Seattle Schools Community Forum

From the Herald, a local story but with national implications - the use of rubberized fields and the incidence of cancer for young athletes (mostly soccer players who are goalies.)

Got this from Facebook (via Leslie Harris) about kids and the arts via a guy named Darryl A. Chamberlain: We must always remember the importance of giving our best to our kids. Here is the Monti's Czardas played by The Kanneh-Mason kids. This is what happens when you are willing to get music lessons for your kids. I always tell anyone who will listen - but especially elected officials - that after class size, the arts seem to be the most important thing to parents for their children.   Mr. Chamberlain speaks of g etting music lessons for your kids which may be difficult for many parents (time, cost, getting your child there) but if we had more arts in our schools, that would be something most parents would be overjoyed to see. Not to start a fight but we were having a discussion on another thread about sports in schools.  Which would you rather see funded and finding the time for - sports or arts?

Interesting article about the pressure on kids to "specialize" in a sport from the Steve Nash Youth Basketball blog, called The Race to Nowhere in Youth Sports. We had mixed experiences with sports with both our boys.  Great Little League experience (especially with the son with a disability).  Great rec soccer experience for my younger son.  (He did try one year of select soccer - too expensive, too much travel, too much pressure.  My son, who had real talent, was the one to say no.) We had great parents on our team but some teams had win-at-all-costs parents and to hear them and their coaches scream at kids was astonishing. Both played Ultimate Frisbee in SPS.  Mixed bag as one son was at a school - that shall remain nameless - that had a no-cut policy but also, basically, a no-play policy if you were not a star.  Really hurt his feelings to be told he would never play in a game - not even for 5 minutes because they had a "competitive" team and wan...

A wealthy person trying to buy a basketball team?  Well, that would be Steve Ballmer buying the LA Clippers but according to a very well-done story from the Seattle Times, he cut his teeth doing it at Lakeside. I note that some of the comments call out Bellevue School District for this kind of thing as well as Rainier Beach High School.  The activities at RBHS have been covered in the Times previously but I don't really know what the story is in Bellevue. But when parents want sports to become the focus at a school (and the school allows it), it benefits no one.  There is no "you're helping low-income/minority students" when they are allowed to play as they are not passing classes. From the John Rogers Elementary school community: "John Rogers will have  4  kindergarten classes this year!  With that many kindergarteners (85) the school is scrambling to move classrooms, offices and closets around.  Staff have aske...

Yes, all our comprehensive high schools will be moving to the Metro league (including Roosevelt, Ballard and Garfield).  Roosevelt will be the second-largest in the league but keep in mind, they count ONLY the numbers of 10,11and 12th graders to decide school size.  That's why Roosevelt will fit into the Metro league. Boy, that will save transportation dollars AND be one less reason to change to later start times for high school students (and middle school, as well).

I agree with this author, Amanda Ripley, writing for The Atlantic.  I have no idea why ed reformers and others seem to look the other way as the dollars and resources and energy and time flow to sports.  It's a great article . But what to make of this other glaring reality, and the signal it sends to children, parents, and teachers about the very purpose of school? In countries with more-holistic, less hard-driving education systems than Korea’s, like Finland and Germany, many kids play club sports in their local towns—outside of school. Most schools do not staff, manage, transport, insure, or glorify sports teams, because, well, why would they? Let's ask some international students who come to the U.S. for high school exchanges: One element of our education system consistently surprises them: “Sports are a big deal here,” says Jenny, who moved to America from South Korea with her family in 2011. Shawnee High, her public school in southern New Jersey, fields te...

After the abysmal issues at Ballard and Roosevelt, this is good news (from Mirmac 1): "...we now have new guidelines for hiring athletic coaches. We are now required to have a parent and student on the interview committee when we interview coaches. If you would like to participate on an interview committee please fill out the following form and submit it. We will be hiring a Girls Soccer and Ultimate Frisbee coaches the last week of August." I believe this is for Mirmac's school but I suspect this is a district directive.  If your school is hiring a new coach and you want to be part of the hiring, ask your principal about it.

