Seattle Schools Community Forum

Here's the agenda for the Seattle School Board Meeting of September 19, 2012. Not every meeting has a theme, but this one features some interesting timing decisions. Or perhaps the theme is evading public discussion.

The Executive Committee meetings are usually pretty boring and uneventful. They are generally about scheduling and such. The meeting this week, however, has a couple of intriguing items on the agenda . 1. Call to Order 8:00am - Approval of agenda - Approval of August 7, 2012 meeting minutes 2. Review of the September 19 and October 3 legislative session agendas 3. Government Relations 4. Community Engagement 5. Executive Committee Discussion - Conditional Certification Application (R. English) - Creative Approach Schools (R. English) - Review and approval of retreat agenda - Proclamation for Cheryl Chow - Presentations to the Board - Policy Development Process - Board meeting times/Comment timing (Board and Student) - NSBA Membership 4/1/13-3/31/14 - Directors’ 2012-13 Conference Attendance - Superintendent Evaluation - Board Calendar/Work Plan 6. A...

Last night was interesting because the Board meeting was split into halves; one half the shiny and prepped TFA folks and the other side ...the rest of us.    What was interesting is that TFA seemed to only want to clap when TFA folks spoke while the rest of us knew the (polite) drill and clapped for everyone.  You notice these things when you've been to a lot of these meetings. I'll just go over the speaker testimony and do a separate thread on the latter half of the meeting.

I was wondering where local TFA was all this time. We'll find out out tonight's School Board meeting as it looks like at least five people who signed up to speak are TFA.  One, Lindsay Hill, is the executive director of TFA in the Puget Sound area, and another is one of the teachers hired for SPS, Kenneth Maldonado.  I note that there are still four places left on the speakers list. I also note that the action item for the conditional certifications has changed under Alternatives: Do not authorize application for conditional certificates for these candidates.  This is not recommended as these candidates have been through the school-based hiring process and were recommended by the school-based team to be hired.  Failure to authorize a conditional certificate would result in a school-based decision to hire a particular person being overturned.  Furthermore, failure to authorize will require a new hiring process, which could result in disruption to the...

The Board meeting was fairly entertaining and informative tonight. First up was a wonderful presentation about Special Olympics and soccer teams made up of SPS students from 7 of the 10 high schools that formed a league this year.  (Rainier Beach's team won the championship this year.)  Created by SPS Athletic Director Eric McCurdy, it is to expand to all 10 high schools this year.  Really hard-warming and a great community effort from both Special Olympics and the Seattle Sounders.