Seattle Council PTSA; What's Happening?

 Can we talk PTA? And talk SCPTSA and the attempt by SCPTSA to say they speak for all parent communities (no less represent them)? 

As some of you know, when my kids were in SPS, I was an active PTA member and board member (although I never served on any SCPTSA groups). One thing I learned (especially as a co-president) that I want you to know is that this idea that any one PTA truly represents an entire school is not true. 

And that SCPTSA grand statement that they speak for all the school PTAs is even less true. 

I think most parents can understand my former statement. Unless you have a fairly large PTA, whoever serves on the board AND whoever are members of the PTA are a small subset of any given school. And sometimes, whoever steps up to serve on a PTA Board are then well-positioned to decide the direction of that PTA.

So it is for SCPTSA. When they say "membership" or "communities" feel "this way," just know that there was no vote on a position. There might have been a small survey with an even smaller vote by PTA board members, but, in general, there are not broad votes of the general membership of SPS PTAs. PTSA is like a large tanker ship; slow-moving and slow-turning. 

In short, what you hear from SCPTSA is really a very small group of people deciding what SCPTSA will say and do. Again, if they are the ones stepping up to do the work, well, that's what happens. But no city official or district official or Board director should think they speak for any huge number of PTA members. 

In fact, the SCPTSA has been steadily losing membership over the last 6+ years. Last count I heard was there were about 800 fewer members than in, say, 2015. That's a lot of people to lose. 

What is also interesting to me is that I think the current Seattle Council PTSA board did something I thought of years ago - with very few people who want to actually serve on the SCPTSA board, you just draft the people you want and voila! You are the voice of PTSA. 

Of course, there is an oddity that has never been explained by this current SCPTSA Board. 

From their website from this year:

On Tuesday, January 18th, Seattle Council PTSA received the resignation of the executive committee, Interim President Romanita Hairston, Vice President Kiani Pineiro-Hall, Secretary Heather Hart, and Treasurer Brian Terry. O'Hara Jimenez also resigned as District 7 Co-Chair. We would like to thank our departing board members for the time, energy, and heart they put into their work with SCPTSA, and while we were not expecting the resignations, we understand the need to part ways. In the interest of transparency, we have posted the statements from the departing members here.

They never posted any statements from the departing people so it's hard to know what happened but when you have that many people in leadershipwalk, something is very wrong.

Then they say they will have elections in February but there is no notice of that anywhere. All you see now is a listing of who is on the Board.

The co-presidents are Erin Dury (former interim school board director) and Manuela Slye (former president of SCPTSA). And there are three other Board spots unfilled. Hmm.

I also see an issue around the Superintendent's Listening Tour.

Now SCPTSA says they are hosting the tour but the SPS press release says BOTH SPS and SCPTSA are hosting these sessions. Problem is, I am being told that the listening sessions are only for certain communities with no media allowed. I did let SPS Legal know that this is problematic. If the Superintendent is allowing one group to take his time over a series of evenings and that group acts as gate-keepers to who can listen in, that's wrong. The Superintendent's words should be open to all, including media. Because I'm not sure any of these listening sessions will be available for later viewing and if the Superintendent says something of substance that the entire SPS community might want to hear, it should be public. There should be media allowed to listen in and take notes.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Legal but they are no dummies.

As well, today the SCPTSA sponsored a community meeting today on Zoom that includes Director Leslie Harris and Director Vivian Song Maritz. And, once again, no media allowed. It sure does give the impression of something to hide.

Here's another issue that I see from the SCPTSA website. They have a (nearly) once a month meeting with SPS head of Budget, JoLynn Berge. Why? It's unclear but if Berge has the time for one group, I'd hope she has time for other groups.

On the same theme, it appears that Director Liza Rankin, who previously served on the SCPTSA Board, is also having once a month meetings with SCPTSA. This is a separate meeting from their regular Board meeting. Is Rankin also available once a month for other groups?

As I did the work on trying to unravel all that happened with Hampson/DeWolf and Scarlett/Al-ansi, I did notice that it seemed that Hampson and DeWolf were more than happy to turn over community work to the SCPTSA. Even though that is one of Scarlett/Al-ansi's areas of expertise.

I noticed that Hampson pushed back against Al-ansi trying to get input from OTHER community groups. 

I notice that Scarlett said at one point that she felt that with so many COVID surveys that they had "saturated" these communities and needed to be asking other people their thoughts.

So why is SCPTSA the only thruway to community engagement? Maybe it's because Hampson is a former president of the SCPTSA and many of the people on its current board are friends.

I do worry about any one group trying to control input to the Board and the district as well as claiming ownership of "community."