Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Friday memo to the Board for May 6 includes answers to questions from the Board that could not be answered at the Curriculum and Instruction Management Oversight meeting. It makes for interesting (and odd) reading.

This week the School Board will conduct its required management oversight of Teaching and Learning. The agenda for the oversight meeting can be found here . In this session, the staff will share information with the Board about Curriculum Assessment & Instruction and Advanced Learning. Some of the information they are sharing does not ring true.

Board Policy 1010, Board Oversight of Management , requires the School Board to conduct oversight work sessions. Among these, they are required to review Highly Capable Services at least once every three years. The last time they did an oversight meeting for advanced learning was about three years ago, on April 24, 2013, so it is time for another. The oversight meeting was scheduled for yesterday but it was deferred. That's fine. The District has cultivated a high degree of skepticism around these programs and has consistently failed to meet commitments made to this community. The common belief is that HCC has been diffused, that Spectrum has been dismantled, and that ALOs never really existed in the first place. The District has not been able to effectively disprove those beliefs and has, in fact, confirmed them to a disturbing degree. Here are some questions that the Board can ask when they finally get the opportunity. You may want to suggest some questions as well.

The core mission of Seattle Public Schools is to educate students. The executives and managers in the District who are most directly responsible for the accomplishment of that mission are: Superintendent, Jose Banda Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Michael Tolley Executive Director of Curriculum and Instructional Support, Shauna Heath Executive Directors of Schools, Marni Campbell, Carmela Dellino, Kim Whitworth Principals I don't know about your workplace, but any organization with any kind of intentional management makes a periodic assessment of the effectiveness of the organization's efforts. The same can and should be expected from Seattle Public Schools.

This afternoon we will finally get a management oversight work session for teaching and learning, you know, the school district's core mission. Here is the presentation that will be made to the Board. Here are some questions that the presentations makes me want to ask:

Tomorrow evening the School Board will conduct an oversight work session to review the operation of the District's Teaching and Learning. Finally. This will be the Board's first review of Teaching and Learning EVER.

On the Board schedule for this week is a work session specifically for management oversight of the Human Resources department. As folks will recall, the June 2009 state audit revealed that the previous board completely abdicated their duty to oversee the management of the District. While I want to believe that they took this criticism seriously, the fact is that it was nearly two years before they took any action to address the failure. They didn't get around to their first management oversight work until the Spring of 2011. The first department they reviewed was Human Resources. Soon after, the "Chief Talent Officer" hired by Dr. Goodloe-Johnson out of Arne Duncan's camp, was fired. I guess that's what comes from oversight. Since then, the Board has codified their (intended) practice into the new Policy 1010, Board Oversight of Management  adopted this past summer. There is supposed to be a calendar of these management oversight work sessions. They were suppo...