Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Soup for Teachers' Facebook page: Seattle public schools just lost an appeal by a student who sued after he was injured in an incident where another student assaulted him at Aki Kurose. New trial ordered. The case is from an incident in 2006.  Wow. The crux of the matter seems to be an instruction to the jury:

I have received word that the WEA Board of Directors has decided to fight I-1240 in court. From their statement:  “Though our candidates won, we are disappointed that corporate interests with their $11 million were able to pass the charter school initiative. Looking forward, your board of directors has decided to fund a legal challenge against the new charters law and, as we did with McCleary, are seeking partners and developing an approach and timeline for this effort.  More details about this will come.”  Please note: the WEA has NOT filed anything but this was a statement made to their membership last month.  Naturally, these kinds of efforts take time and money and the WEA is making all due consideration about their next steps. The Washington Policy Center is itself already on the attack against this action.    From their statement;  The union faces a costly, uphill battle. A lot of information about successful charter schools in...

District watchdog Chris Jackins came forward at a recent Board meeting to say that he believed (and a lawyer looking at the RCW concurred) that the MOU between the district and the SEA is illegal.  He has found a number of appellants to sign onto a lawsuit to challenge the legality of the MOU.   But, that lawsuit needs money to start down this road.  If you find this MOU troubling and want to support this effort, contact Chris at 206-219-1687 or 206-521-3288.  Your donation will remain anonymous and any amount ($10, $20, $50, etc.) would be a big help.  Thanks in advance. 

This is a bit early but I happened to be at the district website and decided to check the agenda for this Wednesday's Board meeting. I'm a bit perplexed. One item is the district asking OSPI for a waiver for Cleveland High to be exempt from the 150-hour state requirement.  It is now an ALE (alternative learning experience) school versus a traditional school.  Under OSPI an ALE school does not meet the 150-hour requirement and so only gets 90% of funding that traditional schools receive.  The district wants Cleveland to get that extra 10% (about 300k) for this year.  What's perplexing is that they explain how they created Cleveland two years ago with a block schedule.  They knew the block schedule would mean less class time and yet they went ahead.  Now, they are unhappy they don't get full funding. OSPI recognizes that block schedules cannot meet the 150 hour/credit requirement, and therefore is willing to grant waivers for schools doing a block sch...

( Update: I had originally filed this thread with a timeline but it ended up seeming long so I went back and omitted it. It is in the appeal document.) I found the appeal document about the sexual harassment case that the district has now lost on appeal. I read through it and I think I understand why the district lost their appeal (it's a technical reading of the RCW). What I think is most important in the reading is tracking how this assistant principal, from about the moment she made her complaint, was bounced around the district. Glenda Williams' initial assertions were found valid by the District. They disciplined the principal and moved her and from there it must have seemed like a trip down the rabbit hole to her. That multiple principals and staffs felt compelled to think the worst about her (when they knew nothing about why she was transferred) is kind of sickening. She had good years at Ballard before the incidents began and managed to have 3 good years at R...

OMG. I will write a complete round-up of the upcoming Board meeting but I can tell you the Board will set the fastest record for taking a vote in the history of Board meetings. How do I know? Because they have to vote to spend (gulp!) $997,610.40 to satisfy a judgment (that lost in the jury trial and lost in appeals) to a plaintiff (one Glenda Williams) in a sexual harassment case. Now I'm sure the district has some kind of insurance but do I know if it covers all this judgment? Probably not as the district is on the hook for costs and lawyer fees (although the plaintiff has agreed if they pay by September 10, they will be a reduction in attorney fees). I'll have go down and read through the transcript on this one. I have to wonder why the district fought back on this one and didn't settle (maybe they tried but that will be hard to find out). But good to know we can loan out our legal counsel to teach business practice classes for the capital side when we have issues ...

Dan has been working hard snooping around in the RCW . It's pretty amazing what you can find in there if you look. Here's what he found: RCW 28A.320.015 School boards of directors — Powers — Notice of adoption of policy. (1) The board of directors of each school district may exercise the following: (a) The broad discretionary power to determine and adopt written policies not in conflict with other law that provide for the development and implementation of programs, activities, services, or practices that the board determines will: (i) Promote the education and daily physical activity of kindergarten through twelfth grade students in the public schools; or (ii) Promote the effective, efficient, or safe management and operation of the school district; (b) Such powers as are expressly authorized by law; and (c) Such powers as are necessarily or fairly implied in the powers expressly authorized by law. (2) Before adopting a policy under subsecti...

There was a story in the Times on February 13, 2010 about how the Court decision on Seattle School Board's selection of high school math textbooks is having an impact on similar decisions being made by other local school boards. It's pretty clear that most people are completely misunderstanding just about everything here. They are misunderstanding the roles of the School Board, the OSPI, the State Board of Education, the teachers, the District staffs, and, most of all, the Courts. No one seems to misunderstand things worse than the Times. The Times either misunderstood the two recent decisions or they are trying to intentionally muddy the water on them. I see the two decisions and I see that they both went against the Discovering Math series very hard. One said that Seattle's choice to adopt the books was arbitraty, the other said that the OSPI's decision to drop the books from the recommended list was well-considered. Two different Courts spoke against these books in ...

This story on The Weekly's blog and this story from the Queen Anne News are about the efforts by Beverly Raines to oppose her re-assignment from principal at Brighton to principal at Lawton. It's a weird story to begin with. The Superintendent moved Ms Raines from Brighton to Lawton one year before her planned retirement. So Lawton will have three different principals in three years. How is that good? Did Brighton need a new principal so urgently that it justifies putting Lawton through that sort of turnover? This was just one part of a wave of principal transfers, many of which appeared to create unnecessary instability. (See the blog post of May 17, Principal Moves ) Then it just gets weirder. Ms Raines doesn't want to leave Brighton and she is seeking a legal remedy to the transfer from the Courts. She, and a number of other District employees are suing, claiming discrimination based on race, age, and gender. Here is the part that is the weirdest for me: according to N...

The appeal of the School Board decision to close Cooper will be heard on Friday, June 12 at 10:30 in King County Superior Court. The plaintiffs are asking for a summary judgement against the District and they really should get it. For more detailed information, please see the West Seattle Blog complete with links to the Court filings. For some history, here are some related posts from our archive. Cooper fights on Bomb Recipe

According the the Seattle P-I (how we will miss their coverage of local education issues - much better and less biased than the Times) at least four groups claim to have filed appeals of the school closure decision with the King County Superior Court. According to the P-I article, the appeals are based on claims of discrimination. It's not possible to describe the grounds for the appeals without reading the appeals filed with the Court (not yet available online). That's a shame because I don't think that the discrimination claim has merit. We will follow the appeals with interest and keep you updated.

As if the district had nothing else to do (and newspapers don't have any other education issues to write about), here's a fight between a family and the district over an out-of-district enrollment. This involves one, Tony Wroten, a basketball player, who enrolled in Garfield last year as a freshman while it was at Lincoln. Garfield moved back to its new building and big surprise! was overenrolled. The district went through the list, found non-residents and Tony was one of them. His family was told he had to live in Seattle to stay. Here's where it got sticky. Tony's dad rented a house in the Central area where his mom lives (dad lives in Renton). But the district - wait for it - sent out an investigator who found that it did not appear that the house in the Central district was his primary residence and they recinded his enrollment. They were told there was room at other Seattle high schools including RBHS, Cleveland and Sealth. Naturally, a threat of a lawsuit has foll...