Seattle Schools Community Forum

Updates: Info from the district:

Tuesday, March 19th Audit&Finance Committee Mtg (Quarterly Audit) from 4-6 p.m. at JSEE.  Agenda.   Items include: internal audits of transportation, maintenance and Ingraham High School (note: these may be regularly scheduled audits or something else.  I'll check.) Performance audit status risk management ERM (which I believe is Enterprise Risk Management, managing risks and capitalizing on opportunities) Wednesday, March 20th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda.   Note: the student performance is the Salmon Bay Marimba Group.   I love a good marimba band so I may have to go just for that. Items include: approval of a grant from OSPI to boost science teaching for elementary and middle school teachers. Per OSPI, Seattle Public Schools will partner with Renton School District, University of Washington College of Engineering, and the Institute for Systems Biology. The project will focus on professional developmen...

The agendas for the Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday morning and the Audit& Finance Committee meeting (Audit) on Thursday afternoon have been posted. Executive Committee Agenda -  There is an item for Government Relations (no details), Community Engagement (no details, no surprise), and then Discussion. Under Discussion there is: Ethics Policy - I believe Mr. Barnett from the City may be giving this update. Update on Public Survey from Director DeBell (not sure what this is referencing) Board retreat follow-up Intermediate Capacity Management Plan - status and legislative calendar IT Strategic Plan Parents Bill of Rights  Program Placement Policy Board calendar/workplan Communications/community partnerships That's a lot to cover in two hours. Audit & Finance Committee (Audit) agenda - Audit response, Department of Internal Audit work plan,  Series 5000 Phase II policies.   There is one vague item - Special Attention Items (no de...

 Tuesday, Sept. 6th West Seattle Elementary starts school Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for Denny Int'l Middle School from 1- 2 p.m. Audit & Finance Committee Mtg. (Audit) f rom 4-6 p.m.  This meeting's agenda reflects topics on the audit response to both the performance audit of capital and the RSBDP (better known as Pottergate).  Perhaps this means the King County Prosecutor has something to report from their investigation.  There's a report from the new Internal Auditor, Anthony Medina.  Not wasting any time, there will be discussion of the Series 5000 policies of the Board policies which look like they cover HR.  Also, a discussion of audits other than those done by the SAO or Internal Auditor - interesting. Wednesday, Sept. 7th First Day of school for SPS  (fyi, the Superintendent will be visiting the new Lowell at Lincoln school from about 9-10 am .  She will also be having lunch at RBHS at noon.) School Board meeting from 6-9 p.m. ...

Tuesday the 23rd Audit&Finance Committee meeting from 4-6 p.m. (for Audit issues) Agenda reflects these items:  capital performance audit follow-up, update on Pottergate, update and action plan on yet another audit, intro of Internal Auditor, schedule of departmental reviews, more School Board policies updates (HR) Wednesday, August 24th Board Work Session on Technology in Schools from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, August 25  Audit&Finance Committee meeting from 4-6 p.m. (for Finance issues) Agenda reflects these items: financials update, community schools report, daily attendance issues, budget update Saturday, August 27 Community Meeting with Director Kay Smith-Blum from 10-11:30 am at the Douglass-Truth library, 2300 Yesler Way at 23rd Anyone attend the Parent Summit or Martin-Morris community meeting on Saturday? 

The Board meeting was fairly entertaining and informative tonight. First up was a wonderful presentation about Special Olympics and soccer teams made up of SPS students from 7 of the 10 high schools that formed a league this year.  (Rainier Beach's team won the championship this year.)  Created by SPS Athletic Director Eric McCurdy, it is to expand to all 10 high schools this year.  Really hard-warming and a great community effort from both Special Olympics and the Seattle Sounders. 

From district communications: Seattle Public Schools on Monday announced the hiring of Andrew Medina as the district’s Director of the newly created Office of Internal Audit. Medina comes to SPS from the Port of Seattle, where he served as senior internal auditor. Prior to joining the Port he served as Internal Auditor for the Las Vegas-based Clark County School District, the nation’s fifth-largest school district. “Andrew Medina is an accomplished internal auditor who will provide critical oversight of Seattle Public Schools financial controls,” said Seattle School Board Director Sherry Carr, chair of the board’s Audit and Finance Committee. “The hiring of Mr. Medina, who will report directly to the School Board, signals our commitment to establishing an independent Office of Internal Audit. The intent is to promote integrity, openness and transparency regarding district internal controls and compliance, and follows the same business model being used by the City of Se...

There have been quite a few changes in the agenda for tonight's meeting.  Some are a bit puzzling.  (I also suspect the speaker list - which is full and has 20 on the waitlist) will change now that Ingraham's principal is off the table as an issue.)

