Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Board is having a multi-topic Work Session today with an update on the Families and Education levy, more Board policies and a  presentation to the Board on the 2025-2016 Budget.  I don't know if it's because I don't read many budgets but I am finding this presentation documentation hard to understand.  It appears - on page 10 - that the district is trying to pay for "strategic initiatives/grant backfill " to about $5M.  Seems like a lot given that's money that is NOT going to the classroom.  What is also troubling on that same page - if I am reading it correctly - is that the district says the "materials, supplies, operating costs" are at $20.3M .  And yet, they will get $16.5M from the Operations levy.  Obviously the two numbers are not equal but the problem for me is that the district gets money from the state for operations.  If there is state money plus local levy money, how are they not able to corral the $20M? They ...

A couple of things that may extend beyond one school - if you know this is happening at your school, could you please let us know. Update: on the SAT testing story, at the end of the thread is a letter from Roosevelt principal, Brian Vance. Key passage: In the following weeks we received no indication that there would be a consequence for our timing error and even after speaking with College Board and Educational Testing Services after the exam, we received no information that would lead us to believe they would invalidate the test scores. The first indication that there was an issue came last week, when students were not able to access their scores. In the end, the College Board invalidated our students' scores.  It sounds like RHS was trying to figure it out but the College Board took their sweet time in making a decision.  Not good. end of update  First, I received this e-mail from a reader about recent SAT testing at Roosevelt on Feb. 25th: Evide...

From the Center for American Progress, a fascinating (and sobering) look at districts across the country.  The name of the study is Parallel Lives, Different Outcomes: A Twin Study of Academic Productivity in U.S. School Districts. (It's not light summer reading, to be sure.) For this report, “twin districts” have very similar sizes and they have the following in common: The proportion of students who are from low-income families The proportion of students who have limited English proficiency or are English language learners The proportion of students who receive instruction through individualized educational programs Our twin districts, however, differ in terms of per-pupil spending and revenues.