Education Meetups In May
This from the Washington branch of the Appleseed Foundation, a non-profit group that promotes systemic change using citizen advocates and pro bono lawyers.
Host a Spring Meet-up and Take on School District Governance in May 2007
Discussions around Seattle school district governance will take center stage during Spring Meet-Ups sponsored by Washington Appleseed and CPPS in May.
Using living rooms and lunch rooms, we will bring voters together to discuss current and future issues on school district leadership and governance.
Want to Host? We need volunteers to bring the discussion to your corner of the city from May 9th to 12th.
You will have everything you need for lively discussion around these important issues. We provide the training, discussion guide, feedback form and more. You supply the venue and invite 10 to 15 of your friends and colleagues over to talk.
Spring Meet-Ups will be provided with background on school district governance, the roles of superintendent and school boards, what cities across the nation do for school governance, and where we are in Seattle. Then the discussion begins. What do we want for Seattle? What is the best fit for us?
Contact Barbara Schaad-Lamphere, Senior Fellow at Washington Appleseed, at BSchaadL@comcast.net to host or to get more information. Or call Barbara at 206-938-0608.
Meet-Ups sponsored by:
Comments
Here is the clearly stated viewpoint of Barbara Schaad-Lamphere, expressed after her School Board term in a pithy quote captured in an April 14, 2005 article by Josh Feit in The Stranger:
"Even when I was on the board, I thought, 'What a weird thing, to elect laypeople,'" says former School Board Member Barbara Schaad-Lamphere, a board member from 1995 to 2003, who's advocating from behind the scenes now to have Seattle follow the lead of Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland, which have all switched to appointed systems.
Moreover, I have no doubt that their perspective dictates a need for change - nobody does community education and organization events to promote the status quo.
But the problem with the District's governance is not that the Board is elected. That doesn't make any sense at all. Are we supposed to believe that there are lots of qualified and capable people out there who would be delighted to serve if only they didn't have to actually go before the (ugh!) voters of the community they long to serve and get popular approval? I'm not buying that. Running for school board is not a significant barrier.
No, I think there's a different set of problems with the governance of Seattle Public Schools.
1) For the last four years the Superintendent didn't share the Board's Vision and Values and worked to thwart the Board at every step.
2) The Board is supposed to be a policymaking body but they have no means of enforcing their policies. The Superintendent and the staff routinely violate Policy. If the policies are ignored, the policy making body is superfluous. The solution is to give the Board the means to enforce policy.
3) All of the real authority is in the Superintendent, but the person in that role cannot be held accountable. The Board needs real authority over the Superintendent.
The only people in the school district who really are accountable to the public are the Board directors. The idea of making them unaccountable as well is worse than anti-democratic; it's evil.
Rather than take away people's chance to vote for the Board, we should extend the vote to Superintendent position.
Rather than take away people's chance to vote for the Board, we should extend the vote to Superintendent position.
I'll vote for that