Seattle Schools Community Forum

As the Board considers revisions to Policy C56.00, the program placement policy, they should think about what they want this policy to do. I will link to a copy of the draft proposal as soon as one is available.

The Board's Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee met on Monday, May 21. The meeting started just after the scheduled start time of 4:00. All three committee members, Marty McLaren (chair), Sharon Peaslee, and Harium Martin-Morris, were present. No other board members were in attendance. They quickly approved the agenda without amendments and then approved the minutes from the previous meeting, also without amendments.

As last year, this year the superintendent refused to follow the program placement policy and the board refused to enforce it. I've gotten the message that the Board will not make any effort to encourage the superintendent to reveal her procedure for making program placement decisions. In short, the superintendent doesn't care about policy and neither does the board. I guess there's always next year.

Yes. I'm going to harp on program placement again.

Seattle Public Schools is following an ass-backwards process in which they are starting with construction plans and will then follow with decisions about where to put programs. There are programs that need a home, such as north-end elementary APP, The NOVA Project, new language immersion programs and more. A rational process would start with the question "What students and programs do we need to house?" and then determine what they need to build and where they need to build it, the District has chosen to start by designing and locating buildings, opening buildings, expanding buildings, and closing buildings and then, later, they will try to assign programs to those buildings.

Mark your calendars, folks. You will not want to miss the April 26 meeting of the Curriculum and Instruction committee. And bring a snack because the agenda is going to be packed! According to the timetable for the policy review process, the C & I committee will consider Phase II revisions for five - count 'em, FIVE - different policies. And not quick, simple, non-contentious policies, but five potentially controversial ones. I'm not sure what else the committee hopes to do in that meeting, but the discussion of these five policies could take a long time.

Henry Ford famously claimed that people could get their Model T Ford in any color they wanted, so long as the color they wanted was black. Why black? It didn't reflect heat or light and therefore dried faster than other paint colors. That's how much he looked for ways to speed production; he wanted the paint color that took the least time to dry. Where will north-end APP end up? It can't stay in Lincoln forever - the District needs that building as an interim site for the World School, NOVA, Eckstein, and all of the north-end elementary schools that they want to expand. Where can it go? You can look around the north-end for available buildings or building sites. I can only think of three: John Marshall, Wilson-Pacific, and Cedar Park. After that, you could do some real outside the box thinking and imagine the District buying property like a failed motel on Aurora or the parking lot of the Calgary church. You could even think WAY outside the box and consider building a s...

Here is a link to the program placement decisions for 2012-2013 . All of the proposals from staff were accepted. All of the proposals from the public were rejected. In violation of the Program Placement policy there is no publicly available description of the process used to make these decisions. A number of other program placement proposals were made, but they are not discussed in this document.

The District's program placement practice used to be something of a mystery. A committee, the Program Placement Committee, used to meet, discuss the program placement proposals, and make recommendations to the superintendent. Then the superintendent would decide which proposals to accept, which to reject, and which to amend. We didn't know who was on the committee, when they met, or what they discussed. I once requested committee meeting minutes as a public document and they stopped keeping minutes after that. In short, the entire process was secretive, corrupt, and political. In 2007 the district wanted to split middle school APP. The decision, however, was a clear violation of the Highly Capable Student Program policy D12.00. The policy prohibits the creation of additional sites. The Board gave the policy an interpretation that was VERY sympathetic to the district administration and determined that the split could go forward after Board review. The Board delegated the Stude...

I see a lot of support among the District leadership for clear job descriptions and duties for everyone in the District - everyone, that is, except the District leadership. Each Board member will acknowledge that the Board has the duty to enforce policy yet no Board member will allow that duty to be explicitly stated in any document. It does not appear in the newly adopted Series 1000 Policies. It does not appear in the policy that describes the duties of the Board. It does not appear in the policy on governance. Now the Board is going to adopt two more elements of Board policy that should mention this duty yet fail to do so. The board policy preamble on the Board meeting agenda this week is an ideal place for it, but instead the preamble makes reference to it only vaguely and euphemistically as "governance tools". It says that policies can be used by the superintendent to hold staff accountable but it neglects to say that they can be used by the Board to hold the superinte...

I know that my zeal for the Program Placement policy, C56.00, exceeds that of just about anyone else. I suspect that my enthusiasm for it is a curiosity for a lot of folks. It seems like a small and ineffective policy. Even if the policy were followed, what difference would it make? The policy still leaves all of the authority with the superintendent, so what difference would transparency make? It think it makes a big difference. I think that the policy represents the change that we want to see in Seattle Public Schools. I think the continued violation of the policy reveals the failure of the superintendent and the Board to live up to the ideals they espouse.

