Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Board Audit and Finance Committee agenda for yesterday included a proposed change to Policy 6010, School Funding Model, which, if adopted, will prevent mid-year classroom shuffling and staff reassignment caused by enrollment overestimation. Director Peters is introducing this motion and she has a lot of stuff to back it up. Including a number of letters of protest to Superintendent Nyland about staff reductions this year. It's good that Director Peters included them because, as we now know, the Superintendent doesn't make it a practice to read letters. Director Peters shows that the staff reductions make little sense - staff is reduced at schools due to under-enrollment while the school has a wait list for enrollment, the costs of the staff reduction wipes out most of the savings, and the staff reductions are incredibly disruptive to students and their education. We'll see how it goes.

To note about tomorrow, Monday, March 30th, it appears there may be a large number of teachers who may go to Olympia to lobby against SB 5748.   This is the bill that would likely get Washington State back its NCLB waiver and give those districts control of some Title One dollars.  It would also start us down the road of including high-stakes testing in teacher evaluation. So if your school sees a couple of subs coming in tomorrow, that's probably why. 

A couple of things that may extend beyond one school - if you know this is happening at your school, could you please let us know. Update: on the SAT testing story, at the end of the thread is a letter from Roosevelt principal, Brian Vance. Key passage: In the following weeks we received no indication that there would be a consequence for our timing error and even after speaking with College Board and Educational Testing Services after the exam, we received no information that would lead us to believe they would invalidate the test scores. The first indication that there was an issue came last week, when students were not able to access their scores. In the end, the College Board invalidated our students' scores.  It sounds like RHS was trying to figure it out but the College Board took their sweet time in making a decision.  Not good. end of update  First, I received this e-mail from a reader about recent SAT testing at Roosevelt on Feb. 25th: Evide...

--> Dear SEA members, Congratulations! By acting collectively on behalf of students and schools, and by shining a light on SPS budget practices that have routinely overestimated expenses, we have succeeded in getting the District to reverse the $4 million in school budget cuts! By Monday night, 40 schools had voted no on their school budgets, with dozens more set to follow suit this week.   Hundreds of members were making plans to come to the school board meeting tomorrow night.   Now that will not be necessary; the school board action is cancelled. This unprecedented action by SEA members helped District leaders understand the devastating impact the cuts would have, and focused them on SEA’s budget analysis, which showed a pattern of overestimating expenses which has resulted in substantial end of year savings for the last 4 years. We also commend the many principals, executive directors and central office administrators who worked diligently to un...

A reader, Budget Reader, asked some questions about the seemingly low budgeting for APP@Lowell/Lincoln (which to most people's minds are two schools but not to the district).  BR followed through and asked the district's Joe Paperman.  I thought it worth having its own thread for institutional memory and because several parents have asked the same questions. This is NOT a thread to start in on APP (so please don't). A thank you to both BR and Joe Paperman for doing this work. From BR: As a follow-up to my earlier post about the budget document and APP @ Lincoln, I sent my questions to Joe Paperman, who is in charge of budgeting for the District. He was kind enough to send a detailed response:

Folks who watch school board meetings have probably heard students from The NOVA Project speak to the board about how their school is funded. You may wonder what the heck they are talking about. They are NOT talking about the 15% reduction in funding that the state grants to Alternative Learning Experience schools. This has nothing to do with decisions made at the state level. Instead, they are talking about how the District unfairly under-funds NOVA, along with The Center School and South Lake High School. The story is not hard to understand, but it it is tricky because it doesn't make any sense at all. Nearly every school in the district is funded through the Weighted Staffing Standards. There are, however, a few schools which are not. It might make sense to fund and staff schools like the Homeschool Resource Center, Interagency, and Middle College differently from the way that other schools are funded. They are not organized or structured like other schools. But if you were to...

