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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Once Again, Educators Save the Day

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Once Again, Educators Save the Day:



Strategic Planning: Want to Join In?

Is this any way to figure the future of this district?  I like that the Superintendent and Board realize how unwieldy the last Strategic Plan was but a taskforce of 6-80 people?  It'll be like herding kittens (or be largely pro-forma facilitation from the consultant group).  (Sorry for the varying typefaces; I couldn't get it worked out of the press release from the district.)

From district Communications:

Seattle Public Schools is starting the process of revising the current Strategic Plan, Excellence for All. The updated plan will guide academic and operational priorities for the next three to five years and include ongoing benchmarking to measure the District’s performance. In 2008, the Seattle School Board unanimously approved Excellence for All, aimed at ensuring all students graduate from high school ready for college, careers and life. 


Garfield Teachers Say No to MAP

In what is a major step, the teachers of Garfield High School will be holding a press conference today to announce they will not give the MAP test.  From the press release:

The teachers contend that it wastes time, money, and precious school resources. 

            “Our teachers have come together and agree that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” says Kris McBride, who serves as Academic Dean and Testing Coordinator at Garfield.  “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously.  It produces specious results, and wreaks 



Once Again, Educators Save the Day

There was a high school shooting in Taft, California today with one student shot but with a teacher and administrator able to talk the student shooter into giving up his weapon.  Taft is a rural community  about 120 miles northwest of LA.  Taft Union High School has about 900 students.

From AP:

When the shots were fired, the teacher began trying to get the more than two dozen students out a back door and also engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said. A campus supervisor responding to a call of shots fired also began talking to him.

"They talked him into putting the shotgun down," Youngblood said.

The sheriff said that at one point the shooter told the teacher, "I don't want to shoot you" and named the person he wanted to shoot.

The shooter may have had up to 20 shotgun rounds in his pockets, he said.

Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus but the person wasn't there because he was snowed