First Returns - Incumbents Winning Except for Marty McLaren Beating Steve Sundquist
It was a hard one to call and you could have placed bets on any and all of the incumbents or challengers and still not gotten it right.
It looks like incumbents Peter Maier (up 2,992 votes), Sherry Carr (up 6,910 votes) and Harium Martin-Morris (up15,158 votes) will be returned to office.
Only challenger Marty McLaren appears to have won her race against Steve Sundquist (up by 1,831 votes).
To note:
It looks like incumbents Peter Maier (up 2,992 votes), Sherry Carr (up 6,910 votes) and Harium Martin-Morris (up15,158 votes) will be returned to office.
Only challenger Marty McLaren appears to have won her race against Steve Sundquist (up by 1,831 votes).
To note:
- I am amazed at the number of people who said they hadn't gotten their votes in until yesterday or today. What it could mean for any candidate, I don't know.
- If late ballots can still flip an election, would that mean Marty McLaren could still lose to Steve Sundquist BUT it flips Sharon Peaslee to beating Peter Maier? That could be one outcome if there are still enough votes out there (although the McLaren/Sundquist race is much closer).
- I did have a feeling about the McLaren/Sundquist race only because that district seemed to have the most personal anger at the incumbent as compared to the other districts.
- The reporter from The Stranger took a look at the vote totals, noted the Buetow/Martin-Morris race and said, "It's our fault." I don't know that it's anyone's "fault" but that skewed vote total, compared to the other races, was telling.
- The party at Rosita's was still fun and spirits were high and the challengers were all proud of their efforts and those of their supporters.
Comments
On the positive side, if any of them have got to go it's Steve Sundquist so there is still hope for that. Of all challengers I am most impressed by Marty McClaren. If that goes how it seems it will be a double celebration.
sw
I know statistics don't change much with a large sampling, but you never know.
2007 percentages:
Maier 63.78%
Carr 58.66%
Martin-Morris 77.03%
Sundquist 61.22%
2011 percentages (so far):
Maier 51.92%
Carr 54.73%
Martin-Morris 60.66%
Sundquist 48.43%
Apparent trend is a significant loss of support for current members except Sherry Carr (which doesn't surprise me). Contrasting '11 challengers with '07 incumbents explains part of the drop in support, as the prior board did not project cohesion and was vulnerable to wholesale replacement.
I suspect the other factor is a drop in confidence with the current board, but not significant enough to outright fire them. Perhaps, to many, this board did enough right, or not enough wrong, to warrant replacement.
If there's a shocker, I'd say it's Beutow vs. M-M. Harium was so popular in '07, he remains quite popular even after a 17 point drop in '11.
Too early to interpret much more at this point, but I expect turnout will rival the '07 election of about 50%.
Will Sundquist continue to dismiss his detractors as the super vocal minority, while maintaining the silent majority supports him?
Will Maier acknowledge his critics if he survives and prevails in a squeaker?
Will Carr grow bolder and assert any independence if she also prevails?
Will Martin-Morris put his feet up, after garnering 60% of the vote, even after a 17 point drop from '07? (Why wouldn't he? People apparently love him!)
Stay tuned....WSDWG
I'm still pulling for later returns to flip District One.
And I'm happy and impressed that Marty McLaren and Sharon Peaslee left the "No Minors" zone to briefly greet one of their junior volunteers.
CT
Dan, I hope you are drafting your recall petition against HMM. I'll sign on.
When mainstream media and even not so mainstream media (The Stranger) support the incumbents, the average person without any skin in the game follows their lead. And, of course, we've seen more than a few on this blog who supported the incumbents as well. I'm not surprised, with the results, but had hoped that SPS would turn around from it's present course and become the District it could be.
