HOW CAN THE SPS ADDRESS DISPARITIES
WITHOUT SUPPORTING THE HIGHEST
GOALS FOR ALL KIDS?
I see this decision by the Seattle schools as condescending to the rights of minority kids to compete at top levels. Despite the wealth of Seattle .. our money and the collective talents of our citizens .. the Seattle Schools are so obsessed with race that they demean their own students, intentionally driving capable kids out of the district by treating gifted programs as racist while running schools that, based on geography, segregate less affluent kids from the affluent community.
The post is copied from an editorial published in the Seattle Times by Denise Juneau, the Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools. I have responded to her text with comments in red.
Racism can take many forms. One form is condescnding racism. This essay by Denise Juneau shows exaclty that. In an effort to help less priviliged kids, the Suprintendent takes the theme that race … that is white racism .. is in the problem. To fulfil this theme, she sets out by demeaning gifted programs rather than by lauding these programs and asking how she can do a better job of identifying kids who belong in such programs.
Superintendent Denise Juneau Writes in The Seattle Times.
with emphasis and comments by SMS and my portrait.
Denise Juneau is superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, Washington state’s largest K-12 school district with 53,000 students.
Superintendent Juneau: Did you know Seattle Public Schools?has a service called Highly Capable?that serves?4,896?of our students, 9% of our student body, while the national average is 2%?
Why doesn’t the Seattle Superintendent celebrate the 9% number as evidence of success? Is it bad to offer gifted education? Ms. Juneau’s editorial bemoans that about 70% of the kids in these programs are “white” .. hardly surprising in a city where 70% OF THE POPULATION is “white.”
Juneau’s racial view of education is not new for the SPS. Over two decades ago, our kids were in the IPP program. The Individual Progress Program was widely known across the US as an innovative work by Hal and Nancy Robinson at the UW. My wife and I, however, were concerned with a glaring issue .. the District refused to acknowledge the success of IPP kids when they got to high school at Garfield. Where would our kids go to high school if IPP ended in grade 8?
So, I did a study of IPP as compared to our best private school, Lakeside. Using socio-economic norming, I found that the IPP kids at Garfield were outperforming kids of similar status at Lakeside!
As an IPP parent I was thrilled and lobbied the District to use this to recruit Black kids not just to Garfield but to the elementary schools hosting IPP. Having lived in the black community in Boston before coming to Seattle and as parent head of IPP, I organized an effort to work with the Black churches. I wanted to tell folks about this opportunity. Other parents were eager to help because we wanted integrated education!
The District blew up and went so far as to insist that the parents group stop recruiting. The District assigned two of its people, both of Caribbean origin, to the task. They refused to work with us and, as we were told by Black friends, instead demeaned the program as white. Frankly, neither of these women understood the culture of the African-Americans in Seattle. Our complaints as “white folks” simply did not matter.
The Superintendent goes on ...Did you know?this?advanced learning service is highly segregated? Of all participating students, 67% are white, 1.6% are African American, and less than 1% are Native American.
What happens if the SPS comes tpo be seen as a charity rather than as part of the entire community? In the era of Charles Dickens, charitable upper-class families were seen as very generous because they donated old clothes and bread to poor kids in the public schools.
At the risk of being accused of being an elitist, the Superintendent’s statement made me guess that her master’s degree in education from Harvard and her law degree from the University of Montana did not include statistics. Since 70% of Seattle kids are white, 67% in gifted classes is hardly remarkable. The issue is not the gifted classes but the fact that about 1/3 of the kids in Seattle go to private schools. Perhaps the disparity is because affluent parents in Seattle are choosing to send their kids to private schools if they do not see the SPS as good schools for their kids? I wonder if the SPS has ever looked at the performance of minority kids admitted by scholarship to any of Seattle’s very prestigious private schools?
Then we have other confusing numbers .. eg the Superintendent bemoans that about 8% of the District is “Native American” yet the District data shows only 1% in the gifted programs are “Native Americian.” BUT that number of gifted native kids is TWICE the percentage of native Americans based on Seattle’s population. Perhaps talented Native American kids are actually getting great benefit by going to SPS? I am sad that the District never looks at kids in gifted programs here to see how they compare, corrected for race and other variables, with their peers elsewhere.
