Seattle Schools Community Forum

Don't ask me to call it "X."  Here's what I tweeted: Without notice nor explanation, Seattle Schools has banned international school-based travel for students. That means the 20+ year Hands for a Bridge program that includes travel to South Africa and Northern Ireland at Roosevelt High is school-bound. It means the 49-year Nathan Hale High’s sister school in Japan exchange is gone. I know both programs raised money so that ANY student could make their trip. Programs like these are how you create world citizens and teach world history. A newly-passed school board “fiscal policy” appears to want to dismantle PTA giving to schools on the basis of equity issues. (But PTAs fund about 23 FTE in schools so I think SPS DOES like getting those dollars). But to do this without public notice is shameful. And I tweeted to the Times, The Stranger, and KUOW as well as Director Song who is the only director that I know of with a Twitter account. One comment I receive at Twitter said...

I have to believe that Special Education is one of the most important responsibilities a school district can have. And probably the toughest because every single child - and their degree of disability - are not the same. I do challenge some people on Twitter who moan about how terrible the US is doing vis a vis other countries in international testing (that's going to be an upcoming post). If those other countries include India or China, countries like that do NOT educate and test all their children. For the most part, the US does because we believe every child matters.  We have seen how the Seattle legislative delegation has tried to push for more Special Education dollars and, to some degree, have gotten more. But my understanding is that, at this point, Washington State is paying out at a 15% level of Special Education students in any given district while Seattle Public Schools' level is around 18%. (I would like to see how the new Washington State spending level has affecte...

This is an op-ed at the MyNorthwest site from parent Travis Mayfield. Quite telling; the title is ' Public schools are good but you wouldn’t hear it from them. Here it is in total with some comments from me: We are in the market for a middle school. We are an eager family with a bright-eyed 10-year-old hopeful about the future. Her last parent-teacher conference (not to brag) was 30 minutes of gushing and glowing by the teacher. I’m mostly a stay-at-home dad these days. So I volunteered in class each week, I helped with all the PTA stuff. We also donate to the fall fundraiser, the spring auction and everything in between. In short, she is exactly the kid and we are exactly the family any school should want. Yet, it feels like I am begging our zoned public middle school to even notice we might be interested. Just this fall, we’ve been to open house tours and pep rallies for a number of private schools.  UPrep  and  SAAS  are going all out. And we are very interested....

Many things cross my desk and this one - about a meeting over in  Bellevue SD  where they are considering closing a middle school (and closing a couple of elementaries) - seemed to touch on both the Advanced Learning program AND closing schools.  This is fascinating because - in real time - we are seeing two large districts moving to school closures. It will be interesting to compare and contrast how each handles the process.  They had 140 participants at this forum about Odle MS. Apparently their Advanced Learning program is sited there. They had six on-line forums. Three of these online forums broke down like this -  one Korean forum, one Mandarin forum and one Spanish forum. I give them credit for being so specific. They have also had six in-person forums at other middle schools. There were many comments on the AL program as well as on consolidation and they had themes for both. For AL, it was cohort, keeping great teachers together for these students and dis...

This is all just awful. It looks like walking alone to a car could be a less favorable option so maybe tell your teen to walk in a group. Including Ballard High School, we now have robberies in the NW, NE, SE and Central areas.  From KOMO News yesterday: Two students of Garfield High School were robbed at gunpoint Thursday afternoon, according to Seattle police.  Shortly before 12:30 p.m., Seattle police said they received a call about robbery that occurred at Garfield High School. The school was not in session during the incident.  Seattle police said two juvenile victims were sitting on a bench when they were approached by roughly four people. The suspects took both juvenile’s cell phones that were lying on the bench in the seating area, police said. When both juveniles asked for their phones, one of the robbers lifted their shirt, showing what appeared to be a firearm handle. The robbers then left the scene shortly after the incident, police said. The school was not lo...

From the Cascadia Elementary School PTA (Cascadia is an HC cohort school) - this via Facebook (bold mine): Cascadia Parents, We need your help with VERY important advocacy.  On November 15, 2023, the Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools announced no school closures, no boundary changes, and no programming changes for the 2024-2025 school year. This is contradictory to the decision that the Advanced Learning department took in the fall to stop identifying kindergartners as Highly Capable (i.e., a program change), which means that there will be no Grade 1 Highly Capable cohort at Cascadia next year.  The Advanced Learning department's decision to stop identifying kindergartners was based on the District’s OLD plan (put forward for two consecutive years) that included a boundary change for 2024 - 2025. The boundary change would have meant that neighborhood children would have attended first grade at Cascadia next year. With the Superintendent’s announcement t...

The new and returning members of the Seattle School Board took the oath of office this week. It was broadcast on the district's YouTube page .  Per usual, the room was just family and supporters, not a large crowd.  Board President Brandon Hersey was the host of the event. He noted several generations of board members present. I only saw former Board member Michael DeBell but Hersey didn't name anyone.  He also had something of a mixed message about the district. He said: - the district had a "vision of longevity" - that it is a "tumultuous time" in the district - there are " big challenges" that will require energy and he hoped that the new members had told their families about this - it was going to be "a fun couple of years" Okay. Superintendent Jones asked if people were excited to be at the event and got a few tepid whoops.  He did make an interesting comment that the two returning members were elected with overwhelming majorities...