Seattle Schools Community Forum

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. 

There is a letter to the Seattle Times from the co-chairs of the Mayor's HALA Committee (on housing which put out a report recently with 65 recommendations). The Committee has not been happy with Seattle Times' columnist, Danny Westneat, who put out some advance news on their recommendations. The Mayor blamed the media for overblowing one recommendation that would change single family neighborhood zoning. Then, the Committee got really mad when Westneat exposed that all their meetings were held in private.  Westneat stated that the Mayor had the legal right to do this but for a committee making such major changes, it seems an odd thing to do.  Many, like state Rep Gerry Pollet said this in Westneat's column of July 31, 2015, "Had Murray set this up in a public fashion, it never would have imploded on him like this." "you would have had people watching and commenting throughout."   He noted that he thought "... people wouldn't have been tota...

I had a good interview with Senator Ed Murray recently who will be in the General Election against current mayor, Mike McGinn.  We sat down in his campaign offices to talk. I asked him about what he believes t he role of the Mayor is vis a vis Seattle public education. He said that he believes it has changed from what it was traditionally as something of a cheerleader position to a more visible one.  He believes that the Mayor should push for discussions about changes needed in the district AND in city government to find better academic outcomes.  He said, "Only the Mayor has the position to pull stakeholders together." I told him that sounded a lot like mayoral takeover of the district.

Remember that column I linked to at the Washington Post written by the Dean of Education, Leslie T. Fenwick at Howard University?  She said: "Mayoral control, Teach for America, education management organizations and venture capital-funded charter schools have not garnered much grassroots support or enthusiasm among lower- and middle-income black parents whose children attend urban schools because these parents often view these schemes as uninformed by their community and disconnected from the best interest of their children. Indeed, mayoral control has been linked to an emerging pattern of closing and disinvesting in schools that serve black poor students and reopening them as charters operated by education management organizations and backed by venture capitalists. W hile mayoral control proposes to expand educational opportunities for black and poor students, more-often-than-not new schools are placed in upper-income, gentrifying white areas of town, while more ...

The Times updates the civil rights investigation by the DOE in SPS by noting there is now a second investigation into ELL students and school closures.  From 2009 through the end of last year, the civil-rights office has launched about 100 civil-rights investigations involving at least one school district in nearly every state.  Those investigations, known as compliance reviews, are just part of the office’s caseload, most of which stems from complaints filed by parents or community members.  The department’s proactive efforts have won praise from those who say there was a drought of education civil-rights cases under the previous administration. About ELL students: In Seattle, the review of services for students learning English appears to have started in 2009. A spokeswoman said that information she received from the education department also indicated that federal officials are looking at whether the district discriminated against some studen...