Where is All the Money Going in Seattle Public Schools?
A reader sent me this interesting information:
I tried to find past year budgets. SPS makes this hard. But a web site says that the budget for 2018-19 was $955MM, and the upcoming budget appears to be $1.13 billion. So that's an increase of 58 million.
For 2015-16, which was 7 years ago, the year the enrollment of this coming year is compared to, the budget is listed here at $753MM. So, compared to 7 years ago, the enrollment is about the same, but the budget amount of $1.13B / 753 MM is up by a whopping 50.1%. This is an increase of $377 MILLION dollars.
Well some of the increase is no doubt ESSER money. But still. If you'd said to SPS 7 years ago your enrollment is going to be the same but your budget will be up by 50.1%, you will have 377 MILLION more dollars to work with, I bet they would have said that's more than enough to get stupendous results. https://edunomicslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Seattle-2015-16.pdf
As well, the district is getting very good financial support for its African American Males project. That initiative is clearly NOT funded just by district dollars.
As well, the district continues to spend heavily on buildings including renovations and yet, enrollment has been and continues to drop. (Although I am gravely worried about the renovation of Rainier Beach High School and wonder if it will really happen.)
I am plowing through a number of public disclosure requests, one of them being about a downtown school which is being pushed hard by the Seattle Downtown Association. In October 2021, then-Mayor Durkan and then-interim Superintendent Brent Jones signed a letter of intent "to move forward on a reimagined Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center and a New Downtown School." I think the revamping of Memorial Stadium is a good idea for both the district and the City; a new downtown school? Not so much.
Here's the official SPS statement:
SPS appreciates the opportunity provided by the agreement with the City of Seattle. It’s unclear whether there will be a need for a downtown school in the future, but residential growth continues to be strong. If there is a need to build a school, having an option on property the City is holding for SPS has tremendous value.
What I also found is that as far back as 2019, the district has been working on this project in a big way.
Their favored architectural firm, Bassetti, has drawn up plans (and drawings which I will soon scan and put up here) for a K-8 school at the former Battery Street Tunnel location. It's unclear who is paying Bassetti but I feel confident that it's the district.
Then there's Shiels Oblate Johnsen which is "a leading project management consultancy in the PNW." They appear to be working for the district on this project. How much is that costing SPS?
To note, there was a group organized, The Coalition for a Downtown School, and they even have social media accounts at Twitter and Instagram, albeit with posts ending in 2020.
The Board seems to be spending quite a sum of money on getting help from the Council of Great City Schools for their SOFG (Student Outcomes Focused Governance. What's that cost because I know it isn't just the price of an annual membership.
And yet I'm pretty sure if I look, there's probably multiple Donors Choose pages for Seattle teachers looking for help stocking their classrooms to reopen.
I know I could make public disclosure requests for budgets and costs but know what? SPS is good at hiding money from the public and hiding their spending. It's not worth the time.
Never again believe this district when they say they don't have money.
They do but it's just hidden from public view and that's how they like it.
Comments
Accountability
Thanks for watching the details.
SP
The district will direct $26M to support AA males. However, there are no accountability measures in place.
I'm expecting COLA increases to be around 10 percent this year.
Seattle Public Schools is spending $1.1 MILLION dollars per week on transportation and they can't manage to transport eligible students. Director Vivian Song Maritz ran on a platform of transportation reform- which is badly. It certainly appears that Director Song Maritz is the only fiscally responsible individual on the board and I highly doubt she will be able to recruit the board majority to sign onto transportation reform
Calls for funding get old when the district isn't fiscally responsible. To make matters worse, there are schools in Hersey's district where 90-95 percent of students can't pass a state math exam. So, what benefit of are those students receiving- especially elementary students whose lives will be greatly impacted by the ability to perform basic math skills? Hersey appears to be a budding politician that shouldn't get promoted to higher office- until he can educate the kids in his own district.
Anyone know what’s considered “admin” and how do salaries compare to other districts? Sure there are heads of special initiatives that could be cut, but there’s also legal (don’t cut the public disclosure officer!), payroll, benefits and other office jobs that do critical work.
More Info
But what they then cleverly did was to create two pots - "central office" and "central administration." So Central Administration is all the salaries for the people at JSCEE and Central Office is the spending to operate the central kitchen, maintenance and gardening, etc.
Put those two pots together and you will always get more than 6% but the district can point to Central Administration as near that point and get away with it.
In spring 2018, the math ethnic studies program was piloted in six schools. The school board had approved the pilot program hoping that it would decrease the achievement gap, writing, "1. We affirm our belief that the integration and addition of ethnic studies into the education of Seattle Public Schools' students can have a positive impact on eliminating opportunity gaps. 2. We direct that the Superintendent incorporate ethnic studies… as a high-leverage gap eliminating strategy."(11)
On the next state math exam, the performance of black students at those schools plummeted. At one pilot school, John Muir Elementary, black achievement had been rising steadily every year, but all those gains and more were wiped out, with the black passing rate dropping from 28 percent to under 18 percent the next school year. At another pilot school, 69 percent white with only seven black students, the white students' pass rates also plunged, from 60 percent to 36 percent.
Confronted with these results, Castro-Gill replied that she never had any intention of narrowing achievement gaps. Gaps, she believed are a good thing, because they ensure that we focus on race. "Closing 'Achievement/Opportunity' gaps is a Western way of thinking about education," she said. "We should never 'close' that gap because it provides space for reflection and growth."(12) It also justified jobs like hers.
Despite the failure of the pilot program, the district said it would "prioritize ethnic studies… [and] help integrate ethnic studies into all curriculum, content areas, and grade levels."(13) An option to skip a requirement to take Algebra II, a staple for those planning to go to college, and replace it with a course covering "power & oppression," became enormously popular.(14)
(11) https://web.archive.org/web/20210227040329/https://www.seattleschools.org/families_communities/committees/ethnic_studies_task_force
https://web.archive.org/web/20210626140550/https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/task_forces/ethnic-studies/Approved-Board-Action-Report-20170705-Ethnic-studies.pdf (page 6)
(12) https://waethnicstudies.com/2020/05/29/the-failures-of-ethnic-studies-and-how-to-fix-them-5/
(13) https://www.seattleschools.org/district/calendars/news/what_s_new/ethnic_studies_update
(14) https://www.southseattleemerald.com/2020/07/21/ethnic-studies-educator-shraddha-shirude-on-giving-math-purpose/
E.S. Outcomes
https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/inventory.pdf