From Dr. Enfield: Due to ongoing budget limitations, the School Board on May 2 authorized a very limited Reduction in Force this year. Given our growing enrollment and our priority to protect funding that directly affects our classrooms, we have worked hard to ensure we maintain and retain the backbone of our District – our employees. Unfortunately it is necessary for us to reduce our staffing in a few areas by up to 45 positions, including 17 Classified and 28 Certificated staff, primarily in the areas of counseling, Physical Education, Music, Career Technical Education and English Language Learners. Affected staff members in these positions were notified during the past several days about this RIF.  In total, we also eliminated 11 Central Office positions. Although this is a limited Reduction in Force compared to previous years, it is not easy and has a tremendous impact on those employees who will lose their position.  I want to thank those staff m...

So this thread is a bit of mind-wandering on my part but maybe you can tease out something to comment on.  It came from a couple of places.  One was this that a friend wrote on his Facebook page: "Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither."

I've been looking at the budget numbers from the District and they just don't look right. I'm not saying that they are definitely wrong, but I have some questions. For example... Each school I have checked so far has a lower expected enrollment than the current enrollment, but the District, as a whole, has a higher expected enrollment than the current enrollment. How does that work? It appears as if the District is intentionally under-funding schools. At the PTA meeting this week Director Sundquist said that over-funding a school was the worst sort of disaster. I guess he hasn't been in an under-funded school; that's no picnic either. It also puts the District in the worst possible situation for hiring if we're trying to bring on staff after October 1. There may not be anyone left but Teach for America corps members. (By the way, how are we going to hire any new teachers while we're laying off teachers who are already on the payroll?) Also: if the Dist...

I am going to attend the Seattle Council PTSA meeting tonight that features Dr. Enfield and our new CFO, Robert Boesche.   They will be answering school budgeting questions.  I want to say something to Mr. Boesche but I don't have a burning budgeting question. Throw out some to me and I'll try to ask as many as I can tonight.

Here is a link to the page with the school budgets. It also has a link to the Weighted Staffing Standards Model .

I had hoped to just put forth some ideas of what you might possibly advocate for the 2011-2012 budget. But there's a lot of pre-information that I think is important to put out there (dates, overview, etc.) so this first part is that information. The budget shortfall (gap) is $36.6M. Staff is recommending increasing the non-grant Strategic Plan spending by $321,476 but say that the impact to the gap is a decrease of $254,546 "due to things already assumed in the gap e.g. Special Ed. This is one statement that I have a hard time believing and even if it is so, that leaves $67k to increase the gap. The gap should not be increased at all for any reason . If we have no money, there is no money to expand. Timeline: It looks from the district's own timeline document that they are somewhat behind in the process. The Central Budget submittals were due between 1/18-1/28. I believe Don Kennedy, COO, said that staff was working over the weekend to have the final submittals to ...

Dorothy and I attended the Board Work Session on the budget yesterday afternoon/evening. It was not a pretty meeting and not just because of the subject matter (which is grim). Here's a summary first and then some general items of interest in a separate thread (it's way too much to write every question and answer but ask me questions and I'll see if that got covered). Dorothy, you chime in if I heard it wrong or leave something out. The meeting was videotaped so it should be available at some point for viewing. I also can't find the Powerpoint yet so that is to come. UPDATE: here's the link . Summary The budget gap is $36.6 million . Here is the explanation Don Kennedy gave in a staff memo: Our current budget gap, based on the governor’s proposed budget, for next year is $36.6 million. While the impact of her budget to Seattle Public Schools was not as negative as we projected, we nevertheless have a significant budget problem. In addition to the $36.6...

Apparently the staff is integrating budget and capacity management. (Which is fine.) However, they didn't make that clear to the Board at yesterday's Work Session and I wanted to let anyone know who was planning to come to today's Work Session. It will NOT be just about capacity management but will include the budget. I attended the Board Executive Committee meeting this morning and a couple of the Board members let it be known that they had not expected this to happen without some notice. From the Board webpage: Note to Public: The board and district leadership are taking an Integrated Planning approach to the 2011-12 student assignment plan transition, long-range capacity management, program placement for 2011-12, and budget development for 2011-12. Upcoming work sessions and workshops may focus on one or two areas per workshop but may have information on all topics. This calendar will be updated as the work moves forward. Those work sessions are: Tuesday, Novemb...