I was only able to hit two of the four Board committee meetings last week (and not the work session either but Charlie covered that one).  I went the the Audit portion of the Audit and Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.  This was a good meeting and especially so because of the arrival of the A&F's two new volunteer public advisors (looking for one but got two and that's even better).

Tuesday Audit and Finance Committee Mtg , 4-6 p.m.   This meeting will focus on Audit issues.  There are several debriefings like IA meetings with the City, discussion with Don McAdams (a district consultant), salary benchmarks and internal audit manager posting.  Wednesday Executive Committee Mtg , 8 am-10am.   Quite a packed agenda .   Materials adoptions for LA, Social Studies and music instruction, academic calendars, consulting services for TIF, ethics agreement with the City and partnering with the City, community engagement, and a raft of discussion items like superintendent evaluation, CFO/COO search process, protocol for following up on public testimony (really?) and much more.  There's also some sort of amendment to a contract at Denny/Sealth to rebuild the previously torn out tennis courts/softball field.  (You remember this one - it's a rebuild of something we paid for under BTA II.)  Looks like more money. It's a...

Those over 45 will recognize the question. We have a number of people to ask about: the superintendent, the COO, Director of Facilities, the Board, and the Seattle Times. The answers are pretty sad. It turns out that just about all of them knew a whole lot and they knew it a long time ago. The Superintendent knew about the program, she knew what it cost, and she knew what it did. She is on the record praising it, which means that she reviewed it. She gave Mr. Potter an endorsement for his spin-off non-profit. She was fully informed. It is very likely that she will claim to have known nothing about it. It won't be credible, but even if it were, that would even more damning. The program was identified as a problem in the 2009 budget. Didn't she claim that she follows up closely on these audit exceptions? Is she telling us that she didn't know where the District was spending a million dollars a year? In a capital budget that didn't have money for needed repairs in scho...

I left after 5 hours at the Work Session on the budget. I know Dorothy Neville was still there so I hope she can fill in the rest. I have 18 pages of notes. It was a room packed with staff and tension. It was clear this was not some exercise and staff was very careful to not name specific jobs (and therefore people) in their discussions. The entire Board was present, Dr. Enfield was there the entire time even though she had just learned of a death in the family and Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was not there because of a health issue. There were 3 handouts: Budget Workshop, Feb. 9, 2010 Central Office Staff Reduction Proposal (note: Central Office, not Central Adm.) A hodge-podge of different documents stapled together that included the above proposal, WSS Team Prioritization Reduction, Personal Contracts, etc. These are not vital documents so don't get worried if they are not on-line. As soon as I see this posted at SPS, I'll link them. I have two meetings this morning so I'm ...

Okay, husband on a plane, college-age son off in his room, decorating done, so let's humor Charlie and finish the Audit and Finance summary. (This also means for my effort I get to eat some of the Theo's Fig, Fennel and Almond dark chocolate bar.) So I left off with the pending or impending) capital program management audit. Sorry, Charlie but Sherry misunderstood Michael and let Noel Treat leave. No Ethics program review. (Yes, a shame but it was an honest misunderstanding. I realize now that I also misread my notes and this occurred BEFORE the audit review information. I include this so that you know that Sherry Carr DID hear the audit review information.) They were then talking about the i ntegrated planning for the 2011-2012 budget . I didn't get the handouts so this was very hard to follow. The one data point I got was that we are losing $66M from grants not included in the previous budget update. (I do not see this info online; I will try to find it Monday...

Here's the Seattle Times story . We have no way of knowing whether Mr. Nderu worked his tail off and issued all kinds of warnings, rang all kinds of alarms, and provided all kinds of constructive advice only to have his work balled up and thrown out - or - he bobbed along in the current doing little if anything. A question like that could be fascinating, but, on the other hand, what difference does it make to anyone but him?

The district has its own internal auditor and apparently, that person just abruptly resigned today. Should make for an interesting Audit and Finance Committee meeting this afternoon. Also, on the Board meeting agenda for Wednesday is the final decision from the Board on the use of Brave New World. I had thought, per the Curriculum and Instruction Committee meeting last week, that the deliberations would come right before the Board meeting. No, it is to happen directly after Public Testimony. Now this should be really interesting. You will have all the Board members trying to publicly suss out a pretty important issue. This is where you will see judgment and thought-processes in action. My feeling is that they will, of course, side with the Superintendent. I actually wouldn't mind if only they said that the use of Brave New World is suspended until all the professional development that BOTH teachers and district staff say should be done. After that, I think it's fine to u...