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Times' Wrap-Up of Last Night's School Board Candidate Forum
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This article by the Times' Emily Heffter appeared in today's Times. I did not attend. Did anyone go and if so, what were your impressions?
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Anonymous said…
one of my impressions is that emily kinda phoned it in in both her story and her blog - not one of her better efforts. she didn't do any of the candidates - or the event - justice and really might as well just not have written about it at all. If I hadn't seen her sitting there I might have wondered if she even went.
CR was good, though. He is tough but fair, and often asks the follow-up questions that you would if you had the mike, or if the candidate were sitting in your living room.
The event was well-done all the way around - except - is it possible to attend ONE event in the Stanford Center auditorium where the sound is clear AND the mikes work? Can someone not thoroughly test the mikes and change the batteries - or can the district not spend a couple thousand dollars and fix the works? It's unbelievable - if you're not trying to hear through the static (thankfully not last night), the speakers are passing the mikes around like hot potatos trying to find one that works, then having it cut out multiple times in their speech.
Don't want to give you the highlights because at this point I'm too biased and it wouldn't really be fair to all of the candidates. All did reasonably well in showcasing their strengths (and vulnerabilities.)
Someone said it was televised live last night - so I'm sure it will be on the seattlechannel website soon and you can see for yourself!
Anonymous said…
My bad - I'd only seen the "Closing time" section of Emily's blog and missed the play by play down below it.
Her story was pretty uninformative but my criticism of her blog was undeserved.
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read). end of update Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board. To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up. But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, grief, that is to come fro
Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting. In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance. - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
Comments
CR was good, though. He is tough but fair, and often asks the follow-up questions that you would if you had the mike, or if the candidate were sitting in your living room.
The event was well-done all the way around - except - is it possible to attend ONE event in the Stanford Center auditorium where the sound is clear AND the mikes work? Can someone not thoroughly test the mikes and change the batteries - or can the district not spend a couple thousand dollars and fix the works? It's unbelievable - if you're not trying to hear through the static (thankfully not last night), the speakers are passing the mikes around like hot potatos trying to find one that works, then having it cut out multiple times in their speech.
Don't want to give you the highlights because at this point I'm too biased and it wouldn't really be fair to all of the candidates. All did reasonably well in showcasing their strengths (and vulnerabilities.)
Someone said it was televised live last night - so I'm sure it will be on the seattlechannel website soon and you can see for yourself!
Her story was pretty uninformative but my criticism of her blog was undeserved.