McWilliams Resigns
The other shoe has dropped.
Zakiyyah McWilliams has "resigned" as Executive Director of Special Education for Seattle Public Schools. See the Seattle Times article here.
Zakiyyah McWilliams has "resigned" as Executive Director of Special Education for Seattle Public Schools. See the Seattle Times article here.
Tell me again how Dr. Nyland is doing such a great job addressing the district's woes.
Comments
I didn't like what she did and what I did wasn't personal. She really never had a chance at SPS nor will any SPED director until they have authority over the teachers.
SPS needs to come clean with the results of the investigation.
--Michael
As Mirmac noted; they couldn't pin the bad things she did (and she did do bad things) without incriminating themselves in the process.
It's really not a loss. There were better Exec Directors before her who left after a year.
The jury's out on the new one. The question at this point is really not who the next person to walk on coals is, or even how good he is at walking over hot coals. The question, after 10 SpEd directors in 9 years, is whether anyone can walk on those hot coals. The only way anyone could is is someone turns the heat down, and it doesn't look like that is going to happen (although they have hired more admins to help him.)
GL
The emails that were released earlier this year (and posted to the Scribd site) showed that Tolley (for sure) and to some extent, English, encouraged Z to work around the normal contract process and give the contract to TIERS. After Z through a fit at the financial analyst (Diane Taguba) that put a stop to the improper contracting, everyone backed down and the contract was issued.
There's been hints here (from multiple people) that Z then went and used her personal email to get TIERS the larger contract so it couldn't be traced. Obviously, this is bad news bears but I don't understand how Tolley gets off after encouraging Z to run around the contracting process.
Also, in regards to what GL said, there were a couple of things that stood out to me about Z's professionalism in those scribd emails:
1) She wrote all her emails and signed her signature in MS Comic Sans. Really? The lack of email standards is endemic through SPS; another sign of a dysfunctional organization but is especially egregious coming from an Executive Director.
2) Her signature directed all attempts to contact her to her administrative assistant. No email or phone number for her, tell her admin and Z will get to it when she can. Setting up your signature like this stinks of elitism and power. Most people (public and private) who have an admin to handle their correspondence will still list their email and phone as if its their own, even if the admin answers. Again, she was operating outside of standard etiquette and none of her managers corrected it. Another systemic problem.
3)Temper was on display in those emails to Diane Taguba where she pulled the HR director in to the discussion because Diane had blocked Z's contracting with TIERS. How did Banda (and SPS HR) land an executive director with so few interpersonal skills and no demonstrated ability to lead teams to such an important position?
-northwesterner
Are you a business person? Many professionals cc: themselves (and thereby their admin) so that the emails may be filed under appropriate folders, thereby avoiding 30-60 day email backup destruction windows.
As I have said before, based on my 30 years contracting experience and read of district procedures (hah!), there was more than sufficient grounds to proceed on a sole source basis for the time-sensitive work in question. Instead English and Tolley decided to zig at the zag and try to practice procurement CYA while essentially moving down the same path. The minor dust-up (fit, as you call it) was when Diane's response email (cc:d to top mgrs) spelling out of specific steps for sole source requiring multiple signatures by superiors, was misinterpreted. Zee quickly apologized when, finally, her boss explained how procurement works at SPS and that the steps were standard operating procedure. The gist is procurement should not be handled by department heads when it exceeds a certain value. I would bet 95% of people inside and outside SPS have no clue about that. Do you? Have you never misunderstood an email that copied your boss (assuming you have one) or written one that required clarification?
Whatever, pursue your witchhunt. In my opinion, the department has taken a decided turn for the worst over the last four months and I've heard nothing to convince me otherwise.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014 6:09 PM
At a Special Meeting of the Board on December 10, Dr. Larry Nyland was approved by a vote of 5 to 2 to serve as the next Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools.
Dr. Larry Nyland was appointed by the Board in August to serve as Interim Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, through June 30, 2015.
