Seattle Schools Community Forum

Nothing particularly earth-shattering or even noteworthy in the last couple of Friday Memos. But what there is worth mentioning is mentioned below:

If you haven't met Superintendent Nyland, here's your chance.  I think it worth your time especially as he is considering whether to apply to be the permanent superintendent. From SPS Communications: Dr. Larry Nyland, who was appointed by the School Board in June to serve as Interim Superintendent, has outlined several opportunities this fall to meet with community members. These informal gatherings will include a few short remarks from Dr. Nyland, followed by time for an open question and answer period.

Families are invited to give feedback on Special Education services at Seattle Public Schools during two “Open Mic Night” meetings Families of Seattle Public Schools are invited to join experts from Louisiana State University and the TIERS Group (Teams Intervening Early to Reach all Students) during two Open Microphone Nights to give feedback on Special Education Services. Join us: Tuesday, April 22 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Rainier Beach High School , 8815 Seward Park S., Seattle Washington 98118 Wednesday, April 23 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Nathan Hale High School , 10750 30 th Ave NE, Seattle Seattle Public School’s Special Education Department is undergoing a Comprehensive Corrective Action Plan (C-CAP) to help improve results for our students in special education. As part of this plan, the department is working with experts from Louisiana State University and the TIERS Group for consultation on activities related to C-CAP targets. They will be vi...

The Alliance for Education lists Community Engagement as one of their three primary missions. Towards that end they have a blog . Their last blog post was made on May 9, 2013, nearly a year ago. They have a Facebook page . Their Facebook page has 646 likes. The Facebook page has ten posts so far this year. Most of them are about the Alliance's annual community breakfast fundraiser. Those ten posts have attracted a total of 25 likes and 1 comment. The comment is from an Alliance staffer encouraging people to attend the annual community breakfast. They have a Twitter account . So far this year, no one has tweeted them. Would it be harsh of me to conclude that the Alliance is failing at community engagement?

And roll. Looks like there is going to be a LOT of activity at the Board meeting on Wednesday.  Apparently we may see: - teachers who are unhappy about the possible class size increase - community organizers unhappy about their exit from the Horace Mann building in order to make way for Nova to come back and now, - the so-called Our Schools group.  Here's their reason to be at the Board meeting: Nearly three years ago, the Seattle School District negotiated a collective bargaining agreement between teachers and the district that outlined strategies for closing Seattle’s opportunity and achievement gaps. Article II Partnership for Closing the Achievement Gap would develop and implement a parent/community engagement process, monitor stability of staff in low-performing schools, monitor data like discipline and attendance records in determining students at-risk for dropping out, and financially support school-level initiatives focused on closing gaps. The Our Schools C...

The 5:00pm start time for public testimony is a barrier to participation by working people. The board can reduce that barrier by shifting the whole meeting agenda thirty minutes later. The meeting would start thirty minutes later, public testimony would start thirty minutes later, and the meeting would end thirty minutes later. The Board would have to weigh the negative impact of the change on the internal stakeholders against the positive impact for members of the public. The board could also resolve the problem by restoring Petitions and Delegations. It was not that long ago that there were two opportunities for the Board to hear from the public at each board meeting. One was public testimony when people could address motions before the Board. The other was Petitions and Delegations when people could speak on any topic. When the Board consolidated the two speaking periods they promised that, if the change created negative impacts, the Board would restore the second session. Petit...

There is no school and no department in Seattle Public Schools that has worse community engagement than the School Board. Their primary community engagement is the public testimony at the school board meetings and it is a near total failure as community engagement. Can you imagine a principal who conducted their community engagement in this way? Can you imagine a principal who held a community engagement event twice a month where no more than twenty people were allowed to speak for no more than two minutes each? The principal then did not respond to anyone who spoke - not at the event, not after it, not at all. Would that be acceptable community engagement for anyone? Want to hear something ironic? If someone uses their two minutes of public testimony to speak to the Board about enrollment, or advanced learning, or school lunches, they will get a response. If the person responsible for that department is at the meeting they will come up to the person who made the testimony and talk...

The Seattle School Board has launched a big project to review and update all of their policies. Phase I of this process is complete - they have renumbered the policies to conform to WSSDA conventions, they have added some non-controversial policies that other districts typically have but Seattle was missing, they deleted some non-controversial superfluous policies, and they have done some work to thoughtfully re-write the governance policies (series 1000). They are now in Phase II in which they review and thoughtfully revise other policies. Many of these revisions will be the subject of some contention and people should try to pay attention to the Phase II process as it occurs. You should try, but they aren't making it easy. The information provided about Phase II of this process is badly out of date, incomplete, and inaccurate. It's hard not to take this as a sign of the Board's minimal interest in community engagement.

Here  is the press release from Seattle Public Schools today regarding the Transportation Plan. This is a remarkable piece of dis-information that absolutely begs for critical review.

Seattle Public Schools is planning to radically revise transportation plans and school start and end times for the 2012-2013 school year after the Open Enrollment. They have told the Board that their plans are set and little, if any, variation is possible at this late date. This "late date" is four months before school begins. Despite their total unwillingness to make any changes in their plans, the District regrets their complete refusal to offer any kind of community engagement whatsoever. So they are now trying to remedy that failure by soliciting public input on the transportation plans. They have a web page about the planned changes to transportation.

For all of their fancy talk about community engagement, the School Board has the worst community engagement of any department in the District. Imagine a principal who conducted community engagement by holding two sessions a month, during which no more than 19 people could speak to the principal for no more than two minutes each. The principal would not respond to anything said, not at the session and not afterwards by phone, mail, email, or in person. People could, of course, send the principal email, but the principal wouldn't reply in 90% of the cases. Nor would the principal reply to 90% of voice mail messages. That's it. That's the entire community engagement effort from the principal. Would that be acceptable to anyone? Could a program manager conduct community engagement like that? Of course not. Could the superintendent? One of them tried and was constantly hounded by the Board to expand and improve her community engagement. They should have removed the beam f...

