Graham Hill Elementary

The Internet is a wonderful place for learning and entertainment, but like the world around us, it can pose dangers if precautions are not taken. As a parent I always make sure that I Know the protection features of the Web sites and software my children uses. An Internet service provider (ISP) may have tools to help you manage young children’s online experience and may have other security features, such as pop-up blockers. I also provide a few time to discuss with my kids about balancing their online activities with real-life activities, and to protect their privacy and online reputation. I also keep the computer in a public part of our home, such as the family room or kitchen, so that I can check on what my kids are doing online and how much time they are spending there.

Proper parenting teens and kids with good information is an important role parent should be aware to prevent children from getting into trouble.

Each student took home a pledge bag last week. More bags can be found in the entry way at school. Please enter as many times as you like. Pledge (along with your parents) to recycle, and return your bag signed and filled with an eligible item. The student is then entered into a raffle to win your choice of a Graham Hill t-shirt or tote bag!

Drawing will be held on Friday, June 11. Be sure to put the student's name and room number on the bag when turning it in. Look for the collection box in the entryway at school.

For more info on what types of items are accepted, check out the Cartridges for Kids website at:

www.CartridgesForKids.com

Or Contact Rachel Harrison at:
moc.liaMG|nosirraHElehcaR#moc.liaMG|nosirraHElehcaR or (206) 725-7299

The District thinks the proposed Student Assignment Plan will have a big effect on Graham Hill's demographics. I'm not entirely clear why, and I certainly don't believe they always predict accurately. But this feels important.

The graphs are here, on pages 4 and 7: http://bit.ly/18OOpU

It used to be that Graham Hill was demonstrably the most racially diverse elementary in Southeast Seattle. I don't know what's happened in other schools, but in the last three years our diversity index has increased some more, from 3.35 to 3.58. According to district projections, our index would drop back a little, to 3.46. They think there would be fewer black and white students, more asian and latino students. So while the school's racial makeup would change, the evenness of our diversity wouldn't change very much.

Another change would be in the number of students in the free & reduced lunch program. Up to 70% from the current 55%.

And there would be more bilingual students, up from 20% to 29%.

Again, I have no strong faith that the District demographers can predict this stuff accurately. But intuitively I guess it feels right. Graham Hill's demographics are influenced by the neighborhood's, but also by a system that favors families who choose and have the wherewithal to advocate and make their choice happen.

Following on from my earlier post, here are some of the things that we cited as problems and gaps with our current web strategy:

• Integration between Yahoo! group, Wiki and website are basically non-existent
• Membership in Yahoo! group is far from universal — only 169 members
• Yahoo! group and wiki each have separate calendars which are maintained individually — there appears to be no good way to integrate these two calendars into one
• Content on wiki is not well organized — difficult to find what you are looking for
• Not always apparent how current wiki content is
• Editing wiki is not something that most people will feel confortable with
• Unsure who the intended audience for main website is, particularly in light of expected new limitations on school choice
• No one really tasked with keeping web content updated

Next time I'll write about some of the proposed solutions. Stay tuned…

Hi Fionnuala,

I'm very glad to hear that GH was represented at that meeting. (I didn't know about that one when I scheduled the communication team meeting.)

Did Ms. G-J give any rationale for wanting schools to do marketing? Seems odd to me in that the entire concept of "school choice" appears to be headed for extinction with the new Student Assignment Plan. Without choice, what is the point of marketing? And who would be the intended audience?

Thanks,
Keith

Hi all
-I was at that community mtg yesterday w/Ms Goodloe Johnson (along w/ a lot of other GHill parents!). There was talk about "marketing" each public school better -an implication that each school would have to have a "minimum" website etc so I wonder if there will be $$ made available for it

Thanks team for doing this great work. What a fine parent group we have.
Mark

The GH PTA communications team held a meeting this evening to kick-off a discussion of how best we can use technology to improve the communication within our community. Attending the meeting were Scott Ringgold, Martin Saxer, Patrick King, Stacey Pitts and myself (Keith Harrison).

