Seattle Schools Community Forum

Congratulations to Van Asselt and John Muir, two elementary schools in South Seattle that won $25,000 awards for improvement on 4th grade WASL scores. While I don't think WASL scores should be the sole measure of success in schools, I certainly believe a significant increase on WASL scores is an accomplishment to be celebrated. See the PI article, " 10 schools win awards for improved WASLs " for details.

Sounds like the speakers at last night's School Board meeting raised many of the same issues around school closures and the proposed TAF placement at Rainier Beach High School. See the PI article, School Board continues to draw fire for details. The video of last night's meeting has not yet been posted to the Seattle Channel page. I heard that Carla Santorno talked some about the TAF proposal at the meeting, and would love to hear from those of you who were at the meeting more about what she said, how she presented the information, and how it was received. I assume the proposed student assignment plan agenda items were passed as described, since I haven't heard otherwise. Any interesting tidbits of information anyone gleaned during the discussion of student assignment?

I received a notice of a NAACP vigil for this evening: ************************************ IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STAND On Wednesday, November first, the NAACP is holding a candlelight vigil in front of the John Stanford Building in protest of the Seattle School Boards decision to close several schools. The anticipated closures will disproportionately impact minority group members and the poor. All of the schools slated for closure serve predominantly minority populations. Further, an overwhelming majority of the students that attend the schools that the School District is seeking to close receive either free or reduced lunch. Meanwhile, schools that are predominantly white and middle to upper income are virtually untouched by the School Board’s closure decisions. Public Schools were intended to be the great equalizer. The Seattle School Board has clearly demonstrated that it is willing to sacrifice the educational opportunities of minority children and the poor. Taking a stand a...

I received the following notice from the StopClosures group: *********************************************** Student, Parents, Families, Teachers and Community Members, Thank you for contacting StopClosures with your support of our efforts to halt Phase 1, and revoke Phase 2, under the leadership of Eric Dawson and Sakara Remmu. StopClosures is working to save every school slated for closure. We represent the overwhelming number of families in the District and throughout the Seattle Community who are opposed to the current [or any] closure plan. We understand that if the District continues to refuse to work in collaboration with the community, as parents, students, advocates, and voters, we have the power and the right to halt any future business of the district, including the upcoming levies, and the recall of those Directors who have voted for closures. We will continue with these efforts. Our goal, and our hope is that the District understand the severity of its actions and the irre...

The agenda for this Wednesday's School Board Meeting is interesting. I'm sure the turnout will be smaller than it would have been if Phase II were still under consideration, but several people are still signed up to talk about school closures. The merger of Broadview-Thompson and Viewlands with an expansion to a K-8 program is on the table for Wednesday night. This is the one recommendation from Phase II that seems to have support, and so it is being brought up again for discussion by the Board. Two other school closure and consolidation issues are: Proposed changes to the student assignment plan for 2007-08 , which seem to be just a matter of putting into policy the promises that were made during discussions around Phase I consolidations and closures about enrollment preferences for children in the affected schools and their siblings. The extension of several one-year changes to the student assignment plan for another year, with the exception of the Orca preference for enro...

I was recently asked, on this blog, if I had any direct experience with the threat of school closures. The person asking the question was aware that I am father to a student at Lowell, but wasn't aware of the changes pending at that school and in Advanced Learning programs. So, just in case anyone is interested, I will bring everyone up to date on what is going on in APP. The Program Placement Committee has made an initial recommendation that, starting in 2008, both Hamilton International Middle School and Washington Middle School will offer APP. The program at Hamilton will start with sixth graders in 2008, will have sixth and seventh graders in 2009, and will have all three grades of APP starting in 2010. It has not yet been determined how many APP students will be a Hamilton, how they will be chosen, or how they will be served. It has not yet been determined which, if any, of the APP teachers at Washington will transfer to Hamilton. It is not clear whether the community at Hamil...

I started this blog a little over five months ago out of frustration with Phase I of the school closure plan, and a desire to keep communicating with others I had met around the district during Town Meetings and public hearings. Now, the blog has gotten large enough and has enough traffic (150-250 different people with 350-500 hits per day during weekdays of the last few busy weeks) that it is time to take care of a little blog business. 1) I have invited several people to become Contributors to the blog, which gives them the ability to post items directly, without having to send it to me first. The benefit of this was clear on the day Raj resigned when I was in a 3-hour meeting as the news was announced, but Johnny Calcagno was able to post the news and initiate the conversation. I also cannot continue to spend as much time every day on this blog as I have been doing recently, so it will be nice to share the posting load with others. My goal is to have 8-10 contributors, connected w...