Seattle Schools Community Forum

In the first story, I didn't know this but the U.S. Census counts U.S. school children and activities associated with back to school.  From the NY Times article : The bureau estimated that 55 million students would be enrolled in pre-kindergarten through high school this fall, and that 11 percent would be in private schools. That total is up by about 16 percent from 20 years ago.  Also, in an alert from reader Steve, a NY Times editorial about our nation's crumbling infrastructure (including school buildings) and job creation.   Take, for example, Fix America’s Schools Today , or FAST, an idea that has been incorporated into a House proposal to be introduced this fall by Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois. Public school buildings in the United States are on average over 40 years old and in need of an estimated $500 billion in repairs and upgrades. A $50 billion school renovation program would employ 500,000 workers (1.5 million construction worker...

 Update (via reader Salander) - The head of HR, Ann Chan, just five months into her job has resigned.   Now interim CFO, Robert Boesche, is in charge.  I think the question is - who IS in charge down there?  So we lost the head of Facilities.   (At least in that position - I have a feeling they may keep Mr. Martin on temporarily to guide the BEX III projects which was his previous position.  But at some point, he needs to go permanently.) Also, today is the last day for Open Enrollment which closes at 4:00 p.m.   Community meetings on Saturday Director Martin-Morris - at Diva Espresso (Lake City) from 9:30-11:30 a.m. Director Maier - at Bethany Community Church (across from Bagley Elementary) from 10:30-noon.

As I mentioned in a previous thread, another high level manager has left the district.  The story is in the Seattle Times. A top-level executive who took over the Seattle Public School's facilities department after it was rocked by scandal that led to the superintendent's ouster is losing his job in what the district describes as a management reorganization. William "Bill" Martin, who was promoted into the $142,000-a-year job of executive director only three months ago, acknowledged that his management style is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the district. What does this all mean?  No head of Facilities?  Ongoing investigation of a "management" style?  But, he might remain with the district.  Okay, so too rough for the head of the department, just right somewhere else.   Boy, does Pegi McEvoy now have a lot on her plate - COO and now Facilities.  And - Martin's promotion during the scandal had some scratching their ...

 Update: the BEX Oversight Committee meeting for tomorrow has been CANCELED .   (Not enough for a quorum so I guess they really need those new members.) Friday In case anyone is interested and available, the next BEX Oversight Committee meeting is tomorrow morning (Friday, 4/8) from 8:30 am-10:30 am at headquarters upstairs in room 2750.  (Sign in at the front desk and they give you a code for access to upstairs.  Take a left after you exit the stairwell or elevator.  Sit along the side of the room.  Agendas and minutes are on the table.  Coffee is for the members.) One of the issues that will be discussed is bringing in some new members to the Committee.  I will report back on that issue and I hope some of you consider applying.  They need a broader view.  Also, it was interesting because the head of Facilities, Bill Martin, at the last meeting, seemed to think that staff would pick these new members.  A little amusing ...

The Times has a revealing article about Fred Stephens, former head of Facilities and Silas Potter's enabler/friend/supporter.  I was wondering when someone in the mainstream media might want to examine his record.  The Times does a fairly good job but does miss/leave out a few parts. For me, it jogs my memory back to several Board meetings.  (I keep most of the Board agenda's at meetings where I have spoken and so I can recall testimony from other speakers.)  The article starts off with African-American activists wanting more access/opportunities to bid on SPS construction contracts.

Good for the Times finding him. (I had my own little research going and found out that he went to high school in two schools in Michigan. He claimed he had attended Columbia and a Michigan university but no degrees listed. He also says on his Facebook page, "To know me is to love me." Well, the Seattle Times has an extensive review of his tenure at SPS so read it and tell me how much in love you are by the end. Me, not so much. I said elsewhere that I wondered if Fred Stephens, as head of Facilities, took his eye off the BEX ball as several projects had cost overruns. I mean if he gave Silas Potter free rein, then he probably gave Don Gilmore (then head of BEX projects) free rein. I have asked myself WHY Fred Stephens did this. (One thing I can say slightly in his defense is that a couple of years ago a son was murdered. I know it took a toll on him as it would anyone.) I do want to pose a couple of questions just for input (or just for the heck of it): should the ...

Thank you to Michael H for the heads up on another SAO audit document. This one has all the interviews the SAO did with SSD employees and certain vendors. I'm at page 54 of 264 and it's been jaw-dropping. I cannot believe the leeway and leverage and access to money and resources that Silas Potter had. It is just not possible for me to believe he did this on his own. Highlights : He repeatedly claimed to many who worked for him that SSD supported the transfer of the RSBDP from the district to his 501c3. Some of the people who had personal services contract through him come off very badly. Elaine Ko for one: We asked Elaine if she thought it unusual that a public program would be transitioning to the private sector at the expense of taxpayers. She said it was not unusual at that time. “It was not a questionable thing.” Also an administrator assistant reports that several people prominent in the African-American community had gone to Board me...

