Accountability = Keeping Commitments
Among the twisting paperstorm of definitions for accountability generated by the District there must be one about keeping commitments to students, families and communities. If the Board is going to have any role in accountability and "holding the superintendent accountable" - whatever that means - it must include some element of requiring the superintendent to keep the commitments the District has made. And, if they are going to hold themselves accountable - whatever that means - it must mean keeping the commitments that they have made.
Nevermind the long list of broken commitments on Director Martin-Morris' blog. Commitments that were made by staff that were never kept and never will be kept - by design and intent from the start. It would be difficult to hold staff to any of those promises. These, of course, provide an object lesson to everyone to "Never accept a promise of future action from a member of the Seattle Public Schools staff because you must presume that they will not keep it."
Now we have the additional concern that we may not be able to accept promises from the Board.
The Friends of the SBOC have recently learned that the District intends to raid the World School construction fund of $2,000,000.00 to pay for seismic upgrades to the Meany Building. The SPS Facilities Director said that SPS might be able to repay the money later, "if needed to construct the World School/SBOC." He said that there were no other funds available for this urgent upgrade.
So Meany has need of an urgent upgrade. Interesting. Mann doesn't have need of an urgent upgrade. Old Hay doesn't have need of an urgent upgrade. The move to Meany was supposed to be a facilities upgrade for SBOC and NOVA, but it was into a building that needs an urgent upgrade for safety reasons. Hmmmm.
Of course, moving pots of money around - the real expertise demonstrated by the District's Facilities department - has to be approved by the Board. This is the same Board, you will recall, who set aside the promises to the SBOC that the Board had made, and approved by vote. The relocation of the SBOC to Meany failed to meet about half of the promises the Board made to that community for a new home. Hey, if getting the Board to vote to approve their promises to a community isn't sufficient assurance of future action from the District then really nothing is. But that's not shameful enough. Oh no! Now they are returning to the scene of the crime to compound their felony with another theft of capital.
It remains to be seen if the Board will approve this second violation of their word. Personally, I wouldn't bet against it. Of course the students at the SBOC don't speak much English - if any - and neither do their families. They are very unlikely to send the Board members a bunch of emails protesting the action. They are very unlikely to call Board members and demand they keep their promises. They are very unlikely to send letters urging Board members to vote against the transfer. There won't be much political backwash from this - if any.
Of course WE know what's going on, and WE can send emails, and WE can call to urge a "no" vote. And WE can confront the Board members with the lie this would make of all of their pretty talk about accountability and trust and public confidence in the District.
Nevermind the long list of broken commitments on Director Martin-Morris' blog. Commitments that were made by staff that were never kept and never will be kept - by design and intent from the start. It would be difficult to hold staff to any of those promises. These, of course, provide an object lesson to everyone to "Never accept a promise of future action from a member of the Seattle Public Schools staff because you must presume that they will not keep it."
Now we have the additional concern that we may not be able to accept promises from the Board.
The Friends of the SBOC have recently learned that the District intends to raid the World School construction fund of $2,000,000.00 to pay for seismic upgrades to the Meany Building. The SPS Facilities Director said that SPS might be able to repay the money later, "if needed to construct the World School/SBOC." He said that there were no other funds available for this urgent upgrade.
So Meany has need of an urgent upgrade. Interesting. Mann doesn't have need of an urgent upgrade. Old Hay doesn't have need of an urgent upgrade. The move to Meany was supposed to be a facilities upgrade for SBOC and NOVA, but it was into a building that needs an urgent upgrade for safety reasons. Hmmmm.
Of course, moving pots of money around - the real expertise demonstrated by the District's Facilities department - has to be approved by the Board. This is the same Board, you will recall, who set aside the promises to the SBOC that the Board had made, and approved by vote. The relocation of the SBOC to Meany failed to meet about half of the promises the Board made to that community for a new home. Hey, if getting the Board to vote to approve their promises to a community isn't sufficient assurance of future action from the District then really nothing is. But that's not shameful enough. Oh no! Now they are returning to the scene of the crime to compound their felony with another theft of capital.
