Seattle Schools Community Forum

From the district: "The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards announced Wednesday, Dec. 16, that 57 Seattle Public Schools teachers earned their National Board certification in 2009. Seattle now has 174 National Board-certified teachers, and more than 85 additional teachers are working toward certification in 2010. The National Board noted that Seattle Public Schools is among the nation’s top 20 in terms of the number of teachers who achieved national certification in 2009, ranking 15th." Good for all these teachers. Beacon Hill International had the most with 6 newly certified teachers. I also note that this is the silly time of the year when the students come back from Winter Break and have 2 full days off plus an early release day before Feb. 15th when Mid-Winter Break starts. (It's even less time if you are at a school with its own early release/late start days.) There's a regular Board meeting this Wednesday at 6 p.m. The big item is the introd...

The Weekly had a couple of stories on SPS issues. The first one by Nina Shapiro was about the issue of reopening schools just after the district closed schools . It had a couple of interesting things that I hadn't known. "No one knows for sure why this turnaround has occurred, but one factor is surely an influx of students from private schools due to the recession. The state's 528 private schools have seen a cumulative drop in enrollment of about five percent this year, to 80,000 students, according to Judy Jennings , executive director of the Washington Federation of Independent Schools ." Really? I had heard that they had many more applications at private schools than space. But 5% is a lot. I wonder what it was in Seattle. "DeBell notes the district went to the city during its 2006 decision-making to ask for demographic guidance, but the city could offer none. Tom Hauger , manager of Seattle's Comprehensive Plan, says that the city does not keep infor...

Thanks to Speducator for the alert about the article in the West Seattle Herald about the district adding classes to Lafayette and Schmitz Park. From the article: "Schmitz Park will add a third kindergarten class and Lafayette will add a third class at the kindergarten and first grade levels. According to Seattle School District spokesperson David Tucker, enrollment needs have increased this year, forcing the district to provide more seats in West Seattle schools. Parents at both schools are concerned that the schools will not have enough space or administrative resources for the added classrooms. "I was surprised like everyone else,” said Geoff Patterson, a parent with two children at Lafayette Elementary. “It struck me as odd that one of the biggest elementary would be getting two more classrooms." There was also concern over movement (within the building) of Lafayette's autism program. The students from Cooper's program had to go somewhere. Some may be...

This will be the shortest piece mainly because not much was said and frankly, I am just taken aback that (1) this seems to be something that should have been done years (if not decades) ago and (2) some of this work HAS been done and I'm confused why it seems like it is starting from scratch. Kathy Johnson of Facilities did this presentation. She talked about creating "trigger metrics" for opening/closing schools/criteria, when boundaries need to be changed, portable placement and capacity mitigation measures. Well, first, yes it would be nice to have a set of criteria to use for opening and closing schools given that we have now had 3 rounds of closures (2 that actually occurred). And portables? This is the same group that said we couldn't afford them and that they weren't available even if we had the money. Do we have that many left over here and there to move around? Michael asked her what the metrics would be founded on and Kathy said that they want the...

The appeal of the School Board decision to close Cooper will be heard on Friday, June 12 at 10:30 in King County Superior Court. The plaintiffs are asking for a summary judgement against the District and they really should get it. For more detailed information, please see the West Seattle Blog complete with links to the Court filings. For some history, here are some related posts from our archive. Cooper fights on Bomb Recipe

According the the Seattle P-I (how we will miss their coverage of local education issues - much better and less biased than the Times) at least four groups claim to have filed appeals of the school closure decision with the King County Superior Court. According to the P-I article, the appeals are based on claims of discrimination. It's not possible to describe the grounds for the appeals without reading the appeals filed with the Court (not yet available online). That's a shame because I don't think that the discrimination claim has merit. We will follow the appeals with interest and keep you updated.

Let me see if I can keep all this straight. We have a number of balls in the air right now and I want to have a sense of what's going on with a diverse set of issues. Please remind me of anything I've left out. 1) Follow up and fall out from Capacity Management Plan A) Design Teams are meeting but their authority - relative to the principal's authority - remains unclear. In the absence of a clear sense of their authority, their purpose remains unclear. There's a rising concern that they have neither. B) Open Enrollment has been delayed and the School Fair has been cancelled. C) There is supposed to be a second phase of Capacity Management for high schools. But no one is talking about it, when it will start, or how it will work. D) The Capacity Management Plan was flawed in a number of ways, but there is no sign that anyone in the District leadership is interested in fixing those flaws. 2) Work on the new Student Assignment Plan continues. A) It has supposedly completed ...

