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
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Such a inflated sense of self.
Bravo, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. Appearing in public and subjecting yourself to potential criticism was a risky move, and shows that you are trying to connect with the public!
And Bravo, also, for bringing along some of your assistants so that you could provide the public with the best possible answers to their questions!
I think the State-of-the-District public meeting is a great idea, and should perhaps be a mandatory part of the job for every SPS Superintendent. I do suggest that it's crucial (in a nearly 1 billion-dollar-a-year annual enterprise) that each yearly meeting begin with a review of the important achievements and goals set out at the PREVIOUS meeting.
I'm not trying to be uppity, and suggest how the Superintendent should do her job. I'm sure she knows better than me, and has a lot on her plate already. I salute her and her staff for all of her efforts on behalf of our children!
Institutional memory is problematic for all human institutions, and Seattle Public Schools may (and I'm not criticizing here, just including SPS in all human institutions) possibly have just a few issues with institutional memory of past promises made and forgotten.
I mean, everyone forgets, but we do have to try to remember and honor what we promised, don't we?