Seattle Times: Board Takeover AND Sped Director Mystery Solved

In public education editorializing, the Times mantra seems to be, "keeping saying the same thing over and over and it'll work."  Well, it does sometimes but not always.  (You have to wonder about this tactic given their dropping subscription rates - people like to read about NEW things.)

Here's their latest and it's fairly boring reading because it's the same old wording.  "Dysfunctional", they get the number of students in SPS wrong ("nearly 50k" - geez, aren't they journalists?), "melodrama" and, of course, should we have a conversation about governance?

Here's my comments to them:

Times, you don't you ever get tired of the same old tired lines? "this dysfunctional district?"

It's not dysfunctional, it has problems. There's a difference.

There is no other urban district in the country that doesn't have problems and guess what? Sped and graduation rates and college-career readiness are at the top of the list. But you wouldn't want to acknowledge that because it makes the district look, well, less "dysfunctional."

As other commenters have stated, this capacity management issue is HUGE and sucks up large amounts of time. It's at the point where many kids don't even get 20 minutes for lunch because of it (and the district admits this). And yet the Times rarely acknowledges this large and continuing issue.

I, too, challenge your selection of the timeline of 2012. What makes that oh, so different from nearly any other point in the district? Like Olchefske? Or Goodloe-Johnson? Right, you liked them so mum's the word. Cherry-picking your timeline won't help your cause.

As well, when we had a board that didn't have "melodrama" (what a word), we got.... rubber-stamping and lack of oversight and the unexplained loss of about $30M. In two words, no thanks.

Go to the Washington State School Directors' Association website. They talk a lot to Board members about the challenges of sitting on a board and warn directors that they will, at times, experience differences.

And then we come to the "can we just talk about it" portion of the program. Certainly we can talk about mayoral takeover of the Board/district - you just need to include EVERYONE in the conversation and not just DFER, Stand for Children, Alliance for Education, LEV and, of course, in the back of the room, the Gates Foundation. These are everyone's schools, not just the usual suspects.

I'll just throw this out to start:

- how come if we voters are smart enough to vote in a mayor and a city council, our vote on School Board is being challenged?

- you may like who the mayor is now but what if you don't like the next mayor? You okay with the next person elected mayor leading the schools? You know, like a Mayor Sawant?

- two words - local control. If the Legislature did this to Seattle (and it would have to go thru them), you really think that legislators in Eastern Washington wouldn't hear from their constituents about losing local control in their OWN school districts?

I, myself, have advocated many times for a paid Board. I note that Rep. Reuven Carlyle has, as well (to no avail). If the top three largest school boards in Washington State got paid (and that's about 17 people), it would be a drop in the bucket of the state budget.

Last thing. Times, you know when you denigrate this district, on the regular basis that you do, you are denigrating the teachers, staff and parents who make the choice to call it home. You are making parents feel bad about their choice when most of them proudly send their child to a Seattle Public school every day. Parents who contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars - every year - because they feel the need to support this "dysfunctional district."

It's unkind and untrue and to keep saying it for your own ends is the worst kind of editorializing.

As well, the Times also has an accounting of the Special Education director story. You know, the one where the district hired a new Sped director, she was there for several months, then poof! gone with almost no explanation.  (I knew from sources what the issue was but did not feel I had enough to print.)  Turns out that Ms. McWilliams seemingly had steered the bidding on a Sped contract to the vendor she wanted.  She used a personal e-mail address to send a friend at that vendor company information about the other vendors' bids.

She now has a 3-month payout (on top of being paid to sit around for several months) and the promise to "never apply for a job" with SPS again.  But she even got a letter of reference. 

Her lawyer said she was charged by  SPS to come in and get things done and quickly.  This is true.  It also seemed in her nature to move at a high speed and that may have rubbed some the wrong way.  (I know that Superintendent Banda personally recruited her from the district she had previously worked at in California.) 

One funny note: the district is calling McWilliams out for not following district policy and that "investigators said they think McWilliams knew the rules."  Sound familiar?  You would have "thought" that Nyland - a seasoned administrator coming into the largest district in the state - would have know the policies (or that a handler would have guided him thru the process the first couple of times). 

Of course, I'm not equating what she did to Nyland.  I am saying that one issue at the district is that, apparently, they don't get new senior hires up-to-speed on policies and procedures very well.