SPS, like most local agencies, has been horribly run for decades. On top of that, they been an utter failure by literally every metric we've ever used to determine the success or failure of our educational institutions.
Part of me wants to feel bad for obvious reasons. But meh. This was inevitable and needs to happen.
SPS seemed pretty solid to me, 10 years ago, if you were willing to navigate the system, which did not seem easy.
But yes, it has been horribly dysfunctional for at least 5 years, at my neighborhood schools anyway. They seem to have brought in a lot of awful principals. I hear some schools are still okay, but it's seems like not that many are left.
Yes, we need to fire administrators and bring back holding teachers and kids accountable to performance. The social justice and equity focus has screwed over everyone instead of uplifting those who needed it.
I'm sure I will get down voted for saying that, but I put two kids through SPS and have seen it first hand many times.
The latest cutting of highly capable programs is the final nail. Kids need to learn to work hard and be responsible for their work and schools are how we have taught that for generations. Now, teachers won't hold students accountable because it may not be "fair" due to their unique life situation. Kids just coast and learn nothing. Till we have standards again, I don't see this going away.
preach. spot on .. all of it. life isn't fair. teaching them that adversity is unfair and wrong just fucks them over when they discover life is full of adversity. When I was a kid schools and parents were rowing the boat in the same direction on these topics ... At SPS we had to row twice as hard because they were being taught the \*opposite\* of a work ethic. One big reason we pulled them.
We just got our pre-k into a faith based private school. We are not religious but feel the justice and equity focus has caused more harm than good… bullying being a problem / victim blaming… then school shootings. Seemed like a no-brainer to go religious schooling over public
I imagine a lot of of this is based on where you live but my kid goes to Maple elementary and it has been unbelievable good. Love the teachers, the after school programs have been amazing. Already this year doing a running club, theatre club, Latino dance, origami and many others for kids to choose from. She is excelling in reading, math and writing. Teachers have been awesome every year...when do people see the drop off? Middle school ..high school?
That’s interesting. We’ve done considerable research… talked to parents who sent their children to catholic school (many of which were not catholic). Talked to the children who recently graduated. I actually wanted nothing to do with the school but was convinced after talking to a child that was bullied in public school and moved to the school we got into. He said he hated public school and the catholic church was considerably better. Your message is the only negative message we have heard. When and what area did you attend?
Most of the cost of running a school is staff, not buildings. Obviously there are some savings from consolidating schools, but leaving some classrooms empty already gets you most of the way there.
they need to cut admin first. Great comment at the end of the article. 28% of SPS headcount are not teachers. What the hell are they all doing?
Then they need to start listening to parents who are paying out of pocket to take their kids elsewhere. An SPS education literally has negative value to 1/3 of the population of Seattle families. We (me included) pay to avoid it.
I agree that 4000 student is not equal to 20 elementary schools. That should be 8-9 elementary schools. The remaining cuts need to come from elsewhere, as you say.
A large part of the missing 4000 students is parents moving kids to private because SPS has deteriorated so badly. As long as the district fails to focus on educational achievement and clearly values *the appearance* of equity more than either actual equity or education, the decline will continue.
Coming up with a 5 year plan to make small improvements does nothing for students who will be advanced to higher grades by then. Likewise, cutting budgets and claiming "teachers will be able to differentiate" without providing any time or resources to do so is just pretending the problems are "solved" when literally noting is being done *except making the problems worse.*
Definitely. This happened ~15 or so years ago when they started forcing neighborhood schools on people. A lot of parent were going to end up with two kids in different schools. It made no sense. So lots of people with money just opted for private schools, then, too.
When people believe the public schools are a public good and provide a useful public service, they are willing to vote for levies and fund the schools. When people believe that public schools are a bloated waste that provide only poor service at best, they withdraw support for levies and further the decline of the schools.
Nothing SPS is proposing will do anything to improve education. The idea that individual teachers will magically *differentiate* to provide ideal education to every student is a cynical hollow promise which is going to result in further backlash and flight from the schools.
I don't dispute the reality. I just think its time the bloated, insular bureaucracy running this thing gives a few pounds of flesh. SPS decline is largely self inflicted, and its on them.
They **say** they are cutting central staff, but those are minimal cuts if any. The biggest cuts are reducing individual school staffing. Removing FTE from schools for mostly specialists, music, art, PE, nurse, librarian, etc. They are claiming that a miraculous new "inclusion model" will allow all students to enroll in their local school and the teacher (without any extra support or expense) will be able to deal with every kind of special need, as well as provide extra lessons for any advanced learners in the class. It's not going to work, and everyone (cynically) knows it's not going to work. It's the least cost possible delivery model: dump everyone into the largest possible single class size and blame the teacher for the inevitable failure.
