Seattle Reviews its Curriculum Creation Department for the first time….

Charlie Mas:

Tomorrow evening the School Board will conduct an oversight work session to review the operation of the District’s Teaching and Learning. Finally. This will be the Board’s first review of Teaching and Learning EVER.
This is one of the final direct consequences of the mismanagement of the District under the Sundquist Board and Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson. It has been a long time coming.
After the State Auditor’s Office took the District leadership to task for their horrendous performance. In particular, the SAO called out the Board for their total failure to fulfill their statutory duties to oversee management and to enforce policy. The Board members had, until then, specifically denied that they had these duties.
In response, the Board stepped up their effort to revise policy and, in particular, the Board’s duties. This led to the development of Board Policy 1005 Responsibilities & Authority of the Board, and Board Policy 1010, Board Oversight of Management.
The latter of these policies calls for Board review of district operations with a review of each department at least every three years (originally every two years). This policy was originally adopted on June 1, 2011, but was amended in February of this year to change the review frequency from every two years to every three years.