Seattle Schools Community Forum

I have always been an action-oriented person who believes that there are solutions to problems.  But, as it was stated in the Moss-Adams report (from the Olchefske scandal in 2004), i f you don't change the culture of a bureaucracy, you will change nothing . The things that have been wrong with this district since 2004 are the same things. Which makes trying to track and follow the inner workings of the district tiring, frustrating and frankly, at this point, useless. Charlie calls the problem "a culture of lawlessness" which is true but I would be more inclined to say it's a silo culture of hunkering down at headquarters and a near-complete lack of understanding about how to run a school district properly.  The leadership at the top that refuses to see/acknowledge problems, no matter how many red flags get thrown up, how many scandals occur or how many finding come from auditors, either internal or at the state level is also troubling. I have met many goo...

The Work Session today is going to be wide-ranging and vital to the work of the district (well, part of it). The first part - the useless part - is about whether the district should become a charter school authorizer.  This should be the quickest part of the entire Work Session because the Board should say NO.  There is NO good reason and many reasons why not.  See my letter to the Board below. The second part is around the Strategic Plan.  Here's the huge presentation .  Here's what staff says they heard at the Jan. 14, 2015 Work Session on this topic: Fix the infrastructure before building improvements – System has been broken for a long time – The Superintendent can propose course corrections to the strategic plan Identify highest value work – “Think Big... Get it right ” – We need to explicitly prioritize and sequence work – We need to identify what will be pushed out to later dates or stopped – Directors need to be able to clearly justify why we may...

A bit of a slow week at SPS, probably because of the MLK, Jr. day off.  It's a good day to reflect on issues around race relations and our district, our city, our state and our country.  Maybe a good day to go see Selma.  (I read that one student - at a sponsored viewing of the movie - had said thank you to the producers for making it because he finally learned what "MLK" stood for - meaning, the actual letters, not the man. Amazing.) Looking over the Board agenda for the school board meeting on Wednesday, I found a compare and contrast moment.  The Times had a good story about the Creative Advance Initiative - arts in the schools program - and it's highly successful launch.  The Creative Advantage Initiative, a program paid for by the city of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools and the private Seattle Foundation, this school year helped 1,659 students in about 12 schools — mostly in the central part of the city — who wouldn’t otherwise have ...

Yesterday staff presented an update to the Board during a Work Session on the Strategic Plan.  I did not attended but just read thru the presentation .  It includes survey results of both parents and staff. Here's what I wrote the Board: Dear Directors, Looking at the Strategic Plan Presentation, I see this notation: At this stage, we are highlighting data but do not yet have root cause analyses or proposed solutions. I can help.

Again, more from the Retreat and analysis later but here's what staff put out as priorities (and this in reference to trying to do the bell time analysis work plus all these items).  Seattle School District Priorities 2014-2015

Deja vu all over again (with apologies to Yogi Berra).  It's sometimes good to have been tracking this district for a long time.  Basically, it's about institutional memory and its usefulness.  Sometimes, it is frustrating, exhausting and frightening.  All at once.  I am speaking of the Board retreat going on today in reference to institutional memory.   I could have sworn that if I shut my eyes, then quickly opened them, I would see the ghosts of staff past sitting around that table.  Maria Goodloe-Johnson (that ghost comment is not in reference to her passing), Susan Enfield, Carla Santorno, even Joe Olchefske.  Because those are the people I thought might have been channeling through staff today. I often wish there was a new person in the audience, a casual observer who I could question and ask, "What did that sound like to you?" 

I'll print this in its entirety.  From Superintendent Banda: Today we are announcing several leadership changes that will improve our ability to support our schools and students. Our Strategic Plan outlines a series of goals we must achieve over the next five years to improve academic success for our students. To meet the objectives outlined in the Every Student. Every Classroom. Every Day. strategic plan, we will need to accomplish several complex projects and develop a way to support and guide this work. We recently made two key hires that will help us strengthen our ability to provide better service to schools, students and families. Barbara Robbins will now serve as the Director of Project Management and Guillermo “Bill” Echeverria has been hired as Director of Continuous Improvement. These are new positions for Seattle Public Schools and they bring a much-needed skill set to the work we are doing. Together, they will help us improve the coordination, sequencing, and exec...

