Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update:  Father of autistic kid Gorsuch ruled against will testify to Senate against his nomination. end of update From NPR: School districts must provide students with disabilities the chance to make meaningful, "appropriately ambitious" progress, the Supreme Court said today in an 8-0 ruling.

This is a singularly beautiful video on being a teacher but especially those who take on the big challenges.

The first story is from OSPI who released data on restraint and isolation for Special Education students in Washington State.  The story from KUOW:

From the Seattle Special Education PTSA Facebook page: Save the date! The Special Families of Puget Sound Seattle Parent Support Meeting is going on a field trip to The Center for Pediatric Dentistry . The Center for Pediatric Dentistry provides comprehensive health care to kids with all types of special needs.

This is important. This is, I think, one of the greatest things any Seattle School Board has ever done. I'm looking forward to how it ends and I'm optimistic that it will end well. Here's the quick version: A family applied for assignment to an Option School for their student with disabilities. While other general education students were assigned to the school, the District maintained a separate assignment queue for students with disabilities and set a capacity for students with disabilities at the school. In the end, the student was not assigned to the Option School. The family complained that the assignment process was discriminatory. Their complaint was denied at a variety of lower levels and appealed, eventually, to the Board. Here's the Board's decision .

I met with Wyeth Jessee last week (it was arranged thru Communications so there was a Communications person in the room who was not part of the conversation.)  He was the former head of Special Education and now, thru a realignment,  has a new role.

From Soup for Teachers' Facebook page: Seattle public schools just lost an appeal by a student who sued after he was injured in an incident where another student assaulted him at Aki Kurose. New trial ordered. The case is from an incident in 2006.  Wow. The crux of the matter seems to be an instruction to the jury:

Once again,  the end of the week and a massively horrific incident, this time in Nice .  Please send out good karma and prayers for all affected by this mass murder and by the people of France.  (I note that Dallas had lit up public buildings in blue for their slain officers and one building was done in the colors of the French flag.  Classy.) In the name of democracy , a good article from the Global Oneness Project, Five Habits to Heal the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer. If I were asked for two words to summarize the habits of the heart American citizens need in response to twenty-first-century conditions, I would chose chutzpah and humility. By chutzpah I mean knowing that I have a voice that needs to be heard and the right to speak it. By humility I mean accepting the fact that my truth is always partial and may not be true at all, so I need to listen with openness and respect, especially to "the other," as much as I need to speak my own voice wi...

From KPLU: How The Language Of Special Education Is Evolving

Press release I received today (red mine)   ANALYSIS FINDS WIDESPREAD UNDERFUNDING OF SPECIAL EDUCATION Children’s Advocates Urge Supreme Court to Keep the Heat on the Legislature OLYMPIA, WA (June 7, 2016) - The Washington Supreme Court should consider the unmet needs of students with disabilities when enforcing the State’s paramount duty to fully fund education, The Arc of Washington State and The Arc of King County said in a “friend of the court” brief filed today.  The Arcs joined with other advocates for children with disabilities in filing the brief in McCleary v State of Washington , including Teamchild, Seattle Special Education PTA, Bellevue Special Needs PTA, Highline Special Needs PTA, Washington Autism Alliance & Advocacy, Open Doors for Multicultural Families, and several individuals who professionally support children with disabilities and their families in medical, clinical and educational settings .  It is the first amicus br...

I was contacted some months back by some Laurelhurst Elementary parents who were, at turns, flummoxed, frustrated and frantic.  It felt to them as if their school was unraveling and, like Stevens, their principal and the district did not seem to be giving their concerns much credibility or credence. Like the Stevens parents, they had asked for a meeting to have a whole picture meeting of the minds, with everything put out on the table.  (This after an earlier parent meeting that apparently was quite tense and non-productive, leaving both sides feeling unhappy.) The issue with Laurelhurst is multi-faceted.   One, their school is packed to the gills even with portables.  They even have some schooling happening in the halls.  Two, the Sped EBD services there seem to be serving a larger number of students than the school can help.  When there are behavior issues, many times the aide will take a child out to the hallway but there's some kind of teaching ther...