This motion allows for the Board President to negotiate a Superintendent contract with Dr. Nyland through June 30, 2017.
A completed contract is expected to be brought to the Board for approval at its January 7 meeting.
--ModernSound
I was skeptical at the time when she was suspended and wanted to see more evidence. All I have provided here were my impressions of her based on the emails on scribd. I still don't have a horse in the race.
Regarding email signatures, go ahead and poo poo it but it is one of the unifying elements of a modern organization. I've managed in big corporations, small companies, and now I'm a graduate student at the largest university in the US. How you write and sign your email says a lot of about your professionalism. Every company I have worked at has required a standardized signature including title and company logo. The university I am at has a standard signature that all the faculty, staff, and at least the grad students in my program are required to use. It is not optional. The inability of anyone to see that the use of non-standard signature and email formatting at SPS is a problem. Amongst other things, it just looks bad.
I've worked in business. Most people that have an admin assistant still sign their signatures with their office line and their email as if that is who you are reaching, even if the admin is the one that actually answers the phone or reads the emails first. Z specifically wrote in her signature that if you needed to contact her, call her admin. Poor style and etiquette. For a few years I was the operations manager at a company where I was in charge of our dispatch office. My physical office was adjacent from the dispatchers however the main dispatch line rang on my phone as well and I would answer when business needs dictated. I did not include my direct line on my email signatures because I didn't want something urgent a dispatcher could handle stuck on my voice mail. So when people thought they were calling me, they would get the dispatch line and have to be transferred to me or leave a message with the dispatcher (who would then evaluate if it was an issue they needed to resolve). I did not put in my signature - if you need to get a hold of me call my dispatch office and John and James will screen your call; that would be pretentious.
Finally, I understand that procurement should not be handled by a department head when it is over a certain value. I have experience on both sides of that coin.
-northwesterner
And thus began the death knell of a brief (and spotty) glasnost in our district's recent F/U history.
The fix is in. Parent and community engagement? HAH! me talk engagefunk someday.
Community "partners"? OOh, they can help us with their great ideas of recruiting and training the school board "governance" superstars of tomorrow. Like Dexter Tang etc.
When asked whether "oversight" was part of the training, there was a clear sign that they had no idea of what oversight means. Kind of like MGJ and her ilk.
I would like to take back some of my votes in a few years past. Does no one retain their sense of morality and conviction? Are all things relative when it comes to power and politics?
I am disgusted. No one lectures me from the dais unless he or she shows me they listened, used rationale and evidence, and could present more evidence than, OH, we're hurt by x, y, z number of suit turnover downtown. Show me how z, y, x suits really made an impact in my child's classroom.
Nice backtrack, nevertheless only those directly knowledgable and impacted by an administrator can judge whether (ComicSans or not) they know their business or in the case of SpEd, the law and its purpose.
It's like me saying the pro football coach was obviously a buffoon because he wore the red jacket on alternate Saturdays.
Stay to your realm of email etiquette. I'll stick to contract law, procurement law, policy and best practice, and actual information from staffers and families in the district.
I don't absolve McWilliams, just as I don't absolve the recent transgressions of those who know better like Geotsch, Wright and Nyland - yet somehow can laugh away their booboos.
I hope you will join me in reminding our amnesiac board that a Pottergate and damning SAO Capital Program performance audit led to a major change in procurement responsibilities (I say change, not necessarily improvement). You and I should start a new community partnership/club that reminds board and staff of what happens a little over 2 years ago?! Or everyone can just pay the heck attention.
Look up the procurement authority matrix (good luck), understand it, then explain it to our district's top managers and the new corrupt majority of the board.
How you present yourself to your supervisors, your subordinates, and your colleagues matters.
It matters in everything you do, inside your organization. Successful leaders and managers are concerned about the way their written and verbal communication appears. Obviously, Z, was not.