We started our discussion by defining the current major pieces of our web presence which are: this wiki, the Yahoo! group and the main website and defining the role and strengths/weaknesses of each.

Yahoo! group

Role

Facilitates direct notification to subscribers (a "push" model of distribution)

Strengths

Easy to understand how to use — short learning curve

Allows any member to share information with all other subscribers

Great for meeting announcements and relatively time-sensitive information

Is fairly self-sufficient — doesn't require much administration

Weaknesses

Not a great tool for storing or accessing reference infomation — poor search functionality

It's a "closed" system — it difficult to integrate information from group into other sources (e.g. the calendar)

Wiki

Role

Functions as the main storehouse for reference information for the internal community (i.e. current families)

Strengths

Anyone is (theoretically) able to add/edit information

Allows sharing of a diverse array of content (web links, files, photos, calendars etc.)

Integrated Google Translate functionality may facilitate accessibility for non-English community members

Weaknesses

Editing and page creation is too intimidating for many users

Information will tend to become "stale" over time without diligent oversight

Look and feel is less than ideal — not very user-friendly or welcoming

Website

Role

The external "face" of the school for anyone outside the school community

Strengths

Overall design is pretty decent

Structure (as a "blog") is workable

Weaknesses

Content is woefully out of date

Current content may not be appropriate for the purpose — content should mostly be "evergreen"

That's a decent recap of the current state of things. I'll continue the discussion as to what changes we want to implement in my next post. Please feel free to share your opinions and concerns.

This is a win-win-win for you, for sustainable local living, and for Graham Hill.

Chinook Book is a coupon book that supports local businesses and gives straightforward and simple ideas about improving health and reducing impacts on the environment. Coupons are easy to use: for food, services, and fun family activities.

A couple trips to the grocery store pay for the book — the rest is gravy.

Please take a look at the Chinook Book website for a listing of all coupons. Each book sells for $20, and the school receives $10 of that.

In order to address the concerns regarding the slowing economy the Congress passed the Economic Stimulus Package that will benefit both the consumers and businesses. Barack Obama is trying to get a plan in motion to get you some extra cash on payday so you won't need a payday loan. He's putting forth a tax cut and the Make Work Pay credit, as he calls it. As of now, the future isn't clear, and impossible to tell exactly - but since the mortgage and credit crunch have arrived, things have been getting worse and the need for a payday loan has increased. Obama is hoping that bigger checks on payday will restore consumer confidence so you won't need to take out a <a title="READ Obama Aims to Boost Your Payday" rev="vote-for" href="http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2008/12/30/obama-aims-to-boost-your-payday/">payday loan</a>.

Hi! This is Anna McCartney, mom of Ewan and Olivia. I've done a bunch of lobbying in Olympia before (on kid health stuff) and really, it's very easy. You just call up the people you want to talk to and make appointments. Then you go down and explain to them your problems/concerns. The thing to remember is that the legislators are just regular people, like us. They don't have a crystal ball, and they don't necessarily know what problems exist. So if you need more money, you have to go explain to them WHY you need more money. In my experience, they are very reasonable folks. Whether they can find you the money is another thing, but it's EASY to go talk to them and become a citizen-lobbyist. I think it would be great to organize a bunch of us to go pester them at regular intervals. I'd be happy to give a small training on what to do, if anyone is nervous about it.

Also, I have to make a little gripe here about funding. Being the chair of the auction just makes me realize how crappy it is that we as parents have to raise money for things like Powerful Writers and reading tutors. It's an unjust system. If we have a more economically challenged community than, say, Magnolia or Windermere, that means we'll likely make less money at our auction, and then be able to offer less of an educational offering at our school. This just seems very unfair to me that the economic situations of a neighborhood affect the education we can offer your kids. Seems that way, the kids from rich neighborhoods will just get the better education! UGH! [Note, I think the teachers we have are EXCELLENT and are giving our kids a great education, but it's very important to have the money to pay for things like reading tutors to SUPPORT our great teachers.]

