Seattle Schools Community Forum

Audit and Finance Committee meeting today at 4:30 p.m..  Agenda

Monday Curriculum and Instruction meeting from 4-6 p.m.  All the agenda says is " Board policies C and D."   "C" is Curriculum & Instruction and covers the following: curriculum (world languages, adoption of instructional materials, approval of supplementary instructional materials), instructional resources, instructional programs (online learning), Special Education and Staff Development. "D" is Students and covers the following: student assignement, student rights and responsibilities and discipline. I don't know what the meeting will cover but one reader said it may be about online learning. Wednesday Work Session: Distribution Services from 4-5:30 p.m.   Should be educational because I know almost nothing about this area. Public Hearing about the Debt Service Fund ( which services our bond debts like BEX and the debt on the Stanford Headquarters).  This is from 5:30-5:45 p.m. and it's short because it's likely to be only me an...

If you wish to speak on the Board agenda on Wednesday, the 6th, be sure to call 252-0040 and leave your name, phone number, e-mail address and topic you wish to speak on. The agenda has several interesting items of note.  one is a renewal of an agreement with Microsoft for software.   There is one puzzling item which I'm sure someone here can explain to me.  "Allows District staff access to the most current version of MS Office for home use."   Does that mean so they can take it home?  Work from home?   a huge item - approval of the budgets.   General Fund for $577,741,503; ASB for $4.4M; Debt Service fund for $85M and Capital Projects fund for $101M.  Adding all those up you get roughly $770M.  That's a lot of dough. Final vote on the attendance policy. The change I see is this: This motion has been discussed at the 5/23/2011 and 6/27/2011 meetings of the Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee. On 5/236/27/2011, after ...

Here's my new recommendation; forget the Board meetings . Watch them on tv if you must. Everything is already decided and nothing you say really makes a difference. The exception to that is if your message is directed to the wider audience and the Superintendent and School Board are just spectators. Go to the Work Sessions and the Committee meetings. That's where best information and action can be found. The Audit and Finance Committee meeting was no exception. Sherry Carr is the Chair of this committee but the meeting started while she was involved in a discussion elsewhere with Noel Treat. Peter Maier and Michael DeBell, the other members, were present and started the meeting. They started with a Financial update from Kathie Technow who is the Accounting Manager. She was going to answer some questions that Sherry had from a previous meeting. Peter said there was a lot of info on enrollment data that would need more breakouts to use for budgeting. A lot of murmurin...