Seattle Schools Community Forum

District staff have put the the Action Report for Intro/Action at Wednesday's Board meeting for the "Approval of lease of space to Africatown Center for Education & Innovation." I have NEVER read such a disjointed and ridiculous Action Report  - with no less than six question marks.  There should never be question marks in an Action Report.   The staff either knows or doesn't know the information.  If they don't, then they have no business submitting such a report. I suspect the issue is that they cannot get clear answers from Africatown leadership and/or staff can't get information they have requested to be provided to them. There is a long and tortured history of what has been going on at the Mann Building (and I believe both sides would say it is not entirely accurate).    It is ridiculously long. Here's what I believe from this Action Report and its woefully state.  Staff is worried about blowback from having to ask police to help...

Based on statements made by Superintendent Banda and President Smith-Blum, I believe the district is doing its best to be diplomatic and pragmatic with the former tenants in the Horace Mann building. The Superintendent has said he wants to try to find solutions. President Smith-Blum says staff made it clear when leasing the building that it was for a limited time and has a "claw back" clause (as nearly every lease of a school building does because the district needs to have the use of the building in case of need or crisis). What is interesting is that it appears the actual lease holders (those who contracted with the district) HAVE moved out to other locations.  The other groups that remain (with subleases from the original lease holders) are the ones asking to stay. She says: "The Superintendent felt it was important to help the groups still in the building relocate as they are doing some good things with kids at risk. The task force has a fairly succinct chart...

The agenda was finally available when I checked this morning.  Given its brevity, I wonder why it took so long. An interesting thing about these Board committee meetings is how the agendas are written.  I find that C&I and Ex Ctm. have much more information generally than Ops and especially A&F. One intriguing topic for today: Resolution 2013/14-2 to Authorize the Direction of Selected Lease and Rental Earnings to the General Fund  Now I would guess in the past that those earnings went to capital needs (and rightly so) but are district needs the money.  It's for things like raises for upper staff, like paying $150k to be part of a "Human Capital: project, like having not one but two teaching training groups within SPS (TFA and Seattle Teacher Residency), etc. And, of course, we are allowing buildings to be sub-let and then taken over by groups so it is very difficult to figure out what is happening with any lease/rental earnings. Our district has...

 Executive Committee agenda for Wednesday.  Hey, all of you waiting for next year's school calendar - they will be discussing that.  (I note that other districts have theirs published already.) Audit& Finance agenda for Thursday.  I see there is a "resolution" about moving leases and rental revenue to the General Fund.  Well, okay but ONLY if it goes to building maintenance.  Those are really capital dollars and should go to capital needs.  But I'll bet they won't.  Work Session presentation on Boundaries. 

This week sees another School Board meeting on Wednesday at 6 p.m . (Before that, there is a work session on International Education. I'm thinking it didn't get covered enough at last week's work session. This one is from 4:15-5:30 p.m.) One interesting item is the approval of some work done at Ingraham for asbestos floor removal, communications, mats for the entries and more security cameras. This contract went 47% over its estimate with change orders of $240k. Okay so $160K of this was the district asking to do complete removal of all asbestos flooring. That is great and fine. But (1) how come more cameras at Ingraham? and (2) what was the other $80K for? I really dislike when a partial explanation is given when you read these things and you are left with, "okay, what else?" Doesn't the Board read this and wonder about this? I question this extra spending because hello? we have a HUGE backlog of maintenance issues and yet we don't consider tha...