Seattle Schools Community Forum

Highland Park is an elementary school at the south end of West Seattle. The attendance area, between Roxhill's and Concord's, is bordered by Highway 509 on the east, by White Center on the south, and by Delridge on the west. The school report says that the school population is 78% FRL, 27% ELL, and 14% SpEd. Only 33% of the third graders passed the state reading proficiency test last year. You know what they say about the prospects of students who aren't reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Student academic growth, as measured by year-over-year test scores for the same students, is below average. While test scores are rising all across the district, the test scores at Highland Park are falling. Highland Park is one of the few Segment 1 schools in the District's School Segmentation scheme. It is one of the two or three lowest performing schools in the district if not the lowest performer. Among the lowest in scores and the lowest of those for growth. Highl...

A lot of the work in education appears to be focused on small things that make little difference instead of big things that make a lot of difference. All of the fights are over the small stuff that doesn't much matter. These are distractions that keep us from taking the battle to the big stuff that really does matter.

Dr. Enfield has put forth a message for parents and communities about the district's focus for the future.  Here's most of it: I promised to listen and engage with the community around what we collectively want our schools to become. I heard four common themes, which will guide our work this year: great principals, great teachers, connected families and a responsive central office.

First up, congratulations to Green Lake secretary, Debbie Passi , the Washington Education Association's Educational Support Professional of the Year.  Also, congratulations to Sandi Whiton, the Academic Intervention Specialist at Chief Sealth High School who received an award from the private college, Whitman.  Her award is called the Distinguished Elementary/Secondary Teacher Award and is given at their commencement exercises to honor an outstanding teacher who contributes significantly to the intellectual development of students.  My puzzlement comes from two places.  One, Ms. Whiton is an academic intervention specialist and what does that mean?  This is something every middle and high school should have.   As I mentioned previously, at the Alliance Breakfast they showed a Denny Middle School video that mentioned an "early incident specialist" who works there.  So obviously these intervention employees exist at some schools but which ones ...

Do you know about City Year ?  I had vaguely heard of it and, of course, if you see a City Year member, you see a young person in a bright red varsity jacket and khakis.   They were particularly noticeable at the recent forum on SPS put on by Seattle Channel.  I recently sat down and interviewed the head of City Year Seattle, Simon Amiel, about who City Year is and what they do in SPS. After talking with Simon, I was very impressed and I want to raise awareness and support for City Year.  The reason I feel strongly about this is because in our high-need schools,  they are doing exactly what I would like to see happen throughout the district.  They are: in schools all day tutoring students building relationships with students and staff and community being role models to students This is the kind of intimate and direct intervention that many of these students need. First, from their website, a little background information: Twen...

I wrote an article for Crosscut (the on-line e-zine of the Northwest) about the upcoming Families and Education levy . I talked to both people on both sides of the issue, read all the supporting materials and did research on what the levy has done in the past. I wholeheartedly support this levy . It covers so much ground from pre-K thru high school. New to this levy are programs that the district has eliminated like college counseling and summer learning. In addition, it will have a program the district doesn't have but is working in other schools districts - direct interventions for struggling students. Unfortunately these programs will only be available at the high poverty middle and high schools but better it is there then not having it at all. Most of all this levy has oversight, accountability and transparency. For me, those are the ding-ding-ding "we have a winner" words for a levy. I want to know exactly where the money is going. I want to know that on...

Several of us have seen advance notice of what Central Administration cuts lead staff is going to present to the Board this afternoon/evening at the Board Work Session on the budget. What I saw almost borders on the ridiculous. There are, to the naked eye, almost no coaching cuts. There are also no senior level cuts (and that's where we would save money). It is also confusing what they suggested and what got saved. Example: 10 people work in Child Nutrition Services - no cuts. Enrollment/Planning has 6.5; they would cut 2.3. Example of total elimination of work: cut all from the following: International Education (.5), Mail Services (1), Native American Education (.07), Native American (1), Risk Management (.9). Example: Systemic Interventions - sounds like an important thing to fund - it would go from 7 people down to 2.5. But Visual/Perf Arts, at 8, would go down just one position. How are interventions less important than arts? Biggest hit? 36 of 90 positions in ...

This is critically important. This is the most important and most urgent crisis in Seattle Public Schools. This is also indicative of the deep flaws in the District. This conversation is from the School Board meeting of 11/3/2010. It occurred during the discussion of an introduction item, the update and revision of some enrollment policies. The conversation begins with Director Smith-Blum expressing her concern about the inadequacies of the interventions available in our middle and high schools for students working far below grade level. I would encourage you to watch the video of the conversation from the start, but I offer here a transcript of it starting at 54:40 of Part 3 of the meeting: Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Susan Enfield: Director Smith-Blum and I did have the opportunity to have a conversation about this and actually I think that many of the issues that Dr. Smith-Blum raises are legitimate, but I think that they’re really separate from this actual policy question t...

At the Board meeting of 11/3/2010 there was a discussion, prompted by Director Smith-Blum, that arose during the talk about fairly innocuous motion about cleaning up some obsolete enrollment policies. Her concern was that the District should do assessments of incoming students to determine their academic needs. The superintendent quickly jumped up to twist that by saying that it sounded to her like tracking and discrimination, but Director Smith-Blum made it clear that was not what she meant. Here's the critical part. Both the superintendent and Dr. Enfield spoke of assessing students' abilities and providing interventions where necessary as a core function of schools. But then Dr. Enfield said that the District's effort along those lines was Response to Intervention and that they were actively seeking outside funding to "take that to scale". Stop right there. This work is core to the district's mission, but we don't do it and we don't budget for i...