Seattle Schools Community Forum

Thank you to Steve for this info: Meeting for Families with Students in the Accelerated Progress Program, Grades 8 and 9, at Ingraham High School, 6:30-8:00 PM, November 17, 2010 Families with students in the Accelerated Progress Program (APP) in 8th and 9th grade are invited to meet with representatives from the Advanced Learning Office and from Ingraham High School to discuss a possible new program to be offered at Ingraham High School in Fall 2011. Others are welcome, but the focus of the meeting will be on a possible program option for students in these particular grades. (I'd love as many people as possible at the Board meeting tonight but this is important, too.)

This op-ed by Garfield teacher, Jesse Hagopian, appears in the Times. I'm surprised at his candor given the tight reins at TFA but good on him for speaking up. He taught in the Bronx from 2001-2003. (I'm thinking his first day of school was probably 9/11 but that may be another story.) I'll let you read it but this is how he ends it: Yet, if the Seattle school district truly wants "excellence for all," it will need highly trained teachers who have a lasting commitment to the profession — not the revolving door that has come to be known as "Teach for Awhile." Meanwhile, Lynne Varner of the Times' editorial board makes it about the union (and that's not true at least not for most of us here). But help me out here, what is she saying? But there is much to find compelling about TFA's mission and how it prepares new teachers. Janis Ortega, who scouts sites for TFA from her Los Angeles base, describes the reductive process the organ...

Six months ago I made a couple of predictions about the enrollment at Cleveland STEM. I predicted that the school wouldn't attract much more than 100 freshman and I predicted a massive turnover in the demographic. Both of those predictions have proven wrong. First, Cleveland STEM has 233 freshman. That is essentially full enrollment. The school has (contractually) a capacity for 250 students in each class and this is just about 95% full. Congratulations to the school and the community for drawing so many students. This is wonderful news. I'm positively delighted. Second, the demographic of the freshman class at Cleveland STEM is little changed from the the demographics of previous classes. Here's the breakdown: Cleveland 9th grade 2010 Asian: 87 - 37.3% Black: 90 - 38.6% Latino: 31 - 13.3% Indian: 10 - 4.3% White: 15 - 6.4% Total: 233 - 100.0% This is not much different from previous classes at Cleveland. In 2008, the last non-STEM year the school was: Cleve...

The agenda for the School Board meeting has been posted. There are twenty names for public testimony but they are all speaking on the same topic: Teach for America contract. I don't see the point. Voice your perspective! Don't be deterred by the probability that the Board is going to approve it because not one of them can see a single reason not to. Here's the list: 1. Jonathan Knapp - (SEA) against 2. Dan Dempsey - (activist) against 3. Sydney Jarol - (Ballard High School student) position unknown 4. Nathan Fitzpatrick - (Teach for America) for 5. India Carlson - (teacher) against 6. Jess Hasken - (Stand for Children) for 7. Becca Shim - (teacher) ? 8. Elisabeth de Leeuw - (test prep tutor) ? 9. Kristin Bailey-Fogarty - (teacher) ? 10. Patricia Robertson - ? 11. Lisa Macfarlane - (SchoolsFirst!) for 12. Kristen Cater - (teacher) for 13. Janis Ortega - (Teach for America) for 14. Steve Milam - (attorney) ? 15. Matthew Shedlock - (IA?) ? ...

It looks like folks in Sacramento are fighting back for control of their district. First their district, led by a Broad Superintendent, turns down TFA . From the Sacramento Bee: Superintendent Jonathan Raymond of the Sacramento City Unified School District said he has backed off pursuing Teach for America in favor of establishing a stronger relationship with local credentialing programs at UC Davis, Sacramento State and Fortune School of Education. Raymond had faced strong opposition from the Sacramento City Teachers Association, which questioned the timing of his decision to pursue Teach for America. The district is in the midst of massive layoffs and is asking the teachers union to accept furloughs and health benefit concessions in order to save jobs. "While I still believe that the Teach for America program has great merit, I intend to exhaust all local options for meeting staffing needs before looking at alternative programs," Raymond wrote in...

From the Central District news, word on what is happening to Nova's old building, the Horace Mann building: The 100-year-old Horace Mann building at 2410 East Cherry is preparing to begin a new life as home for an education pilot project for Seattle teens who have dropped out of school but want to get back on track. When starting new things, it's always nice to fix yourself up a little. This weekend, a small Pacific Northwest army of volunteers will report for duty on East Cherry to lend their elbow grease to a $100,000 Seattle Department of Neighborhoods grant awarded for cleaning up the mothballed school. From the news release from Work It Out Seattle: "EXTREME MAKEOVER: SCHOOLHOUSE EDITION" WHEN: Saturday, Nov. 20 & Sunday, Nov. 21, 10am – 5pm each day WHERE: Horace Mann School Building, 2410 E Cherry St, Seattle, WA 98122 What do you get when you combine a 100-year old school building, community volunteers and handyman, Chris Stevens? We call it, ...

There is a little thing on the agenda for the regular legislative meeting of the School Board this week. It's so small that it is buried in the consent agenda. It's the annual approval of schools. It's a little thing, but it means a lot because it is required for the District to collect the Basic Education funding from the state. That's the bulk of the District's revenue. The state makes districts fufill some requirements before sending their their annual wad o' cash and one of those requirements is that they write and approve an annual improvement plan for each school. In Seattle, the requirements for that annual plan are fulfilled with the CSIP, the Continuous School Improvement Plan. Here's the problem: the District didn't do CSIPs this year. All of the CSIPs on the District web site are out of date. Worse yet, it's obvious. Anyone who knew about the District and looked at the evidence could see that no work has been done on these plans. The C...