Seattle Schools Community Forum

Both Green Lake Elementary and Genesee Hill Elementary buildings are being considered for city landmark status. From the Landmarks Preservation Board: The Landmarks Preservation Board will consider landmark nomination for Green Lake Elementary School at   2400 N 65th Street. The meeting will be on Wednesday, August 21 at 3:30 p.m. in the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5 th   Avenue, 40 th   Floor in Room 4060.   The public is invited to attend the meeting and make comments. Written comments should be received by the Landmarks Preservation Board by 5:00 p.m. on August 20 at the following address: Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, P.O. Box 94649, Seattle WA, 98124-4649. A copy of the nomination is available for public review at the Green Lake Branch Library, 7364 East Green Lake Drive North (206-684-7547); and at Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Office in the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5th Ave, Suite 1700 (206-684-0228). ...

From reader DK: Looks like the 2013-14 school calendar will not be what the district originally assumed- our kids will actually be with their teachers for 3 more days than planned, as Seattle’s request for the 3 full Waiver days for professional development has been denied for a 2nd time by the State Board of Education last week. From the posted July 10-11th meeting highlights: BASIC EDUCATION ACT WAIVERS “ The Board considered requests from 13 school districts for Option One waivers from the basic education requirement of a minimum 180-day school year. Six of the requests are resubmittals of requests presented but not approved at the May meeting, with additional information provided by each district as requested in May…The Board directed staff to provide written notice to Columbia (Walla Walla), Fife, and Seattle districts that their requests were not approved.” Among the reasons given for the final denial for Seattle- lack of community support or engagement (required by state law)....

State Superintendent Randy Dorn throws down on half-days/waivers for school districts, according to a report from KING-5 tv. Washington State’s school superintendent says he opposes the expansion of half-days on school calendars and wants lawmakers to act next year to give his office the authority to curb them. “Just because the adults have the problem of not having enough money does not mean we should take away kids' instructional time,” Randy Dorn told KING 5. “So they moved to this partial-day thing,” said Dorn. “I think it’s a burden on parents, working parents that have to do all the arrangements.” “I don’t like the idea of waivers. I don’t like the idea of half-days for professional development,” said Dorn. “Especially the kids that struggle the most, it hurts them the most if we’re not in the classroom teaching.” “The lack of adequate time for professional development, collaboration and planning is just one of the problems caused by underfunding,” WEA sp...

From Ed Week and the NY Times comes word that Washington State, along with Wisconsin, have been granted waivers from some of the most "onerous conditions" of NCLB.  That brings the total number of states with waivers up to 26.   That's more than half the states and Andy Porter, the dean of U of Penn Graduate School of Education asks, " The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?" From the Times: In exchange for the education waivers, schools and districts must promise to set new targets aimed at preparing students for colleges and careers. They must also tether evaluations of teachers and schools in part to student achievement on standardized tests. The administration said all schools would be required to show yearly improvement.  Instead of labeling all struggling schools as failing, the waivers direct states to focus most attention on the bottom 5 percent of low-performing schools. “With the waiver we can focus on thos...

From SPS: The Seattle School Board on Wednesday decided to extend the school year by two days to make up for January’s inclement weather. The last day of school will be Friday, June 22 . Seattle students lost three days of school in January because of severe winter weather conditions. One day was made up on Jan. 27. The School Board voted 0 to 7 against applying for a waiver from the state, which would have allowed Seattle Public Schools to not make up those two days. Not making up the days would have saved the district about $500,000. “This is a statement on the value of classroom instruction,” said Board President Michael DeBell, after the unanimous vote.

It's a fairly slow week. Wednesday, Feb. 1st - Work Session: Facilities from 4-5:30 p.m. No agenda available yet. - School Board meeting from 6-9 p.m. Agenda .  (note; normally SB meetings are two weeks apart but, because of the snow, this one occurs just one week from the last one on Jan. 25th) The agenda includes: - Creative Approach Schools MOU - as I previously mentioned I support this effort but it cannot go forward without the Board having some oversight ability. Without that, we are giving away our public schools and their oversight. Director Peaslee has introduced an amendment towards that end. - The Waiver for Basic Instructional Materials policy . The agenda indicates that the action report and policy has been updated but I have not read it yet. Director Peaslee is offering two amendments; one is to allow the school principal the right to appeal to the School Board if the Superintendent denies a waiver request. The other amendment is to allow the district ...

