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Sunday, January 24, 2016

How the Color of Money - McLeary Crime Scene Coloring Contest Came to Be - Living in Dialogue

How the Color of Money - McLeary Crime Scene Coloring Contest Came to Be - Living in Dialogue:

How the Color of Money - McLeary Crime Scene Coloring Contest Came to Be



 By Carolyn Leith.

Back in September, parents were blindsided when Seattle Public Schools (SPS) proposed staff cuts at 25 or something schools across the district. Emergency meetings were held, letters were sent to the school board, but none of these efforts seemed to make a difference. The district had made up its mind.
This is when Shawna Murphy and I decided to create our own advocacy group called Teacher Retention Advocate Parents or TRAP.
We staged a spoofy bake sale – dubbed the Half-Baked Bake Sale – at district headquarters. Our goal was to protest the staff cuts, but also draw attention to the absurdity of trying to fund basic education with car washes and bake sales.
After the success of the bake sale, TRAP asked The Thirteen Thousand Dollar Question, when SPS Superintendent Larry Nyland quipped that his $13,000 dollar a year raise couldn’t solve any problems “on the table” for Seattle’s public schools.
Now, TRAP is holding a coloring contest to bring attention to the State’s continuing refusal to perform its most basic duty as outlined in the Washington State Constitution – to fully fund public education.color2
Instead, Governor Inslee and  the Legislature are content to make a plan to make plan. I guess everyone in the Evergreen State is supposed to forget that the Washington State Supreme Court is fining the State$100,000 a day for contempt.
Of course, parents aren’t buying any of this nonsense and have aptly renamed this scheme “The-Kick-The-Can-Plan”.
Why a coloring contest?