Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Q13: New numbers show the mumps outbreak in King County has now spread to 108 cases, including one new case in a Seattle public school. The Public Health Department of Seattle & King County has confirmed a student who attends Nova High School has been diagnosed with mumps.

Update: there is now a ninth child in Washington state who has been hospitalized with this condition. end of update Not sure if this story is widely known but eight Washington state children have come down with polio-like symptoms and one died yesterday in Bellingham.  Three children are from Seattle and one of those is still in the hospital.

  Update : SPS did get back to me - the HPV vaccination is available at every health center in SPS.  Really good news. end of update I've noticed - in print and on tv - that the CDC is pushing the HPV vaccine with a new emphasis on the issues for boys as well as girls. Official handout from the CDC. Many people think the HPV vaccine only protects girls, but this vaccine protects boys against certain HPV-related cancers, too! Girls aren’t the only ones affected by HPV, also known as human papillomavirus.  HPV is common in both males and females. Every year, over 9,000 males are affected by cancers caused by HPV infections that don’t go away. HPV can cause cancers of the anus, mouth/throat (oropharynx), and penis in males.

By my rough count, probably half of Seattle Schools' school buildings are probably pre-1986.  That's a key date, according to this NY Times story on schools nationwide worrying about lead in the water.

From SPS Communications : School vaccination regulations in Washington state have changed for the upcoming 2016-17 school year. The Washington State Department of Health now requires two doses of chickenpox (Varicella) vaccine for all students in grades K through 12. Students who do not have two doses of vaccine by the start of classes in September, 2016, could be excluded from school.

Good News: Duncan's much anticipated departure finally at hand. He's leaving in December. Bad News: Bloomberg reports that John King, former NY Ed chief, will be named as replacement by Obama at 3:30 today! Meet the new boss, worse  than the old boss. Friday, October 2nd Community Meeting on Bell Time Analysis at Washington Middle School from 6:30-7:30 pm. Bikes being recalled.   Nearly 1.3 million bicycles in the United States are being recalled for a defect that could cause riders to crash. The recall affects 17 different bike brands from 13 companies, with bikes ranging from model years 1998 through 2015, and a price range of $200 to $10,000. Referendum to overturn tougher vaccination opt-out law in California fails. Flu shot clinics at SPS high schools.  Free to adults with insurance (or $28 without). Flu shots are offered to all children (age 18 or younger) free of charge, regardless of insurance coverage . Got T-Mobile ? They got h...

From KUOW : In fact, looking at the latest reports of vaccine rates, health officials found that even more parents statewide are foregoing the whooping cough and measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines. Parents are also increasingly opting out of the polio vaccine. Seventeen years ago, 95.4 percent of kindergarteners in Washington state were vaccinated for polio. It’s even more dramatic in Seattle, where 81.4 percent of kindergarteners have been vaccinated for polio. That’s lower than the 2013 polio immunization rates for 1-year-olds in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Algeria, El Salvador, Guyana, Sudan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Yemen, among other countries, according to data from the World Health Organization.

Well first, it's hot (but I'm from Arizona so you can't scare me) and dry so please have a safe and fun 4th and let the experts handle the fireworks AND be careful if you go out into the water (not in a pool).  The waters here in the Puget Sound region are very cold.   Kind of a fun survey on "How Creative Are You?"   if you draw (and I don't).  We like to talk about family engagement here and boy, did Arne Duncan fall flat in his latest Twitter chat.  From Conversation Ed: The topic of Arne Duncan’s July Twitter chat was “Parental engagement”. And that’s ironic for two reasons: He received a lot of parental engagement on the chat he probably wasn’t expecting. He didn’t “engage” much with the parents who were asking him the tough questions regarding his education policy that affect their kids. In fact, Duncan didn’t say much, but parents and educators certainly did. On the Seattle Craigslist, they are advertisin...

