Seattle Schools Community Forum

Not sure if everyone saw this - it's a report commissioned by the Mayor and created by Peter Steinbrueck about neighborhoods in Seattle.  It's interesting reading.  There are mentions of school issues on page 10, page 32, page 100, page 101 (where they speak of the WASL) as well as maps of the district. Yes, it's true - the wonderful murals at Wilson-Pacific have been cleaned and, to my eye, keep their wonderful vibrancy.  I'm still wondering what the plan is to preserve them when W-P is rebuilt. What's on your mind?

In horrible news, the Times is reporting that the Native American depicted and created mural at the Wilson-Pacific building were vandalized over the weekend.  According to the artist, Andrew Morrison, he knows who did it because "he was stupid enough to sign his name." The words DAPKILO were painted over, said Morrison, who sent me the photo you see above. DAP is the name of a crew of graffiti artists. It stands for Down Around Pike, said Morrison, and KILO is the name of one of their artists. It remains to be seen how this can be mitigated but these were not the actions of "graffiti artists" but of vandals. Andrew Morrison

I understand that the Superintendent is scheduled to have a long meeting today with Native American parents and leaders.  I'm sure it will be a compelling discussion and I hope he listens. Like all of U.S. history with Native Americans, the Seattle Schools' history doesn't have a whole lot to hold its head up about.  I'm not even part of that community, nor was it on my radar for many years but even I know that things have not been handled well. I can't give you the whole history of the Wilson-Pacific building and the Native American program.  But the program always did the best it could with a lousy building and underfunding.  Now that the building IS getting a rebuild, is it for the Native American program?  No.  Was there even discussion of keeping the program there?  If there was, it was on the down low.  And, they had to beg to save the beautiful and moving murals painted on the side of the building.  This was not graffiti - these ...

Another film-making competition that high school students can enter from the NW High School Film Festival.  They also have a scholarship competition as well. Looks like the district may not be able to save the Native American murals at Wilson-Pacific after all.  The artist feels he's getting the runaround from the district and has declined permission to digital reproduce them. From the Times: He repeatedly congratulated the district for the passage of the levy, which he opposed. But Morrison said he’s lost trust in the district, in part because no school official approached him about saving the murals until he started showing up at public meetings about the levy. He also said he’s talked wit h four different officials, and has no confidence they won’t simply continue to pass him along. “For many reasons,” he said, “it’s in my best interests to step away.” (P.S.  This may be one of the last Times' articles I will be able to link to for the blog.  I...