Sunday, February 5, 2017

Two Upcoming Events this week


  • The February HCS Advisory Committee meeting will be this Tuesday 2/7 at 6:30 @ Washington Middle School in the library.

Full Agenda: PDF Link. Please send any feedback prior to Wed. either as a comment here or directly to Dir. Sue Peters


12 comments:

muh said...

I have a question: How useful is it for parents to show up to these meetings in numbers? I don't know that I have anything to say, and goodness knows there is a lot to attend to right now, but I feel like gifted education is important, and that probably means I should show up if it is necessary.
Thanks.

Benjamin Leis said...

In this case, there is no immediate need. I've put them up solely for those who are interested. The board session will not take any testimony from the public so it would be purely observatory in nature with perhaps a chance to talk to a director before or afterwards.

The HCS advisory committee meetings are interesting but I haven't seen an agenda for this one yet. Unfortunately, I have a JAMS tour to go to myself that night or I'd try to go out to that one to produce a write up.

Also for the record, if anyone does go to a meeting and wants to produce some minutes for me to publish, I'm always happy to post them.

Benjamin Leis said...

I have the full slide deck now in a link above. I'd love some comments from the wider community before the meeting.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this. I wonder why they don't have any assessment of how the HCC program is working for students? Climate survey? Test data? Compare to neighboring districts? It seems their agenda is more about finding more efficient ways to handle testing and scheduling teacher training, than finding best ways to educate the students. When will they discuss Curriculum and delivery models? Interesting there is the word "pathways" on a few pages, but no substance to back up what they want.

What Matters

Anonymous said...

An outside assessment was done 10 years ago (!), pre-split, by University of Virginia. The lack of defined curriculum was noted as a weakness. The analysis used anecdotal feedback rather than a comprehensive survey of teachers, parents, and students, though the issues noted then are some of the same issues of today. Ten years and little has improved. Google for a Seattle Times link to the report:

Evaluation Report
ACCELERATED PROGRESS PROGRAM
Seattle Public Schools

Recommendations for Action

Develop an overall curricular vision...that align with, but exceed, Washington state standards. APP curriculum should exceed grade level standards... we are NOT advocating for a scripted curriculum for the APP, but are recommending that a common vision, outcome goals, and curricular framework will be safeguards to ensure that all APP students are provided with equally rigorous curriculum. If Seattle decides at some point to create another self-contained APP setting beyond Lowell or Washington, it will be critically important that these foundational pieces are established and are functionally in place. In the absence of guiding documents and tools, the issue of highly-variable teachers will create exponentially larger issues for ensuring quality curriculum experiences for all APP students.

Pretty prescient.

Anonymous said...

@ Benjamin, I made a mistake in the posting above (10:26am). Can you please delete it? I'll repost a revised version later and some additional info re: prior HCC evaluation... Thank you!

Benjamin Leis said...

@Anonymous above and everyone else. Please sign off with an alias to make things easier when responding to each other. Also, if you log on with some sort of authenticated identity you can self delete your old comments.

Anonymous said...


Hello:

The HCS meeting is cancelled for today (Tuesday). We are looking into still having a February meeting and will update you if that gets scheduled.

Thanks, Robert

g said...

Thanks Robert, for posting here. It's hard to know how the SSS blog will fare while Melissa is on hiatus, but this is a great place to find news, and some of us visit this site far more often than we'd check "mailing list emails", if you get my drift. Appreciated!

Please do update here when the meeting is rescheduled.

Sam said...

Are all HCC advisory meetings open to the public? If so, are they typically well attended by non-committee members?

Melissa Westbrook said...

I did attend the Work session and will contact Ben about it. This group needs to get on the district's radar.

Anonymous said...

Melissa, what do you mean? As the district's HC services advisory ctte, isn't it already on their radar? Or are you referring to some other work group?

Unclear