The Seattle Alliance of Black School Educators, in partnership with Seattle Public Schools, will be holding a Parent Summit on August 20 at Cleveland High School. Topics will include parent and family engagement, Seattle Public Schools initiatives, early learning education, and much more. More information here .

Seattle Public Schools is hosting several workshops Saturday, May 14 that will provide families with tools and information to support their children's learning during the summer. The " Building Bridges: Workshops Connecting Families and Schools " will run from 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. at Garfield High School. For more information, please read this news release .

I'm working on my testimony for the board meeting coming up in May. I will be talking about the approval of the minutes of the previous meeting. In that meeting there were twelve motions brought and not one of them had any community engagement. The board pitched a twelve inning shut-out. That calls for recognition. I'm thinking of making up these really nice certificates for the Board members in honor of their special achievement in suppressing public input. The certificates will be nice enough to hang on the wall, or they could show them to the Alliance for Education as a sign of good faith and their sincerity after the Board had the bad taste to fire Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. Given that the new Board Action Report template has dropped the community engagement section and with the summer is coming up, I think the Board is capable of breaking Hershiser's record. I think they could shut out the public for sixty consequetive motions. They are certainly capable of it. We'll...

I went to the Transportation meeting tonight at Aki Kurose. There were a grand total of six members of the public there, not counting a reporter. Cordell Carter got it off to a poor start in his introductory remarks by saying that the District's budgeting priorities were to "protect the classroom against all else". It was an unnecessary and unconvincing lie. Mr. Carter did nothing useful except introduce Tom Bishop. Mr. Bishop briefly sketched out the proposed transportation plan and then opened the floor to questions. It was through the questions - I submitted about six of them - that the story came out. The story, put into a coherent order, goes like this: Faced with the mind-numbing revenue reductions caused by the ailing economy, the state has drastically cut funding for public K-12 education in every possible way, including the reimbursement for student transportation. The State has adopted - just since January - a new formula for reimbursing Districts for s...

I... I... I'm speechless. You simply have to read it for yourself. The superintendent's report to the Board on her community engagement efforts . Please pay special attention to the Q & A that appears at the end. Goodloe-Johnson - great superintendent or greatest superintendent?

I've been doing this the past couple Tuesdays, and I don't know if it has been useful to anyone else, but I sure do find it a handy tool. Wednesday, October 6 Board Work Session re School Reports, 4:00-5:30pm Regular School Board meeting, 6:00pm Thursday, October 7 Coffee Chat with the Superintendent, 6:00-7:00pm at the S.B.O.C. Kevin Johnson, Education Champion, speaks, 7:00pm at Mt. Zion Baptist Church Saturday, October 9 District II - Community Meeting (Carr), 8:30-10:00am District I Community Meeting (Maier), 10:30-noon District VI Community Meeting (Sundquist), 11:00am-12:30pm Tuesday, October 12 Coffee Chat with the Superintendent 9:00-10:00am, at Jane Addams K-8 A&F Audit Committee Meeting, 4:00-6:00pm Wednesday, October 13 Executive Committee, 8:00-9:30am Board Work Session re Special Ed, 4:00-6:00pm Thursday, October 14 A&F Finance Committee Meeting, 4:00-6:00pm Saturday, October 16 District IV Community Meeting (DeBell), 9:00-11:00am

I had this really good meeting with Solynn McCurdy this morning. The more I think about it the better I feel about it. As we were shaking hands and saying good-bye the last thing we were talking about was the idea of presenting a Strategic Plan Update for the community. The Alliance would sponsor the event and it would present a comprehensive and honest accounting of the current status of every Strategic Plan Project. There would be a comprehensive list of all of the projects. For each project there would be information on the project timeline, current status, costs, and compliance with the Community Engagement Protocols. To the extent that the projects are moving forward and meeting expectations, there would be appropriate credit given. To the extent that the projects are stalled, behind schedule, over budget, wandered astray, and closed to the public, it would be duly noted as well. A presentation like this would accomplish a number of necessary goals: 1) inform the community, 2) exp...

This may seem incredible today, but it used to be that the Board would talk to members of the community who attended Board Committee meetings. Members of the previous Board would usually invite members of the public to sit at the table if there was space available and would often turn to informed people and ask them questions during Board committee meetings. This Board never does that. They didn't even talk to Meg Diaz or afford her an opportunity to speak when they were discussing her analysis. Ivory Tower much? How I wish they would re-engage with the public this way, but it's a fantasy. Other fantasies: I would love it if, during the discussion of a motion at a legislative meeting, a Board member would ask a question of someone who testified on the topic. Wouldn't it be great if a Board member asked Chris Jackins to offer a response to a statement by the District staff? I would love it if, during a work session or a committee meeting, a Board member had an informed membe...

Seattle Public Schools has scheduled two community meetings to provide information about how schools are funded and strategies to close the funding gap for the 2010-11 school year. The district will also seek feedback on plans to address the shortfall. In addition, families are invited to share their ideas on what SPS programs and services are most important for them to have protected as the district begins to address a projected $26 million budget gap for the 2011-12 school year. Interpreters will be available at both community meetings, which will include a question-and-answer session. The meetings will be Saturday, April 17, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Aki Kurose Middle School, 3928 Graham St., and Tuesday, April 20, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Roosevelt High School, 1410 N.E. 66th St.