It remains to be seen if the Board will approve this second violation of their word. Personally, I wouldn't bet against it. Of course the students at the SBOC don't speak much English - if any - and neither do their families. They are very unlikely to send the Board members a bunch of emails protesting the action. They are very unlikely to call Board members and demand they keep their promises. They are very unlikely to send letters urging Board members to vote against the transfer. There won't be much political backwash from this - if any.
Of course WE know what's going on, and WE can send emails, and WE can call to urge a "no" vote. And WE can confront the Board members with the lie this would make of all of their pretty talk about accountability and trust and public confidence in the District.
Comments
The closure lawsuit in which I and 7 other women are appellants, has been fortunate enough to secure legal representation... we go to a hearing on Sept 28th, I believe...
I was recently served with the District's reply to our complaint...
Pages and pages of twaddle - seemingly working on the premise that bullshit - especially craploads of it - baffles brains... trying to say most of us dont have standing and that because some of us spoke at board meetings and our own school closure meetings we dont have a complaint, and arguing over the definition of what a 'school' is - a building, a programme, or what?
Anyway.... pages and pages of twaddle in which not once, do they deny or attempt to justify the fact that THEY DID BREAK THE LAW...
In fact, their response doesnt even address that... as if in glossing over it, they hope no one will push the point.... well, people, sorry.... the 8 of us are pushing it - YOU BROKE THE LAW, and you cant keep doing that with impunity...
The BTA is a levy so that means the money comes at different times (unlike a bond where you get the money all at once).
The district needs to get these reopened buildings online first thing. (We all know they should have started this process years ago but too late now.) So my supposition is that the first BTA III levy money will go to that effort and not SBOC even though they really should be first in line.
Given that SBOC has been bounced around and had promises broken, that Nova was bounced out of their building because it was so bad, you'd think that the Board and the District would do the right thing and use capital funds (and we have them because BEX III was a bond) to update and make safe the Meany building for the two populations that now inhabit it.
See http://sites.google.com/site/seattleschoolsgroup/ for the structural report and a synopsis that I wrote of the report. This information was sent to each board member, the superintendent, Don Kennedy and the press during the school closure debate.
We were told by the board that they wanted to move Nova into a building that was safer and high school ready.
We requested that we stay in our school building until the upgrades were made to the Meany building. That did not happen.
According to their own structural report, Meany requires a major amount of structural upgrades to make it safer, $10M worth by SPS' own estimate. And of course, we do not have standard high school ready labs as promised for SBOC or Nova.
The Mann building required very little upgrading in contrast to the Meany building. It was a concern of mine when one of the people evaluating the Mann building stated in their report that the floors squeaked in the hallways of the Mann building and assuming by that observation that the building must be structurally unsound. Those were the kinds of observations made of the Mann building that SPS based their decision on to move Nova.
To this day I cannot begin to comprehend how people can make such important decisions about our schools and yet not look at their own data, information that they paid a lot of for. Information that is done by professional structural engineers needs to be evaluated and decided upon. Decisions should not be based on observations made by someone who is given a clip board and told to walk through a building and make a list.
I am guessing that the $10M that is to go into the Meany building for seismic repairs is due to the efforts of Nova parents and students to bring this to the attention of the school board and the public. It was a hard fight getting those funds allocated and it will be another battle to keep those funds for the Meany upgrades. We intend to fight.
Nova and SBOC have been treated poorly. The students of SBOC had not even been moved out of the Hay building when DeBell was talking to his constituents in a community meeting about re-opening the Hay building due to overcapacity in the north end. There was applause after that announcement.
There is no waiting for the Meany school facility to be upgraded. The building is unsafe and in dire need of being retrofitted. We have been treated unfairly and that will stop now.