More Candidate Info
I was checking out the King County Democrats website and found that 7 of the candidates for School Board had filled out the Dems questionaire. Those are Darlene Flynn, Peter Maier, Sherry Carr, Lisa Stuebing, Harium Martin-Morris, Steve Sundquist and Maria Ramirez. Their answers are interesting and may help in broadening your perspective on these candidates. I wouldn't say that it's a mark against those candidates who did not participate (maybe they didn't get their forms in on time, didn't know, etc.) but it would have been helpful to read what their answers would have been as well.
Comments
maybe not everyone wants to spend 70 minutes trying to figure out how to add a picture to their user name!
Did you even read my post? What are you doing here if you hate the Web?
Melissa W.
Thanks for posting this. I appreciated reading the candidate positions. It included information that was new to me.
Geez, calm down.
It was pretty clear that Mel wasn't advocating here for candidates having a website, she was sharing questionnaire documents that had been posted to the King County Dems site - and noting that some candidates did not fill out those questionnaires (which did not require a website, BTW).
IMHO, based on this and the other post, it's probably you who could calm down...
He asks and answers these questions:
Why are you running for the Seattle School Board?
What relevant experience would you bring to the Seattle School Board?
Describe your past commitment to and involvement in public schools.
and
Describe your community ties and involvement in West Seattle.
All of what he writes there is good.
He writes that he plans to:
"1. Lead by Example. Create a stronger culture of leadership, results, and accountability at the board level through the personal example I set;
2. Student Achievement. Focus on raising the achievement levels for all of our kids, and on closing the achievement gap;
3. Quality & Equity. Work to ensure all of our schools provide students with a quality education as a matter of basic educational equity;
4. Financial Health. Restore long-term financial health to our district;
5. Focus on the Classroom. Allocate more of our available budget resources to our classrooms, where they can buy smaller class sizes, more professional development for our teachers, and more leadership development for our principals"
These all sound great. I especially like the one about leading by example and setting an example of personal accountability (1). Organizational culture is set at the top and flows down. It would be great to see a Board member exemplify the sort of results and accountability they expect of the rest of the District.
As a Board member, I don't know how much Mr. Sundquist would be able to direct, or even influence the District's long-term financial health (4), but I'm glad he sees it as an issue. Likewise, he won't be able to directly make decisions on the allocation of budget resources (5), but he may be able, with his fellow board members, to reduce transporation costs by revising that policy or to reduce some overhead by closing under-utilized buildings. I understand that the District staff say that another West Seattle school has to be closed. He could participate in that process.
As a board member he could try to get the District to intervene more aggressively when schools fail to meet benchmarks and thereby contribute to the quality of education available in schools(3). Likewise, he could help to draft an enforcable promotion/non-promotion policy to put focus on closing the academic achievement gap (2).
I don't know that this is what he means by what he has written, but everything he plans to do could be done as a Board member.