This may only be a partial list of reasons; please, add anything else in the comments. The deadline to file to run for the Board is May 19th. Entire Board Majority NOT vetting the Superintendent in any way, shape or form. Even the Seattle Times thought that was wrong. It was just absolute hubris and it was wrong. For the second time in just over a year , board members voted to negotiate a superintendent contract during a special meeting with no opportunity for public comment. This time, they showed an even deeper disregard for their responsibilities as public servants: Aborting a national search for a new superintendent and denying Interim Superintendent Brent Jones a chance to show students, parents and taxpayers that, indeed, he is the best person for the job. Government bodies can’t fast-forward through transparent processes just because they think they know the right answer. One other odd thing about the hiring of Brent Jones - most permanent SPS superintendent contracts ar
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Check out the front page of the Seattle Times!!!!!!
-justmovedawaybecausespecialedissoscrewewdupinseattle
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014303247_audit23m.html
Financial scandal hits Seattle Public Schools
sigh.
And...is there any accountability of the money we just approved in the most recent supplemental levy?
If the supe and her CFO are at all involved or this happened due to a lack of oversight on their part, they will have to go and it will be up to us to pressure the board and/or replace board members to make that happen.
"Us" meaning "parents".
It will be up to us as parents and concerned citizens to make that happen.
Potter and Stephens were quite proud of their efforts, but Stephens (from the Times piece) is now trying to absolve himself from any oversight.
Oversight. Levy? The Board won't fire MGJ. Their oversight, or lack of, allowed Potter to do what he did and get away with it in plain sight.
The Reform crowd can spin this as yet another reason for their brand of reform. Scandal = opportunity. They'll embrace the word 'oversight' like an iron lung.
@ wsnorth: Agreed. The Board needs to fire MGJ, but since oversight is their primary job, it would smack of hypocrisy unless they absolve themselves, apologize for their failure and/or collusion, or quit. I'd ask McGinn to take over, but he can't even take over the tunnel.
At the risk of sounding like a carnival fortune teller, I predcit we'll continue to read it here first, and SPS will continue to bumble along and be the neverending cash cow for fraud. (Do an archive search on SPS and SPICE, go back 10-15 years. Money goes missing from this district all the time.)
What a shame. As if PRIVATE entities, non-union, are less prone to fraud, as if they have some higher standard of oversight...
Perhaps they do: The profit motive is a strong enticement to oversight - "are we getting the most dollars? Is EVERYONE (stockholders included) getting profit from the "business" (even if the profit is predicated on fraud, such as the mortgage frauds...)
The Board must act to admit culpability and act to guarantee future oversight. Privatizing won't help; our PUBLIC board and district must be held accountable.
(We should probably continue the scandal discussion in the new thread Mel just posted up.)
I listened to the segment today as I drove around doing errands before the Big Scary Snowstorm hits (a whopping zero inches so far), and I thought Mel did a great job.
I found it interesting that Mel and Paul (Guppy) had some areas of agreement: Paul went on and on about how lousy SPS is with money, and there's really no argument about that any more, is there? But the important thing is, this levy is NOT SPS money, it's City of Seattle money, and we can certainly hope there'll be more transparency and, dare I say, integrity?
http://www.cityofseattle.net/neighborhoods/education/
I really don't want to end up seeming to oppose this by asking questions, since in 1990 I was part of a team that campaigned for the original levy and have supported it many times. Nonetheless, when the support was eliminated for the after school programs for middle school, I don't think that was due to them not working. The exact reasons were never clear.
When one branch of government is asserted to be more trustworthy than another, just because it is different, my cautious side is alerted. If the District were more privatized much of what is coming out now would be buried and not subject to public scrutiny. The trust should be built due to the automatic built-in transparency and ease of obtaining details of expenditures and services received no matter which public entity it is.