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan just came out with a new idea for RTTT:  allowing districts to compete as stand-alones (as opposed to just entire states competing).   This is interesting because the most recent news on RTTT is that Hawaii was placed on a "high-risk" grant status and may have its award taken away.  This is also the case in New York.  From Education Week : "I think we'll use it for the districts," he said. "You can do different things. You can do early childhood as a piece of that, or STEM as a piece of that. ... I don't want to commit, but the bulk of the money will go through districts...what we'll be asking of districts is still very much up for consideration." It's clear that Duncan sees the potential of investing a half-billion dollars in districts, especially in states that are, as he calls them, "less functional" and haven't won any other competitive grants. "I love that we played...

Here is the proposed policy 2020, Waiver of Basic Instructional Materials . The primary thing to like about this policy is its very existence. Finally we have a policy to codify the process and set standards for allowing schools to use alternatives to the board-adopted materials as their basic instructional materials (rather than as supplemental materials). Beyond that, there isn't much good here at all.

Wednesday, Jan. 4th Second part of a Work Session around Board policy Series 6000 from 4-5:30 p.m.  This series is about operations including budgeting, revenues, purchasing, etc. School Board Meeting - 6-9 p.m.  Among items on the agenda:

This is a bit early but I happened to be at the district website and decided to check the agenda for this Wednesday's Board meeting. I'm a bit perplexed. One item is the district asking OSPI for a waiver for Cleveland High to be exempt from the 150-hour state requirement.  It is now an ALE (alternative learning experience) school versus a traditional school.  Under OSPI an ALE school does not meet the 150-hour requirement and so only gets 90% of funding that traditional schools receive.  The district wants Cleveland to get that extra 10% (about 300k) for this year.  What's perplexing is that they explain how they created Cleveland two years ago with a block schedule.  They knew the block schedule would mean less class time and yet they went ahead.  Now, they are unhappy they don't get full funding. OSPI recognizes that block schedules cannot meet the 150 hour/credit requirement, and therefore is willing to grant waivers for schools doing a block sch...

Score one for Obama.  He waited and waited for Congress to do some needed updating of NCLB.  Did they?  Nope and so he went ahead and is going to grant waivers to states that ask for them.   The concern was about the large numbers of schools (somewhere between 50-80%) were going to be labeled failing.  Today the President will give a speech outlining how states can get those waivers and what they will cover.  It seems clear, though, that only states that buy into the administration's vision of ed reform (see Race to the Top) will get the waivers. This includes charter schools and that's why you may see this push for charters here in Washington state. 

On the School Board meeting agenda are two action items for state waivers from the 180-day school requirement - one is for parent-teacher conferences and one professional development. Each waiver is for 3 days. The one for parent-teacher conferences has staff stating research and data sources as being that they asked the principals. (I could quibble about that but I won't.) However, they then state that the district had a survey of parents in late December/early January and 93% (0ff over 1600 responses) preferred closing schools (instead of half-days). Great, so the district asked both principals and parents and found most in agreement. Contrast that to the item for the 3-day waiver for professional development. The research and data is the Strategic Plan and the SEA contract. That's data but I would not call it research. Here's what they say under "Community Engagement: The District’s strategic Plan “Excellence for All,” which has professional development ...

From the SPS website: Seattle Public Schools is inviting families to comment on the parent/teacher conference schedule for the 2011-13 school years. The survey is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z8JGDDY until 4 p.m., Monday, Jan. 3 . This survey will take between one and five minutes to complete. Responses will be summarized, shared with School Board members and posted on the SPS website. SPS is applying to the state Board of Education for a waiver to allow the three full-day parent-teacher conference schedule to continue. The three-day model replaces the prior model of seven half-day/early dismissals.

I caught the very end of the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee meeting yesterday just as discussion of the waiver process was wrapping up. At the end of the last meeting Director Martin-Morris said that he would come to this meeting with a draft process or policy or something, but he spaced it and didn't do the work. The Committee did get things done on the matter at this meeting, thanks, in significant part, to the presence of Director DeBell. The Board members, along with Dr. Enfield, discussed the elements of a waiver policy/process and want her to come back to their next meeting with a sort of bulletpointed outline of the main topics to be considered (equity, purpose, duration, professional development, revocation, etc.) and some thoughts on each. One of the ideas to promote equity came from Director DeBell. He noted that the District didn't have to buy Board-adopted materials for schools with a waiver and that savings - such as the money that was not spent to...