Seattle Schools Community Forum

A guest post from the Seattle City Attorney's E-newslettter by Darby DuComb.  Darcy is Deputy City Attorney for Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes and former Board Member of Page Ahead - www.pageahead.org, a children’s literacy organization in Washington State.

I can't be everywhere and am delighted a reader reached out to me to ask to write about Oakland Unified School District's Restorative Justice Program and the forum here on that subject on July 17th.

Clarification: the forum on the school to prison pipeline (this Wednesday, the 29th at the New Holly Hall at 6pm) is NOT sponsored by either the King County Council or City Council.  It was organized by a few members from each group.  They have invited members of the Seattle School Board but it is unclear who may be going from that group.  The featured speaker is Professor Wayne Au from UW Bothell. This is a good opportunity to point out how valuable that Middle College is to preventing more kids from entering the pipeline.  (I also suspect a fair number of candidates from City Council races as well as School Board races will be in attendance.)

The issue here, over the building of a new juvenile detention center has brought a firestorm of an argument.  (In August 2012, the King County ballot had a levy for a new “Children and Family Justice Center,” which ended up passing by 55.42%.) It would seem to be a two-fold argument:

Did your senior write a great college essay ?  Here's a link to an award for $5,000 through Medium.com.  The deadline is May 19.  (Great judges like Anna Quindlen, Wally Lamb, and Mary Roach.)  This is not "new" news but the Gates Foundation invests in a private prison company as well as a company with 19 juvenile detention facilities in the U.S.  This from Mother Jones.  A Gates spokesperson attempted to, according to The Slog , "philanthro-splained" "The trust invests in a lot of things to make sure we have the most money we can have to do that job."  Oh. Nothing like creating - via your work and your investments - your own school to prison pipeline. A horrible week for students in two high schools.  First, the stabbings at a high school in Murraysville, Pennsylvania where 20 were stabbed with one in critical condition on a breathing machine.  Second, the news this morning that bus with seniors from LA/Fresno going to visit Humboldt...