Seattle Schools Community Forum

Everyone is invited to attend the Annual Family & Community Engagement & RtI Symposium on Saturday, May 16 from 8:30am to 2:30pm at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence. This event will feature a keynote address by Dr. Steven Constantino , a nationally-renowned family and community engagement expert. Following the keynote address, there will be concurrent breakout sessions. Come to learn more about the Response to Intervention (RtI) Framework, for Family Math Workshops, Family Literacy Workshops, family and community engagement strategies, Performance Management, services and projects being offered by the Family Support and Community Partnerships Program, The Source, Higher Education access, Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD), and more! A light breakfast and lunch (from Maya's Mexican Restaurant) will be served. Interpreters will be provided.

Michael DeBell, president of the Board of Directors of Seattle Public Schools, will be running for re-election in the fall.

Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. the Board is having a Work Session on BTA III . This will be the first opportunity to hear what projects have made the preliminary list and the Board's reaction. The first one on the list should be the $11M that was on BEX II for Secondary BOC that was taken, in its entirety, for the Garfield project (which is now almost $20M over). Secondary BOC asked to NOT be put on BEX III because they thought it would happen again. Keep in mind, the district did manage to build a new, albeit at $14m modest, building for South Lake High School so yes, they could do it for Secondary BOC. I'm not advocating a new building since the decision has been made to co-house them with Nova at Meany. BUT, since those two schools are moving and moving in with another program both of which require science labs and other high school facilities, then that building should get a good chunk of upgrading to support them. On a personal note, I have been and will continue to advocat...

This is an interesting article I found at the U.S. News and World Report website while researching colleges/universities. From the article: "It might be the next school movement to sweep the country. Emboldened by charter school operators, parents of children attending failing schools in Los Angeles are signing petitions that could force the nation's second-largest school system to shut down those schools and reopen them as charters." The source of this push is not really a surprise - it's a guy who runs many successful charters, Steve Barr. In an article in the LA Times, here's his claim: "If more than half of the parents at a school sign up, Barr's organizers say they will guarantee an excellent campus within three years. They call it the Parent Revolution. With parents, they predict, they'll have the clout to pressure the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve schools. They'll also have petitions, which Barr and his allies will keep a...

The Seattle Times ran an editorial today on the kerfuffle over the letter to the teachers. The Times editors made their first mistake in the lead sentence. They wrote: "Seattle school district officials followed Washington state law by notifying teachers of a proposed one-day reduction in the length of next year's contract." But the District officials did NOT follow the law (RCW 28A.405.210). The law requires that: "Such notice shall be served upon the employee personally, or by certified or registered mail, or by leaving a copy of the notice at the house of his or her usual abode with some person of suitable age and discretion then resident therein." As we know, these notifications were sent through the regular first class mail. Every single one of these nonrenewals could be easily and successfully appealed on the basis of faulty notification alone. The Times editors are not lawyers, but they should be journalists enough to check their facts. Before they claim...

This from our friends at the West Seattle Blog : "Two weeks ago, we published a short report from the city Hearing Examiner’s chambers in the Municipal Tower, after listening to arguments from both sides in the appeal of the decision granting “departures” crucial to the Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School co-located-campus project (rendering above). At the end of that hearing, deputy hearing examiner Anne Watanabe promised to publish her ruling in two weeks. Though the ruling is not yet available online, we got a call tonight from the person who filed and argued the appeal, West Seattle-based district watchdog Chris Jackins. He has received a copy of the decision and tells WSB that while the ruling upholds the city’s granting of the “departures” - allowing the project more height and less parking than city code otherwise would have required - he says “we did get two of the things we wanted”: One, a stipulation that the two schools’ start/dismissal times must be staggered ...

From the School Beat newsletter: Bilingual Department to host three May meetings on audit progress Seattle Public School's Bilingual Education department will host three community meetings in May to share the progress in addressing the bilingual audit received in August 2008 and to support families by sharing reading strategies with their children. At each meeting, families will receive folktale stories in several different languages to take home with them. The three meetings will be held at the locations listed below. For more information, contact Veronica Maria Gallardo, Bilingual Education Program Manager, at vmgallardo@seattleschools.org Monday, May 11 6-8 p.m. Summit K-12 11051 34th Ave. N.E. Tuesday, May 12 6-8 p.m Aki Kurose Middle School 3928 S. Graham St. Saturday, May 16 10 a.m. to noon John Stanford Center 2445 Third Ave. S. Also, I note that Broadway Bound (a community musical theater group that has been working in the Rainier Valley) is putting on "Cats" a...