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Friday, September 27, 2013

9-27-13 Seattle Schools Community Forum

Seattle Schools Community Forum:






Growth Boundaries Information
Readers keep asking about information and I'll try to put up as much as I can find. Growth Boundaries website.  This page contains links to:Presentation to the Board Work Session on September 17Handout from the Board Work Session on September 17Maps from presentation (Note:  I have also searched but cannot find a map that I am told exists of current boundaries and proposed boundaries on one page.)
Seattle Schools Updates
Saturday sees three Director Community Meetings:Community Meeting with Director Martin-Morris at Diva Espresso on Lake City Way from 9:30-11:30 am.Community Meeting with Director Smith-Blum at Capitol High Library, 425 Harvard Ave. E from10 am-11:30 amCommunity Meeting with Director Patu at Caffe Vita, 5028 Wilson Avenue S. from 10 am to noon.From Central District News, a story about unhappy Centr

HIgh Schools and Growth
A reader with background in planning and with much knowledge/background on the district and facilities offers these thoughts on what may be coming for high schools and growth.  (Gray areas are my thoughts as we go along and the rest is the reader's.)To understand: coming up fast is the possibility of very overcrowded high schools.  Not 5, 10 years out but probably three years.  But a three-year pl
Education News
You may recall my update on Common Core?  I left out the biggest news which is the looming showdown between California Governor Jerry Brown and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The fight is over - what else? - testing.  From EdSource:Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday defended the state’s decision to suspend state standardized tests this year and instead offer students a practice test in the Common Co


Friday Open Thread
Good morning and it was a great talk by Diane Ravitch last night.  I'll have a wrap-up. A new program from Seattle Police: Do We Have Your Bike?  via Twitter.Right now, SPD has about 500 “found” bikes in storage at our Evidence Warehouse. Each one of those bikes was abandoned somewhere in the city, then later recovered by officers. We may have your bike, and we’d like to reunite you with your whee


Want to Hang with the Seattle Education Elite?
But you don't have a ballgown for the Alliance's annual Black and Orange Masquerade Ball?  (This year with masks: Don't forget your mask! Creativity and mystery encouraged!)Relax, you're in luck.   The Alliance needs volunteers to be runners for their auctions (and, if you are good-looking, modeling the auction items on stage), check-in staff, you name it.  Should be quite the affair (and don't yo
Horace Mann update
I attended the final meeting of the Horace Mann African-American Community Task Force this evening. The meeting was not as well attended as the last one I witnessed, but it was productive. They have a deal.The ACIC is still in the building and operating, but they will leave peaceably so construction can begin. The District would like them out by the end of next week. You may be surprised to learn
How can we work to increase the rigor in general education classrooms
Inspired by Gen Ed Mom I am starting a conversation about increasing the rigor, challenge, opportunity and support for students working beyond the Standards in our general education classrooms.As I have written numerous times before, the Standards, intended in theory as a floor - the minimum that students should achieve - function in practice as a ceiling - the maximum that students can achieve. T

9-26-13 Seattle Schools Community Forum
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Open Thread for West Seattle Boundary Meeting/Pinehurst MeetingIf you attended either of these meetings and have comments or thoughts, here's a place for them.Early Tweets from the West Seattle Blog indicate a much lower turnout than the other two meetings (about 60ish), West Seattle's topography was ignored/not understood in these suggested boundaries, people unha