Seattle Schools Community Forum

Oh kids, it's been a busy 2 days. Yesterday I went to the AFT convention and today I went and heard Arne Duncan and Patty Murray at Aviation High (I even got to ask Sec'y Duncan a question but it wasn't the one I wanted to ask). I'll write up a full report because there are some interesting things going on. And tomorrow? Going to hear Bill Gates. It will be quite the event (perhaps) because there were protesters at the Duncan event (about 50, most AFT folks). I asked some of them, what will you do tomorrow? Their choices are: sit on their hands and behave (I think this is what leadership is saying) boo and hiss (depending on what he says but he's just coming back from addressing a charter school convention so he might want to talk about it) boycott it (but then they don't get to hear him) wait until he starts and walk out en masse So what's on your mind?

The School Board isn't doing its job of enforcing policy. The School Board isn't doing its job of overseeing the superintendent. The School Board isn't doing its job of representing the community. The School Board isn't doing its job, therefore the School Board should be recalled. Not every member of the School Board, but three of them for sure: Maier, Sundquist, and Carr, and probably two more of them, Martin-Morris and DeBell. What do you think about this idea? Not enforcing Policy The State Auditor found that The School Board and District management have not implemented sufficient policies and controls to ensure the District complies with state laws, its own policies, or addresses concerns identified in prior audits. From the audit: The Board also is responsible for ensuring District staff carry out programs in compliance with Board policy and state and federal laws and regulations and for making sound financial decisions that are in the best interest of the public. ...

Here's a little something that everyone could add to everything they say or write. "The State Auditor found that the School Board completely failed in their duty to enforce laws and policy and completely failed in their duty to oversee the superintendent." I would add these words to every talk, add them to every email, add them to every testimony, add them to every letter to the editor, add them to every comment submitted on newspaper stories, add them to every single thing I said or wrote about Seattle Public Schools.

As we all know, the District centralized food service to the kitchen in SODO. This means that the kitchens in the schools will only be used to heat the food up and assemble some parts - not to actually cook it. The meals the students eat will all have been cooked at the central kitchen a day or two before. It was presented to the Board as a budget cutting move and they accepted it on that basis. No report has yet been made on the savings (if any) realized by the change. The anticipated savings would be lost if there were a significant reduction in the number of students choosing to buy and eat the school lunches. There's some complex relationships between all of these numbers, but that's how it works out. Economies of scale are lost when sales drop. Experience has shown that sales go down when the meals are cooked centrally and delivered to the schools and sales go up when the meals are cooked at the school. The students also say that the meals cooked on premises are tastier an...

Why is Charlie always right? I would have to paraphrase but on the subject of Michael DeBell, Charlie always seemed a bit mistrustful of Michael's words. And, increasingly, Charlie is right. I believe that Michael is a bright guy and a calming presence on the Board (not that any of them are prone to hysterics). His heart is in the right place but his brain is...MIA. To wit, Nina Shapiro interviewed him about the Board vote to extend the Superintendent's contract. Here's what he said: Far from a skeptic, board president Michael DeBell frequently serves as the official voice of the board. And even he, while voting in favor of the superintendent, indicated that he had "wrestled" with the decision. "It's important to acknowledge that many parents and teachers have felt they are not part of this reform process," DeBell says, explaining his ambivalence in a conversation with Seattle Weekly this morning. By reform process, he means a variety of ...

(Update: I hadn't seen the Times write an article on the audit so I went searching. Apparently one was written, dated July 6th, which is weird because I didn't see it. It also isn't under "Education" or "Local" stories; I had to do a search to find it. Interesting how those beatific stories on the Superintendent are front and center and yet try to find any article that might criticize her.) I had been a little unhappy with Nina Shapiro over at the Weekly being baffled by why parents and teachers want the Superintendent to go. She seemed to ask, "Where's the beef?" Now she has a story that outlines the audit problems as well as how the district is creating "corrective action plans for each finding." From her article : One has to wonder how effective they will be, however. Another beef of the auditor's office was that the district had failed to correct problems it had already identified in past reports. She di...

I didn't attend the Board meeting and only got a partial recording. So what happened?