Seattle Schools Community Forum

This was in the Northgate Community Center activities schedule.  Apparently, you can get a high school (maybe middle school) PE credit for this class.  Have you seen this elsewhere?  (Credit to Carolyn Leith for pointing this out.)

Friday, August 8th BEX Oversight Committee Meeting , 8:30 am-10:30 am, JSCEE, Room 2750 Minutes from June. It will be interesting to see if the downtown school issue will be discussed.  (Yes, I know that BEX money is spoken for but it might come up as a topic.) No Community Meetings with Board directors on Saturday the 9th. To note: next week, the schedule starts picking up again with two Board committee meetings and one Community meeting.  SPS News: Distinguished Seattle Public Schools Health Services Manager Katie Johnson has been named one of 20 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Executive Nurse Fellows for 2014. Johnson joins a select group of nurses from across the country chosen to participate in the final cohort of a three-year leadership development program aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of nurse leaders who are working to improve the U.S. health care system. According to a news release from Mayor Murray's Office on July 21, 2014, five new ...

Remember when I said. let's go back to basics?  This might be a good start.

This is a community forum blog.  To me and Charlie, that means anyone can come and discuss anything relevant to public education from national right down to specific Seattle schools/programs.  We try to guide the conversation but not define it. You can opine/inform on topics on just about anything in public education.  We provide open threads for topics that Charlie and I might have missed. We try to be careful on not talking about issues where we - as the moderators of the blog - have no direct knowledge or have not been given direct information from readers on that issue.

A thoughtful piece from Northwest Progressive Institute by Robert Cruickshank about the ever-popular issue of departing superintendents.  The real story, the one the Seattle Times does not want to tell for fear of undermining their anti-democratic agenda, is one of repeated mismanagement by a succession of superintendents and of a central staff that is unresponsive or overtly hostile to the board and the general public. About Banda, he makes some good points: Banda cited the debate over math textbooks in his departure letter, but these are often contentious issues in any school district. A good superintendent would have navigated it more effectively, accepting the board’s decision and moving on. After all, math curriculum figured prominently in the 2011 school board campaign, and parents had been vocal in their call for a different approach. Rather than accept the verdict of the board that employs him and the public that he serves, Banda – already looking for the ...

The back and forth in the comments section of a Seattle Times story about Teachers United got me thinking about the difference between Education Reform and education reform. I don't know if I have written this out before, but I feel a need to write it out now. The goals of many of the millionaire- and billionaire-funded Education Reform Organizations are focused on either reducing the cost of education (their taxes) or re-directing the money spent on education into their pockets. Improving opportunities or outcomes for students is not their real goal, it's only the rather transparent marketing they wrap around their actual intentions. These solutions are devised by people who don't have applicable experience in the classroom, don't have a real understanding of the work, and haven't considered the obvious unintended consequences of their proposals.

I myself have not spoken with the family of the victim but Charlie has and believes the sincerity of their story.  I see now at their Facebook page -Stop Sexual Assault in High School - that the district is trying to shape the narrative of this incident. Here's what the family says has happened recently: -  Yesterday, the District wrote it was sending out the parents' Oct. 18, '13 response to the District's skewed investigation without including essential information we parents provided , e.g. National Parks Service reports with the assailant's testimony acknowled ging rape. For the complete thread, request all correspondence between Julie Barbello, public information office, and the parents from July 29-August 1, 2014. From the parents' e-mail to the district: