-Kate

Let’s not forget about the newly centralized requirement to pay for full day Kindergarten.

The fee for next year is set at $207 per month. When I first heard about this 3.3% fee it became clear to me where that odd number came from. It was apparently set at $200 per month plus the handling fee. Shouldn’t the price go down to $200 per month now that the fee on parent grants has been rescinded?

Our parent group would be willing to collect and process the fees ourselves and send the District one check to cover the price of our own 1/2 FTE K teacher. (That would save our families about $2000 annually in fees) As is, by creating a centralized Pay for K system, SPS has created the need for someone downtown to process about 20,000 personal checks a year and collect $140,000 to pay that someone, in addition to the $4,000,0000 to pay for the (about) 80 1/2 FTE K teachers to actually teach the kids (*).

In such a tough budget climate, it seems like we should do what we can to use parent volunteers to cut down on administrative costs.

(*)I’m estimating 4000 K students, 50% required to Pay for K, 25 kids per class, 1/2 of the classes already paid for by the general budget

You said: “How would the SPS administration look if we could start with a blank slate today? Then how could we get there from here? What’s stopping us?”

Very easy answer to this fine question. There is a 5 person impediment STOPPING us.
When this 5 person impediment is given the opportunity to start over they refuse to do so.

History lesson from Superior Court decision on February 4, 2010

Order of Remand given to the SPS.

The Board did not use all the evidence in making the math textbook decision (excluding all evidence submitted by the public). Judge says: You board members must reconsider and decide again but this time using all the evidence.

To which MGJ said: “NO I appeal” and the Rubber-Stamping Four said :”We support our Superintendent.”

When given the opportunity these folks have no desire to start over and follow the Law. The are very comfortable violating RCW 28A 645.020 on a regular basis and see little reason to change as very few of the King County Superior Court Judges have thus far required them to follow the law.

I think your Idea of starting over is excellent it just will NOT happen with these 5 involved as they do NOT wish to start over and have made that abundantly clear.
===========================
Here is a plan to start over as you suggest and the PTAs can participate and NOT be taxed by the “Defenders of the Schools”.

#1 A Writ of Mandamus will be filed with the WA Supreme Court on 3-26-2010 alleging that the school board does not keep the administrative record that the law requires them to keep and that the KC Superior Court has thus far on more than one occasion not required the SPS to do so in the timely manner required by law.

#2 The Writ would like to see the court require the SPS to follow the law and the KC Superior Court to hold the SPS accountable to follow the law. Since several School Board decisions are under appeal and the board has no proper administrative record in those appeals, they have no defense because a defense requires the proper administrative record. Thus the Supreme court should rule in favor of the appellants in all cases under appeal that are without the Legally required administrative record, which will be all cases under appeal.

#3 If #2 happens as outlined above (no one knows about court decisions) then the SPS will be guilty of many violations of state law.

#4 Particularly repugnant actions were:
a) .. May 6, 2009 The high school math decision which on that date used zero pages from the public although over 300 pages were submitted to the board.
Voting for Chow, Sunquist, Maier, Carr

b) .. The appeal of the Spector decision of February 4, 2010 by MGJ supported by
Sundquist, Maier, Carr, Martin-Morris

c) .. February 3, 2010 the approval of the $800,000 NTN Contract. The Legal firm hired by the district in this appeal has already asked for an extension beyond the legally mandated 20 days to provide the administrative record. If the district had an administrative record that contained the evidence used on Feb 3, 2010 would it really take more than 40 days later to provide it. March 25 is the 50th day. Thus far the district has not provided the contract that was approved on Feb 3, 2010 as public records requests indicated it was still being negotiated. This 4-2 approval found
Sundquist, Carr, Maier, Martin-Morris voting in the affirmative.

#5 It appears that Sundquist, Carr, Maier, and Martin-Morris would certainly easily qualify to be recalled.

#6 A recall petition request is filed with the elections office now located at Boeing Field (K. C. airport)

#7 A judge reviews the petition and approves the printing of the petitions which are prepared from information submitted to the elections office. The director under recall can appeal for reconsideration the writing of the document and it may be revised. ( same applies to the petitioner for the recall.) {Joy Lynn Anderson is ready to file for the recall of all four directors should the appropriate time come … note her child attended the now closed Cooper School (New Pathfinder – kick out Cooper kids replace with others) which is still under appeal and does not have the proper administrative record in regard to its closing decision. No idea what information the Judge is waiting for to rule.

#8 Approximately 32,000 valid signatures are required to place each director on a recall election ballot. Directors are recalled individually.

#9 Elections are held 30 to 60 days of the date that the recall petition is certified as meeting the valid signature requirement.

#10 a recall is just an up or down vote there is no other candidate, The vote is to retain or expel from office (recall = return to general population of non-board members in this case)

#11 when a candidate is recalled their office stays open until the next general election for that seat. If all four directors were recalled those four seats will be open until November 2011

#12 The Board will then consist of three directors: DeBell, Patu, Smith-Blum

#13 Since the Superintendent is also the School Board Secretary, she is to some extent responsible for the ongoing violations of RCW 28A 645.020 and perhaps could be fired with cause as in NO BUY OUT.

#14 Then Louisa Clayton … “We could start with a blank slate.” but not today.

Note I am not an attorney and the above may be grossly misleading and inadequate for some…… but it is the best I can do at this time to answer Louisa’s question.

“It’s hard not to feel that the district lives in a world where schools across our city–and the parents who support them–exist to serve the bureaucracy instead of the other way around.”

Of equally great interest should be that MGJ as secretary to the school board and the school board regularly violate RCW 28A 645.020. This group fails to provide an accurate administrative record in regard to school board decisions. Decision making by whim no evidence required. Rarely are evidence and relevant data provided by the public used in school board decision making. This is a violation of state law and it occurs with great regularity.

The way things are there is little the public can do. Outside of expensive legal action.
Unfortunately even when legal action is taken some King County Superior Court judges fail to act on these frequent and ongoing violations of 28A 645.020

School closures like Cooper
which is under appeal and without the transcript required by RCW
still drags on …. why?

The Student Assignment Plan also under appeal and without a satisfactory transcript drags on why?

The superintendent supported by four school directors, in regard to the High School Math adoption, has appealed a King County Judge’s Order of Remand.
All evidence supplied by the public was excluded. The board made an Arbitrary & Capricious decision. The Judge ordered the board to repeat the decision-making process using all the evidence including 300+ pages sent to them by the public that they excluded in making their decision on May 6, 2009.

Since these four board members and the superintendent rarely use evidence provided by the public or even concern for the public in making any decision, these 5 agreed to appeal. This appeal will likely cost the plaintiffs an additional $7,000 to $9,000.

I hope this makes my point that when a school district loses an appeal based on an article IX violation, the district should pay the winning plaintiffs’ legal fees up to a maximum of $20,000 and if the School District chooses to appeal and loses then the maximum for legal fees is raised to $50,000.

This group of four and “Super” makes five needs “Intensive Therapy” or removal, as their behavior is unacceptable as well as illegal.