Seattle Schools Community Forum

To note for tonight's Board meeting agenda ; the Jane Addams Middle School BEX IV construction item has been moved to the May 7th Board meeting by the Superintendent.  No explanation given.  The Superintendent has also asked to remove the Reduction in Force (RIF) item from the agenda.   I confirmed that this is because there will be no RIFs sent out.  As well, the bill to fix facade restoration at Franklin is - gulp - nearly $1M (coming from BEX III and good thing the money is there).  (When part of the facade fell, it was great luck no one was standing underneath it.)  Along with the backflow item at Jane Addams that had to be replaced recently (and I'm not sure how much that cost), we see that our buildings have a near-constant need for maintenance and emergencies fixes.  This is why the maintenance budget needs to be upped or we will likely pay more in the long term.  There are only five people signed up to speak so if you wanted to speak...

Just added to the School Board meeting agenda today is an Introduction item to allow for "Authorization for a Reduction in Force" by Human Resources.   From the item (red mine): The District is projecting some budget and program changes for the 2013-2014 school year that will not allow it to maintain its current level of programs and services. In order to maintain expenditures within a level of anticipated revenues, i t is necessary for the District to make changes to programs and services and possibly complete a reduction in force of certificated staff. Therefore, it is necessary to give timely notice to people in certificated and classified positions that those positions are being eliminated. For certificated staff, these notices need to be delivered on or before May 15, 2013.  There is no indication of what programs or services they are talking about or the number of cuts. It states that this Action Report will be reviewed by the Audit and Finance Committee on...

I may have missed something so please help me out if you know the answer to this confusion. I was just putting in a public disclosure request for RIFs - the categories, schools and subjects (if secondary schools).  I wanted to give the request some context so I looked for the district's own numbers. Here's my confusion.  First, there is one presentation from a work session on April 27th .   Then, there is one staff presentation from May 4th and one to the Board on May 5th .  The one on May 4th matches the April 27th Work Session presentation. But they don't match in numbers or categories with the May 5th one. April 27th/May 4th both say they will RIF 30 certificated individuals (27.5 FTE).    It also says they will RIF 49 Classified staff (42.05 FTE - 13 SAEOP FTE and 36 paraprofessionals).   So if you wanted to add them all up, you get 79 people RIFed from throughout the district.   But the May 5th one says 36 peo...