Other Issues: Overcrowding at JSIS High School overcrowding Low enrollment at specific schools Your suggestions for other issues to be addressed

Despite media reports that make the New Student Assignment Plan sound like a completed project, it is, in fact, a work in progress. After adopting a framework and then a new policy, the District applies annual patches and technical revisions to the Plan at least annually. These annual "transition plan" adoptions make both small and large changes to the basic framework and implementation of the plan. Last year's transition plan , for example, dramatically altered the transportation standards, added APP IB at Ingraham, changed the rules for siblings, created attendance areas for Rainier View and Viewlands, adjusted the boundaries for southend high schools, and more. In addition, the annual Program Placement decisions are folded into this document in a way that precludes any discussion of Program Placement decisions. There will be an annual transition plan for the coming year as well. This plan will be adopted soon - probably by February - and will include a whole lot of...

The new Advanced Learning Task Force (or Steering Committee or Advisory Committee or whatever) has had its first meeting. It's kind of a mess.

The agendas for the Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday morning and the Audit& Finance Committee meeting (Audit) on Thursday afternoon have been posted. Executive Committee Agenda -  There is an item for Government Relations (no details), Community Engagement (no details, no surprise), and then Discussion. Under Discussion there is: Ethics Policy - I believe Mr. Barnett from the City may be giving this update. Update on Public Survey from Director DeBell (not sure what this is referencing) Board retreat follow-up Intermediate Capacity Management Plan - status and legislative calendar IT Strategic Plan Parents Bill of Rights  Program Placement Policy Board calendar/workplan Communications/community partnerships That's a lot to cover in two hours. Audit & Finance Committee (Audit) agenda - Audit response, Department of Internal Audit work plan,  Series 5000 Phase II policies.   There is one vague item - Special Attention Items (no de...

Looking ahead to the next couple months, there are few items of interest that will come due.

As readers may know, I have been contacting the Board about the district's violation of the program placement policy. The policy requires the superintendent to make an annual report to the Board on program placement decisions and requires the superintendent to make the program placement procedures available to the public. There was no report to the board that met the requirements of the policy and there are no procedures available to the public. I finally have my answer from the district. It acknowledges the violation of the policy, but makes no apology and expresses no intention to comply with the policy in future. In short: "Yeah, we violated the policy. So what? Stop bugging us about it." This is Susan Enfield's transparency. This is Sherry Carr's culture of compliance. This is Steve Sundquist's accountability. This is Peter Maier's community engagement.

I know that I harp on Program Placement a lot more than folks want to hear about it, but here I go again. The Program Placement Policy, C56.00 , isn't particularly enforceable. It does, however, have two elements that can be enforced. 1) It requires the superintendent to make an annual report to the Board of program placement decisions. The District claims that this is that report. However, this report does not meet the requirements of the policy - not by a long shot. The policy requires: On an annual basis, the Superintendent shall report program placement decisions to the School Board, including describing how the decisions work to achieve the above listed criteria. This report makes no reference whatsoever to how the decisions work to achieve the criteria that are supposed to guide program placement decisions. The report is inadequate. The superintendent is in violation of the policy and the Board has a responsibility to demand compliance. 2) The Policy also requires th...

As we all know, the District has intentionally made language immersion programs at attendance area schools. This works directly against the District's stated goal of equitable access to programs. It's just bad in every way. It's getting worse. When building the feeder pattern for language immersion programs, the District wants to have two elementary schools feeding into each middle school and, then, into one high school. If the second elementary school program were placed in a school in another middle school service area, but adjacent to the middle school service area of the language program middle school, then access to the program could be extended to students in another service area. For example, if the second school with language immersion in the north-end were at Green Lake, then students in the Eckstein service area (theoretically) would have access to a language immersion program as well as students in the Hamilton service area. The District, however, has rejec...

Apparently when no one was looking the District announced program placement decisions for the coming school year. The document is dated 3/17/2011, one day after the last Board meeting. Nice start on the transparency effort. Every single proposal that came from staff was approved. The staff must have all of the good ideas because all ten of the program placement proposals submitted by members of the public were rejected. Among them: Relocate elementary Spectrum for the Washington Service Area from John Muir to Madrona K‐8; could also provide additional Spectrum capacity for grades 6‐8. Rejected because an ALO is being added at Madrona, which will increase access to advanced learning programs rather than just shifting services from one school to another. This same proposal was rejected last year for a different rationale, that the program should be located close to the students' homes. So the rationale changes from year to year. Change Van Asselt from a K‐5 school to a K‐8 ...