Seattle Schools Community Forum

To note about tomorrow, Monday, March 30th, it appears there may be a large number of teachers who may go to Olympia to lobby against SB 5748.   This is the bill that would likely get Washington State back its NCLB waiver and give those districts control of some Title One dollars.  It would also start us down the road of including high-stakes testing in teacher evaluation. So if your school sees a couple of subs coming in tomorrow, that's probably why. 

KUOW's Phyllis Fletcher has created a series running this week called Paramount Duty:K-12 Education and the Recession.   From the KUOW website: In "Paramount Duty," I report on how the recession has affected children, parents, teachers and school districts. I produced this series with assistance from Mike Babb and Anita Rocha from the UW Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology; Shannon Harper of the West Coast Poverty Center; Doug Haddix of Investigative Reporters and Editors; and NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.  The stories will air on Monday on Weekday at 9 am and on Tuesday-Friday on Morning Edition (5am-9am).  Topics: Monday - Auburn School helps Kids Eat on the Weekend Tuesday - Homeless in Mount Vernon Thursday - Staying After School (teachers helping kids catch up) Friday  - The Ask (districts lobbying for support in Olympia) It sounds interesting and I'll be most interested in Friday's report because I'll like to hear what legislators s...

Part two of KUOW's series on the Pottergate backstory aired this morning.  Again, just riveting.   And again, you can read the transcript but the audio is better. More backstory in case you missed it is that one of the central early warnings was not just the Sutor Report but that the Daily Journal of Commerce, two years ago, was courted by the district itself to do a story on the Small Business Works.  In doing work for the story, the reporter had found out about the Sutor Report.  That, of course, changed the story. In the story, Lee Newgent, the Executive Secretary of the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council, raised several issues among them: "Giving out work to construction firms that didn't have construction licenses, wage violations, not doing any criminal background checks [or] fingerprinting of their employees while working with children."   He also stated that somewhere down the line " there are going to be criminal indic...