Seattle Public Schools gets approval from board to submit recovery plan to OSPI

The Seattle School Board held a special meeting Wednesday night and unanimously approved the district’s Phase One of the Academic and Student Well-being Recovery Plan for submission to OSPI.

All school districts in the state need to submit this plan by next week in order to qualify for federal funding under the American Rescue Plan.

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"We as a district recognize how important gathering feedback from our community is," said Deputy Superintendent Robert Gannon during the meeting. "We also recognize that in this moment, which was very condensed, we did not have enough time to do the types of engagement that we would traditionally do. We must do deeper and more richer and robust engagement in the weeks and months ahead."

Janis White of the Seattle Special Education PTSA said the advocacy group submitted a letter to the board and district with specific ideas it hopes will be included in a recovery plan for students who receive special education services.

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"There hasn’t been a lot of what we would call authentic family engagement to find out from families what’s really needed for their students to recover when they’re back in the building next year," said White.

White’s son Adin is a high school student in the district who is autistic. While remote learning wasn’t his favorite, White says her son was fortunate to get some learning in this past year.

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 "I know so many students and families who have been unable to engage at all in remote learning, and those students are going to need a lot of recovery services," said White. "For many of those students, it’s going to require trauma-informed mental health support."

School administrators said families including those receiving special education services will hear from them very soon about programs happening this summer and the details on the return to full-time in-person learning this fall.

"It needed to be shared already and they needed to collaborate with the community in developing it," said White.

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