Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Work Sessions scheduled for today now have their agendas available. One is the Risk Management ; Insurance Coverage Review.    On the face of it, this department seems to be doing a good job.  I only say "seems" because insurance is not my area so it's hard to discern any issues.  Two items of note: Page 6 about Liability Coverage Seattle Public Schools’ experience – One claim in excess of $10 million (athletic injury) – One claim in excess of $5 million (sexual abuse) – Excluding the above, annual liability claims paid by WSRMP since 2006 have ranged from $21,431 to $112,358, average $34,280.    Page 11 - Current Property Coverage   • Is it “enough”? – Maximum probable loss • Dunlap + South Shore + South Lake + Rainier Beach (under $200 million replacement cost )    I don't know what this means - I'm assuming it's some kind of example but I'm not sure ...

From Professor Mass' weather blog: "After lots of complaints and the evident failure of Everyday Math, the Seattle School District began a selection process for a replacement, managed by a Math Adoption Committee.  After some deliberation and limited input from the community, they have narrowed the field to three books: Math in Focus - The Singapore Approach  pub. Houghton-Mifflin enVision Math    pub. Pearson Education Go Math!    pub. Houghton-Mifflin Math in Focus is clearly the best of the lot.  enVision Math is far better than Everyday Math, but a step down.  Go Math is the weakest.  Here are a few comments on these books.

The Alliance for Education lists Community Engagement as one of their three primary missions. Towards that end they have a blog . Their last blog post was made on May 9, 2013, nearly a year ago. They have a Facebook page . Their Facebook page has 646 likes. The Facebook page has ten posts so far this year. Most of them are about the Alliance's annual community breakfast fundraiser. Those ten posts have attracted a total of 25 likes and 1 comment. The comment is from an Alliance staffer encouraging people to attend the annual community breakfast. They have a Twitter account . So far this year, no one has tweeted them. Would it be harsh of me to conclude that the Alliance is failing at community engagement?

I had heard about this vote this past weekend but couldn't find info on it at the WEA website.  From KUOW : The state’s largest teachers’ union has passed a motion to support parents and students who opt out of statewide standardized tests. The union also promotes opting out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium state test coming next school year to align with the new Common Core State Standards.

Well, that was interesting.  I'm sorry there were so few people there (but my experience is that many people never go to SCPTSA meetings anyway, choosing to go to their school PTA meeting). As usual, they had food (so no one goes hungry) and welcoming faces.  I note that the Board is a multi-racial one.  (SCPTSA President Katherine Schomer later mentioned that they have been unable to find a rep from either the NW or NE.  So much for that theory that the NE runs SCPTSA.) Much of the entire senior staff was in attendance including Superintendent Banda. President Schomer started the meeting by acknowledging their contact list has problems and they have been struggling with it since fall.  Apparently the state PTA has had issues of sending SCPTSA updated information on what PTAs are members and who their contacts are. As well, the SCPTSA is working on a new website . They did talk about the state PTA convention coming up from April 25-27th over in Belle...

The Seattle Youth Commission is a group of 25 Seattleites aged 13-19 who are appointed by the Mayor and City Council to connect youth to their elected officials. They produced this video to inform students about possible upcoming bus cuts in Seattle. They are clearly saying they are losing or will lose bus service and provide info for each high school's state reps. 

From Bob Westgard of SPS Logistics/Transportation about what might happen if the Transportation measure does not pass: That’s a very good question. We’ve been in contact with Metro about the possibility of reductions in service. We expect that if the measure does not pass, there will be reductions in service, but at this point, Metro is not really prepared to give the District specifics. Metro has committed to working with the District after the results of the vote are known. Good article at Edutopia on high school students and financial literacy.   Hey, it's free cone day at Ben & Jerry's from noon to 8 pm.