Difficult day . . .

If you follow my blog you know that I have Seahawk tickets and follow the team, making today a difficult day.  Do I go to the parade?  Do I use my tickets to wait for the team's arrival in the stadium?  Do I come to work and keep my meeting commitments?  How do I/we respond to requests from students and adults in the community to close school or to at least allow students to attend?  And, . . .

Yes, not a good day and once again no way to make everyone happy.  There were hundreds of students who chose not to attend today in our schools who have the opportunity for a parent excused absence in our system.  This is different than the position taken on Monday by Seattle to make it unexcused and then changed Tuesday to allow the building principal to use discretion.  As of today, there were school systems still taking the position that attendance to these events would be unexcused.

It made for difficult decisions by our teachers on learning targets for the day with so many students missing.  I also want to thank our teachers for the decision to be in their classrooms as we were able to cover all but two teaching positions, similar to many other "normal" days this year in our system where we are struggling with substitute coverage.  Thanks also to Tamara Wheeler who made the many difficult and necessary calls to cover all but those two positions.

I feel that the decisions we made were the right ones and that my personal decision to facilitate a meeting today that has been very difficult to schedule was important and necessary.  It didn't feel any better, however, when I received an e-mail with the picture below taken from our architectural firms office overlooking the parade route.  Today was our regularly scheduled meeting date with them and we were invited to meet in their office with this view of the events and heat.

Choices, choices choices . . .