Candidate Interviews, District 6
This race has three candidates - Rosie McCarter, Gina Topp, and Maryanne Wood. The incumbent, Leslie Harris, has chosen not to run again after two terms. I got no response from Maryanne Wood but I did interview Rosie McCarter and Gina Topp.
Gina Topp
Topp is a formitable candidate with deep connections within King County government.
- She holds a B.S. in Biology, Juris Doctorate, and Master of Tax Law from the University of Washington (UW).
- She has served as the chief legal counsel and policy advisor to King County Executive Dow Constantine.
- She has served on the boards of the 34th District Democrats and the Seattle Sports Complex Foundation as well as on the West Seattle Rotary Board.
- Her endorsements include King County Executive Dow Constantine, current director, Leslie Harris, as well as three former directors that include Steve Sundquist, Peter Maier and Barbara Schaad-Lamphere.
Clearly, a candidate who has a law degree as well as a Master's in tax law brings some very good skills to the table.
She told me that she had grown up in Washington State and saw the struggles of underfunded schools. She has one young daughter she hopes to send to a Seattle School. She said she would like to "make a difference and restore confidence" in SPS.
Per the enrollment decline, she said it does make sense to see it drop from low birth rates and housing costs but that she believes some parents have "lost confidence in the district" and that the district "should own that and figure it out."
She believes the role of a director is, with the other directors, to set a vision and bring back feedback from parents, students, and community.
She understands the outlines of Student Outcome Focused Governance (SOFG) abut said she thinks there are limits in it for what it says is a best practice is for outreach but she said reaching out and engaging the community is vital.
She also thought it odd that this new governance seems so important to both the Superintendent and the Board and yet it feels "very insider."
She said that she and Superintendent Brent Jones both worked in King County for a few years but their work did not overlap.
She said safety issues in SPS need to be address and that gun violence prevention is key to that issue. She thinks that it feels like there is "a lack of communication between levels of government."
I asked her about school closures and "well-resourced schools." She said it is "a difficult and hot" topic. She said that it is important to look at what was done in the past with school closures. She said the district needs to be transparent with good communications to parents/students/community. She believes that they need to be part of the decision. She also said the financials need to be transparent and make sense.
She said that a well-resourced schools would, of course, meet safety and health standards as well as have a nurse and counselors. She said that schools also have individual needs but she would like to see a standard for enrichment programs.
(Editor's note: she and McCarter were the only candidates to mention "enrichment" like arts. Many parents believe in arts for their children but it tends to be tossed to the side when finance issues come into play.)
Rosie McCarter
How she describes herself:
A neuro-divergent and Mom of three, Proud Cherokee and Joseph's band of Nez Perce. LGBTQIA 2 spirit. Phi Theta Kappa. WSA: Parent Ambassador, Agent of Change, Policy Council, school-based behavioral health and suicide prevention subcommittee, Campaign for Cash, UPLAN, Minister, Shelter Counselor, and peer educator.
She says:
I want to represent West Seattle and low income families. I also want to help families with kids who have disabilities.
I found McCarter to be a straight-forward, plain-spoken person, somewhat akin to former Board director Betty Patu. Her broad background might be useful on the Board.
She said that she felt many parents really didn't understand what is happening in the district and not enough is being done to change that. She said she herself just found out about IEPs and hadn't known about them to help her own child. (She has two children at Arbor Heights.)
She thinks three things that need addressing in SPS are "free meals for all, reexamining the budget, and raising up the voices of the unheard."
She hadn't heard about SOFG.
She hasn't met the Superintendent but she did make an interesting comment about him being "only as good as the people around him."
In terms of well-resourced schools, she said a good HVAC system (including AC), decent class sizes ("30 kids is insane") , advanced services, well-paid teachers and "arts, absolutely."
She said there is systemic racism in schools with disparities in discipline between white and minority students.
I asked her if being a minister in the Universal Life Church gave her any special skills. She said she wasn't sure.
She said she is "the candidate of the people, for the people."
Comments
Rosie is lost. Not well articulated and also ignorant of the issues of this district.
Maryanne is MIA and will be MIA.
I hope in future interviews and forums candidates get asked:
- Have you ever been to a school building as a parent, volunteer, staff, anything?
- Have you ever testified at the school board meetings?
- Are you familiar with SPS strategic plan?
- Have you ever served in any committees, task forces, parent groups, advisory committees, anything?!?!?
It is what it is. I am not going to vote for neither one of them.
No thanks
We need to stop allowing "low birth rate" as an excuse from SPS administrators and apologist candidates. It doesn't hold up with SPS own published data. If SPS could even bring the B-to-K ratio up to 0.57, enrollment for 2021 would be basically flat compared to 2009.
-One More Eckstein Parent
Two things can be true at once. Public schools are struggling with enrollment across the US map. The SPS clown show isn’t helping, but let’s acknowledge some systemic factors at play.
Also, is high enrollment *really* the goal? Remember when Eckstein was jam packed with portables, or Queen Anne Elementary was holding classes in the hallway? That was no cakewalk either, and you bet there were systemic factors explaining why enrollment was up, or do you think the quality of education was really that much better 10 years ago??
Think About It
Whether or not high enrollment should be a goal isn’t really the main point.
My point is that this claim of “low birth rate” is used to paper over the fact that an increasing number of families choose to not enroll their children at SPS. To date - and keeping in the proud tradition of never asking a question you don’t want an answer to - SPS has never bothered to inquire why that might be. I have my own beliefs on the topic but just like the SPS people quoted in articles on the topic, I don’t really know for sure either. But I find it infuriating that SPS’ own published data doesn’t even support the claims they make.
However, in the sense that the budget is significantly impacted by enrollment declines and that boosting enrollment would likely go some ways towards alleviating that… yes, I do think it should be a goal. It would also demonstrate that the community believes in the district and its execution.
-one more Eckstein parent
Blue Sky