Friday, August 2, 2013

Seattle Schools Community Forum:Where are is the Legislature with the McCleary Mandate?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Friday Open Thread:

Friday Open Thread





Seattle Schools Wants Parents/Students for Hiring for Coaches

After the abysmal issues at Ballard and Roosevelt, this is good news (from Mirmac 1):"...we now have new guidelines for hiring athletic coaches. We are now required to have a parent and student on the interview committee when we interview coaches. If you would like to participate on an interview committee please fill out the following form and submit it. We will be hiring a Girls Soccer and Ultima

What is the Seattle Times Trying to Do?

The Times (finally) wrote a story about the misleading flyer put out by supporters of Suzanne Estey. That, in fact, it was the Chamber of Commerce PAC (CASE) plus a couple of wealthy guys, Don Larson and Matt Griffin )who have created their own PAC in support of Estey called Great Seattle Schools) who paid for it.  (Griffin and Larson have also given the full $1800 each that they are legally able


West Seattle K-5 STEM Debate Goes On
Over at the West Seattle Blog, they have a story about the K-5 STEM location debate, complete with links to two "viable" proposals.  More good reading on this subject.


Uncle Miltie
Many conservatives have spent this week celebrating the birthday of Milton Friedman (which was July 31).  He was economic adviser to Reagan and couldn't say enough about a free market economic system.   His contribution to public education (from Wikipedia): (bold mine)In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education" Friedman proposed supplementing publicly operated schools with privately


Where are is the Legislature with the McCleary Mandate?
Good wrap-up from John Stang over at Crosscut.  Pieces of that question include: What's "steady progress"? What does a 2018 deadline really mean? If you measure progress on a make-believe linear graph, where does Washington stand? How does the lack of a cost-of-living raise for teachers factor in? "Did they define 'steady progress?' " asked Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia. "They did not define 'st

First weekend in August and it's starting out cool (but I'm not complaining as I know we have more great weather to come).

Report from KING-5 on the upcoming Board races.   I spent awhile talking with the reporter and yet a lot of it didn't make it here.  I also want to say that this statement I made in the story:

The difference in achievement between different ethnic groups is another tough issue facing the board. 
"If a child's not in school, a child's not learning," Melissa Westbrook said at Seattle Schools Community forum.


What NOT about the achievement gap but about disproportional discipline.

I did say this:

"If they are disrupting learning in the classroom, something has to be done, but