SolvayGirl
If the question is, are you better off today than 4 years ago, a lot of people unharmed or benefited by the NSAP, for example, are going to answer "yes" to that question. It may take another couple years for the downsides to some changes to rear their ugly heads, even though plenty of people, like those in WSN, are living that daily reality right now. No matter what, on we go. WSDWG
From the outsider, or unaffected, "macro" view, many of the changes can't look that bad. "Neighborhood schools?" Of course! Who on the outside can argue with that? Cost-cutting, accountability, most "professional" board ever (so says the Times), etc.
If I didn't have kids in the system, where I see both the positives, AND THE NEGATIVES, of all these changes and moves, I'd have a hard time not giving current board members credit for doing a mostly thankless job out of the apparent goodness of their hearts, when they all have good jobs or more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
Compared to prior boards, this one can certainly claim lots of "action," whereas prior boards have been notoriously lacking in consensus, at least in the eyes of the wider public, especially those without skin in the game.
Heck, even I will credit the incumbents for the time they put in, and I do believe their intentions are mostly, or primarily, noble. Judgment? That's another topic for another day. WSDWG
Sherry Carr doesn't surprise me. Even though I disagree with virtually all her votes, and she shares equal responsibilities for everything I feel has gone wrong with the district, she SEEMS the most reasonable one of the four . . . you get the sense that, even after all this time, she COULD change. It's also not entirely surprising because Kate Martin, though I voted for her, had the strongest "against" push.
That said, I'm stunned that HMM is doing so well. Not just because I think Buetow is an excellent candidate but also because HMM has so clearly checked out of the process. He never challenges the staff any more, and goes as far as to chastise those who might question things, has shut down his blog and, in general, doesn't seem to be part of anything.
I still hope that Maier goes down 'cause I happen to think he's the worst of them all.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some shifting!
stu
It's what I would have done before I had kids in school and started paying attention.
Unfortunately, it makes him hard to unseat, unless another African-American runs for the board.
Sign me: Too close to home.
I'm wondering how many of that same lot might think "Marty" McLaren is a dude?
Just sayin' - WSDWG
Any time. I recommend washing it down with a stiff drink. ;)
Peaslee got the stroke of luck that Peter was the fall guy for Pottergate. (Though Sundquist and HMM also had been notified of problems, they let Peter take the publicity hit.) She might yet win, but doubtful. If she wins, expect her to become the board "radical" in the best possible sense. If she loses, expect her to keep rattling Peter's cage, esp. on math. Math people, aggrieved with the district, love her.
Martin grew the most on the campaign trail. Only a few Carr-supporters stuck her with the Crazy Kate moniker at the end. Expect her to become an authoritative presence on the Achievement Gap in Seattle via her activism and her own writing. Her views have nothing to do with establishment Stand on Children and LEV, but she speaks truth to their privileged white perspectives. Might she run again in 4 years? Depends on movement on the Achivement Gap, I think. She might also have enough of the political bug to stand for elected office in a different capacity. A more winning Diane Ferguson II anyone?
Buetow got hit hard b/c of the Diversity thing (though the Clarence Thomas comparison for HMM has been bandied about a lot from the South End which is both unfortunate and interesting) and The Stranger who mocked her a tad too long before they beat a chastened retreat from HMM. She ran a classy, cogent campaign. Expect to see her elsewhere on the political or advocate scene in the coming months/years. She seems to bridge the advocate-incumbent gap more naturally than the others. She also has communication skills the district has shown once again with current headlines that it desperately needs. Send this district a liferaft and clean out the communications department (again).
McLaren benefited from being a teacher(yes!) and from Sundquist allowing SPS to completely screw up of West Seattle enrollment patterns, as well as close Cooper. People are pissed. Expect Marty to hold her lead. What will National Ed Reform do without Sundquist? Expect it to glom onto HMM, the board's unapologetic TFA cheerleader and apparent BFF with LEV-founder Lisa McFarlane. As a board member, expect McLaren to ally with Patu on social justice issues, stymieing Maier's fiscal chop chop sensibilities and HMM's Ed Reform push.