So I'm all for doing the auction, but it just makes me feel all the more sure that we need to change the system. A visit to Olympia might be a step in the right direction.

Thanks for listening to my rant!
Anna

I love that we have parents from other schools chiming in here. I think I can safely represent the GH community in saying, "Welcome!". I'm happy that we finally have some great choices for elementary in the south end - and I'm all for coalescing to work toward a comprehensive plan for our "cluster/region", especially for middle and high school. Thanks Scott, for reminding us to look beyond our immediate self interests to a better future for our whole community.

Betina Simmons Blaine

I hope it's okay to comment here — I'm not a Graham Hill parent, but followed this link from the Columbia City wiki.

Scott, the legislature may be outside the district's control, but it's the root of the problem for sure, and it would be tragic if we didn't acknowledge that and direct at least some of our energies that way. The district certainly has made some bad decisions in the past, but the fact remains that the underlying problem is THE STATE DOES NOT GIVE THE DISTRICT ENOUGH MONEY TO DO WHAT IT REQUIRES THE DISTRICT TO DO. And the schools are left to cover the gap with levy money, federal money (that is really limited in what you're supposed to do with it), PTA money, teacher & parental volunteer energy, prayer. (Dr. Goodloe-Johnson has a spreadsheet that lays this out quite explicitly.)

The really frustrating thing about leaning on the legislature is that OUR legislators are of course very supportive of increased school funding. So they tend to shrug and point over the mountains and say "call your friends in Yakima and tell THEM to bug THEIR legislators." We don't have anyone in Olympia giving real leadership on this. And of course now the economy's in the tank, new revenues will be even harder to come by.

I think there's a moment of opportunity coming up with the release of the Basic Education Finance Task Force report in December. (http://www.leg.wa.gov/joint/committees/bef/) We need to use their findings and recommendations to really push for a major overhaul of the state's education funding system, including a huge increase in the level of funding.

Finally, PTA Lobbying day is 2/26/2009. I've been going to this every year for a while now and Seattle schools are WOEFULLY underrepresented. Let's make a big stink this year, folks!

Cheers,

Mikala Woodward (Orca parent, totally butting in, apologies if inappropriately)

The issue of closures goes hand in hand with District-wide enrollment and student assignment right now. The closures are not only addressing budget concerns but also the demographic "bulge" happening in Northeast and Queen Anne / Magnolia areas.

As such, the implications for SE are fairly significant (not that anyone is talking about it :mutter:). The fastest way to create capacity in the north is to force students from the south back to the south (hundreds of students attend north end middle and high schools). This will create chaos in SE as parents compete for a few limited spots in the most popular (note popular doesn't necessary mean better) schools. In a doomsday scenario, parents would choose to move to more educational stable parts of the District.

I am deeply worried that schools fighting for their individual stakes in SE will lose the larger issue: high quality education at EVERY school in EVERY program. While the District has spent some energy looking at specific schools (Cleveland, Rainier Beach, Aki Kurose), there is no comprehensive plan for SE!

Please do trust me when I say that Graham Hill is one of the safest schools on the list, partially because they remember your advocacy years ago. In fact, I'm more concerned about the middle and high schools than elementary at this point. This isn't to say that there couldn't be closures of elementary schools in SE, or that Graham Hill couldn't be among them, but I do think it's unlikely. The District is trying to provide a multiplicity of program offerings in each geographic area, and since there is no other Montessori in the area, I find it unlikely.

The larger issue, if there is community interest, is mobilizing the entire SE region. We need to put our individual interests aside and look to the broader community. Where are people going to middle school if they can't go north? Same for high school? How can we represent the needs of all of the students in the area when the needs are so wide and varied? How do we create programs that incorporate the diversity as opposed to segregating it? These are questions that must be asked and answered by the community before the District makes decisions that decide for us.

I have been contemplating starting a group of SE parents to mobilize to this end: framing the needs of SE families, advocating for those needs, and providing a diverse cross-sample of this community. If anyone is interested, please e-mail me: priya [at] myseattleschools [dot org].

