Seattle Schools Community Forum

You need to agitate for McCleary because it was the legislature who mandated the 24-credit graduation requirement...with no funding to back it up. From SPS: Dear SPS middle school family, We are sharing information with you about a change that is likely to affect your middle school student when he or she is in high school – and we are encouraging your input. The state has increased the number of credits students need to graduate from 20 to 24. In Seattle Public Schools, students currently are required to earn 21. In Seattle, the new 24-credit requirement will take effect with the graduating class of 2021, this year’s seventh-graders.  

 Monday, December 1st   Want to get on the Speakers list for the Wednesday Board meeting ?  They take e-mails/phone calls starting at 8 am (not before so don't bother).  Phone: 252-0040 or boardagenda@seattleschools.org.   Coffee Chat with Superintendent Nyland at Neighborhood House High Point from 6-7 pm.  The notice states: Dr. Nyland looks forward to listening to your feedback, concerns, and questions. So I think bring any and all input and questions. Community Meeting with Director McLaren at Neighborhood House High Point from 7-8 pm.

I'll let Representative Gerry Pollet - who worked his ass off to make sure this law was fair to Sped students - tell you about it (written on March 12th): Earlier today we did something terrific for our children and schools. We were faced with a punitive Senate bill to require every student to finish 24 credits to graduate from high school even if they were sick or homeless for some period of time, or had special education needs that were not met, and couldn't complete courses.  We would drive up the dr opout rate when students who are behind discover there is no way to make up and graduate with their classmates. As I pointed out repeatedly, the state and districts (like Seattle) don't even provide for free make-up, summer and remedial courses. This would have kicked in with students becoming freshmen a year from now - before we added guidance counselors, lowered class sizes, or provided students with options for career and technical education courses.  ...

From GeekWire : The UW Board of Regents officially approved the School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) last week. It’s the first school in the state to combine all of the STEM fields into one academic unit. The school of STEM will bring together two existing programs —  computing and software systems , and science and technology — and house them under one school. The creation of the school was also due to the increased interest in STEM-related degrees — enrollment in the computing and software systems has doubled in the past 15 years. The school, which now serves more than 600 students, will offer seven undergraduate and two graduate degrees, with three more (Chemistry, Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering) coming in fall of 2014: Applied Computing  (BA) Biology  (BS) Climate Science & Policy  (BS) Computer Science and Software Engineering  (BS and MS) Cyber Security Engineering   (MS – begi...

Well, color me surprised because I just did a spot-check of graduation requirements at some of our SPS high schools.  SPS requires 20 credits to graduate.  I'm not printing everything required but here are some basics: LA - 3 credits Social Studies - 3 credits Science - 2 credits PE - 2 credits What I jogged me to look this up was a comment I read that The Center School is a "prep" high school and has higher graduation requirements than SPS.  So I checked.  Indeed they do. They require 22 credits.

I attended the C&I meeting on Monday.  There were some interesting discussions.  Sadly, I missed the one on innovation schools as I misheard and thought it was struck from the agenda.  Turns out it was moved to the end of the agenda and there is an MOU between the SEA and SPS that I will write a separate thread on at a later time.