They are also cutting teaching staff and special education whenever they can get away with it legally and by finding loopholes in the cba. Morale is very low amongst school staff, but there are still amazing teachers and kid facing staff—why would you do it if you didn’t feel passionate about the work?
There are many elementary schools with 300 or less students. Several with closer to 200. 8-9 of those schools wouldn’t compensate for a loss of 4000 students.
28% administration… that reminds me of this article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/bureaucratic-bloat-eating-american-universities-inside/678324/
What the eff are all those people doing?
I dunno, it takes a ton of people to make a school run. Janitors, nurses, counselors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, principals, assistants, plus all the staff in the district office. I’m sure there are efficiencies to be found, but 28% non-teachers seems back-of-the-envelope reasonable to me.
Same comment has Atlanta at \~15%. SPS outsources a bit of this as well (bus drivers at a minimum). I'm pretty sure are seeing a lot of district office do nothings, and a lot of specialists.
There is a lot of administrative support staff, building support, nurses, crossing guards, janitors and I am probably missing a lot of other people too.
Why should the school district change? All they have to do is run a new funding levy and it will pass, 100% of the time.
If I could have my own ideological playpen with unlimited and unconditional public funding, I'd be down with that. Wouldn't you?
School district has been reducing program effectiveness for years. Anyone who can afford to go private would be foolish not to. All the highly capable programs are being cut. Neighborhood schools have been stripped of librarians, nurses, art, music and PE. Teachers get no support for radical inclusions that reduce the special ed budgets. Keeping students from hurting each other takes more time away from teaching every year, plus *everyone advances* every year no matter what was or wasn't learned, so students think they don't have any meaningful consequences for ignoring class.
It's a downward spiral of decreasing enrollment as schools get worse and any family that can move out of Seattle Public Schools does so, further decreasing enrollment. Meanwhile central district admin is as bloated as ever and eats a huge proportion of the annual budget for no educational benefit to students.
This "new solution" of eliminating all small neighborhood schools to create inconveniently locate mega-elementary schools is budget hand waving. It addresses none of the actual problems in the schools and just continues the long slide. Seattle Public Schools used to be exemplary. Now they are on their way to terrible and declining fast.
I watched them strip Hi-Cap in the South End. I watched them gut SPED with a reduction in services branded as “Extended Resource.” I watched them strip Hi-Cap in the North End. I watched them refuse to hold kids accountable for their learning and behavior, I watched them refuse to return to work, and refuse to fire a board member who was a legal dumpster fire, and now I’m watching them collapse like a dying star. Oh gosh. It’s like there are finally consequences for their actions.
its sad. but they deserve a serious comeuppance for fucking up our schools. what a clown show. I really hope we'll see the leadership (and not just Jones, but 2-3 layers below him) out the door. Its sorely needed and well deserved.
Entirely this, yes. And they can offload at least 60% of the principals, too. We had an elementary principal who ran off her entire SPED staff in October last year.
OK - I got yelled at by a mod (name rhymes with "genital") for posting a headline and a link instead of choosing the Link/URL option . But if it works out for you, enjoy the experience!
you know ... I've been thinking about this a lot. I think we should just shut down headquarters instead. They can all work via zoom indefinitely. It won't affect performance one bit.
Every idiot who calls to fire administrators would propose the exact same plan if they were responsible for the budget.
It's a demographic and thus revenue issue.
AI is going to transform education anyway so this is all a lot of hand wringing.
Now in my Socialist Dreamland, I would have the Feds keep these buildings open and staff them with a federal army of social workers and other health/mental health professionals but alas.....
SPS, like most local agencies, has been horribly run for decades. On top of that, they been an utter failure by literally every metric we've ever used to determine the success or failure of our educational institutions. Part of me wants to feel bad for obvious reasons. But meh. This was inevitable and needs to happen.
but have they been equally bad? That would be a win, right?
SPS seemed pretty solid to me, 10 years ago, if you were willing to navigate the system, which did not seem easy. But yes, it has been horribly dysfunctional for at least 5 years, at my neighborhood schools anyway. They seem to have brought in a lot of awful principals. I hear some schools are still okay, but it's seems like not that many are left.
Yes, we need to fire administrators and bring back holding teachers and kids accountable to performance. The social justice and equity focus has screwed over everyone instead of uplifting those who needed it. I'm sure I will get down voted for saying that, but I put two kids through SPS and have seen it first hand many times. The latest cutting of highly capable programs is the final nail. Kids need to learn to work hard and be responsible for their work and schools are how we have taught that for generations. Now, teachers won't hold students accountable because it may not be "fair" due to their unique life situation. Kids just coast and learn nothing. Till we have standards again, I don't see this going away.
preach. spot on .. all of it. life isn't fair. teaching them that adversity is unfair and wrong just fucks them over when they discover life is full of adversity. When I was a kid schools and parents were rowing the boat in the same direction on these topics ... At SPS we had to row twice as hard because they were being taught the \*opposite\* of a work ethic. One big reason we pulled them.