She's not the only one. Many of the Public Disclosure email chains on the scribd site that I've gone through have show numerous high level staffers with poor professionalism in their emails. Sometimes it is grammar, sometimes their tone is too casual for the setting, other times its things such as font and signature. If you want to be professional, you have to appear professional. I've worked at companies where people have been counseled about how they write emails and how those emails make them and their organization appear. No one cares at SPS.
Let's talk about "contract law, procurement law, policy and best practice."
Z most certainly did not follow the polices and best practices in place at SPS over the TIERS consulting contract.
SPS has policies in place to prevent procurement improprieties. I'll simplify things here because I don't have time to re-read all those documents tonight. When the person tasked with reviewing the contracting procedures (Diane Taguba) raised red flags that policies were not being followed, Z sent at least one hostile email to Taguba that I read as being threatening in nature.
While she back down after some counseling - it is inappropriate to respond in the manner she did to Taguba when Taguba is the one tasked with auditing the policies. What kind of tone does that set for compliance with policies within the organization?
By the way, I once had a position in the compliance department of a large corporation. My job was to audit the divisions within my territory for compliance with internal policies and governing federal regulations. Many times, I had to point out actions by divisions within my territory that did not comply with our policies. Many times I got push back. I always worked with the managers directly to push forward and bring them in compliance. Our corporate culture left no room for being out of compliance. This meant that once the managers got over their initial discomfort, we were always able to work together to bring the organization back into compliance. There was no other choice.
I attended a panel discussion on power and influence within your organization with four retired VP/COO/CEO level executives from Fortune 500 companies about a month ago. The most accomplished exec there mentioned that even at the CEO level, your power and influence within the organization is like a bank account. You make deposits, and you make withdrawals. Deposits into the account are always smaller than withdrawals so you better be building up goodwill with your employees everyday, so they will fall your direction when needed. This analogy, in my experience, is pretty accurate. Even when you have the title, you have to get your team working with you. A CEO, VP, etc whose power and influence bank account goes into the red cannot fire everyone in the organization that does not follow his/her directives exactly. Executives with negative balances end up losing their jobs, because they can't get stuff done.
I'm afraid that with the behavior that was exposed in the Taguba email exchange, Z's bank account ran out.
-northwesterner
The question of inappropriately awarding a contract is a serious issue that could have landed this district in hot water. Every day vendors make PRR inquiring about the specifics of awarded contracts at SPS. The district could have been sued.
Ultimately, though, what I care about is the righting of the SPED department. I don't care if I liked Zee or not, or if she had good or bad fashion sense or if she put cat videos in her emails.
She simply did not have the capacity to run the department. Additionally, from what I could see, Zee was hamstrung by people in the department as well as outside the department.
As GL noted, perhaps no one could do a good job given the circumstances. Stability is good, but in this case that "other shoe dropping" doesn't really make a lot of noise.
The email font thing was just one of many issues I raised in my first post. I didn't think it would blow up like this but I will continue to maintain that how you are perceived in how you communicate matters. And communicating in comic sans does not look good.
I worked for a company that was awarded a contract by the UW as part of an RFP process. Immediately after the award one of our competitors initiated a formal challenge. The challenge took six weeks to resolve before the RFP could be awarded. Contracting and procurement procedures matter. See my above post for my thoughts on compliance within an organization.
Frequently, the commenters on and authors of this blog note the seemingly endless disfunction at JSCEE. As I mentioned above, power and influence are not solely vested in your position by virtue of your title.
If SPS is going to get better, they have got to get managers in place who believe in professionalism, leadership, team building, and working across the organization to accomplish goals. The way Z called out Taguba for doing her job ... really not something that should be tolerated in a functional organization.
Finally, as I mentioned in my first post, I would like to see more consequences directed at Tolley (especially) and English for their role in directing Z to run around the procurement rules.
-northwesterner
And, if Mr. Tolley or Mr. English did something wrong that rose to the level of termination, he could have fired them, too.
That is also my assessment of the new SPS Special Education ombudsman--probably a very nice person who knows very little about the law and the requirements of special education.
