teaching.  The e-mail was from the Gates Foundation's Edie Harding, Senior Program Officer, Pacific NW Initiative about their "DEW" work (Diversify the Educator Workforce.) The one SPS invitee was Karen Harris who is an assistant principal at Beacon Hill Elementary.  (Ms Harris appears to have worked for the Martinez Foundation whose principal mission is to support teachers of color.  The Martinez Foundation has been moved to the Technology Access Foundation.)  I did ask the district if they knew about this effort but no one has answered bac...

From Cascadia Weekly : YOU HAD ONE JOB: With fewer than 20 days left in their short legislative session, a nearly paralyzed state House and Senate in Olympia passed watered-down education funding plans on razor-thin margins divided along extremely partisan lines hours before a cutoff deadline that would have stalled the bills in their houses of origin.

This topic weighs on my mind all the time and certainly is a valid question for all of us. What is public education supposed to be doing?  I would love if anyone who comments would write a 2-3 sentence reply to that question.  To aid in this discussion, I bring up two articles.  (For now, I'm leaving out the growing - and coming-to-your-child's-classroom like a freight train - issue of so-called "personalized learning" via technology.)  (All bold mine.) One article is from the Center on Reinventing Public Education.  Along with being a charter thinktank, they also like to put forth ideas about what they think public education should be (but they are not interested in any discussion and, of course, you can't comment on their articles.) I Ain’t Talking to You If You Ain’t Talking About Structural Reform spins off from remarks from the Washington State Teacher of the Year, Nate Bowling, who said, "“If you ain't talking about the teacher in the clas...

Apparently not, at least when it comes to charter schools.  My second batch of public disclosure e-mails raises more troubling questions. In my first batch, I explained how a couple of other districts' lawyers were worried about running afoul of state law in signing interlocal documents to allow students within their district borders to have an ALE with Mary Walker School District. This batch reveals more concerns from other people. Among them was the overarching role of Washington State Charter Schools Association. Who are they?

The Washington Policy Center had a whole article about how swell charter schools are doing, both in enrollment and outcomes. Over and over, charter supporters say there is "evidence" that students in former charter schools are doing better but they have given NO definitive, verifiable evidence. There are no baseline scores to say where the kids were before they came into the former charters and no explanation of what kinds of assessments were done (what? two months into school?) to show progress. What I DID find was the following about charter schools in Washington State.

As I have previously stated, I have had public disclosure requests in for some time to various groups including former charter schools in Washington State, OSPI, and the Charter Commission.  I am still awaiting yet another drop from OSPI. I had a very difficult time getting ahold of anyone from couple of former charters and gave up.  But, if they ARE public schools, there should be no mystery of who is their public disclosure officer and how to contact that person.

Feb. 5th was one of the key dates in the 60-day legislative session. It was the policy cut-off in the House of Origin. Here are the next key dates:

Next Tuesday, Feb. 9th, Seattle voters will decide on the Seattle Schools' Operations levy and the BTA levy.  Both are renewals but at higher amounts than were voted on last time. Most of you know this is a sticky wicket for me.  I've frequently spoken out frequently against capital levies but not because they aren't needed, but because I don't think this district spends the money in either levy in a transparent manner.  I'm also not sure of their priorities for spending and, given how much parent unhappiness there is out there on many issues, failing a capital levy might be a good way to get the district's attention. Let's be clear on a few things.

WA GOP gut bipartisan education legislation RELEASE: Jan. 27, 2016  (this came via Senator John McCoy but I'm not sure of its origins) Senate Republicans gut bipartisan McCleary bill

Update: one reader asked about the costs and here's the link to the fiscal note .  Quite eye-opening and fyi, according to the note there are just about 840 students, not 1,000.  That's what happens when charters are forced to tell the truth instead of throw numbers around in ads. The bill requires OSPI to reimburse charter schools for any loss in state funding directly resulting from the state Supreme Court decision.  Also, Senator Ann Rivers from R-La Center had this to say about McCleary in The Columbian : “I’m sick to death of talking about McCleary, and a lot of other people are, too,” Rivers said of the court case that resulted in an order that lawmakers must fulfill their paramount duty under the state constitution and adequately fund the state’s public schools. But tackling more specifics in the 60-day legislative session, Rivers said, “wasn’t in the cards.” This is the same Senator Rivers who left work group Town Halls right on the ending ...

As I mentioned in another thread, Seattle Channel has one episode of City Inside/Out about this short legislative session with Rep. Reuven Carlyle, Rep. Gael Tarleton, Rep Eric Pettigrew and Senator Jamie Pedersen.  Highlights

I was interviewed last Friday for a KUOW story by Ann Dornfeld on the legislative efforts to save the (former) charter schools.  It played today.  Astonishing.

One of the charms that ed reformers like to dangle before public school parents is choice.  It's quite the appealing siren call because 1) we're Americans and we love choices (even when they can overwhelm and even paralyze us) and 2) the idea that "wealthy people have choices when it comes to their children's schooling and so should you." Number two is false on so many levels.  Wealthy people have many more choices period.  Houses, cars, vacations, clothes, colleges, you name it - wealthy people have so many more choices.  What's interesting is that the schools in our district are - almost to a school - full.  Now is that because there are more people in our city? Maybe but the private schools are full as well.  (Imagine if even half those private school parents came back.) Here's a great essay by Chicago Schools' parent, Julie Vassilatos, The Frightening Implications of School Choice (bold hers, red highlight mine.) Because "choice" of...

You could call it a soap opera or use another, more colorful, word (but this is - mostly - a family blog.)

I call them "former charter schools" because, according to OSPI, that's what they are.  They are "contractors" fulfilling a program formulated by OSPI for their students. My reading of all that is going on comes to two conclusions. One, the current charter school law is dead.  Two Eastern Washington legislators, Senator Andy Billig and Senator Michael Baumgartner, are introducing a rather hacked-up bill (it's formatted using the old law to show the changes) - SB 6163 .  It's what Charlie calls "charter-lite" and it's nonsense.  It would allow any school board in a district to become  an authorizer of a charter.  (The previous law made the district the authorizer with the school board having true role.)  It is a vague mess that would put both districts and school boards in uncharted waters without a map. Two, there is no frankensteining these former charter schools back to life.  They have passed from being charter schools to being ...