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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Seattle Schools "Tentative" Calendar Released Seattle Schools Community Forum: Updates

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Updates:


Seattle Schools "Tentative" Calendar Released

Not sure if this helps but from SPS:

Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association have agreed to key dates for next year’s school calendar, including:

• frst day of school: Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013;
• winter break: two weeks, from Dec. 23, 2013, to Jan. 3, 2014;
• mid-winter break: Feb. 17-21, 2014, including the Presidents Day holiday;
• spring break: April 14-18, 2014; and
• last day of school: yet to be determined (June 18 or 19, 2014).

The calendar also builds in four snow make-up days, including Jan. 31, 2014, May 23, 2014, and the two days 


Seattle School Board Candidate Questions

I'm reaching out to all the candidates for School Board and I'm thinking about what to ask.

Naturally, I will be asking most of the same basic questions to all the candidates but then, asking about what they would bring to the table.

What would you most want to ask a candidate?


Updates

The district had what is called an "exit conference" yesterday from a regularly scheduled state audit.  Two items of note turned up.

For the FOURTH year, the district claimed more students than they could justify for the federal grant for Native American students.  According to the Times, they received about $6k more than they should.  The district has returned nearly $330k over the last 3 years to the feds.

Not good and really, truly - there is no excuse.  (I'm sure the district had one but I'm glad I was not there to hear it.)  And people wonder why the Native American parents are mistrustful of the district.

And, the district was questioned in the spending of federal grant money for preventing high school students from dropping out to the tune of about $490k.  The district got the grant in 2010 for about $12M over five years and apparently the questioned spending was not part of what was in the district's original application.

From a source at the meeting, I understand that Superintendent Banda said these are not good things but that