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A Brave Seattle Teacher (Who Can No Longer Teach)

A beautiful and moving video, Defining Honor, is about former Adams Elementary teacher, Joseph Skillings.  In 2008, he intervened to help a woman being harassed at a bus stop and was beaten so badly he suffered brain damage.  He is no longer able to teach but continues to volunteer and inspire at Adams.    Thank you to The Stranger Slog for this important video.  

Around Seattle School District (and Beyond)

SYMPHONY PLAYS AT RHS Jan. 24th at 7:30PM. The acclaimed Seattle Symphony will be performing at Roosevelt High School alongside the Roosevelt Symphony Orchestra. This incredible event will feature Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florcence. Concert is free with optional donations accepted for the RHS orchestra. MLK Celebration Recapturing MLK Jr.'s Revolutionary Spirit Monday, Jan. 16, 2012 9:30-11 a.m. - Workshops 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - Rally 12:30 p.m. - March Garfield High School (23rd and East Jefferson Street) Information: (206) 786-2763 or (206) 296-1002 Website: www.mlkseattle.org Roxhill Elementary was just awarded a grant form Symetra Financial Services continue their Saturday Academy which gives up to 50 3rd-5th graders a chance to work on their math and reading skills by attending special Saturday classes at school.   Seattle Public Library is seeking input on improving library services to its patrons.  Patrons a...

Open Thread Wednesday

For something new and different - Wednesday. What's on your mind? 

A New Neighborhood School for West Seattle

The District Staff has recommended to the Board a short-term capacity management plan for West Seattle that calls for a fleet of portables and a new option school located (at least at first) at Boren. The community is calling for a new neighborhood school located in West Seattle, not an option school. The staff says that they prefer an option school because they can see that they are going to have to change the attendance area boundaries, but they are going to do it next year, not this year, and they only want to do it once. All of these boundaries, they explain, are seriously interconnected. That sounds pretty reasonable, until you remember that West Seattle is on a peninsula and is completely dis-connected from the rest of the District. The District can change the West Seattle attendance area boundaries this year and change the boundaries for the rest of the district next year. There won't be any problem caused by the inter-connectedness of the boundaries because they are n...

Ed Reform Marches On In Washington State

Lisa Macfarlane, who helped co-found LEV, has moved on and is now the head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) with this modest-sounding goal: "..a political organization focused on encouraging a more productive conversation within the Democratic Party on the need to fundamentally reform public education.  DFER operates at all levels of government to educate elected officials and support reform-minded candidates for public office." Basically, a PAC for ed reform.   (One thing that strikes me is all these ed reformer love a new org; I'm thinking it makes it look - to elected officials - like "hey, look at all these groups for ed reform" when it is generally the same 25 people.) There is a national DFER and it's supported by the infamous Koch brothers as well as Steve Klinsky, a former hedge fund manager and founder of the for-profit charter company, Victory Schools, Inc.   He gave the max he could to DFER but it was the only Democratic group he su...

Seattle Schools This Week

Tuesday, Jan. 10th Audit&Finance Committee Meeting ( Audit ) from 4-6 p.m. Looks like there will be an update on the Cleveland laptop program among other items. Wednesday, Jan. 11th Executive Committee Meeting from 8-10 a.m. Executive Committee of the Whole from 5-7 p.m. to discuss the Superintendent's evaluation (this is preceded by a closed session of the committee on this topic).  Thursday, Jan. 12th Audit&Finance Committee Meeting ( Finance ) from 4-6 p.m.  Topics here include the annual summary of state and federal grans, preliminary enrollment projections by Tracy Libros, student fees summary and " ideas/proposals to close the gap for 2012-13 ."   There was an interesting article in the Times about Pay for Play fees recently.   It generated a lot of comments with about half saying sports are an important part of high school and half saying PE is fine but sports are not as important.  Friday, Jan. 13th BEX Oversight Commit...

Coe Event with Enfield, DeBell and Carlyle

I did want to write up a post about the Coe event as I thought some interesting things were said.    (This is long so get a cup of joe or tea.)