Good editoria l on funding education from the Seattle Times. They pointed out what I said right after the election. The good: But the message statewide remains a clarion call for robust, consistent education funding by the state Legislature. It says so in the state constitution and voters do not want to be given that task. Legislators will need a strategic plan around prioritizing and paying for education. RTTT (not so good): Tight state budgets should make federal funding more appealing. The money comes attached to a workable reform agenda that includes many things this state wants to do anyway — for example, raising the level of academic rigor and emphasizing college readiness. Yes but that money is not going to help the day-to-day operations of the district nor is it sustainable. (Also, by the time the next round comes along, I have a hard time believing charters will be voted in and that seems to be the lodestone of RTTT.) Seattle passed their levy. Great but... R-52 ...

Did anyone attend DeBell's or Sundquist's community meeting yesterday? I attended Harium's. I was quite surprised that it turned out to be just 3 parents. One was an Eastlake parent and one was a Hale parent. I would have thought from posts here that more parents had issues and questions especially about the NSAP. I first brought Harium up-to-date on the issue of me being able to ask questions at the press conference. (I had received an odd e-mail from Communications that was written for the press.) I asked Harium if the Board had a policy on media access. He said no and he didn't think they needed one but the district should have a procedure. I agreed. It seems apparent that the district has no policy and was flying by the seat of their pants with me and just made it up as they went along. I don't want to drag this out but I do want to make clear: The press conference started late even though all the speakers were there. I was told, five minutes befor...

Seattle Public Schools has scheduled two community meetings to provide information about how schools are funded and strategies to close the funding gap for the 2010-11 school year. The district will also seek feedback on plans to address the shortfall. In addition, families are invited to share their ideas on what SPS programs and services are most important for them to have protected as the district begins to address a projected $26 million budget gap for the 2011-12 school year. Interpreters will be available at both community meetings, which will include a question-and-answer session. The meetings will be Saturday, April 17, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Aki Kurose Middle School, 3928 Graham St., and Tuesday, April 20, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Roosevelt High School, 1410 N.E. 66th St.

Here's a new spreadsheet from Meg Diaz with the WSS data for almost every school in the district for 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11. We can each draw our own conclusions. Meg notes that one of biggest hindrances for reviewing the district's data is that anyone wanting to analyze it has to first be willing to sit down and do tedious line by line data entry. It's incredibly tedious, and is a considerable barrier. I have done some of it myself and I know exactly what she's talking about. Meg wanted to know what the community makes of this data.

( Update : The Times weighed in and with a lot of skepticism over this idea. To whit: District leaders must develop a better ear for what works and is acceptable to city families. Floating a ridiculous idea only to pull it back amid an uproar weakens the district's already fragile bond with families. Parents cannot help but wonder what other ideas at central administration are awaiting their ride up the flagpole. Yes indeed, what next?) Thanks to a parent and activist, Kellie LaRue, for this update: the district is not going to charge a fee to cover administrative costs to PTSAs for funds raised for school budgets . (I will name this person after I find out if it is okay. Thanks to all of you who contacted the Superintendent, the Board and for offering to take public action on this issue. Here is what they had to say via Bridgett Chandler, Executive Director of SPS Communications: We want to express our sincere appreciation for the hard work and dedication of our PTSAs....

There have been requests to talk about school budgets. I am not an expert in this area so if you have info, please let us know. To repeat from my post on the Audit and Finance Committee, here are dates discussed: There was discussion over the timeline for the budget process. There will be discussion about it at the Board retreat this Saturday. Apparently the Board is working on "guiding principles" for the budget for staff to work with. But it seems that they need to add yet another Work Session to get it all done. This will be on April 8th. So hear this: SPEAK UP NOW. Tell the Board what matters to you and your school. Michael was trying to get a kind of drop-dead date to restore money to school budgets but staff really circled around it. One issue is that the legislature did not finish today and so will go into Special Session starting on Monday. (They did some education bills passed but obviously, not the final state budget which includes educati...