What's the Expiration Date on Your Certificate?

Hi friends, it's a rare bit of non-budget related news! :-)

There's a bulletin that was just put out by OSPI....

You can access it here

....that has a tidbit we should all keep in mind:

Our certification office appreciates school districts past efforts to encourage early certification renewal of their employees. Due to the volume of certificates to process and our current operating system, we maintain nearly an eight- to twelve-week processing time for issuance of certificates. With current fiscal restraints and budget shortcomings, this peak season will burden our certification office to its limits. We are asking school districts to continue promoting the early renewal process of certificates by communicating to their employees the importance of submitting applications as early in May as possible.

You'd be well advised to take a few minutes to double-check your certificate and make sure that your credit/clock-hour requirements are met. For those of you who are National Board Certified I know that the re-certification process is a bit different, so if you've gone through the process and could educate me I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, and Happy Easter!

--Ryan--

The Primary is Coming! The Primary is Coming!

In about three weeks, on August 19th, it will be primary election day here in Washington State. After the Governor the position with the most potential to impact us is Superintendent of Public Instruction, so I thought I'd pass along some resources that I've found that can help as you study the candidates!

The six candidates are, along with their campaign websites:

• Terry Bergeson, the incumbent running for her fourth term. Her official OSPI biography can be found here.
  
• Randy Dorn, recently Executive Director of the Public School Employees Union and a former state legislator.
  
• David Blomstrom, a fan of Hugo Chavez and past candidate for the office. His website is NSFW.
  
• Enid Duncan, a city council member and small business owner from Edgewood with experience advocating for special needs students.
  
• Donald Hansler, a former teacher and writer who once put forth an initiative that would have required lawmakers to pass the WASL in order to hold office.
  
• John Patterson Blair, a supporter of school vouchers. He finished third in the race in 2004.

Richard Roesler of the Spokesman-Review did an overview of the candidates on his blog in May; there was also an article with a bit more exposition in it, here.

Over at Politicker WA you can find out information about all the candidates by clicking on their name to see what stories they've done.

TV Washington has put together a Video Voter's Guide which gives you a chance to hear from the candidates themselves; if you follow the link to "View All", you can also download the interviews as an MP3. This goes along with the state's printed voter's guide, which should be in your mailbox soon if you haven't received it already.

The OSPI race could well be decided here in the primary; if anyone gets over 50% of the vote, they win. Make your vote count!

We Need to Know Your Opinion of Terry Bergeson and the WASL

Hello again,

A few weeks ago I mentioned an upcoming project that we were going to be taking part in, organized by the WEA, to gather opinions from the membership on Terry Bergeson's leadership as Superintendent of Public Instruction and particularly on the emphasis that's been placed on the WASL.

At this year's Representative Assembly there will likely be a vote of no confidence taken on Terry Bergeson, and to that end every local in the state is being asked to poll their members. I've developed an on-line survey here to gather your opinions on these vital subjects; please take a few minutes to fill it out. It will be a great help to the Association.

(Please note: The District has no access to these surveys, as I've set up a private MLEA account. Your answers will only be available to the Association, so please be as honest as you want to be! ;-)

Here are some other sources of information that demonstrate the statewide scope of the project:

• From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer a nice overview of the problems many see with the WASL, along with information about the No Confidence vote.
  
• Also from the PI, good letters to the editor and a look at the ever-increasing costs of the test. One estimate says that administering the WASL could cost $47,000,000 next year. For comparison's sake, that's our district budget for 3 years, or enough to offer full-day kindergarten to another 30% of the kids in the state.
  
• The NPR station out of Pacific Lutheran University has an MP3 on the vote situation in Edmonds. it's about a 1-minute listen.
  
• The Everett Herald on the no-confidence vote, as well as The Tacoma News-Tribune.
  
• A release from the WEA describing the project.
  
• The Lake Stevens EA communicating with their memebrs.

If you have any questions, please contact Ryan.