Seattle Schools Community Forum

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. 

Popped into the City Club's One-Stop Ballot Stop this evening.  Not so many people but the mayoral debate was interesting.  One quick-fire question: " Do you think the Seattle School Board is doing a good job?"   Murray - yellow (waffle), McGinn (refused to answer - "I think they are doing the best they can at a hard job.  I don't want to put them down." , crowd (mostly yellows with a smattering of green - yes and red-no).  I had forgotten but City Club puts all the candidates for each type of election together so there was this uneasy line of Dale Estey, Peters, Blanford and Green.  Blanford and Green appeared to completely ignore each other (as did Dale Estey and Peters) while Dale Estey and Blanford appear to be pretty good buddies (so I guess that CASE - the Chamber of Commerce PAC - isn't wrong in calling them "a slate.") The Supreme Court has taken on case on affirmative action which involves a Michigan case using race for college ...

 There's a sinkhole problem in West Seattle directly on the route that buses to Pathfinder take.  This story from our friends at the West Seattle Blog . Thought-provoking story this morning on NPR about how Eastern and Western parents view their children and their ability to learn.  (I have often thought that persistence, resilience, and encouragement are more important than what intellectual capacities you are born with.)  Interesting article from the Huffington Post about who serves special needs children especially those with more severe disabilities.  The high cost of educating students with special needs is disproportionately falling on traditional public schools as other students increasingly opt for alternatives that aren't always readily open to those requiring special education.  The issue is particularly acute in districts where enrollment has declined due to demographic changes such as low birth rates and population shifts combined ...

ParentsCare is a group working on issues around Special Education for SPS students with special needs.  They are taking a survey and would like your help, whether you are a parent of a Special Ed student or not.   From their e-mail: We invite parents of SPS students to participate in a survey for families with students who are assigned to new schools next year, typically the 5th and 8th graders.  We ran a sample survey in our corner of the district and will post a sample of our results is in the Attachments section "2011 SPS Riser Assignment Survey".  It would be nice to see if we get results from across the district. We are trying to measure family agreement with the New Student Assignment Plan with emphasis on the riser process.  A student "riser" is a student who changes schools or program.  For example, from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school are two riser situations for most students. If your student is not ...

Interesting piece in the Seattle Times today from psychologist John Rosemond (who apparently has a syndicated column on parenting) about the labeling of children at school. He doesn't quite come out and say it but I believe his premise is that we are over-identifying students rather than accepting that ALL students have different ways of learning and challenges to learning. From his column: People gifted in more than a couple of areas are rare, and people gifted in one area but lacking in another are not unusual. A person with outstanding musical aptitude, for example, may be noticeably lacking in social skills, and a person with outstanding verbal skills may be mechanically inept. The mere fact that a person is lacking in some characteristic or ability does not necessarily mean something is "wrong." That a certain 10-year-old child is shy, lacks conversational skills, and prefers solitary activity to group play does not mean something is amiss inside the chil...

Catching on up on some reading and ran across these stories. From the federal Bureau of Consumer Protection (within the FTC), a website aimed at kids 8-12 promoting ad education . It's called Admongo. Their goal is that since advertising is all around our kids in more ways than ever, that kids can understand that and understand what an ad is trying to do. It asks 3 questions: Who is responsible for the ad? What is the ad actually saying? What does the ad want me to do? They did try to be careful in the development of the materials to avoid the idea of promoting commercialism. The education company, Scholastic, is handling the distribution of materials to teachers and students. From the website: The campaign has four components: a game-based website at Admongo.gov ; sample ads that can be used in the classroom; a free curriculum , developed with the assistance of Scholastic, Inc., that is keyed to standards of learning in 5th and 6th grades; and teacher training videos. ...