A hilarious article about portables in NYC by the NY Times.  We're not alone. But eight years later, Mr. Cosby, 46, is busier than ever as an all-around handyman for the seven timeworn trailers that house 283 students outside the crowded main school building. He has chased opossums, raccoons and turtles from the alleys around the corrugated metal structures, which were installed in the 1990s and now resemble battered railroad cars. He has laid traps to catch mice and scrubbed the floors of their droppings; mended roofs and lights and air-conditioners; patched many holes and installed new floors where water seeped in from below. Shortly after he took office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg vowed that New York City would get rid of all “transportable classroom units” by 2012. But today, 7,158 students, most of them in the beginning grades, are still learning in them, a testament to the struggle to keep up with rapid neighborhood growth, as well as to the magical powe...

Monday, March 31st The final Strategic Plan Community Meeting from 6:30-8:30 pm in West Seattle at Roxhill Elementary. Tuesday, April 1st Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council meeting at 6:30 p.m. , JSCEE, Room 2700 Wednesday, April 2nd School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda .

Monday, March 17th The wearing o' the Green.  Happy St. Patrick's Day. To note: signups for public testimony for the School Board meeting start at 8 am this morning. Tuesday, March 18th Audit&Finance Meeting from 4:30-6:30 p.m.  Agenda Wednesday, March 19th School Board meeting starting at 4:15 p.m.  Agenda . I see a LOT of audit update items here that I am unclear about -might be worth attending. Items of interest:   - the winning bid for the work for Lincoln comes in at $828k.  What's interesting is that the district decided it needed wainscoting in all the new toilet rooms.  What's more interesting is the variance in cost to do it with the company bidding highest for the overall cost bidding the wainscoting at the lowest cost ($972k for overall, $3500 for wainscoting) and the winning bid at $812k putting in the wainscoting at the highest additional price, $16k.  The average cost for the wainscoting was about $9500.  How...

Tonight is the second of the Superintendent's regional meetings about the Strategic Plan at 6:30 p.m. at Hale High School. I suspect that this particular meeting - coming on the heels of pushback from staff on later start times AND the brewing rebellion by schools over cuts to their budgets - might prove to be larger and more contentious than the one earlier this week.  And Hale - having had a later start time for 10 years - is perfect backdrop for this discussion. That said, the district loves its Powerpoint presentations and I suspect they will make whoever shows up wait for any questioning beyond issues around the Strategic Plan.  But the district press release does say attendees can question district leadership so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Also to note, next week's School Board meeting should be a barnburner as several groups - Start School Later-Seattle, school staffs and NW Center parents - could show up to "express" their opinions ...

Open Enrollment starts the week after next week's Mid-Winter break and runs two weeks thru March 7th.  All forms must be returned either in person or online to Seattle Public Schools by 4 p.m., Friday, March 7, 2014.  Here's the info from SPS .   Also the Enrollment FAQs have many answers to questions.  (Oddly, the district's Facebook page has nothing about this.)  But, to keep in mind: the district isn't open next week so no, you can't call and ask questions the enrollment form is not available so you can't look at one and review it so that you are ready to go when you go in to enroll this is two weeks and that's a lot of kids to enroll.  I would encourage you to go early - in date and time of day).  I did write to Tracy Libros, head of Enrollment, two weeks ago to ask about why application forms could not be reviewed and why the enrollment window seems so short but I never received a reply. Looks like Superintendent Banda is to h...

Monday, December 9th Curriculum & Instruction Committee meeting from 4-6 p.m.  Agenda.  Update on math adoption scheduled. Wednesday, December 10th Executive Committee Meeting, 8:30 am to 10 am. Agenda .  Mostly review of upcoming Board meetings and legislative matters. Oversight Work Session; Finance . 4-5:30 pm.  Agenda Interesting to see on page 13 that in nearly every division in the Budget department, spending is to go up in 2013-2014.  This after our new CFO (and that's what I'm going to call him because these lengthy titles are a pain), Ken Gotsch, said at the Board retreat that the current shortfall is between $18-19M and they have to look for reductions.  They could try keeping the budgeting for these divisions at their current levels for one.  (In fact, the "assistant superintendent" - I'm not sure who this is -  has a budget that goes from  $301,117 to $484,269.  That's up over 30%.) On page 15, they have a pa...

