The Seattle Public Schools is giving all schools within its control the option to create a proposal to become an innovative school. Innovative schools are all over the nation, but the name is tricky because although SPS is referring to these new schools as “innovative” they do not follow the same definition as the rest of the country. In fact the definition does not exist as far as the school district is concerned, which is one thing that makes this choice so difficult. They are asking schools to propose ways that they could be more innovative in big ways that they might not have been able to do before because of the rules and regulations of “standard schools”.
Even Nova, currently an “ALE” (alternative learning experience) school, obviously has regulations. This is not to say that becoming an innovative school allows you to completely disregard all regulations but they are asking us as a school to outline how we could make our school into a much better version of itself–our dream school, if you will. The questions we need to be asking ourselves as a school at this point in the process are: what could Nova be? What would make Nova your ideal school?
These questions mean thinking big, for example when asked to throw out ideas as to what could make Nova better some staff suggested many possibilities. Some suggested we could make Nova a real green school which could include “green” vocational studies, like the math classes could build a green house. Others suggested even more flexible scheduling, such as having classes go all through the day, opening classes up to the community (similar to Karen’s current night ceramics class) to give classes a more interesting feel, and perspective. What if we had the school be fully committee run? To be clear, these ideas are in no way part of the official proposal; they are just ideas. But if we figure out what it is we want, no matter how crazy it might seem, there is a chance that it could become part of “Nova as an innovative school”.
There are a lot of ideas, and we need to continue the flow of ideas. Chances to make huge changes like this do not come very often so we need to think larger than just changing how coor works, or adding five minutes for lunch. Unfortunately we do not have limitless time to brainstorm and come up with a proposal, in fact the proposal will probably be due around mid February . Be sure to get involved in or create your own community conversation about this in any way possible, talk in: coor, at lunch, with your families, with your friends. We have a chance to make big changes, let’s not waste it.
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