Here's a sad commentary on our country.  (I think Seattle Citizen mentioned this issue elsewhere.)  A baby was shot in the head in a drive-by shooting in Kent.  The baby is likely brain-dead. Why did this happen? Police said the shooting stemmed from a road-rage incident when a silver car driven by Malaja’s family and a black sedan turned on Lake Fenwick Road South at the same time. “There was some sort of exchange, and the next thing we know is the individuals in the black vehicle exchanged gunfire (at the) silver vehicle,” said a police spokeswoman on the scene.  KIRO tv had a story and this is what the baby's uncle said: "We need to stop the Seattle violence," the baby's uncle, Edmond "Mackie" McNeil, told KIRO 7. "The CD [Central District], south end, whoever, wherever. It's over. We're trying to be living for our kids. Everybody needs to live for your kids, now. It's over. You ain't no gangster because you w...

State Superintendent Randy Dorn is having a press conference this morning to talk about his funding plan for McCleary    He says: “I want to make sure that every student, from Cape Flattery to Clover Park to Clarkston, has an equal opportunity to a basic education,” Dorn said. “That isn’t happening today. My plan will ensure that.” Also from OSPI, the announcement of math and science partnership grants to seven districts including Seattle. The grants will be used to help increase student achievement in math and science. Specifically, the grants allow for partnerships between schools and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculty at institutes of higher education. State funding for the projects totals $1.9 million, to be split among the grantees. Awards, which have yet to be determined, range from $500,000 to $1.5 million and will be distributed during the course of the three-year grants. The MSP grant program is part of the federal Title II, Part B sect...

A notice went out to all the parents at IHS, but there are two confirmed cases of pertussis (whooping cough) at Ingraham. Pregnant women and infants should stay out of the school building for a bit. Whooping cough in high school?  Get the vaccinations, okay?

Google's doodle today is the hundred birthday of Jonas Salk who invented the polio vaccine.

Good story from KUOW on vaccination rates (thanks to reader Wow  ).  I had heard about this trend of more well-to-do families not vaccinating their children at higher rates than other families. Good map of Seattle Schools and vaccination rates. From the story: Instead of vaccinating her children for chickenpox, Kimberly Christensen chose the old fashioned way to immunize them – sending her kids to hang out with infected children.  “Our friends knew of someone and called us,” she said. “So we went over and the kids shared lollipops.” Her kids did get chickenpox. “It was a long month," she said.   But Christensen is not an “anti-vaccinator,” she told me adamantly. “One of my biggest frustrations is that most people think you’re either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and there is no middle ground,” she said. I can only ask, "Is she hoping she can find someone to give them mumps and measles?" I'll also point out that if a child does not get a chickenpo...

Update :  it appears that the district is working with the City and the Downtown Seattle Association on a proposal for the former Federal Building.  I am somewhat surprised given the district's seeming lack of interest.  The proposal is due July 3rd.  I have no further details until I hear back from the district capital spokesman on this issue. End of update. The West Seattle blog reports on a fire at one play area at Schmitz Park early Thursday morning.  It did $50K in damage to a playground that the district paid for last year.   That likely means it is covered by insurance.  The Fire Department is unsure if it was arson, an accident or spontaneous combustion (from wood chips).   From Principal Kischner: “We appreciate the prompt response of the Seattle Fire Department, which prevented what could have been a much more serious outcome. Although the heat was enough to blister paint on the outside of the building and crack nu...

I read three articles recently that struck me as important especially given the stats on vaccination in Washington state as well as the information on the high number of students who are immigrants in our district. I apologize for its length but I wanted to provide a picture -and reason- for including all three articles. (Correction: The following sentence was my original paragraph. "As most of you have likely heard, there was a recent court ruling that vaccines do not cause autism. Here's an article on it from the NY Times." The next paragraph is the actual ruling which found, in three different cases, that families involved did not show that their children's autism was brought on/caused by vaccines. Therefore, it is under this narrow window that you could say that, in a court of law, there was not proof that vaccines cause autism. This means that you could go either way; namely, say "Vaccines don't cause autism." or "It has not been fu...