Tuesday Open Thread
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.)
Comments
There is room for debate for how “in the weeds” a Board should get managing a district. But it is very clear that the core functions of the Board are to 1) Pass a budget and 2) Appoint a superintendent. Rankin’s record fails on both accounts. Approving a CBA she knew would be disastrous (this is very clear at the board meeting when the TA was presented) and installing a superintendent without a robust search process. Rankin’s rubber stamping of these basic deliverables are a failure to her constituents and families, and to her own goals of improving outcomes for struggling students. A bankrupted district doesn’t serve anyone.
Accountability
It's voucher time.
Lets go
As for the superintendent -- a robust Seattle search process only guarantees a highly intersectional candidate from out of town. It does not guarantee effective leadership. A back-room deal doesn't guarantee effective leadership either, but honestly, I think the odds are equal or better.
The bigger problem is that it should never have gotten to a strike in the first place. Liza Rankin won the SEA endorsement in 2019 and then proceeded to vote against them at every opportunity. She should have worked to build better collaboration with SEA so that when last year's bargaining came around, everyone would have agreed on the available cash and could have reached a good deal without a strike. But that would have required Rankin to be something other than a rubber stamp for the SPS administration.
Support Teachers
I've always been opposed to vouchers but I'm warming up to them now. I just don't think SPS as it exist today is what people want. A vouchers system is better than voting because each family can vote with their vouchers and each voucher counts, unlike voting. I would add that we would need to stop busing students for free, so if you want to go to a school across town you would need to supplement your voucher or maybe transportation could be included with the vouchers. A school that draws from the neighbor hood would have more funds because they don't need to pay for busing.
As for SPS , Ive watched SPS for 20 years and I have to say I think it's either at rock bottom or this next year will be rock bottom. The woe is me crowned has worn out their woe welcome and adding yet another activist virtue signalling board member should be the last straw for any parent on the fence.
SEA mislead their members they claimed that an inclusion model would be in the classroom and teachers rightfully were concerned about inadequate staffing levels. In truth, the district wasn't going to institute a full inclusion model this year and SEA would vote on any proposal that would be put forth.
I'd say that we have two board members that are concerned about transparency. One of our directors thankfully called attention to the fact that a committee is meeting to discuss inclusion; SEA sits on the committee. The board member complained that she has heard NOTHING about what is going on in the committee meeting. Nothing. It seems to me that the director is trying to get ahead of another debacle before the next CBA. Do I dare say that these are the types of things that should be discussed in our now defunct committee structure??
The superintendent and board allowed SEA to swipe Covid Relief dollars and Rainy Day funds. C'mon.
1) Well, as D1 Voter points out, transportation. Vouchers would favor those who could pay for transportation.
2) Vouchers have not proven to make any difference in places that have had them long-term.
3) Private schools, the minute there are vouchers, raise their prices. A voucher amount will generally get you very little in private schools.
4) In AZ, 75% of the people who enrolled in the universal voucher program already had their kids in private. That means, it something of a rebate for them.
5) Public dollars for religious education? Nope.
And the biggest two reasons?
1) If private schools don't have to take state tests, how does a state know how its K-12 population is doing for education?
2) Vouchers allow public dollars to private schools that can freely discriminate against protected classes of children like homeless, Special Education and LGBTQ children. That's just plain wrong.
Welp, Seattle Times did not give Rankin their endorsement. I thought the criticism was measured and could have rattled off a long list of times Rankin wandered outside the "guardrails" of being a School Board Director (homelessness, climate change), and pointed out that while test scores are THE measures of success now, WHAT has the Board done to bolster them? But above all, good call out on the lack of transparency and responsiveness to constituents. She is complicit in runaway expenditures. Lady got to own that.
But Her Record