Who really chooses the Seattle Times Education lab stories?

Education Lab is a Seattle Times project that spotlights promising approaches to persistent challenges in public education. It is produced in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network and is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Amazon and City University of Seattle.

The Times ran a story on Monday 9/9/2019 about teachers quitting a private religious school  over policy differences. The Times published the story in the Education lab section. This seems strange because it clearly states that the education lab is a project that spotlights public education. The school in the one sided hit piece article is a private religious school in Shoreline. I wanted to find out if the sponsors condoned the anti-christian comments that the Seattle Times moderators allowed to appear in the comment section. These comments contained threats against the school staff, threats against the students and threats against the companies that have donated to the school.

I first spoke to the Gates Foundation and was told that they did not write or suggest the religious school story. They confirmed they do submit stories and stories ideas that they want published in the Times in the Education Lab section.

Next, I spoke with City University which conformed that they did not sponsor the article nor did they want their name associated with the article and they only sponsor stories they submit.

Amazon has yet to return my phone call.

Given the tendencies of violence by various social justice groups it was reckless of the Times to publish this story. Any incident of violence against the school's property, students or staff will be the responsibility of the Seattle Times.

Seattle School Board Distrct 1 candidate's pages.

Christophersen - district 1 link

Thank you for your votes. We didn't make it to November but we are going to continue to fight for students and tax payers. Please check back for new post and great information. We will be making our recommendations for Novembers election sometime in September.

Kline - district 1 link

Where's the Seattle Public Schools funding going?

                                          Seattle Public schools budget process.  

The Strange Case of USDE OCR and Seattle Public Schools.

The United State Dept of Education recently released a new statement:

 

“From day one, our approach has been clear and unwavering: vigorously enforce civil rights laws, treat students as individuals, and resolve cases both efficiently and effectively,” said Secretary DeVos. “The backlog of cases we inherited should have troubled everyone, as we know justice delayed is justice denied. While many have tried to distort the nature of our approach, the numbers don’t lie. Our approach has been more effective at supporting students and delivering meaningful results.”

 See full statement

How is this statement relevant to Seattle Public schools?

Seattle Public Schools - Special education funding conundrum

From reading this blog you should be able to infer that we are interested in education with an emphasis on Specific Leaning Disabilities (SLD), which includes dyslexia. We believe that if the district would use better methodologies and curriculum designed to mainstream dyslexic students then that effort would result in better outcomes for students along will significant cost savings.  Freeing those funds to use elsewhere.

We are pleased to see the following statement on the SPS website:

Special Areas of Attention

 

"Special Education: The state’s Special Education budget increase is a down payment on a much-needed long term solution. Next year, Seattle Public Schools will receive an additional 2 million dollars for special education. Annually, the district spends 70 million dollars of local levy funds to provide the services our students need. While we appreciate the increase for Special Education, we continue to have grave concerns about the State’s slow pace in fully funding Special Education as is required by law."

 source :  https://www.seattleschools.org/district/calendars/news/what_s_new/budget_update_for_2019-20

However, I have great concerns that SPS would not use all the funding for special education or would not use the additional funding properly.  More on that in a future post!

SPS provides little to no explanation on what they would do with more funding, they just continue to blame the poor academic outcomes of SPED students on lack of funding. It's not a funding issue that's for sure.

Here's the break down and remember these number do not include the general education funding that is allocated on top off the special educational funding. This is only the available SPED funding data.

Where do your Seattle property taxes go?

The chart below was calculated using the King county tax calculator.

Most Seattle home owners don't look at their property tax breakdown, but you should especially when bureaucrats keep asking for more and more property taxes for education.

Funding education is important and that's reflective being 49% of your property tax bill. Seattle Public Schools yearly operating budget is approaching $1.5 Billion.

 It is also significant to know that when you vote on Building Excellence levies (BEX) that the district consistently uses those funds for other purposes. Our school buildings average age is 48 years. We fully expect for the Seattle Public Schools to use those BEX funds to rebuild schools, especially the buildings that are over 65 years of age.

Seattle property values are at historical highs and there has never been more taxable housing units....So why is the Seattle School District struggling with funding? Where are all the funds going?

The IDEA

The spirit of the IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Educational Act) was to protect FAPE (Free And Appropriate Public Education). Or was it?

USDE OSE rates WA OSPI as "needs assistance" with IDEA

June 20, 2019

 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

Honorable Chris Reykdal Superintendent Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Mail stop: 47200. Old Capitol Building P.O. Box 47200 Olympia, WA 98504

Is it time for the Seattle public school district to be split ?

• When a district closes ALL its schools due to snow in only one portion of the city does it make sense? 

•  When school buses are continually late due to long routes, is that efficient? 

•  When the districts priorities don't align with all communities, is that fair? 

• When schools aren't equally funded, is that equity?

• When a parents concerns get buried in a large bureaucracy, is that listening? 

•  When it takes 4 out of 7 school board members to effect change, is that expedient?

•  When one area has multiple new schools and another has 60 year old buildings that have poor heat, leaking roofs and peeling paint, is that equity? 

•  When a fairly new building needs a $5.5 million roof repair, is that stewardship? 

Whether a parent has one or more students attending public schools you will experience a lot of frustration attempting to understand why the same type of issues seem to become circular problems that remain unsolved. At some point you might think the district is just too large to be effectively managed.

One of my frustrations is how the district seems to shuttle its problematic employees from a distant school to another school hoping the parents at the new school are in the dark about the past issues with their new principle, AP or teacher. Special education is particularity problematic perhaps because of a long and frustrating interaction for over a decade with the department.

So do you think the district is too large?
If it were to be split what would the new district look like.
What should happen to JSCEE ?     Should it be sold to pay off the debt?

I found an interesting site you should look at to see some of the issues with splitting districts.


Fracturing school districts

reorganizing-school-district-boundaries.pdf

New-report-blasts-colorado-for-allowing-tiny-districts-to-net-more-school-funding-by-breaking-away-from-larger-districts/

John Saxon - Math