There are a lot of shenanigans going on right now, and I am very concerned that the district is not intent on moving away from past bad practices. the message with this appointment is that it is better to assuage parents than to provide them and staff with real information.
It is really unfortunate that so many decisions are being made that impact parents, yet parents aren't being consulted.
In meetings over a year ago, we were assured that we would have have input into the appointment of the ombudsperson. That didn't happen.
In a meeting earlier this year, Dr. Nyland and Mr. Tolley assured PTSA leadership that parents would have input into a search for a new Excecutive Director of Special Education, should Zakiyyah McWilliams not return. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Yet, the district says it wants family engagement, and as such parents are being offered the opportunity on Monday night to "learn more about family engagement."
Additionally, the district recently sent out its first ever special education newsletter, yet did not address many of the more pressing concerns to parents.
True family engagement involves receiving information from families, listening to their concerns and responding, not just trumpeting the districts' views.
These latest moves by SPS show that although they give lip service to family engagement, they really don't care or want true family engagement from families of students with disabilities.
Family engagement is time consuming, it can be messy, but if it is authentic, it could repair a lot of the very serious trust issues we have. The district should stop preaching at us and do the hard work of listening.
Jill, the ombuds position was clearly explained to the administration when it was recommended. Of course they know better and changed it to suit their parent management model.
There is reason to hope the new "liaison" will be of help, given her access to the 7400 student contact list.
Or was that a few jobs ago for Wyeth?
Under the Bus
A couple of families raised concerns about the records of 8,00 special needs students having been given out. He said he'd already addressed that in e-communications and said he'd reiterate it, that they've hired an attorney to examine their processes so that it doesn't happen again. Somebody questioned why it hadn't been addressed the first time that the guardian had received others' private information from the same law firm. Nyland questioned whether that was true, that it had actually ever been reported in the first instance. Like that.
AnneS.
So Nyland wants to play games?
Really maybe he needs to learn a lesson?
Cocky Nyland
Individuals that have worked within the John Stanford Center and develop meaningful skills. These individuals use their experience within SPS to climb the career ladder.
Color me foolish, but I believe we will see more job loss at the John Stanford Center.
BTW...Was anyone sad to see Don Kennedy leave??
Now SPS SPED has a leader with precious little knowledge of SPED. He does however have the admiration of the upper JSCEE administrators, which McWilliams with her nonprofessional manner never had, so perhaps he'll accomplish something. Politics in SPS SPED are every bit as important as professional expertise.
Accomplish = perhaps he'll be sure paperwork is in compliance with state and federal mandates. This has precious little to do with delivery of services within a classroom and the parents who don't understand that now will be witnessing the difference soon enough.
Some of the parents on this blog touted McWilliams as a great step forward. That professionals within SPS differed in their assessment is one of many reasons the input of those parents is taken with a grain of salt. Frankly, input of parents is not a priority at all. Yes, parents are a partner in educating SPED students. But they are not a partner in running SPS SPED. No doubt the group of SPED parents active on this blog are not going to be fans of this operating assumption.
Much of the staff that did see parents as a greater partner in SPS SPED solutions left during McWilliams time. Some may return, but no time soon. Delivery of quality special education services can be difficult even in districts who put a priority on these students. In SPS at this time, aside from a few great buildings, delivery of quality services is all but impossible. Problems are everywhere. Shortage of SPED staff. Lack of training for SPED staff. Funding. Space. Bureaucracy. School principals. General education teachers. Parents.
SPS Boondoggle
You would think after several successful legal actions SPS would learn and follow the law? Nope they are now attempting to implement "services" per their own unique interpretation of the IDEA. This will only result in additional legal action by me.
The key word for parents to use in SpEd communications is specially designed instruction or "SDI". SPS is going to fail the C-CAP because it has been made clear that SDI is not being currently provided to most students with IEPs. SPS can not even clarify that they know what SDI is or looks like in our schools. The district is trying to ask for more time from OSPI because of the lack of manpower at SPS to provide both SDI and comply with the C-CAP.