Political Junkie
Grateful Seattle Mom
Grateful Seattle Mom
https://info.kingcounty.gov/
elections/mailballottracking.aspx
I dropped my ballot in the drop box this weekend, and it hasn't been counted yet.
DWE
Thanks to all of the candidates - challengers and incumbents!
Murky Water
I was waiting for someone to say this. It's typical here. If you don't agree with me you are naive, and couldn't possibly know any better.
I believe that voters do know what they want- they simply don't agree with the anti incumbent views of this blog, and their votes reflect that. I've said it before, and it has has been proven by the election results. Most people think the current board has done an adequate enough job.
The views of (most) of the posters on this blog are not representative of the views of the greater Seattle community. It is time to acknowledge that.
Murky Water
The views of (most) of the posters on this blog are not representative of the views of the greater Seattle community.
Those statements are not mutually exclusive. Neither are they necessarily inaccurate.
Unfortunately, a majority of citizens don't care enough to research the issues and vote at all.
/moved because it was out of place after Murky reposted
Bingo WSDWG!! You said it better than I could. Their ability to get the job done is what drew me to this board and allowed me to view all of them (except one) as "adequate". It's not that I agreed with everything this board did or how they voted (I didn't at times) but I was giddy happy to finally see progress and action.
The board before this board had good intentions, and were fine people, but very very little ever got done. It was very frustrating.
If we elected to many activists to the board this time around I feared that the trade off would be that we would once again paralyze the district and halt progress. I'd rather see progress even with some wrong turns and mistakes along the way, than no progress at all. And that is what it boils down to for me.
Murky Water
"If you don't agree with me you are naive, and couldn't possibly know any better."
Can't get much more emphatic than that.
"I believe that voters do know what they want- they simply don't agree with the anti incumbent views of this blog, and their votes reflect that."
I'm going to go with the "most people don't pay enough attention" view rather than this one. The loss of votes from City Council to Board races might bear that out.
"The views of (most) of the posters on this blog are not representative of the views of the greater Seattle community. It is time to acknowledge that."
Who said they were? Could you show me a post where anyone said "we are the views of the greater Seattle community? Even the great Seattle school community?
Didn't think so.
It's posts like that that make me wonder why some people are even here.
wrong turns and mistakes
If the last 3+ years can be characterized as "wrong turns and mistakes", then you have a very high tolerance level for bad judgment.
I wonder whether staff owns some of the credit to getting things done. After all, they are part of the equation.
A Friend of Seattle
What is more revealing is when you go back to some of the posts and look at some of the word and phrase usage, it's even more telling how often this method is used (and not just on this blog) and how effective it is. You don't need to be right to win an argument or a race. You just need to know how to win it.
voter
Fingers crossed and never naive ;o)
Murky Waters thinks the commenters here are in an echo chamber, a kind of self-reinforcing bubble that filters out reality and that commenters here better face up to it. What's the proof? Well, most voters don't agree with the majority view here regarding the bad judgment of the incumbents.
Therefore, what? Their bad judgment and failures of oversight weren't bad because the voters didn't think so? Either their judgment and oversight was bad or it wasn't. It's pretty hard to make the case that it wasn't. So in what reality do people who consistently make bad decisions and fail in their oversight get re-elected? Either one in which people are unaware of these failures, or if they are aware, they don't care.
So is this blog an echo chamber? I don't know. Were the people who opposed the invasion of Iraq in an echo chamber? Were the people who voted against George Bush in an echo chamber? Their views didn't reflect the majority, and as with them, so here--time will tell who is right, not a single election.
The votes are still being counted. Let's be empirical, not superficial. WSDWG
Perhaps to many "unknown unknowns" prohibit meaningful analysis and interpretation at this time.
How would I know? WSDWG
In light of that, however these races break over the next few days, I feel pretty good that the people heard and responded (by voting) as they felt best.
YUP ... how they felt ... based on what?