Did having a budget survey done matter? On the face of it, no, it did not. I say that because (1) it has not been referenced by staff at all during any budget talks except that it occurred, (2) there is no analysis of the specific questions and (3) the comments section was not broken down at all. However, I'll do it if only to let the Board know what was said. What to keep in mind? This was a poorly design survey (numerous respondents said this so it's not just me). Judging from the answers, the district likely got a certain sub-set of parents/staff. That said, they did receive 2700 responses which is still pretty good. Some respondents clearly did not know certain things about the district so you have to keep that in mind. (It was things like not knowing that high school students only use Metro, APP is not a program at Garfield, etc.) However, 2700 parents, community and staff took the time so let's not make it an exercise in window dressing. Demographics...

A couple of stories caught my eye this weekend. One is a story about a woman who lived very, very frugally in Long Beach, OR. She died May 10th at the age of 98 and left behind $4.5M. She left behind no living relatives. From the story: She donated $500,000 to a public-school endowment and another $500,000 to a foundation to be used for student scholarships and grants to teachers. The rest she left to the city of Long Beach to build an indoor swimming pool. Bob Andrew, mayor of Long Beach, agreed it will take some study before the city accepts Oller's money. "It's a very generous offer, and we don't know in a small community what it takes to build the pool," he said. "We have to explore the process and talk to our citizenry. It's a wonderful surprise that someone felt that strongly about the community." What a wonderful woman. What a gift to the public schools in Oregon and to the town of Long Beach. The second story was from the sp...

From the Times this morning, an article about a temporary injunction granted to the Garfield student who was taken from the enrollment rolls at Garfield High. The judge will hear the case on January 21. From the article: "The lawsuit, which states that Wroten resides in a Seattle home, claims the school district has wronged the Wrotens in three ways: by denying Tony Wroten his constitutional right to a public education; by denying him due process; and by breaching the contract reached between the district and the Wroten family last summer." I don't know about the last two but the first one is not going to fly. Mr. Wroten's parents had several choices about his education for these last weeks. They could have enrolled him in a Renton school OR applied as a non-resident to any number of Seattle public high schools. Nothing was stopping him from getting a public education. Just wanting that education at a particular school - no matter the emotional ties to the sch...

I hadn't really planned to write more about the Garfield student forced out of Garfield because SPS didn't believe he lived in the district and there is a waiting list for Seattle residents trying to get into Garfield. (It had been reported that the district had hired a private investigator but it turns out that staff did the investigation.) Things have escalated a bit. There was an article in the Times and the PI, each a bit different. Yesterday about one hundred Garfield students (and the head basketball coach) walked out of Garfield to the district headquarters. They were not allowed in the building; only the student's parents (he did not attend) and the coach were allowed in. From the Times: One week after the school district terminated the enrollment of sophomore Tony Wroten, one of the country's elite basketball prospects, the Garfield students walked out of school at noon and walked three miles in 30-degree wind chill and rain to protest the decision. In ...

As if the district had nothing else to do (and newspapers don't have any other education issues to write about), here's a fight between a family and the district over an out-of-district enrollment. This involves one, Tony Wroten, a basketball player, who enrolled in Garfield last year as a freshman while it was at Lincoln. Garfield moved back to its new building and big surprise! was overenrolled. The district went through the list, found non-residents and Tony was one of them. His family was told he had to live in Seattle to stay. Here's where it got sticky. Tony's dad rented a house in the Central area where his mom lives (dad lives in Renton). But the district - wait for it - sent out an investigator who found that it did not appear that the house in the Central district was his primary residence and they recinded his enrollment. They were told there was room at other Seattle high schools including RBHS, Cleveland and Sealth. Naturally, a threat of a lawsuit has foll...