Seattle Schools Community Forum

My impression of politicians who constantly beat the drum on a single issue is that they either have invested an awful lot of personal capital into the issue and/or they are great self-promoters. I see this in Councilman Tim Burgess who has made pre-K a key issue in his roster.  He was even able to get the Times to print a "news" story today that has no real news in it as a way to remind people it's his issue.  (I'm wondering why the Times felt compelled to print this story rather than allowing Burgess an op-ed.) His latest newsletter is a litany of "composite" stories about kids who live in the north end and kids who live in the south end.

Well, whoops - it appears that thousands of Northshore students, grades 7-12,  were accidentally sent spam emails that contained porn.  This was not a hacking issue.  The Times reports that the district's tech department was able to block anymore e-mails from coming in and shut down the students' Gmail accounts temporarily. Also on the subject of Northshore, I had written how that district was going to revamp their long-standing highly capable program despite parents' displeasure.  Apparently the parents won the day as their board voted to keep the program the same. Good story from KUOW about music in Seattle Schools via Seattle Music Partners.  The story covers students at Bailey Gatzert, Leschi, Madrona and Lowell.

Entering the last month of this school year this week, always an exciting time. 

I was contacted some months back by some Laurelhurst Elementary parents who were, at turns, flummoxed, frustrated and frantic.  It felt to them as if their school was unraveling and, like Stevens, their principal and the district did not seem to be giving their concerns much credibility or credence. Like the Stevens parents, they had asked for a meeting to have a whole picture meeting of the minds, with everything put out on the table.  (This after an earlier parent meeting that apparently was quite tense and non-productive, leaving both sides feeling unhappy.) The issue with Laurelhurst is multi-faceted.   One, their school is packed to the gills even with portables.  They even have some schooling happening in the halls.  Two, the Sped EBD services there seem to be serving a larger number of students than the school can help.  When there are behavior issues, many times the aide will take a child out to the hallway but there's some kind of teaching ther...

Update: read this blog thread below from Wait What and then appreciate that the Seattle School Board recently passed a resolution, 5-1 (with Director Blanford voting no and Director Geary not at the meeting), to ask the state to allow districts to be able to select/create an alternative summative assessment framework to show academic mastery.  (Their discussion is in Part Two of the video of the board meeting. Here's the cue-up from the Seattle Education blog .) end of update From the Wait What? blog by Connecticut writer, Jonanthan Pelto with Wendy Lecker, news that PARCC is not as advertised.   (bold his) In the most significant academic study to date, the answer appears to be that the PARCC version the massive and expensive test is that it is an utter failure. William Mathis, Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and member of the Vermont State Board of Education, has just published an astonishing piece in the Washington Post. ( Alice in PA...

A couple of ways to learn more about who is running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Chris Reykdal Erin Jones David Spring Robin Fleming Forum at Western Washington University (yay Western!), May 25, 2016 The forum, free and open to the public, was hosted by Western Washington University’s Woodring College of Education, Bellingham Public Schools, and the League of Women Voters of Washington (Education Fund). There appears to be another candidate to the race,  Ron Higgins , a teacher and retired engineer from West Richland. His campaign webpage makes for interesting reading. Mr. Higgins, a former Marine, has been a math teacher in both California and Washington state in both traditional and charter schools.  He is against Common Core. He says that teachers should not have to join the union if they don't to. As well he believes schools should "treat boys as boys and girls as girls" and "prevent our students from being bullied by well-f...

A reader alerted me to this discussion at the HCC blog: These talking points come from one of our commenters: I've chatted with some board members on the subject and it sounds like the high school changes are fairly far along with no alternatives even on the table. So time is short to make improvements here. The recommendation was to send mail pointing out problems with the plan. I'll also summarize all the comments here in a letter to the board at a point when there are enough to makes sense. The district is considering changing all high schools to a 5 period, 3 trimester schedule (3x5) as a means of helping students meet the new 24-credit graduation requirement in WA State. Instead of a classes meeting 180 days a year for 6 periods a day, classes would meet 120 days a year for 5 periods a day. In theory, students would have the ability to take more classes per year and thereby increase their opportunities to meet the 24-credit graduation requirement. In reality, the 3x5 ...