Another issue with the Superintendent’s statistics is that Seattle is undergoing “black flight.” Affluent African American families are fleeing the city because, of many things including gentrification and our bad schools. Why not move to Bellevue or Auburn if you can buy a house there and get better schools? I would bet that the District has never asked how well “our” kids do when they move to the Eastside.
Meanwhile Seattle is also seeing wonderful immigration, especially from East Africa. Somali Americans are very different folks from Alabama/Mississippi/African-Americans .. an issue that is lost if all you do is consider “race.” I have gone to events in the Somali community …. somehow I never see representatives from the SPS there. Do we know how their kids do as compared to Somali American communities in other cities?
The only rational explanation is:.
Seattle’s schools are segregated!
This is not just a matter of geography. More affluent parents are probably sending their kids to private schools … and this, I suspect, is as true of people “of color” as it is true of everyone else. It would be interesting to know how well students “of color” who live in affluent neighborhoods in Seattle do in the SPS. It would be even more interesting to know how many high achieving kids from less affluent neighborhoods attend Catholic schools or get scholarships to our elite private schools.
Superintendent Juneau continues: Seattle Public Schools?offers a variety of supports to address the needs of academically advanced students, including Highly Capable (HC) services. Our Highly Capable services include a self-contained, first through eighth grade Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). Providing Highly Capable services is required by state law, the cohort model is not.
I find the choice of words here odd. When do programs like IPP go from being highly respected brand names to becoming “services?” Parents look for programs and schools, not for “cohorts” or “services.” As far as I know Seattle is the only major city in the US that does not offer an academic high school as an option. Instead the District wants to pretend that all schools can offer comparable opportunities.
Of course Seattle School’s opposition to elitism is not true in athletics. SPS boasts of athletics at Garfield even though, given the reality of black flight from the Central District, Garfield needs to recruit kids from less “white” parts of the city .. or even from the suburbs or, in one case, work with the UW to import a promising basketball candidate from another state to be a student in a Seattle High School.
Put another way, the District is run by folks who want to see the best black basketball players in their schools but do not want the same for the best math scholars.
Boston, where I grew up, has two elite schools for the highly achieving high school kids. One, my alma mater, is Boston Latin. School BLS is ranked #33 in the US and has been around for 385 years. Newer is Boston Latin Acxademy. Located in the middle of Boston’s Black community, BLA is also pretty impressive. This public school serves 1,700 economically and culturally diverse students, grades 7 through 12, BLA is a vibrant, diverse, academically rigorous school where the Classics Club is just as popular as the football team. Pretty impressive compared to Garfield!
Superintendent: We test more than 5,000 elementary students each year, including universal cognitive testing for all second-grade students at Title I schools for admission, yet we still don’t have diverse representation in HCC. When student demographics in any educational service are disproportionate, we must examine our institutional structures to figure out why. We can clearly see that HCC doesn’t represent the district’s diversity.
Why should it? Shouldn’t it celebrate the academic success of all of Seattle’ kids? I have another story to tell.
When our daughter was entering kindergarten we were told that the SPS would re-teach her how to read! This upset us because she had begun to read on her own since age three! The District insisted that she must have been taught “the wrong way.” However, when I talked with people in Headstart I learned that most of the HS kids also knew how to read before entering the SPS. So, I lobbied and got the SPS to launch an experiment “The Kindergarten Project.” We got three kindergarten classrooms that would build on what kids already knew. OF COURSE I saw this as another way to promote integration .. taking advantage of the fact that a lot of the Headstart kids were Black. Sadly, the District segregated the program … we got to two all white classrooms and one all black.
So, I certainly agree with the Superintendent when she says,
Superintendent: SPS must examine and confront systems and approaches that lead to disparate access and uphold institutional racism.
I am not a grammar fanatic but, this sentence needs badly to be proofread. Obviously the District does not want to uphold institutional racism. Given my experiences, I think the District ought to look in a mirror at its own failures instead of blaming successful gifted programs.
Superintendent: There’s been a lot of talk and misinformation about the district’s efforts to examine our district policies and practices around Highly Capable services. For close to four decades, the district has endorsed the current model. At the same time, our community has taken the district, superintendents and school boards to task, and called on us to do better and do more. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that upholds racial segregation and continuously produces such clear disparities while failing to address them.
HOW CAN THE SPS ADDRESS DISPARITIES WITHOUT SUPPORTING THE HIGHEST GOALS FOR ALL KIDS?
