Seattle Schools Community Forum

There are not further details/information on the Hamilton substitute incident that occurred last week as the investigation is on-going.   SPS replied to these basic questions about substitute hiring. 1) Why did the reporter say the sub wasn't employed by the district? Is that right? We did not tell the reporter that the substitute wasn’t a district employee. We did say that because he isn’t a permanent teacher, he couldn’t be placed on leave. Instead, we would not give him any more assignments until the investigation was completed.

It would seem something is amiss. From Q-13 News : The 12-year-old special education student at Hamilton International Middle School reported the alleged incident Wednesday to school officials, who called police. The substitute teacher isn’t employed by the school district, but a spokesperson said he won’t get any other assignments in the district until the police investigation is complete. The boy, who is not being identified since he is underage, said the alleged incident happened between classes while he was alone in a bathroom with the substitute teacher. The details are troubling and thank goodness this student said "stop" to the teacher and went and told other adults.  Those adults rightly called the police but it is unclear from this report if the teacher was arrested.  Oddly, the district says the sub wasn't employed by the district.  I'm not sure what to make of that. But an HIMS parent reports that this same teacher was in her child...

One point before the public testimony info.  Last night I put forth arguments on three topics that seem to neatly line up with accountability (Sealth elevator), transparency (TFA donor) and public engagement (Series 4000).  I hope the Board realizes that mouthing these words without backing it up with action means little.  Last night had some interesting testimony (along with some funny lines).

Dorothy Neville sent an e-mail to the Board with her concerns over the what is likely to be more than one school opening its doors next Wednesday understaffed.  She said it well so below is her e-mail entitled Avoidable chaos:

The agenda looks fairly light on Wednesday but with a few notable items.   (I note that today - Saturday the 13th - the agenda is not accessible at the SPS website but I had already downloaded it yesterday.  I'll post it when it comes back up.) Update: here's the link . The agenda was reviewed at the Executive Committee meeting held earlier in the week (which no School Board candidates attended which is unfortunate as it's where you see the real work done).

It would be great if teachers, staff and parents in the know could share what's happening. What turnover has your school seen? What additions to staff, what loss of staff?

This was an interesting Work Session not least of all because of its topic - HR .  (And no one said anything about "human capital.")  Much of my interest was in how the Board acted.  They acted like people who had questions and wanted answers, polite but firm. Sherry started off by explaining that Don McAdams, who is guiding the Board on governance issues, encouraged them to do overviews of all the departments.  They just happened to start with HR.  Ann Chan, who is the new head of HR, started out by explaining HR's focus which is ensuring every classroom has a qualified teacher, supporting teachers and providing timely staffing and evaluation data and support to principals, executive directors and central office managers.  Michael pointed out that 40% of SPS employees were not in the classroom.  He said the recent issues that "reflected badly" on the district occurred in Central office functions.   He was following up on a comment Sher...

I need someone with a legal background to read this thing but I do see some problems here. Here is WAC wording for why the district can do this (italics mine): "(a) The purpose of the conditional certificate is to assist local school districts, approved private schools, and educational service districts in meeting the state's educational goals by giving them flexibility in hiring decisions based on shortages or the opportunity to secure the services of unusually talented individuals. The professional educator standards board encourages in all cases the hiring of fully certificated individuals and understands that districts will employ individuals with conditional certificates only after careful review of all other options. The professional educator standards board asks districts when reviewing such individuals for employment to consider, in particular, previous experience the individual has had working with children. " How do we know the TFA teachers are un...