Seattle Schools Community Forum: Follow-Ups and Did You Know?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Follow-Ups and Did You Know?:

Follow-Ups and Did You Know?

Did you know that the district has rank ordered programs/support activities in district buildings?  The reasoning is two-fold - for enactment of 1351 for smaller class sizes in K-3 and the growth in Seattle Schools.  Here's the list from a letter that Flip Herndon sent on Oct. 13, 2015 to "Seattle Public School Partners:"

1.       K-12 Instruction
2.       Preschool (because it requires dedicated space and licensing)
3.       Before and After Care (because it is more flexible in utilizing multi-use space)
4.       Other Youth Activities
5.       All other Activities

Currently, it looks like most of the impact will happen at the elementary level of buildings, but this space prioritization is applicable to all buildings. Additionally, an evaluation of space needs will happen on an annual basis and any impact to an organization or partner would be communicated as soon as possible to allow time transition. Just because you are receiving this letter, does not mean that you are losing space that is currently being used. This is a general notification. In the event that the space currently being used by your organization needs to be prioritized for K-12 instruction, a specific letter referring to the applicable lease would be sent with a timeline attached. 

You see that? Pre-K BEFORE other before/after school care.  

Budget Items from the Work Session:

Budget presentation (scroll down in document to see it).   Really interesting page 6 which is the Current Year Enrollment by Grade Band (prior three years plus a 10 year previous).  The growth has been largely in  grades 1-5 and high school enrollment has decreased since 2006.


Upside: potential prior year carryover support, teacher reassignments for adjusted enrollment and possible decrease in transportation expenditures.

Downside: acutal enrollment budget variance ($4.3M) and SEA labor contract above anticipated budget ($3.5M)

So the staffing adjustments are both a good and bad thing for the district's budget.  Interesting.

As well they are still waiting for find out about the OSPI/DoE SPED funding holdback of $3M.  The other unresolved issue is "unfunded needs" at $71M.  They identify these as:

• add 5 minutes to lunch/recess
• bell time shift
• African-American Initiative (which I believe only applies to boys)
• Close Opportunity GAP (sic)
• Sped/ELL program expansion
• start of school process improvements
• IB funding
• School funding model enhancements
• Restoration of pre-recession central operations support

I do not know what the second to last item means and I can't believe they want Seattle Schools Community Forum: Follow-Ups and Did You Know?: