Seattle Schools Community Forum

After 3 hours the Work Session finally got to boundary discussions. This included the PowerPoint as well as a sheet which I haven't found yet online. One side as high school enrollment, overall and by clusters (which is very interesting) and the other side has what Tracy termed "dummy data" to illustrate what might patterns might occur because of the new SAP. As Tracy said, this is very complex. They listed 8 steps to the boundary planning process (slide 53). Then slide 54 listed the first step - Identify Factors (like proximity, walk zones, demographics, etc.) As I have previously said, t he Board is not going to rank or weigh any of these so you may think proximity is the most important but that's not how it will be for the Board. Keep that in mind. (I'll have an update on the proximity issue. As Tracy ran through it, I had a scenario in my head. I e-mailed her to ask her if I got it right and I'm waiting for an answer. Basically she said they are ...

I just saw this article in the Seattle PI. Not sure what to think but wanted to pass it along. A couple of these buildings were in the last closures and others are closed as of right now. From the article: The Seattle School District can allow many new uses in former schools without convening a special committee, city planners said Thursday. The District asked for the clarification with regard to eight closed and closing schools: Genesee , at 5012 S.W. Genesee St., Columbia , at 3528 S. Ferdinand St., T.T. Minor , at 1700 E. Union St., John Marshall , at 520 N.E. Ravenna Blvd., Horace Mann , at 2410 E. Cherry St., Viewlands , at 10525 Third Ave. N.W., Hughes , at 7740 34th Ave. S.W., and Fairmount Park , at 3800 S.W. Findlay St. "What we were looking for at at this point was simply to expand the potential uses of these eight specific closed schools," district spokesman David Tucker said. I guess the thing that I still shake my head over is how many closed, leased or in...

I saw this little blurb of an article in the Science section of the NY Times called "Children: Self-Control Presages Math Gains in Young". I thought it was interesting. From the article: "Claire Cameron Ponitz, a research associate at the University of Virginia , led a group that tested 343 children with the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task, in which children perform the opposite of an oral command (for example, the correct response for “touch your toes” would be to touch your head). Higher scores, the researchers write in the May issue of Developmental Psychology , indicate a greater ability to control and direct one’s own behavior, an ability essential for success in the structured environment of a kindergarten class.Those with higher scores on the fall test generally reached higher scores in all areas in the spring, but showed significant gains compared with other children only in mathematics, not in literacy or vocabulary." I thought the point of the research w...

This will be the shortest piece mainly because not much was said and frankly, I am just taken aback that (1) this seems to be something that should have been done years (if not decades) ago and (2) some of this work HAS been done and I'm confused why it seems like it is starting from scratch. Kathy Johnson of Facilities did this presentation. She talked about creating "trigger metrics" for opening/closing schools/criteria, when boundaries need to be changed, portable placement and capacity mitigation measures. Well, first, yes it would be nice to have a set of criteria to use for opening and closing schools given that we have now had 3 rounds of closures (2 that actually occurred). And portables? This is the same group that said we couldn't afford them and that they weren't available even if we had the money. Do we have that many left over here and there to move around? Michael asked her what the metrics would be founded on and Kathy said that they want the...

I am going to try to give some analysis to what was presented yesterday at the Board Work Session. As I mentioned previously, the first part was Demographics with many charts presented by district demographer, Rachel Cassidy. (FYI, all the Board was there except Cheryl Chow, out of the country, and Harium Martin-Morris on Board business.) There were a number of things both on the charts and in Rachel's remarks that didn't quite ring true to me. I am not trained so she probably has good reason to come to her conclusions. Slide 8 about factors driving enrollment. One of the factors listed was "dropout and graduation rates". I thought this odd simply because I'm not sure that most people, when enrolling their student, think about this. Or maybe it was meant as there is more room in high schools because we have a high dropout rate. Slide 9 was a chart showing births and kindergarten enrollment. We lose about 2,000 of these kids from birth to enrollment. She said...

I encourage everyone to take an active role in one of the school board campaigns this summer. You can contribute, volunteer, display a yard sign, and talk to your friends and acquaintances about the candidates and the issues. Two years ago some of the school board campaigns raised and spent a lot of money. It felt wrong to me. I think that school board campaigns should be grassroots efforts. That said, this blog is a grassroots communication tool and I think it should be available to the campaigns. It's certainly self-serving, but I would be happy to post requests for help from candidates here. I have tried to be very even-handed about the School Board races on the blog and I intend to continue to be even-handed about them on the blog. If any of the other candidates want to use the blog to ask for volunteers I encourage them to do so. They can add a comment to this post or, if they prefer, I will faithfuly relay their requests in another post. I hope I haven't abused my privile...

From the online Seattle PI: "Three students, working with the Cambridge, MA based SAT prep company, Ivy Insiders, Ben Schmechel, a sophomore at Princeton University, Michael Dunn, a senior at Yale, and Megan Ji, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, are looking to change the way families approach and handle this future defining test. Recognizing the implicit disparity, as well as the increased financial difficulty for many families as part of the current economic recession, Schmechel, Dunn, and Ji, through Ivy Insiders, are moving such traditionally expensive test prep to a more variable sliding scale, "Pay What You Can" model. Last year, the 1,600 students around the country who were part of Ivy Insider classes averaged a 265-point gain‹results which beat those of national test-prep averages by a factor of nearly 2. Having scored in the 99th percentile themselves, averaging a score of 2300, Schmechel, Dunn, and Ji are seeking not only to change the way students prepare and...