Seattle Schools Community Forum

Monday, March 14th  Curriculum&Instruction Committee meeting from 4:30-7:30 pm. Agenda

Social Studies Adoption Committee wants, needs, your input : please inspect the candidate text books and supporting materials and provide your feedback and preferences.   These are the social studies text books middle school students will have for many, many years. So, even if your student is in early primary grades, they will still be affected. Now is the time to speak up! Viewing continues until June 18 th 2015.  All instructional materials are available for viewing at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellent AND at 5 middle school libraries: Hamilton Int'l Washington Madison Aki Kurose Eckstein If your students happen to be at those middle school, urge them to pop by the library and check out the texts and leave feedback. Their input matters! If you visit the school, be sure to stop in at the office first to register as a visitor. They can direct you to the library. (Note: 6 th graders study ancient civilizations, 7 th gra...

From SPS Communications: Seattle Public Schools invites all families, staff and community members to review instructional materials under consideration for use in middle school social studies. This is the first of two rounds of review. Public input will help the Middle School Social Studies Adoption Committee narrow materials for the second review round. Public viewing of materials and feedback for the first round ends on Wednesday, April 15. Two options are available for review: Visit the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence during normal business hours to view the materials in person and fill out a feedback form. Materials are on display and forms are available in two locations: the School Board office on the first floor and the Professional Library on the second floor. Access the materials online. Click HERE for our adoption page, which provides links to PDFs with access instructions from three of the four vendors. The page also offers links to survey...

Roosevelt and Garfield jazz bands both made it into the Essentially Ellington competition in NYC...again.  Congrats to both programs. And because I love high school newspapers - news from the Rainier Beac h student newspaper, Viking Shield. I received a press release today from the district announcing that  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will visit Sanislo Elementary's  3 rd -5 th graders  tomorrow .   From the press release:

I'll let Diane Ravitch explain these newly released scores to you (as she's the expert) - bold mine: The National Assessment of Educational Progress ( NAEP ) just released the results of its Economics test for high school seniors. Only 18% of students ranked “below basic,” which surely included high numbers of students who are English language learners and have serious disabilities.  82% are basic or above. A remarkable 43% of students ranked “proficient” or above. Proficient is excellent performance. Having served on the NAEP Board for seven years, I believe that a student who is proficient demonstrates A level performance. 3% of students rank “advanced.” This is A++ performance.  In any classroom where 43% of the students earn a solid A, great things are happening. Congratulations to our high school social studies teachers! What is interesting is that NAEP reports that there is no significant change from the overall scores from 206-2012. From N...

 Statement from Superintendent Banda on The Center School race and social justice curriculum class (partial): On Dec. 21, 2012, we received a complaint from a family at Center School alleging that the instructional activities used in the Citizenship and Social Justice: Advanced Placement Language and Compositions and Social Studies class included intimidating and discriminating actions, attitudes and classroom environment. Our Human Resources Department then launched an investigation of this complaint, as is our process. At the request of the Superintendent, the Teaching and Learning Department reviewed this particular course, convening an ad hoc committee to examine the curriculum. In the meantime, the class continues to meet and we’re reviewing how a portion of it – a six-week race unit that has since ended – will be taught in the future.   Regarding the first issue , the Human Resources department found that the way in which the race unit at the Center School...

 This week has a large number of Executive Sessions (closed to the public) for the Board.  Most are on " Evaluate a complaint against a public employee ."  I suspect some of these may be about schools in the news over the last several months who had principal issues.  Wednesday, June 6th School Board Meeting - Agenda Our first Board meeting that starts at 4:15 p.m. with the Speakers List at 5:00 p.m .  Please remember to give testimony, you should call/write tomorrow morning starting at 8 am -  252-0040 or boardagenda@seattleschools.org. The Board will run through the Consent agenda, student presentation, and superintendent comments by 5 p.m.  Then there is Public Testimony, Board comments and then Business Action Items. The agenda has some interesting items.  To note:

Monday, May 21st  Curriculum&Instruction Policy Committee Mtg from 4-6pm, JSCEE Agenda .  Promise Neighborhoods MOU with Neighborhood House 2163 School Policy, Supports and Interventions 4110 Superintendent procedure, Family and Community Advisory and Oversight Ctms Policy 2200, Equitable Access to Services and Programs Teacher College Contract NWEA Contract Cost increase for Social Studies Adoption Policy 2420, Running Start and Homeschool discussion 2163 -not sure what they want to change here 4110 - as Charlie as pointed out, this one doesn't always get followed so I'll be interested to see what is said here 2200 - must be new as I don't see it under the current policies 2420 - at the Board webpage, this seems to be about grading so I'm confused here  Promise MOU - this one hadn't been on my radar but it's an agreement with Neighborhood House, Seattle Housing Authority, City of Seattle and SPS to support families and schools in the so...

