Seattle Schools Community Forum

I attended three Work Sessions last week and here are highlights Athletics I have to say this one seemed to be one of the less dry and more animated Work Sessions that I have attended in years.

After the abysmal issues at Ballard and Roosevelt, this is good news (from Mirmac 1): "...we now have new guidelines for hiring athletic coaches. We are now required to have a parent and student on the interview committee when we interview coaches. If you would like to participate on an interview committee please fill out the following form and submit it. We will be hiring a Girls Soccer and Ultimate Frisbee coaches the last week of August." I believe this is for Mirmac's school but I suspect this is a district directive.  If your school is hiring a new coach and you want to be part of the hiring, ask your principal about it.

Charlie reported that Robert Boesche, CFO, wants budget ideas so let's give him some.  My thought is inspired by the Kia car commercial with the gangsta hamsters (I cannot say why this commercial so entertains me but it does.)  The tag line is: You can go with this or you can get with that. So in that vein, I thought we might put together a list (and feel free to do this at your elementary school).    First up, School Counselors or Academic Coaches? This or That? Which do you think make the most difference at your school?  Which would you be willing to do without for a year or two or three?  (And none of this, "I don't really know" stuff.  You know your school; what do teachers or the principals talk about more?) What else would make a good "this or that"?

I am going to create a one-sheet list of my suggestions for easy reading but here it is fleshed out. (I'll have the one-sheeter by the end of the evening.) As a preamble to what I would suggest the district should cut, I make these disclaimers: I have looked through all the documents available for 2011-2012 budgeting. They do not follow in a real and coherent fashion so it is not really possible to discern exactly what staff is saying. There was an initial listing , followed by another presentation and the Strategic Plan Budget Planning Tool followed by the Budget Balancing tool . I can't tell if the planning tools overlap. I know that the Board pushed back on some initial ideas (like selling the radio station at Hale) so naturally it fell to staff to look at other areas. Staff is right about the difficulty of planning when there are unknowns looming. What will the economic update forecast be on March 17th? What will labor partners have to say? I am going wi...

(Note: I was just despairing to someone over trying to boil these meetings down and yet providing the context and back and forth of discussions. I'll try to do a general summary but this is for wonks and those who want to know what the discussion was about.) I attended the Audit and Finance Committee meeting yesterday (as did Meg Diaz and Chris Jackins). I came away fairly depressed and overwhelmed. Depressed about the financial state our district is in and overwhelmed with data and paper. I also wonder, really wonder, who in our district administration really know what happens to the money (more on that later) and I wonder if the Board fully gets it. What is frightening, truly frightening, are two things. One, that a heck of a lot of money gets carried forward, held back, moved, paid back later and who really tracks it all . I could spend all my days and nights going over it and I doubt I would ever figure it all out. Two, the Board, while trying, is not really going to...