Seattle Schools Community Forum

First up, Aki Kurose Middle School is closed today. The district said this yesterday (partial): Seattle Police Department and the SPS Safety and Security team are investigating an anonymous tip that suggests an intent to harm students tomorrow.   The safety and well-being of all members of the Aki community is our top priority, and with that at the forefront, we have made this exceedingly difficult decision out of an abundance of caution. Very sad and I hope everyone stays safe. In May there was a very sad report of a young man on the Ship Canal Bridge with a disabled car who was standing by his car on the right shoulder. Another car, driven by a person who was alleged to be drunk, hit the disabled car which hit the young man and he flew over the bridge. He died.  Apparently this was near to John Stanford International Elementary and some students were said to be very worried about all the sirens and police cars. As well, there was another event around the same time period...

Here's a very good article by Michael Petrilli at Fordham Institute called How to Narrow the Excellence Gap in Early Elementary School. Here's his premise around the issue of the "excellence gap" between white students and students of color from K-12 grades (bold mine). The excellence gap is even apparent at kindergarten entry. That indicates that much of the gap is driven by out-of-school factors, especially socioeconomic inequality between the ages of zero and five. Yet many more Black and low-income students are achieving at high levels in kindergarten, especially in reading, than in later years. This indicates that something is causing the excellence gap to widen in the early years of elementary school. That last point is what gives me hope. If we can understand why a disproportionate number of Black and low-income high-achievers are “losing altitude” in grades K–3, we might identify strategies to reverse this trend. Key Factors Socioeconomic inequality continues...

 From SPS: The Amazon Career Launch206 Program is an immersive 2-week hybrid (virtual and in-person) summer program aimed at inspiring High School students to pursue technology careers of the future, prioritizing underserved and underrepresented communities. Students earn .5 CTE credit and receive a stipend. This program is only for SPS students and the deadline is June 17th. SPS also has a list of other internship opportunities that look very good. Available Regional Internships Agriculture Sciences Business & Marketing Family & Consumer Sciences Health Sciences Skilled & Technical Sciences STEM Work-based Learning Opportunities

 Two great articles from The NY Times. The first is  School Counselors on How to Help Students Recover From Pandemic Stress.   It has some good ideas including some for home and some for schools: Restart group activities Or, start a new activity, either in school or outside of school.  Hire more staff Yes, more of a mirage than reality. But what if there were more adults in buildings? Meaning, what if there were more volunteers helping with meeting kids' needs.  Offer places to take a break I love this one. I can imagine that kids would love a quiet space with simple things to do. (Naturally, it would need to be monitored because you could get a couple of chatty kids in there and the whole thing doesn't work.) Teach social and emotional skills Interesting thing - on Twitter, I get challenged on this. I cannot believe it. Either people don't know what SEL is or feel only parents should talk to kids about emotions. It feels like there are many parents who don...

 I listened in on Director Vivian Song Maritz' community meeting. It was a big sad because only four people showed up. What I heard: - The acting principal at Ballard High, Joseph Williams, is going to Franklin High School to be the permanent principal. No word on how the Franklin community feels but apparently no outcry has been heard.  - This school year saw a number of lockdowns at Garfield High, many about incidents in the surrounding community. It was a bit startling to hear from one parent that her Garfield student will casually mention something. I'd hope schools have to report all of these and that the district tracks them but I have never seen that kind of documentation.  - Director Song Maritz was careful to ask parents how they were doing in light of the recent school massacre in Texas. (I have no other word for what happened.) It sounds like parents told their older students but not the younger ones. I noted that there is ALWAYS one kid in any given class who...

Probably one of biggest national public education stories is about how - across the country - districts are losing students . Indeed, it is projected by SPS that their enrollment will fall to under 50,000 next school year, a number that hasn't been seen in probably a decade. To make clear, district lose students? They lose money. From The NY Times : All together, America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, according to a recently published national survey. State enrollment figures show no sign of a rebound to the previous national levels any time soon. A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed. No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remot...

I'm gonna say it - I told you so. In an in-depth article by KUOW reporter Ann Dornfeld, it is revealed that one Washington State charter group - Impact Schools - was not providing ELL services to students despite claiming to do so. Impact Charter Schools is the largest charter provider in the state. Dornfeld is writing a series on this group and the second one is equally troubling and is about holding back students to repeat a grade level again, despite parents being told by teachers that their children were doing well. I will note here that these schools are being run by experienced staff like Jen Wickens who has been a fixture in Washington State charter schools since the law passed. As well, former Alliance for Education head, Sara Morris, was also involved in the opening of some Impact Schools. From the ELL article: Ogubamichael was drawn to Puget Sound Elementary, a charter school in Tukwila, because of its promise of instruction tailored to each student. Ogubamichael’s fa...