Wednesday, October 23 Work Session: Strategic Plan Performance Measures from 4-5:30 p.m.  No agenda available. Work Session:Distribution Services from 5:30-6:30 p.m. (hard stop at 6:30 pm as they have an Executive Session at 6:30 p.m.)  Agenda Thursday, October 24th Road Map to College event from 3-6 pm at Chief Sealth Int'l High School District IV School Board candidate forum at Lawton at 6:45 p.m., featuring Suzanne Dale Estey and Sue Peters. Saturday, October 26th Community Meeting with Director Patu from 10 am to noon at Cafe Vita. iCollege event with Washington State University faculty, staff and alumni, from 10:30 am- 1:30 pm. at Seattle City Hall. No registration needed, free lunch for the first 300 students who show up.  Looks like a great opportunity to learn about WSU and get help with the college application process with multiple workshops.  They are raffling off a free iPad mini as well.  Also to note on your calendar:

I attended the Executive Committee meeting last week. The minutes from the previous meeting on June 12th were somewhat telling.  They reflect some discussion of the new Seattle Teacher Residency program.  Michael Tolley noted that it had been assigned to the Audit and Finance Committee and not the Curriculum and Instruction Committee.  That's interesting because I would think training teachers would be C&I but there was not an explanation in the minutes. As well, Duggan Harman said that "costs have not been finalized."  Remember that for the future because the STR program may well cost much more than we suspect and the money has to come from somewhere.  As well, this item WAS to be on the August 21st Board agenda and the Superintendent pulled it.  I suspect it is because the Board was not going to vote for a program with no budget attached.  Rightly so. I note that Directors were updated on conditional certifications for TFA teachers and ...

Every Student. Every Classroom. Every Day. Three Goals, 50,000 Journeys. What do you think? I'm good with this.  I just would like to see the entire plan more streamlined and focused as the motto.

 To note, it appears there will be no other district/Board meetings after the July 3rd Board meeting until early August. Wednesday, July 3rd   School Board meeting at 4:15 p.m. - Agenda Even during the sleepy summer months, a lot is happening.  At this meeting, the Strategic Plan will be voted on.  The Board will heard a report about FERPA re: Common Core and the student data "cloud." (I will be putting out a white paper on this topic so look for that.)  The Board will vote to extend the Superintendent's contract by one year to June 2016.   (They are not considering a raise until after bargaining agreements are done and the district's budget is set.  I personally would not be for a raise at this point in time.  Apparently, according to the item, there is no public input sought on the issue of a raise or extension of his contract.) Hey and look what is delayed (again)?  It's the Highly Capable Student Program State Grant .  No...

Following up on Charlie's thread to the new (waiting for Board approval) five-year Strategic Plan , here's what I heard from the Board retreat where the Board and senior staff discussed it.  For some reason, only the goals are at the communications page on this issue but there are links to the v ision/mission/core beliefs from the Intro item on the Board agenda page.  To note: that Saturday, June 1st, saw a packed room of staff (most of whom stayed from 10 am to 2 p.m. - a big commitment of time) and Board members. Everyone came prepared to work and was in good spirits.  There was a feeling of a shared unity to this work.  Once again the Alliance person sat at the table with Board and staff.  One funny aside is that I downloaded the agenda from the district's website.  It had only the district logo but when you got to the meeting, the agenda had both the district's and the Alliance's.  Just in case anyone thought the Alliance was just a helper at t...

The revised Strategic Plan for Seattle Public Schools is scheduled for introduction at the Board meeting on June 19 and for a vote at the Board meeting on July 3. You can read it here .

Dear Seattle Public Schools community: As the 2012-2013 school year draws to a close, I want to thank you all for welcoming me in my first year as your Superintendent. It has been a pleasure to get to know the schools and community and learn about the ideas and concerns each of you have. My conversations with educators, students, families, staff and community members have provided insight for changes and priorities, both for this year and for the future.  Throughout the year we’ve celebrated successes and addressed challenges. The 2,900 students graduating from high school this year are a visible reminder that our primary purpose continues to be ensuring that students graduate prepared for college, career and life. We are building for the future Our enrollment continues to increase, with more Seattle families choosing to send their children to Seattle Public Schools. Thanks to approval by Seattle voters, two key levies will help us address running the...