Seattle Schools Community Forum

Tonight's Board meeting is the last for this particular make-up of the Board.  They certainly are leaving with major issues that will be decided tonight. Items of note for tonight's meeting:

The district's Advanced Learning office reports this (bold mine): However, shortly after the Advanced Learning Office posted the calendar, staff learned that an existing district database that had been expected to aid scheduling could not be used . As a result, staffers were required to create a new database, entering all referral forms by hand . This unanticipated process has caused some scheduling delays. Additionally, a district server glitch inadvertently blocked a number of notification emails before the first October testing date. For these reasons, not all families could receive the email notification of their school’s testing date in time. 

As soon as the Title IX news moved off the headlines, the Title IX work in Seattle Public Schools moved off the agenda. The annual report required by Board Policy 3208 has never been submitted. Never. The Board has never asked for it and the superintendent has never offered it. There is no Title IX coordinator. There was an interim person, then another interim person. There's no one doing the work right now. There was a report by the interim Title IX coordinator. No action is planned in response to that report. Despite promises to revise the sexual harassment policy and procedure, that work remains incomplete. Title IX training has come to a stop. The Board has lost all interest in completing the Title IX work that they made such a show of starting. They do not respond to emails about the stalled work on Title IX.

Via ABC News: This Florida Special Ed teacher,  Chris Ulmer, starts the school day with uplifting words to his students.

I have said, over and over again, that having an ALO in a school is usually no different from not having an ALO in a school. Schools typically don't define their ALO in any meaningful way. They cannot and do not describe the ALO for families or tell families what the ALO provides that is any different from the norm for good teaching practices. There are typically no practices specific to school ALOs. Schools cannot identify anything they do differently for students in ALOs than they do for students who are not in ALOs. Often the school cannot even say which students are participating in the ALO. There is no assessment of school ALOs. The District has never made any assessment of their quality or efficacy (or even their existence) and the schools make no assessment of their quality or efficacy. The bulk of ALOs are a fiction. They exist exclusively in marketing materials. I recognize that this is a pretty harsh characterization of ALOs and, let's face it, Spectrum sinc...

State Superintendent Randy Dorn's letter to Attorney General Bob Ferguson. The letter is much more in the weeds than the press release below. Dorn ends the letter saying (partial): In the meantime, many school districts have already begun the process of planning future levies. Without clarity on this question, school districts cannot adequately plan how they intend to deliver - or pay for - basic education services. Given the longstanding - and ongoing - legal uncertainly regarding school districts' authority to use local levy funding to pay district personnel for basic education services, I believe it is essential that your response to this request be expedited.

The Board has put up - less than 48 hours before the Board meeting - a rather short narrative for the Superintendent's evaluation .   They reference the rubric document as well and it's an odd thing to see someone get a raise when he is ranked only "Basic" in some categories.  I look forward to the tortured explanations from the Board tomorrow night as to why he deserves a raise and contract extension.