The 43rd Dems will be hosting a meeting with a panel discussion about the impending sale of the PI with reps from the local media, government and advocacy groups. It's Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m.at the University Heights Community Center. Prior to the panel discussion, Director Sherry Carr is to update the group about the decision to close schools.

There was an op-ed piece in the Times today by Jesse Hagopian and Andre Helmstetter about the unfairness of the school closures. They truly believe it is racist and directed against children of color. Additionally, they point out that the cost savings (to them) is small and may be counteracted by students who may leave as happened last time (and the dollars that follow them). They mention the rainy day fund and the possible funds from the stimulus package. Well, the district says over and over they will not go to the rainy day fund. And the money for education in the stimulus package is, to my understanding, directed towards renovating schools AND the Reps. are trying to cut it from the package anyway. They vow to fight on. I received a forward of an e-mail from people within the NAACP. They say: They are planning a rally with ESP people and NAACP possibly at the Dept of Education office in downtown Seattle. That the national NAACP is coming in with support. (They didn't def...

There are all kinds of imprudent instructions available online. How to hack, how to phreak, how to build a pipe, how to disappear and assume a new identity, etc. So it is in that tradition that I offer this sketch of instruction on how to sue the School District to stop the closures. It may be irresponsible of me to provide this information. It may also be pointless to offer the instruction because the chances for success are so poor. So there is no need to write a comment to advise me of either of these two points. I am already well aware of them, thank you. I'm providing the information so that people will have the facts while a tornado of misinformation swirls around them. Information wants to be free. Knowledge is power and this blog is about empowering people with knowledge. So spare me, please, the rants about how I am either irresponsible or foolish. The best chance to blocking the closures will only delay them, not really stop them. And the only ones that I think can be del...

I received this information from Sharon Rodgers, president of the Seattle Council PTSA. I'm going to condense it somewhat. Here are the links to the design team documents ( document 1 and document 2). Document 2 (template) is labeled "draft". I have not combed through these myself. Just looking at the team membership on document 1, I see only 1 parent/community member listed whereas in the other document, I see it says 3-5 reps. A bit confusing. Just so you know how hard the people at the Seattle Council work: "Over the course of the last two weeks, your Seattle Council PTSA Board met with all seven school board directors and Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson and Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno to share the concerns we continued to hear from families about the impact of the proposed closures/moves on their students, especially those already in fragile situations." Details on transitions: "Our first goal is to make sure that School Design Teams...

Danny K mentioned at the end of another thread that it is "time to hold the district to their promises." And I agree. Here's my proposal. I'm inviting parents whose children are being displaced by the closures to become contributors to this blog for one year. I want a commitment of at least one post per month and the topic is: A year in the life of a child/children/family affected by school closures. You can focus on your child/family, other child(ren) at your school, or an overall picture of what is happening at your school. But I want it to be specific...I'm not looking for things like "The district is failing us as we expected."...but more like "We were supposed to get extra money for X by Y date and it hasn't happened." I want to find out what promises these families receive from the district, which ones are kept and which ones aren't, what surprises if any they face along the way, and what they want the public, staff and Board mem...

So I won't go blow by blow but here are some impressions from the Board meeting last night to vote on the final recommendations. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. Even though she came out of this with her final recs in place, doesn't really seem like she won. The amount of anger at her and the repeated remarks about her salary are going to be tough to overcome. (Raj had a built-in niceness that even if you disagreed with him, you never felt angry at him.) I find this argument that there is a lot of racism involved in these decisions somewhat mystifying. The top tier of leadership in the district is all black. About 40% of the Board is minority. What I hear more is this is more socioeconomically based anger than being about race. They perceive Dr. G-J as being out of their socioeconomic class and therefore unable to relate to them. She got a lot of hissing and booing. She said letters to parents at whose children will be moving will be sent home next week. Director Maier asked i...