Superintendent: So, we are trying a new approach. For 17 months, an Advanced Learning Taskforce has been meeting to explore possible solutions to increase diverse representation. Three weeks ago, initial policy recommendations were presented to the School Board. Since then, there’s been confusion about the implications and misinformation about the recommended changes.
The requested policy changes won’t decrease academic rigor or eliminate advanced learning or Highly Capable services. We recognize there will always be students who need an alternative placement to be appropriately served.
Yet, in Superintendent Juneau’s essay, she writes as if the existing “cohort” were something to be ashamed of. How can you induce some homeless kid or a struggling immigrant to aspire for success if you demean success as racist?
Superintendent: However, we need the opportunity to re-imagine a more equitable model that allows our services to represent the giftedness in all our students, no matter their location, ethnicity or economic status.
I wonder if Superintedent Juneau’s statement about how young people think about gifted classes applies to this group of award winning computer science students at Garfield? More likely she is repeating the words of Azure Savage, a bright black man who is in this year’s Garfield graduating class. Savage came to Garfield via the District’s HCC programs in elementary and middle schools. He is bitter abut being black and gay. Kids at Garfield are not allowed to be in an identified program because this is seen as elitist.
We have a chance to undo legacies of racism and chart a new, better course for all advanced learners. Our Highly Capable identification process must change to recognize the giftedness present in our students of color. Under a new model, neighborhood schools would be equipped and supported to identify and serve most of our advanced and gifted students where the cultural context of students and their families is taken into account and honored. No longer will we expect students to fit into a predetermined service model. Instead we will shape advanced learning services and supports around the unique strengths and needs of individual students, expanding access and opportunity in every community. Real change takes courage and a commitment to our values even in the face of the unknown.
This paragraph is bewildering. What does it mean? I guess my PhD and MD do not qualify me to decipher educational jargon.
I?accepted the superintendent position because of the progressive talk?about racial equity?in our school district and across our city. However, at every turn, I find that in Seattle, we struggle to live those championed values. I am unwilling to accept this.
The SPS has many fantasies about its own programs. As one example, they tout Garfield as a top academic school. WBUR, the PBS station in Boston , interviewed Azure Savage, a Black Garfield HCC student and said that Garfield was among the top 3% of American high schools as rankled by US News and Word Report. I looked that up. The actual rank was #485
Garfield High School is the longest standing Highly Capable high school site in the city. During my Listen and Learn Tour, students called Garfield “Apartheid High” or the “slave ship,” referring to the physical segregation of students and classes. While this description of a celebrated school may make many uncomfortable, I encourage our community to listen closely to the words and lived experiences of our young people. Equity work is hard, but our students deserve our best thinking and are asking us to be brave by facing our challenges and confronting racial inequities head on.
“I wasn’t sure if I was per se allowed to be black. I wasn’t sure if that was an identity that I was even allowed to take on because I felt like I didn’t know much about it,” “I didn’t have any friends who were black. It made me very confused as a child about who I was and where I fit in.” Savage doesn’t think changing the program can make it equitable for students of color – “I think that above all, this program needs to be dismantled completely,” he says. “Underlying all of this is a lot of institutional racism and I don’t see how this program, in the way it’s set up, could ever possibly be fully equitable and have absolutely no racism involved.”
These comments about Garfield interested me because our son did attend Garfield, although briefly. I worked with Principal Amon McWashington, to celebrate his academic achievement along with Garfield’s celebrated athletic teams. Amon was demeaned by the District for his academic ambitions.
The superindent goes on.. There are no broken students. There are only broken systems. The cohort model as it exists right now does not serve all our students well. All students that walk through our doors should know that we believe in their brilliance and potential, and our policies and practices need to reflect this belief. Change is necessary. Change is possible. We just need the will.
I applaud Superintendent Juneau for taking on this issue but, to use a loaded phrase, I see her essay as tarring the very programs these kids need and deserve. The comments by Azure Savage, a Garfield student who is black, gay and outspoken, may do a lot to explain the Superintendent’s point view.
The comparison I made above to Boston’s Latin Academy shows what can be done! Frankly, from what I see, I feel pride in what Azure Savage is accomplishing. This young man may show that IPP and its District successor programs are VERY successful. Why wouldn’t this be possible in a school like BLA that addresses both diversity and academic rigor?
