During the December 9 School Board Meeting, John Stanford International School (JSIS) was one of ten Seattle Public Schools to receive the “Great Schools” award. The award, co-sponsored by Phi Delta Kappa of Washington state and the Center of Educational Effectiveness, recognizes the top 5% highest improving schools over a 5 year period in the combined areas of reading and math. Principal Kelly Aramaki was on hand to receive the award and a banner for the school.
Mr. Aramaki was thrilled to receive the award, as was the staff, which he gave much credit to help strengthening and maintaining student achievement in reading and math, especially with the school’s dual-language immersion program. Mr. Aramaki is also thankful to the community–from parents, to local businesses–who continually support JSIS.
Other Seattle Public Schools that received the award are The New School at South Shore, Mercer Middle School, AS #1 (Pinehurst), Daniel Bagley Elementary, Catharine Blaine K-8, Thornton Creek, Orca at Whitworth, View Ridge Elementary, and Madison Middle School.
In 2009, 104 schools in all of Washington State have been awarded with the “Great Schools” distinction by the Washington Chapter Phi Kappa Delta and the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Phi Kappa Delta is an education professional organization and the Center of Educational Effectiveness is a Redmond-based educational research and data-service organization.
Man, I wish I could say I’m happy for them. Unfortunately, I’m still chaffing from living 1 mile from the school, in Wallingford, and not being able to get my kids in.
Be upset with the school district not the school.
My daughter went to that middle school and it was such a terrible school we left the public school system for high school. She is in college now so maybe it has improved but I remember the science teacher would sit and read a book and tell the kids to not bother him. Really, he would give them an assignment and then just ignore them the rest of class and if they had a question he would not answer it!
Gawd it was an awful place. It was international yes but they all were separated into cliques. The asian students stuck together as well as all the other races. There was no attempt at integrating the students. Everyone is taught to be race proud and stick to themselves. Well maybe not so much taught but encouraged. Why don’t we teach kids to be equal?
Really my child learned nothing the years she was there except to hate school. She had maybe one decent teacher. Thankfully we had a better experience in high school. So this bit of news is unbelievable to me.