Seattle Schools Community Forum

Had a great time at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin this weekend.  Very inspirational and got to talk with two education heroes - Diane Ravitch and Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union.  More on this later especially about Common Core. To note, the district and bus drivers have reached a tentative agreement so there should be no bus drivers strike. Also to remember, this is the last week of Open Enrollment.   It ends at 4 pm on Friday, March 7th.

There was a high school shooting in Taft, California today with one student shot but with a teacher and administrator able to talk the student shooter into giving up his weapon.  Taft is a rural community  about 120 miles northwest of LA.  Taft Union High School has about 900 students. From AP: When the shots were fired, the teacher began trying to get the more than two dozen students out a back door and also engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said. A campus supervisor responding to a call of shots fired also began talking to him. "They talked him into putting the shotgun down," Youngblood said. The sheriff said that at one point the shooter told the teacher, "I don't want to shoot you" and named the person he wanted to shoot. The shooter may have had up to 20 shotgun rounds in his pockets, he said. Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus but the person wasn't there because he was snowe...

From th West Seattle Blog, a report of yet another break-in (the second in two months) at Arbor Heights Elementary.  Both times, computers were taken.  From WS Blog: 4:29 PM UPDATE: More information from SPS’s Wippel: Four computers were stolen today, worth $1,800 each – $7,200 total – “And no budget to replace them. The four stolen last November weren’t replaced either. (Principal) Christy Collins said the kids ‘feel violated’.” How did the thieves get in? Seattle Police spokesperson Det. Mark Jamieson tells WSB the break-in was discovered after an alarm went off around 5 am; officers found a door, hinge pins removed, propped open on the south side of the school, and started searching.   Yes, this school really does need rebuilding because this is NOT how buildings are today.  It's heartless to take from a school that clearly has so little.  Maybe there's another way to get those computers replaced. 

 Update: statement from SPS on the NRA statement. We are forming a joint working group with the Seattle Police Department to study all recommendations for improving our school safety, and this effort will begin early in 2013. Together, we will formulate sustainable plans for implementing improved safety measures across the District. The security of our students and staff is our highest priority, and we look forward to working with our staff and community partners to implement improved safety measures across the District. End of update. I rarely call people names here.  Not useful and there are better ways to say you disagree with people. But head of NRA, Wayne LaPierre - an idiot.  Here's what he is saying in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings:   "How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?"   Wayne, your group doesn't even support an act...

Dear families, The Seattle School District is reviewing whether it should apply to the State Board of Education for a waiver, to allow the three full-day parent teacher conference schedule to continue for elementary and K-8 schools. The waiver also seeks one day for middle and high schools. Your input is valuable to us as we consider this decision. Parent-teacher conferences are important to ensuring direct communications between classroom teachers and families, and we want to make sure that we gather input from as many families as possible about these meetings. We have prepared a brief survey that should take 5-10 minutes to complete. The survey will close on Friday, January 11th at 5:00 p.m.  The survey is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Parent-Teacher-Conferences-Jan2012   We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your feedback. Sincerely, Michael Tolley Interim Assistant Superintendent for Teaching & Learning Seattle P...

Perusing the BEX IV presentation and then what was presented to the Mayor's Educational Leadership Team yesterday, I see some things that I don't understand. BTA has been about major maintenance like roofs and yet there are five roofs to be replaced under BEX IV.  That is troubling because BEX is about renovations and yet there are roofs and other "major preventative maintenance" under BEX IV.  What is really troubling is the "major preventative maintenance" at $18M has no list of projects.  Basically, it looks like a fund for something.   Those five schools with roof replacements scheduled are Eckstein, Franklin, Gatewood, Laurelhurst and Whitman.  However, checking the BTA work from previous years shows that Laurelhurst received a new roof in 2002, Whitman in 2006, and Eckstein in 2010.  This is district data at their website.  How could this be wrong?  Or, how could these almost new roofs need replacement? I note - just as an observat...

From the district (at 2:30 p.m.): The lockdown has been lifted at both John Muir Elementary and Franklin High schools. Both schools are in shelter-in-place and students will be released on time. End of Update. From the Times, a report of a shooting near Franklin High School.  Apparently, it had nothing to do with the school, the person shot was believed to be between 18-20 but not a student at the school.  (The shooter, though, apparently looked to be younger, about 15-16 years old.)  The victim is in critical condition.  This happened at about 12:30 p.m. Franklin was not put into lockdown but students were told to stay in their classrooms. One thing that I did learn is that the district does have the ability to text students as well as parents about on-going issues at school.  After the Cafe Racer shooting and this shooting, where it was lunchtime with students off-site, it might be good to be able to text students on what to do. 