Part of the last Operations Committee meeting was devoted to Capacity Planning and Management and there were several documents released. They finally made it to the SPS website (thanks to readers who pointed that out - I lost track in all the financial crisis tangle). They are: Enrollment Projections Facilities Planning Annual Report Capacity Planning Management Annual Report Unfortunately, there is one missing document which is the 2010 Enrollment Headcount and Projections by School. It has some data not in the Enrollment Projections document that is interesting. I'll try to get this one as well. The Enrollment Projections is a series of 30 charts (have fun, kids!) projecting enrollment to 2015. The big number here is that they are saying: Based on the adjusted projections, the 2015 moderate projected enrollment is 53,969 students. That is a difference of 9200 students. Let that sink in. Can our district handle 9k plus students? (Of course with the current debacle, t...

There was much of interest discussed at last week's Operations Committee meeting. I think the Capacity Management issue will be a bigger item of interest but as I stated previously, I'm still waiting for some documents to be on-line so that I can link to them. There were three documents related to Facilities (not including the monthly summary which is almost useless). Two were labeled "Annual Report" but I'm not sure anyone would think of them as reports. (One page, both sides? Considering all the work done in a year on facilities, how is that a report?) The first was was an annual report on " BTA Related Information ." It reviewed the work need to be done in seven weeks to get BTA projects done on Queen Anne, Rainier View and Viewlands. (The seven-week period was not specified so I don't know when they are talking about. Summer?) They point out that there are many unknowns in the work. Now look, I get that some of these b...

Here is a link to the State Auditor's report. (Thank you to Mirmac 1 for providing the link.) I may try to go thru this to provide a timeline. I see that I was misled in a couple of places by district staff when I asked about a police report. If this doesn't make something happen, I don't know what will.

I copied that headline from the Seattle Times story . I take no happiness in this news. I knew about this, warned about this, and Dorothy and I were trying to ferret out the whole story. Apparently, documents got leaked and this report got out before the SAO was quite ready to release it. To let you know, earlier this month I wrote a white paper and sent it to the Mayor, the City Council, and the entire Seattle state legislative delegation. I called it " Approaching Storm: the Coming Crisis in Seattle Public Schools ." I did not include any information on this story as I had to make sure I had the facts in hand. This just adds to what is in the report. Coincidentally, I have a meeting today with Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw. When I first became aware of Silas Potter and the Small Business Program, I was suspicious. As we were told, the money spent over the last two years on this program had to be paid back to the Capital fund from the General Fund. That is one reason ...

Charlie posted the district's news release on the audit. I always enjoy the minimizing that goes on in these things. One of the most clearly called out issues of the audit was lack of Board oversight of BEX spending to the point where the Board was not even being told about spending. What does the press release call it ( in the middle of a paragraph): ".. .communications with the Board ..." Like staff forgot to send the Board an e-mail. So what did the Board have to say? At first, when Steve asked for comments or questions, there was dead silence. That wasn't a good sign. He then handed the microphone over to Michael DeBell, noting that Michael was the only current Board member who was on the Board serving during the audit time period. Michael pointed out that there were 3 different Boards over the time period. Then Michael started something I thought I would see from other Board members but not him. He started the CYA period. He asked the auditors to expand ...

Here's an item of interest from the Magnolia Voice blog about the closed Magnolia School. On Saturday evening SPD officers were called in to search the building for squatters. There were also SPS security personnel involved. They found 3 squatters. From the blog; Officers on the scene said that squatters hide in the building as well as the overgrown bushes and it’s a drain on resources for SPD to keep up with the abandoned property. Brad (a Magnolia reader)says: “My concern, like many residents living around the school is Seattle Public schools doesn’t have any money to adequately keep up the property and deter crime, let alone do anything major with it. It’s time for them to sell and let someone develop it or turn it into parks. The view would bring a substantial price. Most important, this place needs to go. The safety factor alone for nearby families is an issue in our community.” The school has been vacant for years. Last June we reported that several people...

This Board work session was dubbed for the new plan for facilities, " Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Initiative (SIMI) . All the Board members were present as was the Superintendent. This meeting was not to ask anything of the Board but to give them a review and update. (Note: this thread is long and I apologize but if you do choose to read the whole thing, you will have a better understanding of what the district is doing for our facilities.) Glossary Maintenance Direct - what used to be called Regular Maintenance PM Direct - Preventative Maintenance SIMI - Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Initiative APS - Asset Preservation System APP - OSPI term - Asset Preservation Program BMAR - Backlog of Maintenance and Repair TCO - Total Cost of Ownership The reason you should be interested in this thread is two-fold. One, it explains how each school will now be filing maintenance requests and two, it is a sobering reminder of the state of our SPS infrastructure. Fi...

