Seattle Schools Community Forum

Tuesday, Jan. 27th Kindergarten Enrollment night , 5:30-7:00 pm, Northgate Elementary, open to all. Wednesday, Jan. 29th Work Sessions : • Oversight Work Session: Enrollment & Planning (4:30-5:30 PM) • Work Session: Budget (5:30-7 PM) • Work Session: Series 1000 Policies (7-8 PM) Nothing attached for Budget so clearly the Enrollment Work Session is the most interesting. Fun fact: the district has no permanent Enrollment director but yes, they have a demographer (and a PhD at that), Natasha Rivers.  The interim director appears to come from an IT consulting firm.  The district has also hired a communications firm, Write as Rain , for "growth boundaries communications." Page 5 is all about Stakeholder Engagement and Public Information. Page 11 on Opportunities and Risks is also worth reading. Then we get to the percentage projections page for elementary, middle and high school.  Sober reading.  Elementary looks like the overwhelming majority of elementary sc...

Well, that was interesting.  I'm sorry there were so few people there (but my experience is that many people never go to SCPTSA meetings anyway, choosing to go to their school PTA meeting). As usual, they had food (so no one goes hungry) and welcoming faces.  I note that the Board is a multi-racial one.  (SCPTSA President Katherine Schomer later mentioned that they have been unable to find a rep from either the NW or NE.  So much for that theory that the NE runs SCPTSA.) Much of the entire senior staff was in attendance including Superintendent Banda. President Schomer started the meeting by acknowledging their contact list has problems and they have been struggling with it since fall.  Apparently the state PTA has had issues of sending SCPTSA updated information on what PTAs are members and who their contacts are. As well, the SCPTSA is working on a new website . They did talk about the state PTA convention coming up from April 25-27th over in Belle...

I reported previously on the discussion of the issue of NW Center and Cascade as discussed at the Board meeting on Wednesday, March 5th.  That, along with later start time advocates, was the bulk of public testimony.  I note that it seems that a call seems to have gone out that at every Board meeting, there needs to be two non-profit groups working with Seattle schools that come and tell the Board how much they need student data and how careful they are with it.  They also come with an "example."  There were two people at the Board meeting that night. I think I mentioned previously how one of these providers came to a meeting and practically outed a middle school student (with a lot of personal description about the student).   Coincidentally, the district is having a Work Session on how they take care of student data just this coming Wednesday but I'll write separately on that.  I'll just say this the district does NOT have everything in place...