Seattle Schools Community Forum

Explore new cultures without leaving your home! You and your family will learn, firsthand, about another exciting country by opening your heart and your home to a high school exchange student from around the world. Host families are needed for foreign exchange students who will be attending Chief Sealth High School for the 2013-2014 school year. Host families are needed for the following students: a girl from Germany, who enjoys track and field, shopping, photography, ballet dancing; loves music and plays the guitar,  a boy from Brazil, who speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese, enjoys technology and is very active in Taekwondo,  a girl from Bolivia, who enjoys drawing, painting, taking photos, cooking and playing tennis,  a boy from China, who enjoys playing basketball, swimming, music and singing, travelling and also enjoys going to museums,  a girl from South Korea, who has advanced English skills. She participates in the math and newspaper ...

Of possible interest to our readers: From Education Week - an article about "a new breed of national education advocacy organizations " and the debate "about whether they can play a grassroots 'ground game' comparable to that of labor. Another article on these groups, this one from Education Next, about Fight Club for ERAOs (Education reform advocacy organizations) in D.C.  You remember the first rule of Fight Club?  There is NO Fight Club.  Why this emergence of these groups?  This article links it to charter operation frustration.  This is possibly the best article I have read in summing up these groups, how they interact and their growing influence. Many of the groups talk to one another frequently,, through a regular conference call organized by the Education Trust, at meetings organized by funders such as the Walton Family Foundation, and at conferences convened by groups such as the NewSchools Venture Fund.   The 34 organizations in the...

Do you know about City Year ?  I had vaguely heard of it and, of course, if you see a City Year member, you see a young person in a bright red varsity jacket and khakis.   They were particularly noticeable at the recent forum on SPS put on by Seattle Channel.  I recently sat down and interviewed the head of City Year Seattle, Simon Amiel, about who City Year is and what they do in SPS. After talking with Simon, I was very impressed and I want to raise awareness and support for City Year.  The reason I feel strongly about this is because in our high-need schools,  they are doing exactly what I would like to see happen throughout the district.  They are: in schools all day tutoring students building relationships with students and staff and community being role models to students This is the kind of intimate and direct intervention that many of these students need. First, from their website, a little background information: Twen...

Seattle Public Schools has committed to a seven-year cycle for instructional materials adoptions. The District wants to review and update all textbook decisions every seven years. The work is divided across the seven-year period so all of the adoptions don't occur at once. This year, the District is looking to adopt materials for these courses: Middle School Language Arts High School Science High School Social Studies K-5 Music French Japanese Each of these adoptions will follow the process set by Policy C21.00 . Part of that process calls for one standing Instructional Materials Committee for all adoptions and a separate Adoption Committee for each adoption. The District is now seeking volunteers to serve on the various Adoption Committees to recommend specific texts for the classes. If you would like to serve on one or more of these committees, you should submit your application without delay. Follow the links or visit the Curriculum Alignment page of the District web si...

The District is moving forward with the customer service initiative in the Strategic Plan, "Excellence for All". Like everything else the District does, this is all about accountability. As you know, accountability means having objectively measurable goals and assessing performance relative to those benchmarks. Now they need people - lots of people - to make those assessments. They need people to act as secret shoppers to check and report compliance with the customer service protocols. It's not a big commitment - a few minutes of training, a few minutes of asking for service and a few minutes to report on your experience. Did the staff respond promptly? courteously? correctly? If you're willing to be one of the army of hundreds of secret shoppers they need to assess the standard of customer service in the District, please contact Bernardo Ruiz at bjruiz(at)seattleschools.org.