Hello Michael Christophersen, Thank you for registering for Alliance Candidate Training - Evening Session.
The event was basically about giving anti-gun talking points to political candidates. They had some polished slides with basic common sense statements.
My main reason for my attendance was to hopefully to gain some understanding for the reason for the major loop hole in HB 1240.
After some pressing one of the organizers wrote in chat that "something is better than nothing" and HB 1240 might not passed if it "KILLED JOBS"
To that I wrote back that it semms the sponsors of the bill 1240 cared more about not killing jobs than not killing children in other states? At that point he stop responding.
The host then went on with talking points for schools especially around safe storage. They seem to make it sound like it was easier to buy a gun in Seattle than fentanyl.
I stated that in Seattle we have a weapons ban, a 10 days waiting period and FBI and local law enforcement back ground check plus both a required safety training law and safe storage laws. So short of gun confiscation what I'm I suppose to say to parents?
The Seattle school board primary elections should be a chance
for voters in each director district to decide which candidate they think would
best serve their community's needs, but in Seattle this is not the case. Whether
it's unions, media outlets or political groups wielding their influence and
agenda, voters get marinated in election meddling.
One media outlet goes so far as to call their effort, “The
Election Control Board” and the scary thing is they really mean it.It’s also clear that these so called
endorsements in many cases are not well thought out or possibly simply purchased by the supporters via a PAC. Oh and many of the past endorsed candidate’s performance once elected don't live up to those shinny endorsements.
So you might want to think good and hard before taking the endorsement
bait.
"Samuel Hall’s attorney Janelle Davis says they hope to give courage to
other parents to stand up to abuses of power by school districts."
"A McKinney dad who was banned from school property after publicly
criticizing local school district officials is suing the district for
keeping him away from his kids’ on-campus activities for an entire
school year. The district did this by issuing a criminal trespass
citation that was recently ruled invalid."
"Washington lawmakers voted nearly unanimously Friday to strengthen
oversight of private special education schools that serve some of the
state’s most vulnerable public school students."
When It Comes to Banning Books, Both Right and Left Are Guilty
"Today, the Left wages its own crusade against authors, publishers,
and teachers. Moms for Liberty has a Left-wing mirror image in We Need Diverse Books and Disrupt Texts, groups at the forefront of movements trying to cancel, rewrite, and otherwise censor picture books, young adult novels, and American classics taught in K-12 schools.
Around the time Dr. Seuss's books were pulled from library and bookstore shelves, Newsweek reported that videos of liberals burning Harry Potter
books were "spreading like wildfire across TikTok." In one video, a
book burner condemns the "racism" and "harmful fatphobia" in J.K.
Rowling's most famous work."
It is now widely acknowledged that lockdowns caused immeasurable harm, particularly to children, and new research highlights that the interests of the young were forgotten by policymakers during the pandemic. Yet those who are now prepared to wring their hands about this situation are also adamant that lockdowns were unavoidable. Indeed, there is a general reluctance to criticize the very basis on which the measures that damaged children were adopted.
According to district reports the student who shot to death a fellow student at Ingraham High School on November 8th had previously brought a gun and a knife to school and was possibly not expelled due to the districts policy 3240.
Seattle Public Schools recognizes:
Every student has the right to the high quality instruction,
supports, and interventions that they need to graduate high school on
time and prepared for the future;
Racial dis proportionality persists in disciplinary responses in the district;
Students are impacted when they are removed from their learning environment;
Situations
involving discipline may be complex and require staff to understand
underlying factors that are influencing students behaviors and;
Mitigating and aggravating factors should influence the disciplinary decision-making process.
Supplementary Goal#1 During the 22-23 school year Ingraham High school will decrease the disproportionality of discipline in BIPOC/FFEJ student populations from 3.4% to 1.5% as measured by the atlas data dashboard.
At some point we need adults running these buildings and perhaps if there were adults running Ingraham the shooter would have been expelled the previous month and a young man would be celebrating graduating.
The city wants to spend $165,000,000 (ya that’s $165 million)
on another sports stadium in Seattle. This time it’s for replacing Memorial Stadium
which is technically owned by the Seattle School District.
Where will the money come from? You guessed it from your bank
accounts!
When I was in high school we along with the rest of the
Metro league played our football games in Memorial Stadium. In the 90s Seattle
Public Schools went on a very expensive High school sports fields building
spree which today including renovations and upgrades probably exceeds the $150
million they want from us to build another stadium. The
point of building stadium fields at each High school was to avoid having to
juggle so many games over a week-end and fans having to drive across the city
to fight over expensive parking with the crowds there for other city center
events.
We already have invested so much money in all these high
school stadium fields that spending another $165 million does not make sense
for Seattle school district.The
district is basically broke and can barley meet its current financial obligations.
If various groups in Seattle want to build a new stadium
then they should follow in the University of Washington’s footsteps and ask all
those big buck donors to once again pony up and pay for a new sports stadium.
- On April 25, 2023 the WA state governor signed House Bill
1240 into law. The law basically restricts or bans WA state citizens from future
sale, manufacture and import of assault-style semi-automatic weapons.
There is one very large issue with this law and that is the state has given one
entity a waiver to the law. Aero Precision is a weapons manufacture located in
Lacy WA that can still manufacture all types of banned weapons they just can’t
sell them to Washingtonians.
This seems to go against the spirit of what the law intended
to accomplish. This loophole allows Aero_Precision to manufacture weapons and then sell them outside of Washington state
where they might be used in various crimes including school shootings. Why
would the Washington state governor allow these weapons of mass killings to be
exported to other states? If these weapons are such a menace to society as he
claims then wouldn’t it be prudent and justified to stop the manufacturing and
export of these mass killing machines?
I’ve sent emails to most of the local Democrat state representatives
for a clarification and so far none have responded.