In the meantime students are not receiving SDI which is a violation that usually OSPI will award compensatory services to students as a remedy.
It's only fair for the district to start paying for outside services for SpEd students until SPS can prove compliance and demonstrates it uses scientifically proven methodologies in providing SDI.
I believe the citizen complaint(CC) count is above 22 and rising. OSPI is demanding that every OSPI corrective action be included in the SPS C-CAP and therefore the C-CAP continues to change and become more complex. There are 2 CC currently being investigated involving lack of SDI at two SPS schools, these CC have the potential to significantly change the SPS C-CAP making SPS compliance impossible by June 30th 2015.
--Michael
Look out. We have a bad-ass here.
Wow. The smartest one in the room AND a tough guy.
Didn't think it was possible, but this post actually made me feel empathy for the SPS special education system if this is the type of parent they have to contend with.
McWilliams is that you? You got spanked and now your trolling this blog? Don't you have any class left?
or is it your sidekick Spedy Gonzales trolling?
Spammer alert
GL
Under 42 U.S.C. §1983, when a school employee, acting under color of state law, causes the
violation of a well‐settled federal right of which a reasonable person would have known, he
or she may be personally liable for damages, and if there is proof that the violation was
undertaken with a malicious or oppressive intent or due to a callous indifference to the
federal right then punitive damages may be awarded.
Qualified Immunity Defense
Qualified immunity is a defense available for public officials when they perform a
discretionary act, if their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 800, 815‐17, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2736‐37 (1982).
“Clearly established” means that the contours of the rights were so clear at the time.
Boil yourwater
Really I think it fair that some of these educators should be held accountable, but that never seems to happen in Settle. They just move on to the next pay check.
Patrick Starfish
GL
Poor Babies
Improper discipline, teacher assaulting students. Race discrimination these are suits that have been filed against Seattle School teacher's and the district settled out of court so it's hard find the records.
There was even a case back in 2004 where a teacher was sued for sending a student home because the student was wearing a hair product that the teacher found offensive. The district paid $10,000 plus legal fees in an out of court settlement.
So it maybe true you can't find a suit that successfully resulted in a court or jury award it's disingenuous to for you to say it can't be done.
boil yourwater
http://seaac.www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/SEAAC/SEAAC%20Financial%20Accountability%20Position%20Paper.pdf?sessionid=93ac12ae16f067c78ac83b032c1d853f
GL
Yet Seattle District administrators, based on enrollment of 49,974 students, are receiving $13,795 per student in tax money. District administrators provide food services, bus transportation, cleaning and maintenance services to schools, as listed on pages 78, 79 and 80. Still, we were surprised to find that central administrators keep $306.8 million, or fully 45%, of the total education budget, leaving only $382.5 million (55%) to be divided among Seattle’s 97 community schools.
It not clear is the $103,000,000 for Sped is included in the $689.4 million. Anyway we know there's about $103,000,000 million divided by 7500 students = $13,733 on top of the $13,750 for a total of around $27K. Even if the number are off the point is families can do much better taking those dollars to the private sector that actually knows how to help these students.
In the 1990s, Seattle Superintendent John Stanford sent 70% of education dollars to local schools.
Where's thebeef
Boil yourwater
Of course I read your post. Did you read your statute? You can't sue teachers, but you can sue districts. There's a big difference, and if you don't know it, you should read up on it more before you post. Districts do not have qualified immunity, but teachers do. And I'm done arguing with you because you obviously have more reading to do.
GL
Over at the wacky Washington Policy Center (and I say their education work is wacky because it is so one-sided), they are right on one thing - why does so much money in Seattle Schools go to adm and not into the classroom?
Understand that no matter what you are told, the administration has rearranged the names so that they can say administration only gets 6%.
I'll bet if you combine "central adm" with "central office," you'd get a very different number.
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