u/cascadia1979

I tried to break some new ground here in my article on Shuldiner's cuts to recess time in SPS. That includes:

• Looking at pediatric research on recess times, including one study that calls for 45 minutes of recess a day and explicitly says "Thirty minutes daily does not seem to be enough."
• Giving an overview of the 2014-15 fight over lunch and recess times in SPS, from which the photo is taken, as well as the 2023 state law that mandated a 30 minute minimum -- but was amended down from the 45 minutes originally in the bill
• Taking a look at the email sent out by SPS on Friday afternoon and its claims
• Trying to get a sense of where SPS's conclusions about instructional time per subject come from
• Looking at the parent mobilization for more recess (and lunch!) time, which has clearly succeeded at least in getting Shuldiner's attention, and noting that Shuldiner plans to address this again at the Wednesday school board meeting.

My own view is that the academic gains from more recess time outweigh any gains from more instructional time -- and it's better for the overall wellbeing of the child. Both experience and research seem to justify the argument that 45 minutes of recess, not 30, should be the goal. Hopefully SPS leaders see it that way, because it's annoying to have to keep refighting the same battles every 10 years.

In a wild 72 hours, we went from SEA and SPS trading public accusations about each other's conduct at the bargaining table to reaching a deal at the literal 11th hour that averted a strike and produced a Tentative Agreement. We don't know all the details, either about what's in the TA or how it was achieved.

But we know a few things, and I cover them here at The Bulletin.

That includes what we know about special education. The tl;dr is nothing will fundamentally change during the life of this Collective Bargaining Agreement, but we should see a lot more progress in making changes than we have in the past -- and with plans for a pilot program in 2028-29 at some SPS schools.

Will SEA go out on strike? We take a look in the latest issue of The Bulletin.

Half of this article is my analysis of where things stand. The tl;dr is that I think a settlement before September 2 is still more likely than not, since SPS stands to gain very little from a strike but would suffer significant reputational and political costs, as well as the disruption to student learning.

This isn't a "who is right" or "who should prevail" analysis. And we don't know what the red lines are for either side, or how close they really are. But my guess is SEA members will authorize a strike on Wednesday, and then we're in for a bunch of angst and concern until a settlement is reached, probably next Monday.

But I could be entirely wrong. We'll see what happens!

School is scheduled to begin one month from today. Will that happen? Or will we have another strike? Every contract negotiation since 2012 has gone down to the last minute, except for the one-year renewals in 2021 and 2025.

In this article I take a look at what we know about bargaining so far. There *seems* to be genuine attempts at collaboration, but there have also been missteps, and with a month to go they're not particularly close to a deal.

Seattleites have typically sided with SEA in the event of a strike. And while it's much to soon to say whether a strike will happen, would that support hold this year? Worth considering. (I would assume yes, but you never know.)

*Huge* shout-out to Beth Day for this article, a deep dive into the data and explainers we got from SPS about the June staffing adjustment as well as student enrollment and the results of this year's choice process. There's still a lot we don't know about where students went, but this is a good data analysis, with charts and maps.

There's been a lot of media coverage of the Governor's announcement of a statewide smartphone ban in K-12 public schools. But I hadn't seen any reporters point out yet that this ban would be stricter than what Ben Shuldiner announced for SPS just over a month ago.

Ferguson's proposal would include high schools in an "away for the day" policy, meaning no exceptions except for medical or IEP/504 needs. Shuldiner's policy allows high schoolers to use phones during passing periods and lunches, since SPS has an open campus policy that makes it hard to enforce a ban for high schoolers.

That was pretty controversial at the April board meeting in which the SPS policy was announced. It'll be interesting to see how Ferguson and the legislature square whatever bill they draft with open campus policies.

Trying to do more of a newsletter update with this one, covering three topics:

1. Shuldiner spoke more directly about school closures on KUOW this week. And it kind of sounded to me like he contradicted himself at times, saying we're in a "budget crisis" and we can't take ideas off the table, but then that closures are "not really about budget." I heard echoes of Brent Jones and Fred Podesta in 2023-24 right there, honestly. But Shuldiner doesn't have concrete plans and says he doesn't want to do closures "by fiat." We'll see what happens...

2. At Wednesday's board meeting Shuldiner took a moment to encourage people to push the state legislature to raise levy caps. He's right, but it's also going to be controversial, for reasons I get into in the article.

3. SEA sent a letter to Shuldiner expressing "deep concern" about Anitra Jones being appointed principal at Adams and that SPS hadn't properly investigated her at Rainier View. blukoff posted about that letter here earlier this week.

Apologies it took a week to get this one written up and published, but it's a big and important article. I thought what Shuldiner presented last week was a genuinely major update on SPS budgeting, signaling *potentially* major changes to what the district funds and how it operates.

I emphasized the word "potentially" there because it's not yet entirely clear what specifically is going to change in the coming years. There's $30M in savings projected in 2027-28 and who knows exactly where that comes from (changes to the SEA contract? closing schools? something else?).

But if Shuldiner is serious about a genuine "per-pupil" funding model, sometimes known as "student-based budgeting" then the impact could be far-reaching.

It's also possible that it could cause a strong pushback. SEA is already clearly unhappy with the current staffing changes and is speaking out in large numbers at tonight's meeting.

Whatever happens in the future (months of conflict? kumbaya and happy days?), I think 1) this is a significant moment and 2) it was really good to see a no-BS budget presentation from SPS leadership for a change.