We just got our pre-k into a faith based private school. We are not religious but feel the justice and equity focus has caused more harm than good… bullying being a problem / victim blaming… then school shootings. Seemed like a no-brainer to go religious schooling over public
I imagine a lot of of this is based on where you live but my kid goes to Maple elementary and it has been unbelievable good. Love the teachers, the after school programs have been amazing. Already this year doing a running club, theatre club, Latino dance, origami and many others for kids to choose from. She is excelling in reading, math and writing. Teachers have been awesome every year...when do people see the drop off? Middle school ..high school?
Starts in middle school, then gets real bad in high school.
Definitely school and teacher dependent. We've had great luck in 3/4 years of gradeschool. lots of horror stories in middle school
We were just up the street at Kimball and it was a nightmare. I pulled them.
What was a nightmare? We just moved to the nighborhood and Kimball is our school, but I might keep my kid at Pathfinder K8 if Kimball is a no go.
Don’t move them. Kimball is really struggling.
[удалено]
That’s interesting. We’ve done considerable research… talked to parents who sent their children to catholic school (many of which were not catholic). Talked to the children who recently graduated. I actually wanted nothing to do with the school but was convinced after talking to a child that was bullied in public school and moved to the school we got into. He said he hated public school and the catholic church was considerably better. Your message is the only negative message we have heard. When and what area did you attend?
Yes. If you have no brain.
“But it’s not fair to identify the teachers that aren’t working.” — most of my field
Actually kids need to learn how to work lazy and leverage AI.
If the district is down 4000 students, they need to close some schools.
Most of the cost of running a school is staff, not buildings. Obviously there are some savings from consolidating schools, but leaving some classrooms empty already gets you most of the way there.
they need to cut admin first. Great comment at the end of the article. 28% of SPS headcount are not teachers. What the hell are they all doing? Then they need to start listening to parents who are paying out of pocket to take their kids elsewhere. An SPS education literally has negative value to 1/3 of the population of Seattle families. We (me included) pay to avoid it.
I agree that 4000 student is not equal to 20 elementary schools. That should be 8-9 elementary schools. The remaining cuts need to come from elsewhere, as you say.
A large part of the missing 4000 students is parents moving kids to private because SPS has deteriorated so badly. As long as the district fails to focus on educational achievement and clearly values *the appearance* of equity more than either actual equity or education, the decline will continue. Coming up with a 5 year plan to make small improvements does nothing for students who will be advanced to higher grades by then. Likewise, cutting budgets and claiming "teachers will be able to differentiate" without providing any time or resources to do so is just pretending the problems are "solved" when literally noting is being done *except making the problems worse.*
Definitely. This happened ~15 or so years ago when they started forcing neighborhood schools on people. A lot of parent were going to end up with two kids in different schools. It made no sense. So lots of people with money just opted for private schools, then, too.
When people believe the public schools are a public good and provide a useful public service, they are willing to vote for levies and fund the schools. When people believe that public schools are a bloated waste that provide only poor service at best, they withdraw support for levies and further the decline of the schools. Nothing SPS is proposing will do anything to improve education. The idea that individual teachers will magically *differentiate* to provide ideal education to every student is a cynical hollow promise which is going to result in further backlash and flight from the schools.
I don't dispute the reality. I just think its time the bloated, insular bureaucracy running this thing gives a few pounds of flesh. SPS decline is largely self inflicted, and its on them.
> To close its budget gap, the district is cutting staff in the central administrative office
They **say** they are cutting central staff, but those are minimal cuts if any. The biggest cuts are reducing individual school staffing. Removing FTE from schools for mostly specialists, music, art, PE, nurse, librarian, etc. They are claiming that a miraculous new "inclusion model" will allow all students to enroll in their local school and the teacher (without any extra support or expense) will be able to deal with every kind of special need, as well as provide extra lessons for any advanced learners in the class. It's not going to work, and everyone (cynically) knows it's not going to work. It's the least cost possible delivery model: dump everyone into the largest possible single class size and blame the teacher for the inevitable failure.
They are also cutting teaching staff and special education whenever they can get away with it legally and by finding loopholes in the cba. Morale is very low amongst school staff, but there are still amazing teachers and kid facing staff—why would you do it if you didn’t feel passionate about the work?
There are many elementary schools with 300 or less students. Several with closer to 200. 8-9 of those schools wouldn’t compensate for a loss of 4000 students.
28% administration… that reminds me of this article. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/bureaucratic-bloat-eating-american-universities-inside/678324/ What the eff are all those people doing?
getting paid! and sucking at the teat of accessible student loans ...
