Category: Education

Seattle Public Schools will be asking families for feedback on their schools, with questions ranging from effective communication to school safety on the annual email survey.

The District will email or call all families the week of January 13th and do a second round the week of January 20th. The calls and e-mails will be in the home-language spoken. The family survey on our schools will be administered through School Messenger.

The annual climate surveys are administered to all school staff, students and families. In the past, these surveys were conducted in the spring. Seattle Public Schools has moved up the date in order to collect the data at the mid-point of the school year, which will make the survey more formative for our schools. The student and staff survey are paper based and will occur between January 6th and 17th.

Also,  Seattle Public Schools is adopting new instructional materials for the math program in grades K-5. They are currently evaluating eight potential math programs and we would like your input.

All program materials – textbooks, workbooks, teacher manuals, etc. – are on display for members of the community to review and provide feedback on. The materials are available for viewing at:

John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence
In the professional library
2445 Third Ave S., Seattle, WA 98134.
Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

The JSCEE building will be open during winter break, with the exceptions of Dec. 24, 25, 31 and Jan. 1. You will have until January 8th to submit your comments on all of the different K-5 math programs under review (list below). Those comments will help the adoption committee identify three finalist programs for comprehensive review.

Starting in early March the three finalist programs will be on public display at five different locations across the city. (Sites to be announced)  The final program will be selected by the Math Adoption Committee in early April and submitted to the school board for approval in May.  Following approval, the materials will be delivered to schools in time for start of classes in the fall.

For more information, please visit the adoption webpage: http://bit.ly/MathAdoptionSPS14

The Seattle School Board has begun the process of revising the attendance area boundaries for elementary and middle schools across the city to reduce overcrowding at some schools. Notably, under the draft boundaries [PDF] presented to the School Board on Tuesday children in Belltown, downtown and South Lake Union would no longer attend John Hay Elementary and McClure Middle School on Queen Anne but rather will attend Lowell Elementary and the new Meany Middle School on Capitol Hill.

The final boundaries will be approved by the Board in November. Members of the community are invited to Walk the Boundaries and submit feedback to growthboundaries@seattleschools.org or at one of the community meetings scheduled next week.