My question for the District is whether they believe that Azure Savage would have achieved as much if he were not
For the record. I have never agreed to be called “white.” As a Sephardic Jew growing up in a Nazi neighborhood my life was threatened and I was called “kike” and “nigger.” My wife and I also chose to live in a black community where, our family refused to visit because they were afraid of black folks. But, the rent was good and our neighbors great! .”
in an elite program with high academic goals? Azure writes in his book that he had difficulty choosing to be in classes where he felt culturally isolated as opposed to being in general education classes where he would be more likely to find community. “It’s more than having someone to laugh with during class,” Savage writes. “It’s the advantage of having someone to ask for help on homework, to study for the test with, to stand up for you, to confront the racist teacher with. I also wonder if the SPS has brought in experts who have had successes in dealing with highly talented minority kids. Have they visited BLA or similar schools like some of the southside charters in Chicago?
Another example of a great source should be my friend Moses Williams. Moses runs a program called STEMPREP that crosses all 50 states and the territories. His kids are amazing. STEMPREP kids attend great, local schools … not usually minority schools … across the US but spend their summers in STEMPREP programs run by Moses. 100% go to high ranking colleges. 100% graduate from these elite colleges. 83% go on to achieve doctoral degrees. I doubt that any Seattle School, public or private, can beat that record. Sadly, despite several efforts on my part, I have never been able to get the SPS to meet with Moses.
My bottom line?
A comment on the Seattle School Blog sums up my bottom line pretty well. “Kellie” writes “While everyone had some war stories what really 
struck me was the overall stability in surrounding districts. Seattle just ping-pongs from one extreme to the other, and is always chasing some magic bullet that is going to fix everything. “Kellie” goes on to point out that people make choices about schools based on multi-year plans and activities. She says “The system was crazy-making for so many families.” I wonder why the District does not see that antagonism toward its own programs will alienate just the people the District wants to serve?
My guess is that the real reason that the SPS is destroying its elite programs is because of white liberal oppositon to the very idea that schools should encourage kids to strive to be their best. One School Board Director, Jill Schlegel Geary , recently summarized this all too well in a Facebook post demeaning Seattle parents who were lining up to get their kids tested for private school. “As I stand in line, the looooong line, for the ISEE (Independent School Exam),….with all these predominantly white families, it occurs to me they are here because we have created Self-contained smart schools that their children do NOT have access to. So whole some argue dismantling a closed highly capable pathway will drive families out of SPS, it appears to have the exact opposite impact. Everyone one wants a challenging, engaging education for their child and we have a system that says we won’t deliver it if your kid isn’t at the tippy top.”
great kid like Azure will do better only if he is kept away from other kids who are his intellectual peers but have the right skin color?
Your illustration of the problems with the IPP program and the district’s recruiting two Caribbean women to the task of advocating for black American children brought to mind the color consciousness and internalized racism of some people. Though I am a second generation native American but my Western hemisphere roots are the Caribbean (i.e. Jamaica and Barbados). Though some see only color and assume that black people are a monolith, our cultural diversity can be as broad as any other peoples. My first wife was from Baltimore, where black folks referred to Caribbean folks as “black Jews”. It had everything to do with the custom of our folks working multiple jobs, saving money to open and invest in their own businesses. That focus doesn’t suggest that Caribbean folks were any more gifted than their American counterparts but rather that an emphasis on achievement was included in the early education of those migrants. Identifying and nurturing gifted children, regardless of their zip codes and cultural moorings is an investment in our country’s future. But it requires that misinformed presumptions
be pushed aside and enlightened, scholarly people be elevated to be the decision makers, understanding that some latent racism will persist.
Racism is inherent when we classify people by skin rather than culture. I have met veddy veddy Brits, bowler hat and umbrella included, in the UK. I have known Dravidians .. south Indians .. with skin darker than anyone in the NBA. I have been in a fancy hotel lobby with an elegantly dressed colleague, an African American, and seen dome tof come up and ask my friend to take the luggage. In Israel I have met Yemeni Jews who would be “black” in Mississippi, and one on TV I watched a black Harvard Professor argue with a Tanzanian Arab that he could nto be Arab cuz the Tanzanian had black skin. ON e of my favorites is the genetics of the forst Europeans .. the Cro Magnon had black skin and blue eyes!
Kids should learn about and be proud of their ethnic history. Kids should learn about the heritages of other kids. But when society assigns kids to “races harm always occurs!
