Seattle Schools Community Forum

To start, I think that foreign language teaching is great and should be started in every elementary school. I would advocate for foreign language several times a week in every elementary versus what we have now which are four foreign language immersion elementary schools that are ONLY open to neighborhood children. I did a previous post on this subject that covers some of the history. JSIS started as a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "hey kids, let's open a foreign language school to honor a beloved superintendent." But, where was the discussion about funding, where those kids go AFTER elementary and how to expand the program? Nowhere.   Guess what? John Stanford International School was a wild success and left other parents clamoring for more. It took the district nearly eight years to bring a couple more schools on-line and then McDonald in the last couple of years. (They did also finally get around to figuring out a pathway to middle and high school although those...

When the issue about the race/social justics class at Center School came up, there was little notice about who attends the school.  Yet both the teacher, Jon Greenberg, and some Center students I talked with expressed frustration with the lack of diversity at the school AND that for some minority students who do enroll, they leave fairly quickly.  What the students told me is that the minority students don't feel they fit in but many enjoy Mr. Greenberg's class because they DO get to talk about something completely relevant to their lives. (The students also said that the minority numbers are so low that many parents won't consider Center School.  This is very akin to what minority parents have expressed about APP.  They don't want their child to be the only minority child in the classroom.) One question I do have is how this class continued on - for years and under different principals - and if there were problems in the past.  That hasn't been addressed an...

I attended part of the Board retreat last Saturday and part of the (kind of funny) School Board meeting last night.  If you've been around this district awhile, you could definitely feel a change. 

The Washington State PTSA, at this weekend's convention, took up a resolution on local units paying for teachers/staff.   (Note; the resolution is about two-thirds of the way down the document.)  They are advocating for PTSAs to NOT pay for teachers/staff.