Seattle Schools Community Forum

The reality is that our country, our state, our city are in a recession that has gone on now for at least two years.  We are moving at a glacial pace out of it.  Our district tells us over and over there is not enough money for all we need to do to the point where we laid off teachers and counselors (and other district workers) and put off planned purchases.  Now, technically, the district has marginally more money than last year, not from the state, but from increased enrollment.  Any other time this might be major good news but just as money comes with those students, so do costs.  I come to an interesting article in the Saturday Seattle Times about schools districts and their budgets.  The State Legislature included a 1.9% pay cut for teachers in the state budget but the teacher contracts are all decided locally.  So that means, our district is, right now, negotiating with the SEA about those cuts.  Now, you may recall that we voted in a...

First up, a commentary from David Brewster over at Crosscut about the upcoming elections citywide.   It gets so much wrong about the School Board that Charlie and I just couldn't stop ourselves.   I'll just hit the highlights: It was different with the Seattle School Board , where all four members of a particularly inept board were swept away (or declined to run) by an informal slate of business-backed, big-organization-experienced newcomers. The result was a transformed board. It changed overnight from a board dominated by petty bickering, meddling, superintendent-undermining, inexperienced bumblers. This time there is a swarm of challengers. I don't know much about them yet, but none seems to have much community stature.  I wouldn't call the previous majority on the Board inept at all but throwing that at all four of them seems wrong (especially if you know those women).  I'm not sure what "big organizations" that Steve, Harium and Michael ...