Seattle Schools Community Forum

Back at the beginning of the summer, when I was being a real nudge, I was invited to a half-hour meeting with Michael Tolley and Shauna Heath scheduled for today. We had that meeting this morning and it consisted entirely of my questions and their answers. They were gracious and relatively candid. Half an hour isn't much time and I wanted to cover a few topics in great depth.

Three interesting notes from the Board meeting tonight. 1. After a long list of conservationists, architects, and conservationist architects got up to praise the District for proposing a resolution on sustainable building practices, the resolution got put on hold. Directors DeBell and Carr slowed the process and Director Patu called for a work session to discuss it. Director DeBell said that a resolution is not the way to codify the idea and he and Director Carr complained that they were hearing about the resolution for the first time at the Board meeting. Ummm... isn't that how every motion works? Only the members of the committee who vetted it get to see a motion before it comes before the full Board. 2. Director Smith-Blum said that she got input on the language of the resolution from a long list of experts on sustainable buildings. Contrast that with other things brought to the Board without any effort at outreach at all. This illustrates the utter lack of any kind of stand...