Seattle Schools Community Forum

Another week, another Friday Memo . Read this to the end for the best part.

Update: Former state legislator, Larry Seaquist, has dropped out of the race for state superintendent.   He has decided to try to shore up Dems in the state House. 

School Board Director Sue Peters has proposed changes to the policies that govern program placement. The staff have responded with their suggestions for updating the policies. Both versions will be discussed today in a work session. You can read them here .

I'm trying to figure out what's going on with program placement, and I have to admit that I'm not confident in my understanding of the current status. Here's what I can determine:

I had planned to go to the Work Session today.  As you may recall, it was to include Advanced Learning but that got pulled.  The line-up of topics includes the Families & Education Levy which is the their first topic.  Their presentation's page 8 is an interesting pie chart showing the different areas of education they fund and how much.  Early Learning and School Readiness  $7.7M  27% Elementary Academic Achievement  $6.4M  22% Middle School Academic Achievement  $5.9M  21% High School Academic Achievement  $2.6M  9% Student Health  $6.3M  22% I'd have to ask about the Early Learning and School Readiness portion and how much includes pre-K.  Early Learning is generally defined at pre-K to 2nd or 3rd.  I raise the issue because the City now has its own Pre-K levy so it would be good to know how that spending breaks out because of the new levy. This is certainly important: Last summ...

The Board has been blindsided by a few program placement shenanigans (Middle College, EEU, Interagency, etc.) and got the idea of pulling back program placement authority from the Superintendent. That would be a shame because in the District's governance model, with its management/policy dichotomy, program placement is solidly on the management side and belongs among the Superintendent's tasks, not the Board's. That said, this same governance model expects the Superintendent to follow the Board's policy and, when it comes the program placement, Dr. Nyland has been an extremely naughty fellow with policy violations all across the horizon. So this becomes just another episode highlighting the district's fundamental governance flaw: the Board's only way to discipline the Superintendent is to fire him. No one is happy about how he has handled Program Placement, but no one is unhappy enough to fire him over it. What to do?

Friday memos to the Board are always interesting. Here you will find all sorts of interesting stuff. From March 4, 2016, Teaching and Learning Update : " District achievement testing in reading and math (MAP or SBA) is required to determine Advanced Learning eligibility. Candidates are required to participate in district achievement testing. Opting out of testing is a decision to opt out of the Advanced Learning eligibility testing process. " So there we have it: Students who are opted out of SBAC are ineligible for Advanced Learning.

The Board has long delegated authority for program placement decisions to the Superintendent. Policy F21.00 made that explicit and Policy 2200 reinforced it. All the Board required was a coherent process, community engagement, and a report. Since the Superintendent has never provided a coherent process, community engagement, or a report, the Board is now preparing to take back the authority. The Board is preparing to amend the policies to require all program placement decisions to have Board approval. See the documents starting on page 58 of the packet for the upcoming Executive Committee meeting . There can be no doubt that this is a direct response to recent decisions (EEU, Middle College, InterAgency at Queen Anne) and the historic failure/refusal to conduct community engagement, provide any coherent rationale for decisions, or make sound decisions. Is this what accountability looks like?

Great story at KUOW about Highland Park and their "yoga breaths and mustang money."   Kudos to Principal Chris Cronas and his staff for their work.  "Do you know what grit is?" Cronas asks the students. "It's when you work really, really hard on something and you never give up on it." Next, the deep breathing. Cronas squeezes a rainbow-colored ball as he speaks quietly. “Let’s all practice our breathing with the ball and my voice. Ready? Go. In. Hold … one, two, three, four, five, six.” "This is not rocket science. This is Education 101. Kids need to feel safe. They need to feel respected," Cronas said. “They need to know that the people at their school love them and will give them the structure they need to succeed." For the School Board meeting tonight, the public testimony list is nearly full.  Most of them, including me, will be speaking to the Seattle Preschool Program Service Agreement.  Others are speaking on disci...

It's January again and therefore time for another annual report on Equitable Access . This report is required by Board Policy 2200 which delegates authority for program placement to the Superintendent, but sets the criteria for program placement and requires an annual report to allow the Board the opportunity to confirm that the Superintendent's program placement decisions are aligned with those criteria. The Superintendent submits quarterly reports throughout the year and an annual report in January. The reports are delivered in Friday Memos to the Board. Every quarterly report and every annual report is deficient in some important way. This year is no exception.

I wanted to also update you on all the items discussed at the Curriculum&Instruction Committee meeting on Monday.  The agenda was jam-packed and Director McLaren did an admirable job keeping it moving.  Sadly, though, it meant truncated discussions.  (Note; this will not be inclusive of all items on the agenda.) Director Blanford, who is Chair of the committee, was absent so Director McLaren filled in with Director Peters also there as the third member of the committee.  I also noted that Rick Burke, Jill Geary and Leslie Harris, newly elected members of the Board, were also in attendance.