So we will see about 120,000 votes.......
As long as too many voters choose to:
cast their votes founded in opinions formed by myths and half-truths, rather than the facts, ......
we will continue to have legislative bodies filled with purveyors of half-truths.
I wasn't in an echo chamber, but nobody ran up to me stating they were pro-incumbent and debating with me either. Teachers active and retired, and parents whose children are enrolled in public schools were most interested.
I did much more than I expected to at the beginning of the campaign, and I credit the encouragement and involvement of savvy and bright campaign assistants for that.
If anything I learned that I'm definitely not alone nor way off base in my beliefs and opinions about what makes for better schools, I'm better educated about how endorsements and advocacy groups work here, and the election experience has emboldened me to lob ideas at my son's school's PTSA.
The election isn't settled yet for all races, and whichever way it goes what matters to me is that I supported with my available time and money a principled, smart, capable candidate with vision and ideas for an improved School Board and district.
The Democratization of Truth:
Communication and the Crisis of Contemporary Politics
By W. Lance Bennett
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
7 p.m.
Kane Hall, Room 130
Anyway, it's been an education for all of us, and I hope all of us take the lessons learned and build from them and keep pushing no matter who finally winds up on the board this go round.
My neighbors on both sides are retired with grown children. None of their grandchildren attend school in Seattle. Across the street, a young couple has an 18-month-old; their toes are barely in the water. They've heard the public elementary up the street is pretty good (it is; they're lucky). Directly across, a single, Orthodox Jewish 40-yr-old guy. He's very political when it comes to City Council etc., but can't even tell me who's on the school board.
They don't go to forums or read blogs. They get their opinions from the local media. They do not have a lot of knowledge about TFA or ed-reform. They see that SPS is doing things: NSAP, closing under-enrolled schools, restructuring transportation, aligning curriculum, creating STEM, raising test scores. The Times endorsed the incumbents. The Stranger endorsed the incumbents. They must be good! They vote for the incumbents or skip them at best.
I NEVER said they are naive, they are just not very involved in the local school district (I know I had no real clue about it until my child started attending public school). There are so many political issues to concern yourself with these days, that we all tend to pick the ones that affect us personally the most.
I know that not everyone shares my view. I've been on the losing side of most elections since I first voted for George McGovern vs. Nixon in 1972 (yup, I'm old, and was one of the very first 18-yr-olds to vote). But just as I marveled then that very few of my college classmates took advantage of the two days off the school gave us to go home and vote, I still am surprised at how few people vote today.
So "Murky," please do not put words between my lines. I was just stating my opinion that many people are not as obsessed with the inner-workings of SPS as those of us who read this blog. And, I did acknowledge that even some who do felt that at least some of the incumbents deserved another term. Many of the moves made recently have definitely benefitted some families, and I am sure that if I had been in that camp, I'd be happier about the direction SPS was going too.
SG
SG
Murky disagrees. Murky, do you have any evidence to support your implication that the general public IS paying attention to the school board and district? Beyond reading the Times?
One could also interpret the results at success is related to money spent - I believe McLaren had the best-funded campaign among the challengers.
People want to vote for something that gives them hope, not just against something that they have come to think of as business as usual. Was an alternative vision adequately articulated? If so what was it? If not, would it have made a difference if one had been? Do you think a consensus alternative vision could be developed? I don't know. Just something I'm thinking about.
Me: "I'm voting for all of the challengers. I'm not happy with many of the decisions the current board members have made."
Friend: "Really? But the Seattle Times endorsed all the incumbents."
And that, my friends, was where she was getting her info on the school board race. And we know how unobjective the Times was in its coverage of the school board candidates.
I echo that - I sent a well considered, fact-based email to as many friends as I could think of to urge them to vote for the challengers.
So many came back - but the Seattle Times endorsed the incumbents.
Many friends said they appreciated my perspective and would vote challengers but many had already sent in their ballots.
boo. Sad today about the board but happy about the levy!