It was a bright sunny 2019 June afternoon when I picked up my daughter from her high school located just off of Aurora Ave. North. As we made our way home we stopped at the red light on 125th and Aurora where a very young women crossed the street in the crosswalk. This isn't unusual except for the fact that she wasn't wearing any pants or underwear. Fast forward to 2023 where the above mentioned situation is now considered not only normal but condoned by the city of Seattle administration.
Prostitution, drug dealing and open fencing of stolen merchandise is now prevalent all hours of the day and night from 85th all the way to 145th on Aurora. This activity impacts school children at Cascadia Elementary School, Broadview Thomson K-8 school and Ingram High School.
This is an example of the Boiling Frog Effect where if you slowly turn up the illicit activity the people don't really notice. They just drive by in their cars as very young women are trafficked right in front of their faces.
My efforts to stop the illicit activity has resulted in warnings that the traffickers will come after me to the police will arrest me for harassing the prostitutes .
My calls and emails to our Mayor asking for a solution have went unanswered. Our
Seattle School District should be working to stop these crimes
from happening so close to our schools but the school board insist on taking
no action.
The Seattle Police responded ,
"The Seattle City Council repealed the Prostitution
Loitering ordinance a couple of years ago. The City also adopted the
harm reduction model which identifies the workers as victims and
discourages enforcement. The City has contracted with
social service agencies to conduct outreach and assist the workers out
of the situation.
The Police Department conducts stings to arrest the
customers a couple of times per month but it has no impact on the
workers. We are also attempting to identify the employers and take
enforcement action but it is difficult as the workers
had no incentive to turn them in.
Thank you
XXXXXXXXX
Seattle Police Department
North Precinct Operations
10049 College Way N
Seattle WA 98133"
"Prosecutors allege the suspects kept the 18-year-old victim in the Mount
Baker neighborhood, transported her and a 21-year-old woman to Aurora
Avenue and hotels for sex work, and took any money she earned."
Its been a few years since I checked in on SPS and its special education citizens complaints so I thought it might be a good idea to dive into the numbers again.
The current total for 2023 is 12 which might not be complete do to the lag between submission and a resolution or possible withdraw of the complaint. Withdraw usually means SPS has come to a resolution with the parents.
Three Rhode Island teachers who were fired for refusing the
COVID-19 vaccine have been offered their jobs back with full back pay
after reaching a settlement with the school district.
Last week, their attorney, Greg Piccirilli, and the school district
said they had reached a settlement, allowing the teachers to return to
their jobs. They are also each entitled to $33,333 in damages
along with their back pay. DiOrio will get $150,000, Thurber will get
$128,000, and Hines will receive $65,000 under the agreement.
“The
three teachers have the opportunity to return to teaching positions
within the Barrington School District should they choose to do so, at
the steps they would have been at had they worked continuously,” the
Barrington Public Schools district said in a statement on May 11.
Fewer than 150 of Seattle’s 50,000-plus students attended schools in
person during the first week of March. District and union officials
announced last week they were close to finalizing an in-person agreement
for preschoolers and students with disabilities to start March 29, the
first step of the reopening plan.
“It blows everything up,” said
Chandra Hampson, president of the Seattle School Board, of Inslee’s
announcement, adding that she still wants to see the district and union
meet the March 29 deadline. “It completely changes what we have to
bargain … And that’s super frustrating. We weren’t happy about delays
(to reopen)… But we wanted to prioritize more in-person time to those
less likely to succeed.”
Those
parents said they were floored to learn their children wouldn’t receive
makeup time. Other children sat for months on wait lists to get
evaluated for services that are critical to keeping them engaged and on
track.
Concie Pedroza, who oversees special
education as chief of student supports for Seattle Schools, declined an
interview request. In a written statement she said that in the spring
“staff were focused on providing resources and modifications to students
so that they could make progress on their [Individualized Education
Program] goals.”
Pedroza acknowledged that there were some issues, stating:
“Throughout the first few weeks of school closure, we recognize that
there was a slight disruption in services while we worked to get devices
and technology to our staff and students to support remote learning.”
It
was more than a “slight disruption in services,” said one district
special education teacher, who asked to have her name withheld for fear
of retaliation.
“We were told not to deliver specially-designed
instruction,” she said, adding they were not allowed to adapt lessons to
each child’s needs, as federal law requires. “I just couldn’t believe
it.”
"Washington’s education department hasn’t adequately tracked how
schools are spending hundreds of millions in federal aid earmarked for
pandemic learning loss, according to an audit ordered by state lawmakers.
The
report says the agency failed to collect sufficient data about
interventions meant to help kids recover from learning loss, and has not
monitored whether the investments are helping students improve
academically " https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/state-report-finds-wa-education-agency-hasnt-tracked-federal-funds-effectively/
"On Nov. 8, 17-year-old Ebenezer Haile was shot by another student in a school hallway. The next day, Jones announced a new safety initiative:
Seattle Public Schools would assemble a community action team of
school, police, city and community leaders to assess how safety can be
improved at schools and surrounding neighborhoods.
To address
mental health, a child wellness team made up of psychologists,
counselors, pediatricians and social workers would be launched. Jones
also said the district would conduct an audit of safety plans at
Ingraham and safety reviews of the district’s 106 schools.
The
district says it has accomplished all of those tasks. But Friends of
Ingraham, a nonprofit group led by Ingraham High parents, has sent three
letters to the district asking for more information.
The group
asked for the outcome of the audit, what safety policies and procedures
have been changed as a result, and whether policies and procedures
leading up to the shooting and following the shooting were followed.
The
parent group had a discussion with Jones set up in March, but it was
delayed, said Kathleen Zagers, co-president of Friends of Ingraham. A
meeting is set for this week."