I attended the Operations/BTA IV community meeting at Roosevelt this week.  It was disappointing on several fronts. Attending staff included Charles Wright, Flip Herndon, Tom Redman, Joe Wolf, Richard Best, and Carmen Rahm (and a budget staffer whose name I didn't hear and can't find at the district website). There was a dizzying array of handouts.  I don't know if staff has something against trees or cannot devise a couple of handouts to cover the issues but this was overload.

The Board Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee met yesterday (Monday, April 7). The agenda included an update on Creative Approach Schools, information on the application for a SIG grant by Rainier Beach High School, an update on Special Education program placement, and an update and further discussion on potential changes to the High School Graduation Requirements and High School Grade Marking.

The School Board should reject the Annual Report on Equitable Access toPrograms and Services because it fails to fulfill the requirements of the policy. Instead of holding the required information, the report contains a lot of general information that should not appear. Either the superintendent is confused or he is attempting to confuse others. Neither situation is acceptable. Per the policy, the report is required to contain detailed information about how each program placement decision relates to the eight decision-making criteria. These details are almost completely absent from the report. Moreover, a number of program placement decisions are not even mentioned in the report. Instead, the report contains comments about a number of changes and decisions which are not, in fact, program placement decisions at all. The report is almost completely without any detailed information and it is almost completely without any mention of any stakeholder engagement. The superintendent procedur...

Tuesday, Feb 4th Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council Meeting starting at 6:30 p.m., JSCEE, room 2700 Wednesday, Feb. 5th Parade for the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks 11 am (I put this in because if you are going to the district headquarters that morning, you might be aware of this because of the traffic.  The parade is to end at Century Link Field which is only about a mile north of JSCEE.) School Board Meeting , starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda .  There are some major issues in this agenda and many of them have to do with what really irritates me - when staff leaves out information the Board should have (both informational and in order to take a vote).  I'm going to go over the Agenda at the bottom of the page for those who are interested (allowing anyone else to see the rest of this thread more easily.) Saturday, Feb. 8th Community Meeting with Director Carr at 8:30 am to 10:00 am at Bethany Community Church (enter off playground) SPS News ...

I picked up a draft copy of the annual program placement report at Monday's C & I meeting. It was written by Misa Garmoe, the recently hired Executive Director of School Operations. She has been on the job for about three months. This is a new job which is different from the Assistant Superintendent for Operations. The copy I saw was clearly labelled as a draft and the final report won't be released until January 31, so I won't comment on it in detail yet. That said, I think the report is seriously flawed and I have sent Ms Garmoe my suggestions for changes. I don't really expect her to make the kinds of changes that I suggest, but I did offer them nonetheless. The draft I saw included a lot of information about changes to curricular foci rather than programs. None of those should have been included. In addition, the information provided about changes to programs did not include the sort of details required by the policy. As I often say, the fact that all of m...

Update:  I just went in to correct the link to the new document (see paragraph below) and found that the Board Agenda looks like a crazy quilt.   I'm not sure what I have seen or not seen.  I would say - with no hesitation - that at the end of the voting on the Growth Plan and the Intermediate Capacity Management Plan that will not be one single person in the room who could really tell you what will happen.  I'm sure that there are staff and parents who know certain parts well but the whole thing?  It will unfold as it will.  The district has just unleashed (and yes, that's the word I'm using) a new document    for pathways for the North/NE. I'm trying desperately to keep up so did I miss this?  Two days before the Growth Boundaries and Intermediate Capacity Plan is NOT the time to hand this out.  Who can really digest what this means? They say this on the last page about "program placement": Board Policy F21.00 deleg...

This is going to be yet another rant of mine about program placement. I know that I go on about this, but it continues to be a sore point for me. I imagine that some folks must be really tired of reading about this topic, so I will put everything after the jump.

If you had an idea and community support for a new school program, what would you do?

Today is July 31st, the due date for the quarterly program placement report. I was recently reminded of an email I sent to the Board at the end of January in which I asked about the status of the program placement process and the equitable access framework - both of which were overdue then. I was reminded of that email because I just saw it among the documents sent to Linda Shaw of the Seattle Times as part of a public disclosure request about all email traffic between Director Smith-Blum and Mr. Banda in January. Director Smith-Blum forwarded my email to Mr. Banda and asked him: " Just fyi below, and it is accurate - would love to have an update on the EAF - program placement - so we can start to get on top of the process and comply with the policy. Is it possible for Aleta to set a date for us and whoever else might be appropriate in the conversation so I can determine where on the Board calendar we might need an entry point in the plan as well? " Here we are, six m...