ByJill Schlegel Geary
Please, please, please, when comparing Boston Latin to SPS, be sure to include the fact that it, ONE school, has. $50 million endowment, which provides $1.7 million per year as program support, in a state that already funds thousands of dollars more per student for education. To tell a grossly underfunded district, from the state with the most regressive tax structure in the country to go look at BLS as a model is crazy. We might as well go to Lakeside. Please find an apple to compare us to, not a passion fruit.
NOTE: The article does NOT refer to Boston Latin SCHOOL. It refers to Boston Latin ACADEMY .. a school in a part of Boston much poorer than anything in Seattle and a more successful then Seattle’s best schools while being 71% what you call “people of color”
Next, your percentages argument is strange. It seems to say smart white kids stay in SPS because of HCC, and black/brown kids who would qualify are going to private school. Well, why are they doing that?
Nope, read again. This is not what I said. What I do say is that affluent kids, without the race overtones you imply, are leaving the district. Look, I live one block form Holy Names. It is easily more integrated than a typical Seattle School. Why is that?
I don’t want to get rid of challenging education. And as a matter of fact, while you poo poo it, SPS added Calculus 3 to it’s catalogue because a group of students at non-HCC Ballard asked for it as a possible class.
Rather a thin answer. I too know good teachers and good kids trying to make the best of the schools. As for calculus 3, I do not poo poo it. as a scientist I can say that calculus is no more a good replacement for a modern math curriculum then Marcus Aurelius would eb a good text for a kid learning to speak Spanish.
The question and challenge then becomes how do we make sure to deliver the challenging education to kids throughout the city. Our HCC cohort has grown to the point that funneling it into limited pathways has become detrimental to the educational offerings through out the city. And it has created programs that are racially uncomfortable to their host schools.
I agree wholeheartedly that we need to focus on recruiting students of color to more challenging educational opportunities. But the system we have right now is not working to that end.
NOTE: Then why has the District done such a bad jib oif exactly this?
I have heard Garfield offers 23 AP courses, while Sealth has 5. That is not because all of Garfield’s classes are just full of HC kids, because any student can enroll in AP classes at Garfield. It is because, when you put all the higher performing kids in one school there is an upward incentive. They bring the numbers to make the courses possible. But that means Sealth does not have the numbers. And the overall population does not have the opportunity to strive upward. A student doesn’t get to choose to be HC, and cannot choose to go to Garfield if not tested in. So if you are a 94% kid in West Seattle, well, too bad for you. Garfield is full.
SPS is challenging the policies that require the narrow funneling of labeled/tested students into a few schools, to better allow the development and delivery of academically challenging courses where kids are. We have a lot of families whose kids qualify for HCC who are demanding that we do this work, but right now our policies don’t support it.
It would be awesome if we could do both – offer all the AP/HC classes locally and in a self-contained schools, so parents could choose whether to educate their kids within their community or in an ability exclusive environment. But as the example above shows, you need a viable number of kids to support course offerings.
Last time I looked, the cost of teaching Mandarin was no higher than the cost of teaching remedial English. This has more to do with the District’s inability to recruit qualified teachers then it does adverse effects of offering courses at Garfield. It also reflects the reality that fewer kids at a typical school will be as prepared as the kids at Garfield. The answer .. it seems to me .. is to create a school for kids like that rather then pretend that sperate but equl is a viable way to educate by race.
With the opening of Decatur Elementary, we have seen an unfortunate loss of kids in the NE elementary schools, schools that could provide academic challenge. Those kids are then sent to Jane Addams, instead of Eckstein. As a result, Eckstein’s music program, a general Ed program available to all, loses an important influx of kids, since gifted kids tend to take music in greater numbers. It becomes harder to maintain the classes for all.
If we limited HCC to just the top 2% , it would not be such a problem. But it has grown way beyond that and funneling the top 7% away from a school has an overall negative impact on the city’s quality of education. (7-9% because once in, one is not dis-enrolled, even if as the student ages they would no longer necessarily be able to test in).
Again, the uproar is that we need to change policy to give more flexibility. I have heard SPS say a unique setting will be maintained for the tippy top (perhaps the group you are most interested in), but we simply can’t funnel the top 10% away from neighborhood schools as a matter of course and still offer robust academic prep to everyone. Demand creates opportunity.
NOPE. I am not “most intersted” in any group. What I do believe is that removing incentives undermines all kids.
