Saying No to Mayoral Control

A group of public education activists has come out against Rep. Eric Pettigrew's bill to all the mayor of Seattle to appoint two members of the Seattle School Board.  It includes statements from Director Sue Peters who, as far as I know, is the only Board director to go on record.  I asked for a statement - a week ago - from the Board but have received no answer.

The Seattle Weekly has a good story that has a startling ending. 

Nevertheless, it’s a bill that moves in that direction, and as such was bound to raise controversy. “The proposal is an affront to democracy,” School Boardmember Sue Peters says in the release. Currently, all board members are elected. 

“The only reason to remove elected school board members is to forcibly impose policies that everyone knows the public does not want,” adds Robert Cruickshank, a onetime communications advisory to former Mayor Mike McGinn and now president of the Northwest Progressive Institute.

Quite apart from specific policy agendas, there’s been an idea circulating in big cities around the country that mayoral control—or even state control—will solve public education’s ills. In the last two decades, roughly 20 school districts have come under some mayoral oversight, according to a 2014 report on the subject by the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education. It’s ironic, the report goes on to note, since a century ago, the country moved away from mayoral control of school districts due to corruption and cronyism. 

Pettigrew says this:

Pettigrew mentions the persistent achievement gap between whites and students of color, which the south Seattle Democrat says is particularly prevalent in his district. “Let’s just see what happens,” he says, if we try something different. 

What, throw something at the wall and see if it sticks?  He STILL has not explained any connection between outcomes for students of color and mayoral control.  Just rearranging the chairs will not in itself create change.  And where's that all-important data? 

Oddly, though, Pettigrew says he’s not familiar or particularly interested in how this idea has played out in other cities. The results are mixed. “Researchers are divided on the question of whether or not it has produced higher student achievement,” concludes the Center for Public Education report, entitled “Toward collaboration, not a coup.” “Almost all agree on one negative consequence, however. These researchers observed that when mayors take charge of public schools, the role of parents and the community, especially among minority groups, can be marginalized.”

That surprising ending?

He (Pettigrew) says he and Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos are working on a new proposal stemming from their feeling that the Seattle School District is too big to manage effectively. Their solution: splitting it in two. 

Now, that’s an idea that truly seems to come out of the blue, and it raises a million questions. What would the boundaries be? Would it create better-off and worse-off districts? Would they share resources? 

And, perhaps most importantly, how would the public feel about that? 

I'll have to ask Rep Tomiko-Santos about this idea; I have never heard her mention it.  But split in two? Uh oh.