Seattle Schools Community Forum

Still waiting for information on the Math Summative Assessment .  The questions I posed on this mystery assessment were not that hard so I'm puzzled as to why it is taking so long to answer them. As you may recall, the Superintendent recently promoted/created positions within SPS.  I had wondered (as did a few of you) what the salaries for these positions are: Barbara Robbins, Director of Project Management, $136,612 Guillermo Echeverria, Director of Continuous Improvement, $133,325 Cari Campbell, Director School and Community Partnerships, (will not start this position until end of May), $112,154 Eric McCurdy, Executive Director Athletics, $139,628. I will gently say that I believe those to be fairly healthy salaries for public jobs. Also, there is a FAQ being worked up for the Math Adoption .  That's great but given that the vote is a week from today, a little tardy.  Hopefully, they will be available by Friday so that parents who want to go talk to Boar...

There are sometimes days doing this watchdog work that are defeating, sad and frustrating.  Today is one those.  I'll get to the issue at hand but a few thoughts first. I've said this before - I do truly believe we have some good and decent people working in SPS.  There are several up the food chain who are almost great but, like many a bureaucracy, have those whose work either drags them down or mires them in place. I've also said this before - anyone who works in leadership at SPS who does not read and heed the words in the Moss-Adams report of 2002 is doomed to failure.  Or, at least doomed to frustration. The echo in my head from that brilliant report (and I paraphrase here) -   It does not matter what structural or systemic change you bring to an institution, if the culture of bureaucracy at an institution does not change, nothing changes. This has been, and continues to be, the problem with our district. You really need someone at the top ...

The reality is that our country, our state, our city are in a recession that has gone on now for at least two years.  We are moving at a glacial pace out of it.  Our district tells us over and over there is not enough money for all we need to do to the point where we laid off teachers and counselors (and other district workers) and put off planned purchases.  Now, technically, the district has marginally more money than last year, not from the state, but from increased enrollment.  Any other time this might be major good news but just as money comes with those students, so do costs.  I come to an interesting article in the Saturday Seattle Times about schools districts and their budgets.  The State Legislature included a 1.9% pay cut for teachers in the state budget but the teacher contracts are all decided locally.  So that means, our district is, right now, negotiating with the SEA about those cuts.  Now, you may recall that we voted in a...

I got there about 5:10 p.m.  A lot of the Mayor's staff, district staff and a middle school rock band warming up.  For all those people, there was no one to officially greet you or tell you anything about the event.  (I get that they needed staff but seriously, it was a lot of people for a simple Q&A.)

Let's go back to those days of yesteryear when we were a district with little money.  The district had: "hiring freezes",   RIFed teachers, laid off central administration workers,  laid off elementary counselors  and the state cut teacher and principal pay Oh wait, that's today, right?  I think anyone looking at that list would say that the district is experiencing a severe money crunch. But as I've always said, this is a district that finds money when it wants to do something.   STEM?  No, don't go out and do the hard work of getting the program at least half-funded by private companies and entities (even though our area is rich with science/technology companies).  No, we just take money from other schools.  (Not saying they shouldn't have created the program but that they could have done it in a way that was more cost-efficient to the district like the STEM school over in the Tri-Cities.)  Consultants?  S...

Interesting reading over at Education Week. It seems that our Superintendent is not the only well-paid superintendent in the country. New Jersey's governor makes less than 75% of New Jersey's local superintendents. New York's governor makes less than the NYC superintendent (by almost half). What struck me is that both the superintendents of the LA Unified school district AND the superintendent of NYC make less than Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, by a lot (NYC, $250k/LA, $250K). Folks, we are an urban district but we are small and manageable district by comparison to Detroit, Chicago, LA or NYC. From the article: In some states, you could certainly argue that being a school superintendent is a more difficult job worthy of more compensation, though I don't think that is the case currently in California and New York, where both governors have found it next to impossible to govern much of anything lately. Also from the article: Intuitively, it seems completely out of...