Plus, since IPP, there is the growth of college offerings for high schoolers. So in reality, the top students have a wealth of opportunity once kids get to upper grades. While you seem most focused on high school, the real challenge is how to get really strong elementary and middle education in every corner of Seattle so as to make sure every student, of every race understands they are expected to achieve from start to end, before messages of bias and stereotype tell them otherwise.
This is tricky because it accepts without question the necessity of racial segregation. It also fails to recognize the fact that at K-8 levels parents have huge abilities to educate their own kids. Obviously this is more true in affluent homes. I suspect we agree that there is a need to spread that wealth to more homes! I suggest one way to do this is to offer excellent opportunities by creating more centralized schools that offer great resources. This can easily be true of vocational schools too. It also offer clear ways to take advantage of Seattle College and the UW. I am confident the big companies would chip in as well.
We are hoping to bring TAF to SPS. That program is very successful in Federal Way. It serves students tested as highly capable well. It has fantastic graduation and college entry rates. It would be best placed at Washington MS because of it proximity to space that could be made available to develop into new labs to support the STEM programming. Problem is that TAF staff will not coexist with a segregated HC cohort because of the message it sends to the other kids about educational expectation. So because policy requires highly capable be delivered in a self-contained model, we have to do something with the cohort.
So our options are to move the HC cohort, but no other south end school wants it. Going back to statistics, while Seattle is 70% white, the southend is not. So the program has a very visual impact telling kids, white is smart, brown is not. As a result none of our southend middle schools want the program. There is no way to fix that according to your statistical analysis.
This is ohso typical of the SPS. Giving into racism is no different if that racism comes from a dark or a light skin. That said, I too oppose zebra schools. Ir would be good to know what other answers have been sought? Why does IPP need to be on a zebbra schoo; at all. Would the model used in Boston .. the schools that serve 7-12 .. work here/
The other option would be to maintain the cohort in a white neighborhood, but that is clearly problematic for brown kids who don’t want to leave their peers and go into what I KNOW is very unwelcoming place to many, not all, but many. And again, going back to demand, you need numbers to have offerings. I wish the visual divide of the program didn’t make a difference, but it does and a highly negative one
You accuse me of being a misguided, bleeding heart liberal, but I am simply responding to what I have learned since I got out of my NE Seattle bubble. This is a very complex issue, and I am going to focus on what families of color who are not represented in the program are saying about what they want for their gifted students in their neighborhoods right now. But good on you for focusing on the kids who, regardless of not being given Boston Latin $$$$ experiences, have very, very bright futures in SPS.
If I gave that impression I apologize. I certainly did NOT use those words. But, I do feel you are wrong. Love to discuss alternatives. maybe we can get a group together?
A month after our daughter turned 8, she moved from a Horizon classroom to IPP. Soon after, she told me the difference between the two “gifted” programs. She said that a classmate who was exceptional at math had finished the book early last year, to be told that he had finished math for the year. But, she said, in IPP he would be given the next book! At eight years old she understood the difference between being turned off and being encouraged to go on better than the SPS District administrators seem to.
9% of Seattle Public School students are in the top 2 percent. The district should celebrate this number.
Seattle Superintendent Juneau’s plan to dismantle HCC will do nothing to identify advanced learning students in minority communities. The superintendent’s plan will decrease HCC from 2% to 1%. Advanced learners need cohorts; south end schools will have the most to loose.
The district spent time and resources creating school level advanced learning opportunities. Then, the district spent time and resources dismantling this system. Now, the district wants to put advanced learning back into schools. Seattle Public Schools eliminated Honors LA and SS for 9th and 10th graders. They replaced H designated classes with Honors For All; essentially an integrated system. The district’s own reports show that the district does not have the capacity to create consistent high standards in these classes.
Lastly, Seattle Superintendent Juneau’s Op Ed implies that the Advanced Learning Task Force has issued recommendations. This is not true. I find the lack of transparency and the willingness of the superintendent to mislead Seattle residents to be concerning. You can find the ALTF 10/19 minutes here: https://www.seattleschools.org/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=89586858&fbclid=IwAR27IM2a5N81LxvjrmVY8G2nn6qNZ3Yz8MLb1jnkj6NAEs9DtP6pQfSG_jw
Thanks for the post. I gather now, after DECADES of success the District wants to evict HCC from Washington. How can they expect parents to commit their kids to a program treated this way? And worse, how does it help less affluent kids if SPS depicts HCC programs as racist?
I would love to talk about this more if you have time.