Seattle Schools Community Forum

Provide your Feedback on the Absence Rule for Next Year OSPI is proposing changes to Chapter 392-401 WAC – Statewide Definition of Absence, Excused and Unexcused. Find the proposed changes below.  Please submit your comments by 5pm on July 27 to krissy.johnson@k12.wa.us. Proposed Attendance Changes 2021-22 I am troubled by the changes in the section on expelled/suspended students. Plus, they want attendance taken twice a day in elementary.  I am going to suggest a survey of parents/districts before changes.

This is just going to be a random assortment of items I have heard from recent meetings of the Board.

So I listened in to the Board meeting Wednesday to listen to the discussion around the budget vote. (That’s a whole other post but I digress.) I caught Special Education PTSA president Janis White’s testimony about what seems to be a failure by the district for recovery services for Sped students mandated by OSPI. I also read Sped parent Mary Griffin’s post at the Special Education PTSA Facebook page about how, at the last Special Education PTSA meeting, staff promised clear info on summer school. Apparently that didn’t happen. But Sped parents shouldn’t feel badly because Director Harris, time after time, has asked for staff to PLEASE give the Board documentation in advance of meetings so directors can review it and ask pertinent question. Oh sure, says Superintendent Jones. That she has made this request over and over should tell you something. She also asked for an org chart because the shift in jobs and titles and new positions is quite hard to track.  But for Exhibit One of wh...

 In what feels like somewhat toned-down endorsements, the Seattle Times has endorsed Laura Marie Rivera for the District 4 seat and Michelle Sarju for the District 5 seat.

As you may have heard, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down an opinion this week that a cheerleader’s rant on SnapChat after she did not make the varsity squad was speech protected by the First Amendment.

After Barrack Obama became president, there was this after-glow as if “now we’re in a post-racial time in America.” But that wasn’t true, was it?  Things changed in 2016 when Former Guy came into office. He  took the lid off of what was already a simmering pot of injustice, spit into the pot and then watched it boil over. The discussion around Critical Race Theory comes from this confluence of two things. The so-called woke movement and the very real white nationalist movement via the Former Guy.  The white nationalist movement which desperately wants a continuation of the codification of the white gaze of U.S. History and knows that the way to keep that going is thru public education. And that means kids. I may have used this paraphrased quote before - from Hitler, no less - “ If I have the children, I don’t need their parents.”

 Hello from sunny Arizona (it’s now down under 100 degrees so bearable but I see Seattle is heating up)!