I ask that question because along with a student graduating high school to be college or career-ready, that student should also be citizen-ready.  An 18-year old high school graduate can go fight in a war, get married, and vote.  Those are some fairly high level decisions. Two thoughts run through my head on this subject. One, do you remember being 18?  You went off to college or you went out and got training, got a job and suddenly learned what it is to be responsible for yourself.  No one was going to tell you to get up and go to class or to be on time for work.   My gold standard for the realization about adult life was when I realized I had to pay for toilet paper.  I couldn't believe my hard-earned money for going for that and yet, what are you going to do?  It a big lesson to learn that all the money you earn will NOT be going for fun, fun, fun. Taxes are a real part of that lesson. Two, is the increasing cacophony of political voices ...

There have been quite a few changes in the agenda for tonight's meeting.  Some are a bit puzzling.  (I also suspect the speaker list - which is full and has 20 on the waitlist) will change now that Ingraham's principal is off the table as an issue.)

Monday, March 28th Board Committee Meeting - Curriculum and Instruction Agenda topics:  science adoption delay, AP Science and Social Studies, high school social studies adoption committee, middle school language arts adoption committee, K-5 General music adoption commitee, promotion/retention policies, homework policies Tuesday, March 29th   Superintendent Chat from 8-9 am at the Central library downtown (10th Floor) The Source Informational Night for Latino Families - Campana Quetzal will be hosting this event at 6:30 p.m. in the RBHS library.  Families will learn to use the Source and how to create an e-mail account.  The workshops will be in Spanish.   Superintendent coffee with members of the East African community from 6:30-8:00 p.m. - there is no location given for this; I'll try to find out where.   There is also another diversity speaker lecture.  This one is Brian C. Johnson about framing diversity through modern film....

Monday - Curriculum and Instruction Committee mtg. - 4-6 p.m. Among the agenda items: world language credit, credit for online work, update on science and social studies alignment, Wednesday - Director Sundquist Community Mtg. - 11 am-12:15 pm Also, Board Work Session on Budget - 4-8 p.m. This may be a bit of showdown. Will staff have the information that Directors requested at the last meeting? Will staff try to waffle on how much Central Office staff gets cut? Will it be Central over Transportation? Thursday - Community Meeting on Transportation from 7-8:30 p.m. I don't know where and I don't know how this can be covered in this short a timeframe. I'm thinking they aren't that interested in feedback. Possible Audit and Finance Committee meeting - TBD Also, a reminder of forum of public school K-12 teachers talking about challenges, both local and national . Seattle University, 6-8:30 p.m., Student Center, Room 160

The Social Studies Instructional Materials Adoption page has links to parent/community and staff surveys. Oddly, although the science adoption has a survey for students, social studies does not. They are also looking for 2 parent/community representatives to survey on the high school social studies adoption committee. Applications are due by Jan. 6th and you will be notified by Jan. 10th. Here's some more info: We are asking that prospective applicants bring an open mind, with passion about student learning in Social Studies, and avoiding approaching the process with a specific textbook or set of materials in mind. Time commitment will be approximately 60 hours between January and April, 2011 . We expect to hold five day-time meetings (8:00 AM – 3:00 PM), and four after-school or evening meetings. The committee will determine its schedule at the first session on Thursday, January 20th, 2011. (3 PM – 6 PM).

From the SPS School Beat : Applicants Needed: The Instructional Services science staff is planning for an anticipated adoption process for high school physical science, physics and chemistry instructional materials . The process will start in late spring 2010 and end in spring 2011. Applications to become a member of this Instructional Materials Adoption Committee will be accepted from March 16 to April 16. The time commitment for each Instructional Materials Adoption Committee member is approximately: • one meeting in late spring 2010, approximately three hours • five six-hour days, approximately one per month in the first seven months of the school year • three after-school meetings, approximately three hours each District educators and community members are encouraged to apply. Seattle Public Schools teachers will be provided with substitute release or extra hours for their time. Community members will participate on a volunteer basis. Please look for the announcement a...