Saving Seattle's Schools Requires New School Board Members

This year we can take a huge step in turning around the troubled Seattle School District, but to do so will require replacing the current board members that are up for election.

The multitude of problems in this poorly run and poorly performing district are manifest, and ultimately the origin of these deficiencies can be traced to a lack of leadership, energy and curiosity among several of  the school district's directors.  It seems that local newspapers run another depressing story every few weeks about a major Seattle School failure or scandal.  A few examples include:

(1)  Multiple reports of financial irregularities, including an out of control Small Business Development Program that wasted 1.8 million dollars.

(2) Poor administrative control and lack of transparency by superintendent Marie Goldloe Johnson that resulted in her firing

(3)  Lack of progress on student achievement, particularly by minority and low-income students.

(4)  Firing of a highly competent and beloved principal of Ingraham High School and an unwillingness to admit error over the incident.

(5) Selling Martin Luther King Elementary to a group with inside connections, for a loss of near 7 million from what could have been secured from the Bush School.

(6)  Selection of a high school math curriculum found to be mathematically unsound by the State Board of education.

(7) Deliberate deception about the college readiness of Seattle students.

(8)  Acceptance of an influx of untrained "Teach for America" "teachers" when a large pool of experienced or properly trained teachers are available

(9)  The State Board of Auditors 2010 audit produced a highly damning audit of district finances, citing mismanagement of district resources and noted that the school board failed to properly oversee the superintendent.
I could go on and on..but you get the message--poor student performance, poor administrative structures and oversight, cronyism, corruption, and much more.

Ultimately, the Seattle School Board is responsible for the school district and it is clear they have not done a very good job.   Many of them have been content with rubber-stamping the Superintendent's recommendations, have shown little curiosity about  obvious failures, have provided minimal oversight,  and have shown little interest in taking strong steps to turn around a sinking district.

But the waterfall of failures have gotten the community's attention and the worst school directors are now up for reelection.  Retiring the current incumbent directors up for reelection and replacing them with active, questioning individuals could have a huge impact. particularly since the remainder of the board is much stronger (DeBell, Patu, Kay Smith Blum) .  If you are a Seattle voter, this year you can have a major impact for good--here are my suggestions.

District 1:   Sharon Peaslee over the incumbent Peter Maier.  Maier is one of the worst of the current board members, and it is has been reported that he knew about some of the financial shenanigans early and chose not to act.  He also voted for the terrible Discovering Math series, even after he was told it was unsound (I was there...he really didn't care).   Sharon Peaslee has substantial teaching education and experience, was a key player in saving Ingrahm HS principle Martin Floe, and has been a real activist for better math and other issues.

District 2:  Kate Martin or Jack Whelan over the incumbent Sherry Carr.   Sherry Carr has a lot in common with Peter Maier--lack of curiosity, lack of vision, stay the course, support the superintendent.   Kate Martin has great vision, amazing knowledge about education, is willing to ask hard questions, and has the experience in management to back it up.  And extraordinarily articulate.  Jack Whelan, a member of the the Foster School of Business at the UW, is the poet of the campaign, writing cogently and insightfully about the districts problems.  He will not rubber stamp.

District 6:  Marty McLaren over the incumbent Steve Sundquist. Steve was supporting Goodloe Johnson to the end and rarely questioned the Superintendent's direction.  He STILL believes that the selection of poor Discovery math books was a good idea and has pushed the idea of bringing  barely qualified Teach for America recruits into our classrooms.  Amazing.  Marty McClaren is an extraordinary individual, with substantial teaching experience and was the force behind the initially successful math textbook lawsuit, for which she took personal financial responsibility (one of the most selfless acts I have seen in a while).  She is the kind of person that will ask questions...a lot of them.

Folks...elect 2 or 3 of the above and the majority of the board will change from stay-the-course rubber stamp types to inquisitive, intelligent individuals ready to show considerable leadership.

Announcement:  There will be a candidate forum for Seattle Public Schools, District 1 on August 10th at Enlighten Cafe and Art Gallery at 5424 Ballard Avenue NW. Time- 8pm

Dry Time and Low Clouds

We are now in the driest time of the year climatologically (see graph below of climatological probability of rain, click to enlarge)--in fact, the driest day of the year on average was yesterday July 29th, when .005 inches of rain has fallen on average at Seattle-Tacoma Airport over roughly the last half-century.  We think of ourselves as being a wet place, but during the magical last week of July and first week of August we are one of the driest places in the U.S., with a climatological probability of rain of around 10%. 

