Huge relief and celebration . . .

Yes, both of our levies are passing well above the necessary 50%.  With the updated count today they are both above 60% with the Program and Operations at 60.90% and the Technology at 61.71%.  This is truly a celebration as they would pass under the old 60% requirement and come on the heels of our historic bond measure passage.  There are so many people to thank so I am always hesitant to list names, but I would be remiss if I didn't thank the following people for their leadership and commitment to this effort.  They are the ones spending many hours behind the scene organizing and planning as well as many hours engaging the community in multiple ways around the need for continuing these revenue sources.

Please share your thanks and appreciation with these individuals and the many others who donated their time to share the message and the need.

Community Members:  Erin Weaver, Casey Henry, Angela Stewart, Wendy Castleman, Sean Stewart, Sarah Gilbert, Joy Stramer
Staff:  Jen Dunham, John Schuster, Barbara Roessler, Kevin Patterson
Student Groups:  We The People, FBLA

Grading state practices . . .

I found this report  on the National Council on Teacher Policy and decided to share it because some of the grades are directly related to evaluation and waiver bills currently being discussed in Olympia.  The study gives states a letter grade on the laws, rules, and regulations that influence the quality of teaching in the state.  The chart below shows areas analyzed in the study and how our state changed from 2011 to 2013.  In both those years Washington received a C- and in 2009 it was a D+ so there has been some positive movement in these areas according to this analysis.

The map below shows that we are somewhere in the middle when compared to other states.

My sense is that the proposed changes in teacher evaluation and waiver language reflected in some of the current bills being discussed in Olympia will increase the grade.  The chart below identifies "weaknesses" in Area 3 that the bills are intended to fix such as use of student achievement data in evaluations.  I don't know how widely distributed this report is or how much influence they have on state and federal policy decisions, but I do know that it could be another source of leverage fr reformers in our state and at the national level.

Important conversations . . .

As I shared in this post, on Friday twelve of us representing our school community visited with five of our six legislators.  I was able to be involved with four of the five.  The sixth is a member of the House Rules Committee and was called to a meeting because of a looming bill cut off date.  So, what did we hear?  We heard that the cost of living raise is dead then we heard it is still alive and later we heard that it is doing better than just alive.  We saw surprise on one legislators face as we shared the response to this question from another legislator leading me to assume that in conversations between the two something else may have been said.  Given what we heard I'm not ready to bet n this one.

We heard that the 1080 hour requirement is likely to be delayed and that there will be some flexibility built in by lowering the requirement for some grades.  There will, however, be a struggle as there are a number of bills addressing this issue with  one gaining momentum that includes implementation of the Core 24 graduation requirements beginning with the class of 2019.  We shared our preference with the bills that delay this requirement until it is fully funded.

On another critical issue we learned that there will be legislation coming out of this session that will change "may" to "shall" related to requiring the use of state testing data in teacher and principal evaluation.  We had some interesting conversations about this requirement and what legislators are looking for when they say they want increased accountability.  There is no hope of this going away as the lobby from districts with significant Title 1 money and from OSPI is too strong.  What will be interesting will be to see the parameters attached to the use of these tests.  At least one legislator suggested that he will advocate for language that gives local districts the autonomy to determine how much of an influence these tests will have on an individual evaluation.

We talked about other issues with some interesting conversation around the common core, but I want to close this post by sharing my appreciation for most of our representatives.  I believe that they are transparent and share what they believe or what they know at that moment.  I also believe that I have the ability to influence someone who is transparent and am more open to being influenced by what I hear.  Those that say what they think I want to hear, waffle on positions, use vague and ambiguous language, and hide behind their position are not open to being influenced so receive little attention and time from me.  Though I don't believe we changed any positions I do believe we said some things that opened up the possibility for further conversations.  In any case we, we actually got on both the House and Senate floor in the same day, a new experience for me that could be do to our unique coalition appreciated by multiple legislators.

Coalition to visit Olympia . . .

I'm going through my blog file and seeing a growing number of posts and articles on Common Core push back in states with a focus on the diversity of the groups beginning to advocate for changes to the implementation schedules.  Included in these efforts is a pull back from the two national assessment consortia, potentially increasing the cost of administering these tests next spring.  But, last month I said I would take a moratorium on common core posts so I'll just keep adding to the file.

Closer to home, tomorrow a coalition representing PSE, TEA, Board, students, parents, and administrators will meet with multiple legislators in Olympia.  Our purpose is to demonstrate how one system comes together to identify common needs and advocate for what our system needs to meet the multiple accountability measures imposed by the state and federal governments.  The legislators tell us that we are the only system that lobbies with these diverse groups and they enjoy the opportunity.  It also results in them giving us more time to share our concerns and requests.

Tomorrow we will focus on the following areas.

• Funding the McCleary decision.
• Funding to support staff development for teachers, classified staff, and administrators.
• Please, no new mandates from this short session.
• Cost of living increase for school personnel.
• Delay and restructuring of the 1080 hour requirement.  (SSB 6552 was recently submitted that both delays the implementation by a year and provides flexibility in meeting the requirement.  This is a positive move by multiple legislative leaders, something that we did not believe possible when the session started.)

We will be sharing our message with six legislators throughout the day.  This coalition is another example of the collaborative culture we are creating and contributes to what separates us from many other school systems.  I don't know what influence we will have on their voting, but I do know that our process provides us with a greater opportunity than most to be heard.

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 . . .

The conference call experience . . .

As I continue to recover from yesterday's game and tell my Granddaughter that she will be going to school Wednesday not the Seahawk's victory parade, I thought I'd share this funny video about a conference call in real life.  Kimberly Allison shared it with me so I placed it in my blog file for possible later use on a day like today.  If you have ever participated in a conference call you will appreciate this video as it captures the experience of trying to engage multiple people over great distances with this technology.  watch the first three minutes of the video to see talking over, cutting out, muted conversation, background noise, bouncing back, and the reality of people engaging or not, and exiting the call.

No words needed . . .