Seattle Schools Community Forum

From SPS to parents:

The Viaduct is closed and I see no tweets from SPS Communications about transportation issues so I hope all is well for schools in that area.

This story was on KUOW today. "Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in addressing the opportunity gap is the persistent disparities in our public schools," said Murray, in an statement promoting the event. schools," said Murray, in an statement promoting the event. "This is not just the responsibility of the Seattle school district. This is clever way for the Mayor to get the City more involved but really he should have said: "Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in addressing the opportunity gap is the persistent disparities in our city.." Because that is equally true AND his turf.

Charlie and I have always enjoyed a good laugh over the district's "Facilities Master Plan" because we both could never understand how a list of buildings with descriptions and policies around them is a "plan."  It will be interesting to see if the newest one is any better. I attended both Work Sessions yesterday on facilities and it pretty much turned out how I thought.  Staff's presentation for the first work session was overly long - a lot of flowery talk about the mission and values of facilities which is fine but you don't need five minutes about it - and sure enough, they had to rush at the end of the first Session.  Directors seemed to have more questions to ask but they had to plow on. I'll have a write-up of my notes soon.  There were several handouts including this one that I thought parents might want to see.  It's the newest Facilities Master Plan Replacement or Major Modernization Priority list.  It has many categories of facil...

School Board Director Sue Peters has proposed changes to the policies that govern program placement. The staff have responded with their suggestions for updating the policies. Both versions will be discussed today in a work session. You can read them here .

Crosscut is featuring this story: Charter schools suspending black students at high rates . It's full of accusations and denials.

Update: some common sense from one of my favorite education writers, Jersey Jazzman, and his "The PARCC Silly Season. end of update It's just hard to know where to start. First, the new thought from ed reformers is that parents just don't understand what they are doing when they opt their children out.  Thanks for patronizing them as if they are not thinking adults.  There are also new pro-testing groups springing up and many of them are funded by the Gates Foundation.  It's the same thing, over and over, with the Foundation. Create faux parent groups, data use groups and even media groups.