Today will remain dry, but there is a good chance it will rain tomorrow (Sunday)!--more on that later.

Before I talk about tomorrow, I wanted to show another fascinating figure on our cloudiness issue this year, produced by Dr. Jim Johnstone (Dr. Fog), who I mentioned in my last blog.  Beware!  This is one hell of a depressing figure.

The grey bars show the average number of hours of cloudiness at Sea-Tac Airport per month (1=January, 12=December).  18-19 hours a day in midwinter, with a gradual reduction to about 15 in June.  Then a HUGE decrease to around 11 in July, a graduate increase through September, and a jump up in October.  All locals know about this pattern--we have three months of relatively bountiful sun: July through September.

 

But now the depressing part.  The black line shows this year. You will notice that we have maintained wintertime cloud levels through June.  And I guarantee you that when July numbers get plotted in a few days, we will be way above normal (probably 15-16).  This figure, more than any other, expresses the unhappy moods of so many.

But yesterday was simply spectacular and today will be the same.  I was on the East Coast last week and experienced 103F with dew points in the mid to upper 70s.  Personally, I would rather have the cooler, milder weather. 

This morning some low clouds along the coast pushed in through the Strait and Chehalis Gap...but are rapidly burning off as I write this (see image).

Tomorrow, a weak front will move in--pushing a surge of marine air into the west and to the Cascade crest.  Here is the predicted 24-h precipitation ending 5 PM tomorrow.

The windward side of the Cascades will be a soggy place to hike and conditions will deteriorate rapidly going into BC.  So go south and east for better conditions.  Low clouds will spread over the west.   But improvement beckons on Monday...

The Cold Truth

Several of you have note that it is not the cool temperatures or even the rain that bothered you this last few months, but the lack of sunlight--sort of like a summer version of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).   So what is the truth about clouds this spring and summer?

In such situations there is ONE expert on our local murk that I trust, a local scientists who has spend a great time looking a the climatology and trends of local clouds.   I have mentioned him before---Dr. Jim Johnstone, AKA Dr. Fog, a researcher here at the UW. 

Here are some of his depressing results--the average number of hours a day with clouds at Sea-Tac for April through June.  2010 and 2011 have simply been the worst over the past 60 years. We are talking about 18-19 hrs a day of cloud on average.  And the general trend the last few decades is for more clouds.  Now you will hate me for telling you this... but I have a project with Dr. Eric Salathe to simulate Northwest weather under global warming. 

Guess what.  These high-resolution simulations suggest more low clouds west of the Cascades as the interior heats up.  More interior heat causes the pressure to fall to the east and global warming seems to be associated with a stronger East Pacific High--the result:  more low clouds offshore and more onshore flow.

 And what about his results for temperature?  Here are the April-June temperatures for the entire state.  I bet you know which year was the coolest.  This year.  It is in a class of its own.

 

Or how about a plot of where the daily maximum temperature records (both record high maximum and record low maximum temperature)  have occurred this year during April-June?  The big concentration of record low maxima (blue symbols) is over the Northwest, while record high daily maxima were found over the southeast.

But if you really want to get into the murk, take a look at the amount of radiation measured at the top of the atmospheric science building at the UW.  On July 25th  the UW's sensor's measured  4.51 megajoule (unit of energy) per square meter,  the darkest day in almost 4 months.  On a bright sunny day we would be up in the low 30s.  Not since 4 April 2011 with 3.47 MJ/m2 have we seen a darker day in Seattle as measured at the U of WA.

This weekend....below normal temps but perhaps acceptable.  A disturbance approach from the north will get mighty close on Sunday, so go south and east for better weather.

Heavy Showers and Thunderstorms

I wasn't going to blog today...but had to mention the convection--heavy showers and thunder--that rolled through on both sides of the Cascades.  The radar showed it nicely---here are a few samples.

And all of this during one of the climatologically driest weeks of the year.  A number of locations along the eastern slopes of Cascades, around the Tri-Cities, and over the south Sound got .15 to .20 inches in the downpours.

