Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Seattle PI online reports that at the Board meeting last night, they voted 7-0 to continue the the graduation requirement with a C average. Here's a story link . Here's what Cheryl Chow had to say: "(The data) very clearly is stating that when students start getting lower grades in the 9th grade, by sophomore year they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "We need to get our PR better because a lot of work has been done for close to two years on this issue. It's unfortunate that a headline made us back up and take more time because that many more kids are going to drop out of school." Michael De Bell also noted the staff's hard work. Okay, but clearly the public and parents didn't like the idea. What does it say - to an employer - if we change this policy? So, maybe we didn't all understand the underlying reason for the position but we all see the public face ramifications. I'm glad the Board recognized ...

I'm going to try to dash off a few highlights from this meeting (and hoping to get to the Board meeting later). Directors Chow, Martin-Morris and Carr were there, with Harium chairing the meeting. There were at least 8 staff there. The agenda included grading policy for giving credit to middle school students for high school courses curriculum alignment - delivery of a white paper textbook adoption and materials anaphylaxis policy (which I previously reported on so will skip here) math intervention; what was done over summer and plan for this year (I left so I missed this part The discussion did not stay in this order so I may skip around a bit. Dr. Enfield (our new CAO) started by saying that it had been a good day for principals with training on the integrated service delivery model for Special Ed and bilingual students. There was no fleshing out of this issue so I don't know what was done. Then Harium talked about fewer minutes with more Action items. Less of what he te...

I attended this afternoon's committee meeting for the Board's Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee. The attendees were chair, Director Martin-Morris, Director Carr and Director Chow (who was late because Gary Locke is to be Commerce Secretary for the Obama administration and, as Cheryl put it, they needed a Chinese-American to talk to at KOMO) as well as High School Director, Michael Tolley, and CAO, Carla Santorno. The topics to be discussed were changes to the grading policy, promotion/non-promotion and bell times for middle/high schools. As usual, there was a lot of paperwork passed out. There was: a memo from Carla about the Steering Committee for High School Reform; Proposal to Changes to School Board Policies D46.01 andC15.02 (grading) the survey about these changes a draft of changes to the Board policies (which came from staff) 3 years worth of AP and IB information for the high schools that have it (very interesting but I haven't read it all (FYI, I err...