So I did figure out something (and who knows, maybe this was very apparent to others but I did check with Tracy Libros in Enrollment), that the Summit 8,9,10th graders (now) will get a pretty good bump into whatever comprehensive high school they want. The reason is that Maier's amendment says for any over enrolled school that they apply for (after they receive their letters of assignment and if they reject the assignment), the first 2 tiebreakers (sibling, then reference/region) apply and THEN the priority placement they get from being displaced. Well, there is no reference/region for high school; the whole city is the region. So for those Summit students, after the siblings get in, they are next in line. And since there is no school that will fill its entire freshman class on siblings that means they pretty much get whatever they want. That means Roosevelt, Ballard or Garfield. For people who wanted an alternative experience, it's not much but it does allow them a lot o...

I knew that I had read it somewhere, so I went looking for it and I found it. From page 107 of the .pdf of the appendices of the preliminary report on capacity management : APP students living in each specified region would be assured fo a seat in the APP program serving their region, with transportation provided. Students could apply to attend the APP program in the other region; assignment would depend on space available. School bus transportation would not be provided. This, essentially, grants everything that Director Maier's amendment would have granted and more, since it also applies to future students. Since this was not altered from the preliminary report and since the preliminary report was included in the final report by reference and since the final report was included in the Board Motion by reference, this is now the assignment plan for APP. In short, families can choose between Lowell and Thurgood Marshall - or between Hamilton and Washington - and could get an out-of-...

Updated amendments (Sundquist & Maier) and the Superintendent's Update presentation are posted on the web site . Maier apparently listened to Charlie today. ****************** 9:00 pm The emotional intensity tonight at the Stanford Center was overwhelming. I feel sad and exhausted and I'm going to bed. 8:20 pm Meeting adjourned. 8:10 pm Moving on to rescind School Board policies as listed in the agenda and making changes in reference areas. Unable to continue due to crowd shouting. Now continuing but I can't hear a thing. DeBell speaking about SBOC co-location with Nova at the Meany building. "Wish we had a newly rennovated stand-alone building for the SBOC, but we are at a period of scarcity and we cannot do that." Could not hear votes, but it sounds like both recommendations passed. 8:05 pm Sundquist reading revised final motion. Vote : Yes (5) : Sundquist, Carr, Chow, Maier, DeBell; No (2) Bass, Martin-Morris; revised closure plan passes . 7:50 pm ...

I just read on the West Seattle blog that the School Board's meeting tonight with the final vote on closures will be televised tonight on cable channel 26. See Seattle school-closure vote tonight: District says it’ll be on TV for details.

Dick Lily, former School Board director and now a contributor to Crosscuts (online zine), weighed in on the amendments submitted by Board directors yesterday to the final closure plan. If I didn't know his hair was already white, I'd think it turned white. He genuinely sounds upset (not tearing out your hair upset but not happy at all). His read: "Given the widespread and reasoned opposition to this round of closures (seven schools were closed in 2006), the longer term question will be where the district goes from here. Much of the goodwill and confidence that school families bestowed on Goodloe-Johnson when she arrived two years ago has evaporated. One can see the district’s central office building down in SODO as the new Fort Apache, where the folks in charge are alien and unconnected to the interests of the community they’re sent to serve." And, he doesn't mince words on the Board: "Similarly, many will see in Thursday’s vote a stunning lack of spine in ...

The Seattle Times had a column , a story and an editorial this morning about the closures. The story was about if the district doesn't lose any students in the closures (or very few) and how much money they could save over 5 years ($12.6M). From the article: "The district also hopes the economy will work in its favor, said school-board member Harium Martin-Morris. "A lot of people who might have chosen private schools in the past won't be able to do that as much." Hmm, I said that here and it got pooh-poohed. The economy is getting worse so time will tell. What did De Bell say? "Board President Michael DeBell points out that the district plans to open one new school as well as close five in an area where it might attract more students — and more money. That school will be a new K-8 in the northeast part of the city, where a number of schools are overcrowded, with long waiting lists. And he says he probably will support amendments to Goodloe-Johnson...

The Times today (1/28/09) ran a guest column by Gayle Johnson in defense of the African-American Academy.