And I hate to admit it, but the forecasts were not good regarding these thunderstorms--both the human predictions and computer models.   The NWS forecast yesterday was correct about a major cool down today as the upper trough pushed in, but pretty much missed the heavy showers.  The models also did not do well.  At least we have plenty to work on!

Now this was a classic convective pattern, with a sharp trough moving in:

But clearly some ingredient was missing in the models--either how the models were initialized or their descriptions of the physical processes.

Perhaps a hint of the origin of the failure can be found from the infrared satellite sequence today.  Here are images from last night through this afternoon.  My eye sees two features:  one associated with the trough moving in from offshore and another feature initially over Oregon.  It is when they join that the convection blew up in a way that Friday's computer runs missed.  My own examination of the model output suggests that the eastern convection was associated with a weak upper trough over land that the models underplayed....but I only looked at the situation briefly.  It takes some detective work to conclusively discover what is behind such forecast failures.

East Coast versus West Coast: The Continental Weather Seesaw

It often seems that the U.S. east and west coasts are on some kind of weather seesaw.   Recently westerners have been complaining that the East Coast is warm and the West is cool, but sometimes it goes the other way.  Quite frequently, warm records are found on one coast when cool records are occurring on the other.   The coastal weather seesaw some people call it.   And now,  a new index reveals its intimate details.   In this blog you will view the Coastal Contrast Index (CCI), an advanced new diagnostic tool never shown before in public.
  
The CCI is based on the difference between the temperatures of major cites on both coasts.  Specifically, the mean temperatures of eastern cities (TE) minus the mean temperatures of western cities (TW).

CCI= TE-TW

For TE we use Boston, New York, Washington DC and Atlanta.  For TW we use Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.  The selection of these particular cities is based on arcane scientific principles that are too complicated to explain in this blog.  Yes, the latitudes don't match exactly, but that is where the people are.  And I should note that the data analysis for the CCI was done by data analyst extraordinaire of the UW:  Neal Johnson.

Ready to see it?  Take a look at this graph (click to enlarge) for January 1 through July 21st.

The blue line shows the daily climatological values based on long-term average temperatures for those dates and cities. 

Notice that from January 1 through roughly 10 April, the West Coast is generally WARMER than the East Coast by about 10F.   And then in late spring and summer the East Coast becomes warmer by roughly 10F again.  The seasonal seesaw...its real.  And the reasons are clear:  the West Coast has the relatively mild Pacific to its west, which keeps us warm in winter and cool in summer.  The East Coast has a large continental area to its west (weather generally comes from the west in the midlatitudes as you know), which is cold in winter and warm in the summer.

But this graph doesn't stop there!  The red line shows the index for THIS YEAR and the information is sobering.  And very different than normal. 

During the winter, the East Coast was WAY cooler than normal compared to the West Coast .  We are talking 20-25F cooler than the West.  You remember that--snowstorm after snowstorm, frigid day after frigid day for the forlorn easterners.  Some folks even blamed than on global warming.

And then in roughly mid-February an atmospheric switch was flipped and on most days the East Coast was warmer than the West--much warmer than it should be.  On many days, particularly this summer,  the East was 15-20F warmer than the West.   And if we included the last few few days, there would be a spike to 25 or more.

The reason for this anomalous behavior has been discussed in the blog several times:  the establishment of a persistent mean trough over the West Coast and a ridge over the central and eastern U.S. during February, a pattern that has just not gone away.

Finally, you will notice several big swings of the index and there is a reason.  Although there has been ON AVERAGE a trough over the west and a ridge over the east, on a daily basis sometimes there are brief excursions to the opposite situation, occasions when there is a ridge over the west and a trough over the east.  Then the seesaw goes the other way.  And westerners love it!

Why is the east and west coasts so frequently out of phase?  The reason is that the flow aloft is usually very wave like and the wavelength of the typical wave is frequently just about right to give us the out-of-phase coasts (see graphic).

The upper level flow pattern is very wave-like and has typical wavelengths.

This wavelength is set by a number of things, such as  the rotation rate of the earth and the typical temperature variations of the planet.    Why did we get this anomalous wave pattern this year?  La Nina is partially to blame, but there is probably more.   Is this a sign of global warming?  I don't anyone can answer this question at this point and keep in mind that while some places are warmer than normal, others are cooler.

