Seattle Schools Community Forum

I was reading the BEX Oversight Committee meeting minutes for June 13, 2008 and came upon this: "The State is hiring a consultant to conduct a performance audit on the capital program." This, of course, comes as no surprise to me. For a long time, I have felt this program had serious oversight problems. However, I haven't been able to verify through the Auditor's office if this will also include fraud, waste or abuse within its scope. One issue is the lack of credibility within the department. For example, despite the fact that even on the BEX III campaign materials it says that most projects were on-time and on-budget (which in itself is a change because there was a stubborn insistence that ALL BEX projects had been on-time and on-budget), in the May minutes of the Hale BDT it says "There are no current anticipated budget overruns on any BEX II or III projects." That statement (by Don Gilmore) begs the question of how Facilities would explain the b...

So perusing the BEX page, I read through the various "updates". I put quotes because they are all different from one another, some have nothing since 2007 (hard to believe) and some have some interesting information. Of course, some of what is being argued over in the NE, namely capacity, could have been helped (or at least the district would be on stronger ground at this point if they had done something) by putting a NE elementary on the BEX III list. (Two schools, Laurelhurst and John Rodgers, had been on a list of schools considered. Also, Thorton Creek has been talking about being a K-8 for a long time and they have a large amount of acreage to do it on.) We have parents in the NE saying they wish there was more capacity and another middle school to take the pressure off of Eckstein (many are hoping for a K-8). Well, that might have happened except the choice was made to build New School K-8 a mile from African-American Academy K-8. From Hale's project minute...

Good article today in the Times about an Eastside high school trying to go green. Here's some info from the article: "Buy a hot dog at an Interlake High School Saints game this fall and save the Earth. Really? Well, at least save some electricity. That's because Interlake's new concession stand will be powered by solar energy. Interlake is one of 12 schools, including Redmond High and Thomas Jefferson High in Auburn, to receive grants from Puget Sound Energy (PSE) for solar panels. The utility plans to give out at least 10 more grants to schools in the next few years. "There seems to be a lot of demand and excitement in the schools," said PSE spokesman Andy Wappler. "[Solar] is like the 'It Girl' of energy." Also, "Like City Light's solar panels, the main goal of PSE's program is education, not production. Most panels installed through the school grants are 1- to 2-kilowatt systems. Even Interlake's 4-kilowatt syst...

There were two recently released audits of a couple of areas of the District by the State Auditor's office. Both are interesting. One is a federal audit but it includes many sources of funding I had never seen before (Department of Justice and other federal monies). It had come up because the district had a grant from UW for a program called Gear-Up (which I think is to help struggling students be aware of college) and had improperly used funds from this program to finance a trip to New Orleans for 23 students and staff (ostensibly for community service). The district thought the trip met the grant requirements but the state auditor's office said it didn't. The other audit was about the district not overseeing payroll properly (which, if you read the audit, is something the district has been warned about before). A district employee padded a timesheet to the tune of $9,000. The Auditor referred the problem to the King County prosecutor's office and recommended s...

With fairly good regularity I check a number of online discussions about Seattle Schools starting with this blog but also the P-I's SoundOffs, the P-I's education beat writers' blog School Zone , the P-I reader's blog Chalkboard , and another P-I reader's blog that I also recommend Learning Connections , (see if you can guess my user ID on the P-I's online discussion boards) Director Martin-Morris' blog , the West Seattle Blog , CPPS, and a couple of Yahoo discussion groups. With slightly less regularity I check Crosscut , The Weekly, the Stranger, and the occassional Seattle Times discussion board. Well, now there's another source as well: Examiner.com . I will be blogging there as well as here. I would guess that there will be a lot of cross-posting. The major differences are that I presume a more general audience there and there's a real picture of me instead of a japanese cartoon character or a satirically appropriated picture of someone else as ...

This article appeared in today's PI. To wit: "Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait ("Shakes the Clown," "Crank Yankers") and his friend, actor/comedian Robin Williams ("RV," "License To Wed"), have begun a 25-day shoot in the Seattle area, most of it taking place at a former elementary school in Wallingford." I won't tell you the plotline - it's crude and not particularly interesting. Also in the article: "The film crew is set up this week at the former F.A. McDonald School, thanks in part to WashingtonFilmWorks, which had a hand in Goldthwait's decision to shoot here. Since last year, the state has offered financial incentives to production companies. If feature films spend more than $500,000 on expenses such as food, housing and labor, WashingtonFilmWorks will pay 20 percent of the costs back to the production company." I called the district to see how much they were charging for the rental but the property m...

Question for Special Ed parents: Do you know if some schools are quietly doing away with Special Ed services (for whatever reason)? Does it seem like schools are trying to do less? I ask because as I was perusing the many responses to the Times' article about the situation of twins not getting into the same school in the NE area (there were about 60 responses most of them venting against Seattle public schools and most without clearly understanding the facts), there was this post: "Ann Seattle wrote: "A fine school, but last year 93 families were vying for 44 kindergarten slots--20 of which are for special needs kids." So ...are you incredulous that children who receive special education services should have a shot a school that YOUR child should attend? Do you think they should be locked up on an island somewhere in quarantine? Guess what? After first grade McGilvra expels those children. McGilvra, like Bryant, has "opted out" of serving children who need...