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Brandon Hersey is new D7 Director
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The vote was 4-2 with Geary and Pinkham voting for Emijah Smith.
I’ll post more on what was said later.
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Comments
Anonymous said…
This is despite what was evidently overwhelming parent support for the other candidate. Interesting. I'd like to hear rationale for the choice that ignores parents.
Concerned Parent
Anonymous said…
Concerned parent, where is the evidence of this overwhelming support? Phone calls? Emails? Not everyone can make a public meeting.
Fed Up
Anonymous said…
@concerned parent
This blog isn't representative of district parents, either.
Enough
Anonymous said…
The district with the population that struggles the most gets the youngest and least experienced candidate, with little knowledge of the district.
More noise please
Anonymous said…
Are you talking about the candidate who got no votes? Maybe that type of experience wasn't what the were looking for.
Concerned Parent, you need to be clearer in your comment. Who is the one with "overwhelming parent support?" Also, how do you know that?
ALL of you need to be clear about who you are talking about.
D7 Parent said…
The district had a form for people to register their "vote" as well as forms at all the candidate forums to fill out. They did not (to my knowledge) reach out to immigrant community groups in D7 to help spread the word which was a huge oversight. This process has been pretty brutal for all the candidates. It would have been so much better to have had an election. I hope the board has learned something from it, but from my perspective it wasn't worth it.
Anonymous said…
This board lacks a brain and a spine. They brought in Amplify. They failed to vote in Ms. Van Arcken. Says a lot about their priorities.
Clearly, they prioritize optics. And the district 7 replacement kangaroo court is/was also only about OPTICS, not excellence. Not about scaffolding kids and communities to higher achievement.
Julie Van Arcken got twice as many public ‘votes’ as the next highest candidate. Fact. But, this was not an election, and an electronic survey is not a substitute for a properly processed ballot box. But still.... she got twice as many votes. But that counts for nothing. In the end, the board went with optics. So, what (who) the public overwhelmingly wanted, at least per SPS’s own tool to gather that feedback, they ignored. Rather typical.
Hopeless.
Anonymous said…
@ D7 Parent:
I sure hope you are not holding the Board responsible for there not having been an election.
-- Ivan Weiss
Anonymous said…
"Julie Van Arcken got twice as many public ‘votes’ as the next highest candidate."
You've got to be kidding if you think that was a measure of the public. It was a vote of the well-connected.
Get Real
Anonymous said…
They don’t need another HCC proponent of stratified education. That’s what we’re moving away from. The focus is African American males, and now we have a highly qualified one. We don’t need a do gooder special interest panderer. And we don’t need someone who has already dragged down the PTSA, with a quasi criminal record as a bonus. The choice was correct, and obvious.
Get Overit
Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
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
Why You Should Care Mr. Crabill has found quite the acolyte in Director Chandra Hampson. In the course of discussions over SOFG, she says his name over and over, "A.J .says we...." Now that's not too surprising given the direction the district is heading and that it is Mr. Crabill's work with the Council of Great City Schools is how we got here. But it appears that Mr. Crabill is working very closely with Hampson and we know she wields some amount of power over the majority of the Board. Mr. Crabill is going to continue to work with the Board as SOFG is instituted in SPS. In fact, his role may become more public as it did at one SPS Board meeting in the spring where he was on the phone during the meeting and suggested the Board stop the meeting to "self-reflect." I also noticed that in a district in South Carolina, when things weren't going to plan, he blamed the Board for not following SOFG to the letter. Look for that to happen here if Board members w
Comments
Concerned Parent
Fed Up
This blog isn't representative of district parents, either.
Enough
More noise please
Enough
ALL of you need to be clear about who you are talking about.
This process has been pretty brutal for all the candidates. It would have been so much better to have had an election. I hope the board has learned something from it, but from my perspective it wasn't worth it.
Clearly, they prioritize optics. And the district 7 replacement kangaroo court is/was also only about OPTICS, not excellence. Not about scaffolding kids and communities to higher achievement.
Julie Van Arcken got twice as many public ‘votes’ as the next highest candidate. Fact. But, this was not an election, and an electronic survey is not a substitute for a properly processed ballot box. But still.... she got twice as many votes. But that counts for nothing. In the end, the board went with optics. So, what (who) the public overwhelmingly wanted, at least per SPS’s own tool to gather that feedback, they ignored. Rather typical.
Hopeless.
I sure hope you are not holding the Board responsible for there not having been an election.
-- Ivan Weiss
You've got to be kidding if you think that was a measure of the public. It was a vote of the well-connected.
Get Real
Get Overit