One incident says little about long-term climate change, but some in the media are already saying that this incident is "consistent with" or "the kind of events we will experience under" global warming.  Want to see an egregious example of this--check out the NY Times.

Why the Northwest is Nearly Heat Wave Proof

 As we complain about our cool summer, we should not forget that the central and eastern portions of the U.S. has been experiencing major drought and heat waves (as noted in my previous blog there is an intimate condition between our coolness and their heat).  It turns out that when one does a careful accounting of the meteorological causes of death, heat waves far exceed tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning, and floods in causing deaths and injury.   Only one other meteorological parameter is in the same league:  roadway icing--which injuries and kills thousands of people per year around the U.S.  Consider a few examples of heat wave losses:  the U.S. heat wave in 1980 killed more than 1250, while the famous Chicago heat wave killed 700.  And of course the 2003 European heat wave brought an extraordinary toll of roughly 50,000.
     Definitions of heat waves vary, but the National Weather Service likes to use the heat index, which combines temperature and humidity.  Humidity reduces our ability evaporate water from our skin--a very potent cooling mechanism (take a look at dog or cat in hot situation--they can't sweat and suffer for it!).  Here is a table for that index:

In essence, it tells you what the air feels like, or in other words how effectively you can get rid of body heat.  Generally, the NWS puts out warnings when the heat index gets to roughly 105F. In the Northwest we rarely get such values--not only because we are generally cool, but because when we get hot, the air is very dry and so the relative humidity is low.  Today over the northeast U.S. some locations had heat indices over 120F!!  For example Warrenton, VA had a heat index of 133F at 3 PM.  That is truly dangerous.   Washington National hit 120F.

Only once in recent years did we get into serious heat index values, and that was the heat wave of July 28-29, 2009 when we got to 103F in Seattle.   We had unusually high humidity values during much of that heat wave because the air reaching western Washington originated over the moist western slopes of the British Columbia Cascades:  a relatively unusual trajectory the low-level flow during our heat waves.

Eastern Washington can get over 100F pretty easily during the summer, but that heat is relatively dry.  And dry heat has another advantage--the air temperatures often cool substantially at night.  Why?
Humidity acts as a blanket.  Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas the is very active in the infrared part of the spectrum.  It absorbs IR radiation emitted by the surface and re-emits IR radiation back to the ground...thus contributing to warming at the surface.

Here is an example of the large daily (diurnal) range of temperature at Pasco the last few weeks:

Eastern Washington has had a delightful climate this summer, but notice the big changes in temperature..particularly when they get warm.  Highs mid-80s and lows around 50-55F.  I hope it is warm enough for the grapes, which I believe like warm days and cool nights.

Of course, the key reason we don't have many heat waves is the Pacific Ocean, which keeps us cool and dry (see sea surface temperature map below).

While cold water is found west of the Northwest, the eastern U.S. gets air moving northward off the steamy Gulf of Mexico (temps in C, 30C is 86F)

No that last word is not a typo.   The ocean temperatures only rise into the low 50s during the summer at best, and with the East Pacific high offshore, we generally have onshore flow, bringing the cooling effect of the ocean.  Cool air can not pick up much water vapor so air off the ocean is relatively dry (low dewpoints).  To get really warm, we need offshore flow, but that air is generally dry too.  And offshore flow generally doesn't last very long around here.

And there's more!  When the west side heats up the pressure generally falls over the region (warm air is less dense and thus pressure declines).  We call that low pressure the thermal trough (or more accurately, the thermally induced trough).   So we have high pressure and oool air offshore and lower pressure/warm air over us.  Well, air wants to go from high to low pressure...it is just hankering to move in in this situation!  The warmer we get, the lower the pressure, the more than cool air wants to move in.  When large scale offshore flow weakens, the cool air surges in...giving us an onshore or marine push.

The bottom line:  when the Northwest was designed, natural air conditioning and protection against heat waves was a built-in feature. Even under global warming, this natural cooling system should still keep our summers tolerable.  In fact, if the interior of the continent heats up sufficiently, producing lower inland pressure, our local AC might get stronger!

Now it doesn't seem so bad to be in the cool Northwest anymore....