Issue 6 -- Holiday Reading

Thanks for being one of our earliest subscribers at The Bulletin! We hope you’re enjoying what you’re reading so far, and that you and your family have a good holiday weekend ahead. Please feel free to forward this to your family, friends, and school community and encourage people to subscribe. It’s free!

Having bad experiences with SPS special education services?

For many years families have reported all kinds of problems getting Seattle Public Schools to provide the special education services their students are entitled to under state and federal law. But many of us are noticing that this appears to have gotten worse in recent months, with SPS refusing to complete promised evaluations, denying more IEPs, unilaterally altering or canceling 504s, and generally undermining special education services. (I've seen this with one of my own SPS students recently.)

What we don’t know is whether SPS is actually doing this more frequently, or if it’s just more of the same.

Donald Trump and his cronies are busy destroying the U.S. Department of Education, which enforces federal laws ensuring students receive special education services. Trump’s actions could create a situation in which school districts can more easily undermine the delivery of those services. If SPS is getting worse on this right as Trump guts the USDOE, that would be important to bring to the public’s attention here at The Bulletin.

The Bulletin is looking for stories from the last six months of students’ special education services being undermined or outright denied. If you have a story to tell, feel free to share it here: tips@thebulletinsea.org. The only person who will receive these emails is me (Robert). If The Bulletin wants to include one of these stories in a future article, I would follow up to ask you for your explicit permission and ensure personal identifying information is redacted if requested. But the default is that these will be kept confidential.

Here’s what we’re reading this Thanksgiving week:

• Family says Seattle Public Schools ignored threats, slurs and Swastikas targeting Jewish student – KIRO 7 updates the story about the Jewish student at Nathan Hale High School who faced persistent antisemitic harassment in 2023-24. The student’s family has moved their lawsuit out of King County Superior Court and into the federal courts, claiming violations of civil rights laws.

• Seattle Public Schools seeks new trial in assault case – Denisa Superville at the Seattle Times has the story that SPS is appealing its defeat in a jury trial earlier this month where the district was found liable for a shocking attack on an African immigrant student by an SPS teacher with a history of violence toward students. The student’s attorney argues this appeal is another example of SPS’s “long-standing refusal to take any accountability.”

Those two stories in particular demonstrate the scale of incoming superintendent Ben Shuldiner’s task to fix a broken culture at SPS. For years students and families have complained that their safety and wellbeing isn’t being taken seriously by SPS administrators. Rather than act, SPS digs in its heels in the courtroom. It’s unacceptable – and a sign that sweeping changes are needed in the district office. If heads don’t roll it’s going to be hard to believe Shuldiner and the board are serious about change.

• Seattle Public Schools’ new superintendent will start in February with $425,000 contract – KUOW’s Sami West reports on the news that Ben Shuldiner will be paid a total of $425K – a base salary of $365,000 plus benefits. That’s 9% more than Brent Jones made as Superintendent, but still less than superintendents in Renton and Lake Washington schools.

• A Critique of Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG) by Uriah Ward – A St. Paul, Minnesota school board member wrote this excellent criticism of SOFG that will likely resonate here in Seattle. Even better: Ward laid out how St. Paul created a better alternative, a governance model rooted in the community’s actual values, including public partnership. Something to keep in mind as a new SPS board takes office next week with a mandate to end SOFG.

• Emily Cherkin testifies at the UK Parliament – SPS parent and Bulletin contributor Emily Cherkin is in London this week to give testimony to Parliament about technology in the classroom. Cherkin, who has worked for years on this issue as The Screentime Consultant, opened by telling MPs “I am here from America with a warning: To protect our children’s cognitive, mental, and emotional health we must do more than ban phones from classrooms. We must get rid of EdTech.” You can view her testimony here.

• Meet Seattle School Board’s new directors on Zoom – On December 8 the Seattle Times is hosting a live Q&A with the four newly elected school board members. That’s Kathleen Smith, Joe Mizrahi, Vivian Song, and Jen LaVallee. You can submit questions here and register for the Zoom webinar here.

• SPS community discussion moves to Reddit – Albert Wong, with help from Benjamin Donguk Lukoff, has breathed new life into a subreddit originally created by Christie Robertson devoted to discussion about SPS issues. You can find it at r/seattlepublicschools. It’s a welcome shift away from closed Facebook groups characterized by inconsistent moderation and lots of harassment and personal attacks. The open moderation process at Reddit is designed to prioritize open conversation and a free flow of information while penalizing the kind of smears and disruptions that came to dominate the closed Facebook groups.