Sadly, I was unable to attend the Work Session today. I hadn't realized that the topic was adjustment of the Superintendent's SMART goals and what the focus of the district should be for 2016-2017. I know - how to decide?

Via Soup for Teachers Facebook page. Please join us Monday, May 23 at 7:00 pm for the next general meeting of the Seattle Special Education PTSA at JSCEE. Teachers, parents/guardians, students and community partners all welcome.  There will be guest speakers talking about different home and community based interventions and resources for our students. We will be joined by Mika Rollin, BCBA, Dr Nicole Swedberg talking about Dyslexia , Louisa Hall and Melissa Morrissette from Sound Mental Health.  Members will also be voting both for the 2016-17 Spec Ed PTSA budget and the 2016-17 Special Ed Board.  Hope to see you there! Great TED talk on inclusion in classrooms and why it's important. " 'Special' means separate."

And speaking of field trips , yet again the district cannot get the smarts to head off situation. Now it's all over the news.  This morning students at Stevens protested outside their school for about an hour.  They were protesting the very abrupt announcement that a long-time tradition of 5th graders going on an overnight field trip was not happening.  This is two weeks before the trip was to happen. The "official" explanation is that the paperwork didn't get to the district in time and, even with an extension, could not get done.

I had planned to go to the Work Session today.  As you may recall, it was to include Advanced Learning but that got pulled.  The line-up of topics includes the Families & Education Levy which is the their first topic.  Their presentation's page 8 is an interesting pie chart showing the different areas of education they fund and how much.  Early Learning and School Readiness  $7.7M  27% Elementary Academic Achievement  $6.4M  22% Middle School Academic Achievement  $5.9M  21% High School Academic Achievement  $2.6M  9% Student Health  $6.3M  22% I'd have to ask about the Early Learning and School Readiness portion and how much includes pre-K.  Early Learning is generally defined at pre-K to 2nd or 3rd.  I raise the issue because the City now has its own Pre-K levy so it would be good to know how that spending breaks out because of the new levy. This is certainly important: Last summ...

A very wonderful letter from a mom with a special needs child after "social skills" training in her child's school that forgot that there are many types of people in the world that we should all be kind to and show respect for.  In case you didn't know, as of Feb. 2, 2016, OSPI reports that there are 35, 511 homeless students in Washington State.  That's 3.3% of the P-12 population.  It's an over 9% increase from 2013-2014 and a 62.7% increase from 2009-2010. 

The vote on the next version of No Child Left Behind is coming up for a vote this week, first in the Senate and then, next week, in the House.   There are several issues that have come to my attention via Diane Ravitch and the Network of Public Education. Here's a link to all the Washington State representatives and senators.  E-mail is great but there is also great value in calling their offices and registering your vote.  (I interned for an Arizona senator once and my job was taking phone calls from constituents on issues of the day.  They registered every single call.) However you do it, PLEASE contact our congressional reps on this vote.  When you do, please note to them that this is a much better bill than the original.

Reason #10 on why I hate the SPS website - the main calendar does NOT reflect all the meetings. Sitting at the Curriculum&Instruction meeting yesterday,  I learned of a regional Sped meeting with district staff that will be held tonight at West Seattle High from 6-7 pm for parents. It's important for parents/public to be able to have ONE place to know about any and all meetings that they may want/need to attend.  I'm not sure I get why this cannot happen.  There are a couple of moms who have started a Facebook page - The Thirteen Thousand Dollar Question - about what their school could do with Superintendent Nyland's proposed raise.  They are looking for letters to him explaining the needs out there (see example).  They will be on display at the next Board meeting where the Board will vote on the raise/contract extension.  #‎nylandsraise‬   ‪#‎donateitall‬    ‪#‎letters2larry‬ teacher.retention.advocates@gmail.com Gre...

The Board has quite the lengthy agenda , given that they cancelled their last scheduled Board meeting due to the teachers strike. Note: I'm putting an asterisk beside every item that has new spending plus where the money is coming from.  I'll give you the total at the end.  Highlights:

From SPS via KPLU (here's link to complete page with footnotes):