Seattle Public Schools questions/concerns/comments? West Seattle event Wednesday

Thanks for the tip. Seattle School Board members are hosting events around the city for general “community engagement,” not just linked to one specific issue or program, and the next one is at Denny International Middle School in West Seattle on Wednesday. All are welcome to attend in the library at Denny (2601 SW Kenyon) 5:30-7 pm Wednesday (April 30). The district hasn’t announced which School Board directors plan to attend – we’re checking – but you can count on this area’s elected representative Gina Topp, who currently serves as the board’s president.

Kyle April 28, 2025 (9:51 am)

Maybe I’m the only one, but the early release on Wednesdays is really tough for working parents with elementary school kids. All elementary school kids need after school care, and most parents are still working at 1:10pm on a Wednesday. Moving the early release to Fridays or doing late start instead of early release would help make SPS better for working families who already struggle to patch together care.

A April 29, 2025 (9:37 am)

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1,000% agree. Most schools do this now (even the private ones in the area). Never had this growing up. When did it become the norm? It is insane to think parents can handle this every single week. Almost all families – both parents need to work. Perhaps school staff can take a day for professional development now and then instead of early release in the middle of our work day/week every. single. week. It’s hard and expensive enough raising kids – this was an unexpected and pretty shocking burden. Seriously crazy to put this on parents/caretakers.
- Another perspective April 29, 2025 (4:55 pm)
  
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  It’s not the school’s job to parent children. I think that parents often forget this. Yes it’s really convenient to have a place where you can send your kids all day so you can go to your job. On the other hand, that’s not why school exists and it’s not the priority. These meetings are used to continually keep teachers abreast of what’s going on in the school among other things. These are not the kinds of trainings that you can do every once in awhile. And even then, if you don’t have school for an entire day you will have parents complaining about that as well. There is no winning. Teachers are required to participate in this training. It is state mandated. There’s no way around it.