Priya Singh

Thank you Deena for sharing your insights from the meeting. It's encouraging on a personal and community level, discouraging on a broader level. Considering Graham Hill's relatively safe position, I wonder how our parents can most effectively and efficiently help to boost Southeast schools?

I agree that public education experiences an unjust financial squeeze, and the State needs to step up. I also think the challenges to make that happen are ever greater, considering the perfect fiscal storm we're all up against.

So it's reasonable for Dr. Goodloe Johnson to point to the legislature, but my skeptical mind thinks it's also a useful distraction. My main concern is with what SPS will do within its own sphere of influence. Closures represent the most prominent idea for structural change. They shouldn't.

The biggest question should be — how do we use this era of great uncertainty to realign parents' thinking and draw kids of all backgrounds into Southeast schools? Maybe expanded elementary Montessori is part of the answer. But there has to be a sophisticated package of incentives and vision to make it happen.

To my mind, Southeast and Central Seattle closures represent further destabilization, further demoralization, and further lack of confidence from all parties. We need more confidence.

[from Deena McCloskey]

Hi all,

Thank you for everyone's great thoughts and input which you sent or told me about prior to last night's meeting with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. My biggeset takeaways from the night were 1)Being Superintendent has got to be one of the toughest jobs there is, and 2)the system of Seattle Public Schools is really…well, I can't think of any tactful way to say it, the words that just stick in my head are that the system is really, incredibly messed up! I'm sorry to say.

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson explained that part of why we are where we are with such dichotomies in school performance and resources is because the system for many years now has completely enabled and empowered principals to freely run the schools, the curriculum, the administration, the discipline techniques, learning styles and community/parental involvement, etc. as they see fit. It is has been completely left up to the individual principals. Thanks goodness, that Graham Hill has had strong principals like Christine, who welcome parental involvement and set up programs that parents want to see their children attend. The Montessori program was mentioned several times during the meeting, including that the program will be replicated in other Seattle schools. So, from the stories I heard last night, Graham Hill is doing everything right and going in ALL the right directions for the future.

There were several Graham Hill, current & former, parents there last night. Thankfully, the school was very well represented, and I hope some of you will chime in with your thoughts on the meeting as well. Due to our number, we had ample opportunity to tout Graham Hill's successes and values and use the school as an example of what parents are seeking in their decisions about their children's education like choice of programs, clearly understanding of what it is Graham Hill offers, delivers upon, and how our students go on to be successful in their middle & high school years, and high quality of education.

There was a lot of discussion about the obvious challenges like budget shortfalls, class sizes being too large for teachers to be able to offer quality educational guidance to all students, school violence for the middle and high schools, family involvement being non-existent in some schools, etc.

There were also good points made around getting schools more involved in their local communities so if the neighbors are meeitng children from their neighborhood school, they might actually decide to send their children there.

The most significant opportunity we have that Dr. Goodloe-Johnson made in my mind has to do with lobbying. She believes our State Legislature would be making different budget decisions if they heard more regularly and more loudly from Seattle Public School parents. She made a good point that lots of other industries, health care, etc. have organized lobbying efforts, and therefore stay in the forefront of the minds of budgeting legislators and she thinks more money would come to the public school system to help (things like reducing class size, specialized programs within schools, providing tutors, social workers, etc.) if parents made their voices heard in Olympia. She suggested that the PTA is a legal entity and through that organization, parents should coordinate one day/month to go to Olympia, meet with our Legislators and explain our needs for the public education system.

There were of course many other things discussed and some wonderful examples of parents making a difference at certain schools. February 9-13th is bring your family to school week and Cleveland H.S. is doing some wonderfully innovated things around helping all parents feel welcome at the school and therefore increasing invovlvement.

I do want to provide one final note wrt school closures. Graham Hill was mentioned at least twice by Dr. Goodlove-Johnson as a successful school that they are going to replicate elsewhere in the district. I don't have a crystal ball, but I did feel confident leaving the meeting that we will not see Graham Hill on the closure list this
year.

