More News from Seattle School Board Investigation of Two Members - Seattle Council PTSA

From the latest installment of requested documents from the Board investigation of Board members Chandra Hampson and Zachary DeWolf who were charged with HIB (harassment, intimidation and bullying) of two senior Black women staffers. (The investigation found that both directors had used "positional authority" to do so but neither did it because of the race of the two women.)

It is heavily redacted so I am trying to be careful to only note items when I am sure of who is being written about. I do apologize if some statements seem random but that is how both the interviews were written. All bold is mine.

The documents are interviews with other folks than the principals of the investigation who are Chandra Hampson, Zachary DeWolf, Keisha Scarlett and Manal Al-ansi. I'll start with two people who are part of the Seattle Council PTSA.

Sebrena Burr

• It is disturbing reading through these documents (and past ones) and seeing Hampson push off so much community input work to the Seattle Council PTSA, rather than trained staff like Manal Al-ansi, the Director of Racial Equity for SPS. There also could be some liability issues with the district allowing a private entity to do this work. What you see from Hampson is impatience on timing issues, rather than embracing of Al-ansi's expertise.

• It's interesting - and important to the whole discussion of race in schools - that Burr, a Black woman, says that "the problem is around the understanding of what is and is not anti-Black." Scarlett and Al-ansi are also both Black so that would be a good conversation to have. Burr also says that she almost ran for a position on the Board (likely Hersey's). She also states that (probably) Scarlett never reached out to the King County NAACP. Well given that Scarlett and Al-Ansi were trying pretty hard to keep this internal to SPS, that's not really a surprise. She also seems to fault the work of the two women, saying that "the process became less transparent." 

• She states that there were community members brought in by Scarlett and Al-ansi who she thought should not be there, saying it was "negative and toxic." She also claims that some community leaders were "harassed" at one point. She also points out that SCPTSA reached out to the national PTA group for a resolution on the issue of racism in public schools. 

• Hampson and former director Jill Geary were using a policy from a Virginia district as a template for Policy 0040, the anti-racism policy. I have found that district and will do a separate post on it. However, in the Burr interview, there is a heading, "Meeting with Denise Juneau - SCPTSA Asks for Policy Back." This in itself is troubling because it policy is the Board's work, not any outside entity. It feels like SCPTSA wants to claim total ownership of the creation of the policy and that may be part of the issue that sparked the acrimony.

Manuela Slye

• She states that she met Hampson in summer of 2018 through a SCPTSA meeting. She said she considered herself "a community colleague" with Hampson. For what it is worth, she says she wishes she could spend more time socially with Hampson. 

• Slye said she had no concerns with how Hampson conducts herself with Black people. 

• She said that she and DeWolf have spoken of working to help homeless children. She thought DeWolf had been respectful with her and was direct. 

• She said that she thought when the pandemic began that there was "no connection between the community and the school district." Except that the district was continuing to feed kids right from the start. I have to give the district big credit for that huge effort. 

• SCPTSA met with Juneau every month. And yet she said she had no "direct" access to Juneau and had to work with her assistant. I'll just note that there has been a yin and yang between nearly every superintendent the the SCPTSA. I'm not sure any superintendent made themselves available to any SCPTSA president. 

• She says that she and Scarlett served on a equity and race advisory committee and then, after Scarlett became the chief equity officer, she helped Scarlett review candidates for 2 positions. They reviewed 100 candidates for the community engagement jobs now held by Deborah Northern and Kirk Mead. She considers this how SCPTSA collaborates with the district.  

To which I say, WHAT?! The district allows outsiders to review resumes for a district job from the time it is posted? I have never heard of this. Maybe after the whittling down process, as is the case when school teams come into to meet with prospective principals, but for non-school positions? Weird. 

• She says that there was a SCPTSA committee meeting on the policy and that after it, on a video call, Scarlett said she felt the meeting was a set-up and that people who were at the SCPTSA meeting were also on this call.

• Slye tells a story about Dr. Concie Pedroza who is now the Associate Superintendent of Student Supports. Slye says that in November 2018, the John Stanford International School had asked SCPTSA for help on a race issue between two children and "the community felt the principal, Dr. Concie Pedroza" had not handled the situation well.

Problem is, according to LinkedIn and other searches, Pedroza was never principal there. She could not have been the principal; her LinkedIn page says she was Director of Racial Equity Advancement at the time so if Hampson and Slye spoke with her, it was in that capacity.

I think it important to correct this, whether it is Slye's error or MFR Law Group's because it is not fair to Pedroza.

• Slye says that there was a meeting with Juneau after that and Pedroza presented a doc that Pedroza had shared with principals during the summer about the anti-racism policy. "It was agreed that Pedroza would work on training and the SCPTSA would work with parents." 

• She says that in November 2019, she began asking about the policy's status and continued to ask thru Feb. 2020. 

• She had a meeting with Northern and Mead who told her that there was a stakeholders meeting but she got invited late. It seems like she was miffed about this.

• In June or July 2020 she sent a timeline of the policy development to Juneau and Pedroza with a copy to the JSIS PTA, the Board and Erin Jones, who was consulting with the district at that time.

• The investigation interview with Slye states, "She believes that the Board takes but does not give." She said NO one replied to the email (which would include Hampson and DeWolf). She asked a couple of Board members including Hampson, "Where do we go from here?" She then continued to send emails and talk with DeWolf and probably Scarlett about moving forward. She also seems to think Scarlett was not moving it forward "and if they were not going to move things forward, the SCPTSA would finish the engagement." 

The SCPTSA had 16 community engagement meetings and did a presentation to someone in King County Health Department about the anti-racism policy. She talks about meetings in a neighborhood in the Rainier Valley and that she met with "indigenous people from Mexico." 

• She asked that "DeWolf and Hampson give the policy back to SCPTSA."  Slye says she did not work closely with Hampson on strategy to move the SCPTSA version of the policy to the Board. SCPTSA wanted their original version and say the "changed, watered-down version that was pro-Black and pro-indigenous," would be impossible to implement. "The community wanted accountability" and the SCPTSA Board voted to move forward with the original version.

• There seems to be a question of whether SCPTSA does represent "the community" as they claim. I do not think there is any one entity that can claim to speak for parents or the community at large. 

• The investigation interview says Slye described a meeting on November 2020, not the one in September 2020 that was so tense. 

• This is fascinating: Slye believes" the real story has not been told about this situation." She is "not into politics" and "does not want a job in the district." She is tired "and if, she had the time and energy, she would tell the story." 

So she knows all but won't tell the investigator? Okay. Also, there are persistent rumors that Slye will run for the Board so we'll see if she is "not into politics." She lives in West Seattle so if Harris doesn't run, I'd bet Slye will.

Lastly, I made a connection that I just never understood before. Manuela Slye was the president of the SCPTSA during the period when this stir around Policy 0040 was happening. She wrote some very strongly worded emails to the Board about getting this work done which is fine. Ms. Slye is using her married name here. 

But there has also been an outspoken (sometimes fiery) critic of the district on this kind of policy work named Manolita Light. I had assumed - not knowing Light - that Light and Slye were different people. They are not. 

I'm not sure I can explain why Ms. Slye has two different public personas and uses two different names but it seems odd.