I dunno, it takes a ton of people to make a school run. Janitors, nurses, counselors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, principals, assistants, plus all the staff in the district office. I’m sure there are efficiencies to be found, but 28% non-teachers seems back-of-the-envelope reasonable to me.
Same comment has Atlanta at \~15%. SPS outsources a bit of this as well (bus drivers at a minimum). I'm pretty sure are seeing a lot of district office do nothings, and a lot of specialists.
Atlanta is bottom of the barrel school system and Seattle is a 100 times better. Lived in Atl for 7+ yrs and mentored kids in the community as well.
Cleaning erasers and sharpening pencils???
There is a lot of administrative support staff, building support, nurses, crossing guards, janitors and I am probably missing a lot of other people too.
> What the hell are they all doing? Self aware enough to realize you don't understand something. Not self aware enough to not get mad about it.
hey lesser known barista. got any kids or is it just reddit and pedantism? try paying tuition. then tell me how to feel.
Why should the school district change? All they have to do is run a new funding levy and it will pass, 100% of the time. If I could have my own ideological playpen with unlimited and unconditional public funding, I'd be down with that. Wouldn't you?
yup. that's why we should vote no.
School district has been reducing program effectiveness for years. Anyone who can afford to go private would be foolish not to. All the highly capable programs are being cut. Neighborhood schools have been stripped of librarians, nurses, art, music and PE. Teachers get no support for radical inclusions that reduce the special ed budgets. Keeping students from hurting each other takes more time away from teaching every year, plus *everyone advances* every year no matter what was or wasn't learned, so students think they don't have any meaningful consequences for ignoring class. It's a downward spiral of decreasing enrollment as schools get worse and any family that can move out of Seattle Public Schools does so, further decreasing enrollment. Meanwhile central district admin is as bloated as ever and eats a huge proportion of the annual budget for no educational benefit to students. This "new solution" of eliminating all small neighborhood schools to create inconveniently locate mega-elementary schools is budget hand waving. It addresses none of the actual problems in the schools and just continues the long slide. Seattle Public Schools used to be exemplary. Now they are on their way to terrible and declining fast.
I watched them strip Hi-Cap in the South End. I watched them gut SPED with a reduction in services branded as “Extended Resource.” I watched them strip Hi-Cap in the North End. I watched them refuse to hold kids accountable for their learning and behavior, I watched them refuse to return to work, and refuse to fire a board member who was a legal dumpster fire, and now I’m watching them collapse like a dying star. Oh gosh. It’s like there are finally consequences for their actions.
its sad. but they deserve a serious comeuppance for fucking up our schools. what a clown show. I really hope we'll see the leadership (and not just Jones, but 2-3 layers below him) out the door. Its sorely needed and well deserved.
Entirely this, yes. And they can offload at least 60% of the principals, too. We had an elementary principal who ran off her entire SPED staff in October last year.
we've had a good one. but I've heard about a lot of poor hiring decisions. ideology has ruined this place.
So is it official??? Can we 100% editorialize headlines on link posts? Unleash the hounds?
no. discussion.... but where this is smoke. As for editorializing and hounds, of course! its reddit.
OK - I got yelled at by a mod (name rhymes with "genital") for posting a headline and a link instead of choosing the Link/URL option . But if it works out for you, enjoy the experience!
go figure. the god's of reddit are cruel and unpredictable. I was short flair.
They are fickle immortals. But if you're never going to die, I guess rule #1 will always be "Keep things interesting"
>They are fickle immor~~t~~als
Generally don’t agree with y’all but 100% this should be happening
>y'all
you know ... I've been thinking about this a lot. I think we should just shut down headquarters instead. They can all work via zoom indefinitely. It won't affect performance one bit.
I have been there dozens of times and never seen more than 3 people in the building and a nearly empty parking lot.
that's hilarious. They really should shut it down. What a bunch of parasites.
Best I can do is a new post-overdose hangout spot for junkies.
we do need those
We have them, they're called "treatment facilities."
You’re ill-informed—we don’t have nearly enough of them. People who desperately want to get into treatment can’t.
Then build more but don't take money away from children and schools.
But administrators are real people, with real lives. Can't we think of the impact to them?
Maybe. Need more story reading by trans teachers?
are the in drag or dressed all cissy?
Every idiot who calls to fire administrators would propose the exact same plan if they were responsible for the budget. It's a demographic and thus revenue issue. AI is going to transform education anyway so this is all a lot of hand wringing. Now in my Socialist Dreamland, I would have the Feds keep these buildings open and staff them with a federal army of social workers and other health/mental health professionals but alas.....
man oh man I'm glad that's a dreamland. Asylums in the middle of residential neighborhoods. The idiot on this thread might be you.
The schools do this already but are understaffed. You know nothing.