That's all I have time to write before my dinner guests arrive. I hope this will spark some good discussions, and I will certainly be bringing input to the next PTA board meeting and hope we can continue to pursue excellence at Graham Hill Elementary.

Keep up the great work everyone! Please stay involved, or if you're not yet, get involved in Graham Hill. Its one of the most wonderful & generous things you can do for your children, to give them the gift of an excellent education, and show them you care deeply about where they are spending every weekday to grow as people and future world
citizens.

Cheers and happy weekend!

Deena McCloskey
Mom of Mc's

I like the idea of an off-site gala auction in the spring. It works really well for many schools to raise a lot of money. We could have classrooms do a theme basket, or do an art project like we used to do for the Montessori picnic and auction. It would be nice to have live music like we did a couple of years ago.

Susan Kingsbury

I favor the "multiple smaller events" strategy over the "all-in on the auction".

I'm not anti-auction. True, I'm not crazy about the "consumeristic" aspect, but also not hypocritical enough to claim that as my reason for leaning away from the auction; if it does happen, I will surely attend and I'll be in "buy more stuff" mode. Bring on the bargains!

Reasons I support multiple small events:
1. Provides opportunities for busy parents to be involved in discrete, achievable tasks with smaller time commitments
2. Encourages multiple smaller donations
3. Supports local businesses and builds community
4. Greater potential for student involvement

My concerns with the auction:
1. Who is going to step up to own the auction? I'd guess at least 2 or 3 people need to take on very time-intensive roles. Doesn't seem like the type of thing well served by many hands making light work.
2. To be successful, will likely require parents to dig deep and pay for big ticket items. Current economy might not support this outcome.
3. Doesn't support local businesses to same extent. (i.e. big ticket items aren't coming from CC community)
4. Shouldn't we be well on our way with planning efforts already? Seem like we're setting ourselves up for a less than stellar event…

I think the question that it begs is, is there enough money in the
Graham Hill community to make an auction successful? I don't know if
there is or not. I do know that, in all honesty, while a gala auction
sounds like fun, I won't have the money to attend or bid on anything. On
the other hand, I would be able to participate in the smaller events. If
there's a chance of doing everything in one fell swoop and raising some
money from outside the parental pool, then I think that's a great plan.
I just don't know if there's enough of a foundation that it'll work.

Michelle

My $0.02:

Cambria hit it on the head: "there's a skeletal crew of devoted parents". WHAT'S UP WITH THIS?! Apologies in advance for my rant, but I think this issue needs to be addressed head on without mincing words.

I, too, have spoken with numerous public school parents in and outside of Graham Hill trying to figure out what it is about our school community that makes our PTA involvement so spartan. I'm perplexed.

I empathize with single parents, language barriers, two jobs, swing shifts, etc. There are so many people though who don't have these issues and do little if anything. I know that there are many who do volunteer in class, chaperon field trips and contribute money and I've a hunch that many of our older students' parents burned out when there wasn't a functioning principal for 8 years, and then more burned out fighting closure. That said, there are still plenty of people with lots of great ideas about how things should be who aren't stepping up. If we are going to continue to be a "school of distinction" then this has got to change. We have got to change the culture of expectations within our school community and involve many, many more people than are currently (trying to) carry the load. If more people don't start making more of a commitment then our school can just not be what we all want for it to be for our children.

We all know that "Many hands make light work". "It takes a village", etc., etc. As a third year member of the Graham HIll community, I am often asked how we're liking G.H by others outside of the school and my response is quite positive with the caveat always being how weak our PTA is. I do not believe that this is a leadership issue. This is a community issue and we alone can change it.

WHO WILL LEAD THE AUCTION EFFORT?

WHO WILL LEAD THE ANNUAL FUND DRIVE?

WHO WILL LEAD OTHER VALUABLE FUNDRAISING EFFORTS?
A catered dinner?
A 'Pearl Jango- like' Night out?
A walk a-thon?
Other ideas?

WHO WILL WRITE A BIG CHECK?

Over and out,

Maura Whalen