PAL
The SEA must agree with the huge sums spent on Central Admin. and the likes of Duggan Harman whom says he know the hardship of furloughs but gets a 20K raise.
LAME SEATTLE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION.
Willfull ignorance at its best
Sad news.
What did they get done, exactly?
When you think of what they got done, please do not include things that the staff got done, but things that the Board got done.
Perhaps the most significant problem with this board has been the adoption of a "hands off the staff" policy.
What one calls oversight and policy enforcement, another calls interference or meddling.
Lip service is the level of their commitment to governance as well. They go on and on about their governance role, but never really do much governance work. Yes, they have commissioned this huge policy overhaul, but look how carelessly they have done it.
The lip service they pay to management oversight and to governance don't hold a candle to the lip service they pay to community engagement. This is where we see the biggest gap between their rhetoric and their actual performance. Look through the motions and you will find very few of them reach the Board with any community engagement at all. They sure don't get any after introduction.
As lazy as this Board has been at legislative meetings they have been even lazier in committee meetings. They allow themselves to be carried along on the staff's current and never dip an oar into the water themselves.
But this board has been bought and sold on the Don McAdams/Broad Foundation theory that a good School Board simply hires a strong CEO-like SI, then sits back and let he or she run the show, only looking toward the eventual bottom line of improved test scores.
OF COURSE this is a recipe for scandals and disasters as nobody looks, or bothers to pay attention to HOW those scores are actually generated, and whether they have any validity at all, but no matter. We want results!
We've practically forgotten about the 17%-Gate story, which is exponentially worse than what Mr. Potter did, as those giant lies led directly to changes in State Legislation, to address a crisis that, in fact, did not exist. That it didn't outrage this board when MGJ and her toady Bernatek dragged SPS's reputation through the gutter by claiming SPS had about the lowest college prep rate in the region spoke volumes to me. If ever there was a firing offense, that case of high treason justified it.
I will say again that Sundquist is a decent person, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how he can continue to advocate for his "governance" philosophy and tout his experience, when it has been so terribly ineffective in practice.
The only explanation appears to be this board's preoccupation with sticking to its 5 year strategic plan, even when DeBell is sounding alarm bells that it isn't working. Beware ambitious, large-scale plans going forward.
Such "action" winds up being in vain, while really important work is left undone. Its a crying shame that a failing ideology has such an iron grip on this board.
Of course, he thinks that a strong board should focus on three things:
1. Management oversight. By this, Mr. McAdams means that the Board should judge the quality of the management decisions by the outcomes. They should compare those measurable outcomes to pre-determined benchmarks. This is the brand of accountability that we were taught by Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: work with known metrics, assessments and benchmarks. A strong Board would be different from the Sundquist Board in that they would actually do the work of setting the benchmarks and holding the staff accountable for the outcomes. This Board never did.
2. Governance. In the McAdams vision of a strong Board they would enforce policy and absolutely require the district staff to keep their commitments. The Sundquist board, however, refuses to enforce policy (they usually don't even know what the policy is), and they refuse to require staff to keep their commitments. Seriously, a real McAdams led board would have fired Dr. Goodloe-Johnson by June of 2009.
3. Community engagement. In the McAdams model, the popularly elected Board act as the liason between the staff and the community. The Board would both represent the community to the District and represent the District to the community. The Sundquist board only ever represented the District to the community and they didn't do much of that.
Don McAdams would advocate for a strong Board, not a crowd of rubber-stamping bobbleheads like we have. I will say that Mr. McAdams would say that the board needs to stay on their side of the net, but he would expect them to completely cover that half of the court. The problem with our board is that they won't play on either side of the net. They haven't tried to manage the district, although they have explored further than they should have. But neither have they tried to govern the district. They haven't really tried to do anything. Consequently, they have done nothing.
Well not quiet nothing ... three out of four incumbents seeking reelection were reelected.