Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: well, will you look at that?  On the same day, Publicola and The Stranger choose to highlight one campaign issue.  And it's their support for 1B.  Hmmm. End of update. After several forums (most of which I was invited to), I've learned a lot about the two campaigns for childcare/preschool, 1A and 1B. Here's my vote: Vote NO on the first question (and your conscience on the second one but I'm voting for 1A because I believe that, overall, it will serve more low-income children, faster, than 1B.  That's where I want my tax dollars going.) That will get the City Council and the unions back to the table to deliver one early learning proposition they both agree on.

Grab a soothing drink (or set that VCR or DVR) because this is going to be good - Frontline is showing a special on Michelle Rhee.  It will be on KCTS 9 at 10 pm Tuesday night.  Rhee, the poster girl for all that is wrong in public education reform today, has had this discussion long coming.  Given Frontline's hard-hitting reporting, I'm sure they will be thorough and frank.  Coincidentally, Rhee just released a report card of sorts, through her "group" StudentsFirst on how states are doing.  Diane Ravitch calls her out on it here . This comes on the heels of a number of staffers at StudentsFirst, all Democrats, who abruptly left the organization recently.  From the Huffington Post: "There were known to be some significant differences on political strategy and policy matters, especially in StudentsFirst's approach toward unions and partisanship," said a source close to the education reform community who declined to be named in order to pre...

Here's the latest in the Pottergate saga from the Seattle PI. Thanks to connections in SPS I had a heads up on this but had not seen the details. (I know this information was also given to the Times but the PI seems to have beaten them to the first release of the story.) It doesn't look good for yet another couple of Board members, this time Steve Sundquist and Harium Martin-Morris. From the PI story: Two Seattle school board members were warned in late 2008 that a contractor hired by Silas Potter was unlicensed, paying below-market wages and not following safety rules on construction sites at two elementary schools, according to e-mails between the school board and union officials The contractor, Solar West Office Solutions, was investigated by the state Department of Labor and Industries, which ordered the company to pay $57,000 in back wages. However, the school district wound up footing the bill because Solar West's owner, Keith Battle, could not be locat...