Seattle Schools Community Forum

This looks to be a busy week for K-12 Education at the Legislature.  It looks like Reuven Carlyle's bill, HB 1593 , to provide a 3-year alternative waiver for people who want to be principals.  Basically, this is TFA for principals.  The candidates have to be able to present their qualifications (but they do not have to have them from working in a school setting) and be working towards a principal certification.   (i) Strategic planning; 26 (ii) Supervision and evaluation of personnel; 27 (iii) Budgeting and allocation of resources; and 28 (iv) Employee professional development. 29 (b) The standards must also include a consistent record of 30 satisfactory performance in previous employment. Just like TFA, it will expand the pool but you can be someone who just needs a job for a couple of years (with no intention of staying in education).

As I reported before, tomorrow is the day when the district has their " Construction Management Exit Conference " with the State Auditor's office. This is an audit of the capital building program known as BEX (Building Excellence). I believe it covers the last 3-5 years. I've said repeatedly that this is important because: this audit has taken the Auditor's office two years to get through (not normal at all) that on the first reading of the audit more than a year ago, members of the BEX Oversight Committee starting talking about how to cover themselves and because Garfield went nearly double over its original construction budget (the early published number was $60M) and it costed out at about $120M. That is not a sign of a well-managed project or program. we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when we have a huge backlog of capital work I want to be clear that we have gotten a lot of building done under the BEX program. But, like ma...

Flying under the radar, we finally have a 3-year principals contract that has been approved by PASS, the principals' representative group. It needs to be approved by the Board at Wednesday's School Board meeting. I attended a meeting where Director Sundquist and Howard Pripas, the Director of Labor and Employee Relations went over the principals contract. It is quite an interesting contract. Here's some highlights: Steve says the key change is the principal evaluation process which is being worked on and is due to be done by April 1 by the Principal Performance Evaluation Task Force. The evaluation would include student and school growth. To get the increase in pay, this evaluation system has to be completed by April 1, 2011. This contract takes principals from a 3-step salary range to their salary (beyond base pay) being determined through the annual opportunity to earn both a Performance Increment and a Student Achievement Bonus. The district had done assessm...

From the district website: Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D. and Patricia Hunter, President of the Principals Association of Seattle Schools (PASS) today announced they have reached a tentative agreement on a three-year collective bargaining contract. For the first time in Seattle, principals’ compensation will be tied to student achievement and performance. Approved today by the members of PASS, the three-year contract will cover the current 2010-11 school year through 2012-13. The contract will be introduced to the Seattle School Board at its January 19 legislative meeting and is scheduled for a vote at the Feb. 2 meeting. Additionally, A new evaluation system will be developed by a joint PASS and Seattle Public Schools taskforce by April 1, 2011 and will tie principal performance to student achievement. The new evaluation system will be in place beginning in the 2011-2012 school year. The adjustments in compensation also recognize the...

Turns out my spidey sense was correct; the Executive Session on Wednesday/Thursday is about the long-awaited principal contract. It will be interesting to see what it looks like in its final form. Also, just as a reminder, there is a new head of labor relations for SPS, Howard Pripas who came to us from the UC system. As well, the Board did make a decision on their new policy/governance person but I will wait for their formal announcement. I would like to ask the Board how this person will work as she/he reports to district staff but works for the Board. How will the Board take this person's research/advice in context to what they hear from parents/community.

Sorry this took so long. As I stated previously, I did not stay for the budget portion of the Work Session so this is only about the Strategic Plan. Here is a link to the presentation . Betty Patu was not there and so they recorded the meeting (both audio and video) so it should be available somewhere. Michael DeBell stated that this was to listen to the information but not to set any priorities. What ended up happening was that there were 88 slides to cover and yet for some reason they let the Family Engagement section go on for about 35 minutes. It was interesting info from each of the schools with a FEAT team (Family Engagement Action Team) but I didn't feel it was the right time to present it. So by the time Dr. Goodloe-Johnson got started, she really whipped through the slides. (I've stated in the past that I think the staff presentations are too long and I still believe that is true.) I stepped out as they went into 2010-2011 Governance Priorities starting on slide ...

It was written in the presentation, although not verbally noted, at the Strategic Plan Work Session, that the principals' contract was not completed. It seems that our friends at the Alliance and their Our Schools coalition has been interacting in this process (to what degree is unclear but I think they are in the loop). Apparently the district is near to closing the deal with principals (it sounds like they've resolved school issue details but now they are talking about salaries). It will be interesting to see the principals' contract versus the teachers' contract.