So I like to check in regularly with other blogs. I look at LEV's blog, the Alliance's blog and Harium's blog. One interesting thing I've noticed is that, when challenged or asked about information on their threads, you can rarely get an answer. Charlie asks a lot of pertinent questions in a respectful, albeit blunt, manner and rarely gets an answer. Harium does occasionally but most of his replies are that he supports the staff. I noticed that when Charlie started asking questions at LEV, there stopped being replies. So what are these people afraid of? I can get Harium being busy and not able to reply to everything (but then, why have a blog?). But LEV and the Alliance say they want to engage and talk and yet there's silence. I think there are two issues. One, they confuse lively discussion with arguing. If someone disagrees with you, there's no need for shouting, swearing, name-calling or snarkiness. But you can say, look here's why I have th...

Fred Stephens, long-time director of district facilities, is leaving the district by the end of the month. I will be kind of sad to see Mr. Stephens go because I always felt he cared about the district even if he was not always able to see the buildings get the care they needed. It was not announced where he is going or what he will be doing. Bill Martin who is currently the head of BEX projects will be interim director. There is a bit of mystery about this resignation. Just last week Mr. Stephens had an argument in the district headquarters parking lot with an employee in his department. The police had to be called to escort the employee from the premises. The mystery is that this employee was overseeing the program that the recent state audit called out (the Small Business Development program). (To review, the district, based on Board policy, has a program to help small business owners make bids on district capital projects. This is in conjunction with other public enti...

This week sees another School Board meeting on Wednesday at 6 p.m . (Before that, there is a work session on International Education. I'm thinking it didn't get covered enough at last week's work session. This one is from 4:15-5:30 p.m.) One interesting item is the approval of some work done at Ingraham for asbestos floor removal, communications, mats for the entries and more security cameras. This contract went 47% over its estimate with change orders of $240k. Okay so $160K of this was the district asking to do complete removal of all asbestos flooring. That is great and fine. But (1) how come more cameras at Ingraham? and (2) what was the other $80K for? I really dislike when a partial explanation is given when you read these things and you are left with, "okay, what else?" Doesn't the Board read this and wonder about this? I question this extra spending because hello? we have a HUGE backlog of maintenance issues and yet we don't consider tha...

Okay, I probably won't qualify as an "expert" but I'm as close to a civilian expert as you might get (I can think of a few people who might know more). People here had asked for a "primer" of sorts about facilities and especially BEX/BTA. I am going to simplify here, both for space and sanity (yours). First, Facilities covers a lot of territory including: construction management, custodial, environmental services, planning, maintenance, property management, publishing services, natural resource conservation, risk management, self-help small works. The head of Facilities is Fred Stephens. The district has between 116-123 properties (it depends what you throw in there but that's about right). Fun Fact: did you know the district owns the property that the Oak Tree shopping area sits on? They do. The district has what they call a Facilities Master Plan . (I was actually on a committee to rewrite this thing until I realized that had no intent to rewr...

From the Central District News website, a story about 4 proposals for the use of the now-closed Martin Luther King, Jr. school and grounds. It looks like 2 private schools want it (Bush and Hamlin Robinson). Bush is offering use of the fields (they are non-lighted) to the community when Bush isn't using it. This is tempting because they are offering the highest price and the offer of field usage. The other two offers are community-based. One is from a community group (Citizens for a Community Center at MLK) and the other from the First AME church. The two community groups were trying to work together to present one offer but it didn't work out. A decision is expected in January. So this is one of the first buildings to really have bidders. As I have mentioned previously, when I worked on the CAC, we had many e-mails about what to do with closed buildings. It fell into the two camps above. Sell to the highest bidder or give preference to the community. Given there i...

From reader DJ, ''Sorry, didn't know where to post this or where to find the confirming information, but this piece was on the CD News: http://centraldistrictnews.com/2009/09/30/two-competing-proposals-for-mlk-school Is the district indeed selling, as opposed to retaining, the MLK building? " The answer is yes but it also includes the option for a long-term lease (20 years or more). Here is the information from the SPS website. From the School Use Advisory Committee for MLK Elementary School document: "The residential makeup surrounding MLK School is principally single-family homes. All members of the committee and other nearby neighbors expressed their desire to retain the quality of life that reflects the residential character of the neighborhood. Some of the concerns expressed both by committee members and other community members were traffic, parking, security, lighting and noise; and minimizing their impacts on the neighborhood. The second and third meeting...