Spoke with Pegi McEvoy, assistant superintendent for Operations, and guess what?  Roosevelt is finally getting its security cameras by the end of the summer.   Cross that one off my "to-do" list. I knew RHS had been put on the BTA III list for the cameras and had advocated for them to get moved up the list (the $80-90k cost and the time it would take was a complete drop in the bucket for the district under BTA).  Kay Smith-Blum had even asked for this at an Operations Committee but former head of Facilities, Bill Martin said they had a schedule and Peter Maier backed him up.  I think Pegi might have gone to bat on this one (she's the former head of SPS Security) so I owe her.  From the Seattle Council PTSA: This Tuesday, June 28 , the Washington State Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the McCleary v. State of Washington case.  The plaintiff is arguing the State of Washington is not meeting its constitutional responsibility to fully fund...

From the Rainier Valley Post, news that at least one of the suspects in an incident at RBHS on March 10th turned himself in police at the insistence of his grandmother.   The backstory: On Tues., March 8, several students said they witnessed a shooting right outside the school at about 10 am. Apparently, the incident was not immediately reported to police. There were no injuries, but two days later, shortly after 10 am on March 10, three men showed up at the school looking for two girls that had witnessed the shooting. The men ignored a security guard who insisted they leave, and instead, pushed by him in their attempts to confront the girls, before eventually being escorted out of the building. What the cops had to say: This guy attempted to intimidate a witness in one crime, and now he’s locked-up for another. Although direct witness intimidation attempts are few and far between, that result is actually not uncommon. People should know that actual incident...

Update : I managed to miss that the original source of this story was MyGreenLake.com and, as was pointed out, give credit where it is due (especially a blog!). My apologies. The Stranger Slog reports that on Jan. 13th after school was over that day, a child playing tag ran out into the street at Green Lake Elementary (where they don't have a totally fenced playground) and the child was hit by a car. Luckily the student was unhurt. The child was there without adult supervision. From the article: The blog said that Bowers admitted that the unfenced playground is "a huge safety concern," promising that fencing will go in "ASAP." "This is my biggest fear," Bowers told parents of the accident. The district said they had approved a request for the fence in December but it got held up for "parts." There was also mention that the lack of fencing could have been a decision that GL Elementary had been allowed to make. No one seems to kno...

We have a national tragedy...again. That's one thing you can always count on in this country because we have made a decision about what part we want guns to play in our lives. I personally don't believe that the Second Amendment covers guns for everyone (that word "militia" just doesn't seem like a citizen-in-the-home kind of word) but this is what our Supreme Court has said and it's the law of the land. That said, I do believe that gun owners should be held very responsible for anything that happens using the gun in their home by anyone who lives in the home. I also don't believe anyone but a law enforcement officer needs a 30-bullet magazine. What's fascinating is that the sale of Glocks has now gone up with rabid people fearing the government will cut off their guns. Funny how people worry about losing guns but not losing more people. From the AP: One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent on Jan. 10 compared with the correspondi...

I think I have gone about as far as I can with trying to get a clear picture on this situation. The reason I thought it important to cover was (1) to try to reassure parents about what is in place and (2) to find out if we need to be advocating for certain things. What I am sad to say is that like a lot of the criminal justice system, there are flaws to be found. There are gaps in what is supposed to happen. There are people saying contrary things. There is a situation that, on the surface, looked black and white and now there are many shades of gray. At the end of it? We are only as safe as the people doing the protecting (and some of those people aren't even in criminal justice). I interviewed Pegi McEvoy, the head of Security for the district, a probation officer for King County, and an unnamed source at Roosevelt. All those sources talked to me on procedural grounds (with one exception), NOT in specifics of this case. Pegi McEvoy only spoke to me on this condition. ...

The PI had an interesting story this morning about an incident at Washington Middle School in early April. Apparently 3 students were expelled for 15-days for aiming/having a toy gun at school. However, none of the staff told the Seattle Police School Emphasis Officer about the incident and she found out when she saw one student riding a bike during school hours. He told her about the expulsion. From the story: In an April 21 meeting with a school staff member, in which the officer asked why she was not contacted and the incident was not reported, the staff member did not have an answer, according to a police incident report. About 15 minutes later, the staff member "stated to me it wasn't reported because 'it was a clear, plastic gun and not used with malice,'" School Emphasis Officer Erin Rodriguez wrote in the report. Additionally, After speaking to the witnesses and girl who was hit, Rodriguez contacted the school security staff told about the incid...

What's happening in our country? Here's what I wrote to Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and the Board: From the NY Times: "In the last month, 25 people, including 2 gunmen, were slain in three mass shootings, in North Carolina, California and Alabama." This terrible trend is frightening because as the economy continues to slump and, for whatever reason, people are feeling tense and frustrated and life is getting more and more unsure for many of them. So again I say to you - we need security cameras at Roosevelt High School. The police in Binghamton, NY, the site of the latest shooting, waited for hours because they had no idea what was going on inside. This would be the exact same scenario at RHS. You might get cell phone calls from inside the building but they would likely be confusing to police. The police could not know, with any accuracy, what was happening, who was hurt and where any shooter might be. If we had cameras, they likely COULD get into the building, go to ...