September '16 Open Thread

Over the past few weeks I've watched a stream of back to school photos across my facebook feed from various friends in other districts.  And here we are with still a week to go before school commences.  But there are signs of spin up. The practice bus runs are occurring in the morning. Transportation letters have gone out. Teacher assignments are also starting to appear.

Update from Dir. Sue Peters:

"I've needed to reschedule it [the next community meeting] to Sunday Sept 11, 1-3 pm at Magnolia Library (instead of Sept 3).

In the meantime, if anyone on your blog, from the HCC community or beyond, would like to share any questions, concerns or feedback about the Garfield and Thurgood Marshall plans for Honors and Social Studies (or any other topic, of course), please invite them to send them my way, and to my colleagues on the Board:
SPSDirectors@seattleschools.org = Board Directors only
or

SchoolBoard@seattleschools.org = Board, plus Superintendent, and 7 members of seniors staff.

Hope you've had a nice summer."

Cascadia Split Update

From this weeks Friday Memo more indications that a split is being planned.

"- Cascadia enrollment for Highly Capable will be going to the capacity management task force soon; with the goal of bringing a solution to the board in November. Cascadia (new) is built for 660. Decatur (being vacated by Thornton Creek) can serve 275 – making a total of 935. Current enrollment is 770 and we are growing at close to 10% per year = 840. "

The next Capacity Management Task Force meeting is on the 14th so there may be more news soon.
See: http://www.seattleschools.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=627&pageId=11000118

Note: Given the WSS staffing formula See page 30 in: http://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/School%20Board/16-17agendas/09_10_2016/20160910_Agenda_Retreat_Packet.pdf  A split school would have only .5 secretary. .5 librarian, .2 nurse etc.

Official SPS statement:.
http://www.seattleschools.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=627&pageId=13505264

Articles about the First Day

By coincidence I saw 2 different articles on what to teach on the first day. The first was from one of my favorite teacher bloggers Fawn Nguyen: http://fawnnguyen.com/first-two-days-school/ She's one of those people I wish my kids could have in real life:

"Oh, how many of you have older siblings who had me as their teacher? Yeah? Did they say that I’m really mean? Well, your sister is a liar"

The second was a Salon Article: http://www.salon.com/2016/09/06/down-with-classroom-icebreakers-can-we-all-just-start-teaching-instead/ on the same lines:

"If you’re reading this it’s probably too late. There’s a good chance the teacher of a child you love has already squandered a non-trivial amount of instruction time by prodding a roomful of reluctant kids through a series of awkward icebreakers and/or delivering a soul-crushingly dull and dour recitation of required supplies, class rules, and tardy policies."

Upcoming Threads:

• I'll setup a testing thread earlier this year based on what I saw last time around. Note: the testing registration deadline as always is quite soon:  October 6th. See: http://www.seattleschools.org/students/academics/advanced_learning/ for more deadlines
• Since I thought the first version was interesting we'll have a building news thread maybe once a season.
• I plan to check in with TM and Garfield to see how things are going after enough time has gone by to judge.

Info on commenting

So how's it going in those last days and as school starts please post your impressions of the new year.