Parent Input on Seattle School Board Elections
There's this bright HCC parent - Albert J. Wong - who writes at the HCC Seattle Elementary Schools Facebook page. (I hope he runs for the Board someday.) He has some thoughts to share about the upcoming Board elections. (Editor's note; there is brief editing but only because he mentioned things pertinent to only the Facebook page.)
Bunches of folks have been confused about the school board race this year. Enough that I'm going to risk writing a (as balanced as possible) public post.
So first, the board in the past half decade is closer to the old supreme court, with 1 swing vote. Thus this election is important because you are either going to reaffirm the current direction or swing it. The swing votes are 2 races: Debbie Carlsen vs Liza Rankin, and Ben Gitenstein vs Evan Briggs.
A choice of Liza + Evan continues the existing trend because Liza is clearly the incumbent. Liza and Chandra Hampson rose out of SCPTSA (note SCPTSA has very little interaction with most PTSAs even though it technically is the umbrella and takes a cut of membership dues) at the same time. If you watch board meetings or spend even a few minutes talking to anyone, you find quickly that Chandra has set the advocacy direction of the past few years. And if you hear about voting, you know it's a 1-vote swing.
This has resulted in some good things (Equity Tiers). This has resulted in some less good things (removing finance committee meetings where they might have heard about the recent elementary class reshuffle before it happened). If you think they have more to provide on the good side, you should support that bloc. If not, you should vote against it.
Evan Briggs is endorsed by Chandra and is actively campaigned for by Chandra.
Evan helped create the Thorton Creek PTSA a few years (it's on their webpage) which is weird cause that school has 2 different parent organizations. But whatever...if you read through the list, you can get a sense for priorities there and alignment.
This is fully public endorsement and history based data showing that these two candidates sources from the same cluster of advocacy (it behaves oddly like a political party? weird for a parent org, but whatever. it's effective).
If you like where they are pushing things, then you should provide them continued control of two board seats. If you do not, then you should vote for the other cluster of Carlson + Gitenstein.
Looking forward, the most critical thing to realize is the district is 130Million deficit. All decisions will be molded by this pressure. This means we need to very carefully examine the board + district admin structure as the ability to work in the tens of millions of dollars when thinking about tradeoffs, and then insert this into the admin effectively is required.
As a critical example of where this came up recently is the 50 school reshuffle of elementary kids that netted a mere 3.6-million dollars (see Oct 17th meeting: https://sps-by-the-numbers.com/.../board-special-meeting...). As shocking as that was, you'd probably be even more shocked to find out that the board was NOT briefed happening before it occurred. At least one director wrote mail to their director district stating this. So something is structurally wrong in the board <-> admin communication.
Whatever candidate you choose is going to have to fix that. So when you see someone talk about Student Outcomes Focused Governance support as a plus or minus, you need to evaluate in your head how that will operationalize into efficient ability to pool talent + input from the board with operational knowledge in the district to collaboratively effect change. If you don't know what SOFG is, time to find out. Cause that's part of what's being voted on. And if you want to see how it's used, here's a transcript of a recent board meeting: https://sps-by-the-numbers.com/.../2023-10-11/board-meeting where members use it to shape/change/focus/stop discussion. Search for words like "guardrail" or "guideline" or "governance" and then read/listen around.
Also, regardless of whatever you choose in terms of oversight here, recognize a second extremely important fact: if WE don't get off our butts and go after the state to handle it, then expect a lot of school closures and program cuts next year. We supported the teacher strike cause they need a living wage. We also now need to ensure SPS can actually pay for the living wage... and if anyone says anything about "cut administration fat" I will scream. 73% of the budget is _instructional_ salary. There isn't enough admin to cover a 130M deficit if you removed all of it. The underfunding has been decades in the making and is in the order of tends of percent. (Look up Washington Paramount Duty http://paramountduty.org/ if you want lots of wonky details. I also wrote an open letter primer for messed up it is: https://sps-by-the-numbers.com/.../state-underfunding...).
Every city in the state is affected by this. Seattle more than most because of cost of living and stupid-ass state-legislated caps on how much we can locally source via levies. The board cannot fix this. Only Olympia can. And Olympia only listens to us.
Oh, and let's talk equity. I 100% consider this choice equity neutral. Over the past few years, I have accumulated many specific interactions with families of asians, families of refugees, some immigrants, and families of other sorts that feel erased or unwelcome by the current advocacy institutions. I expect others may have their own experience of being lifted up. I have examples of oppression. Both must be true. What you are really choosing is between supporting which equity you happen to understand and [other]...which is the best anyone can do realistically.
For me personally also, I know that the leading edge of Seattles "equity focus" tends to erase asian american experience, make sophomoric attempts to divide us into some single line slider between "privileged and not" (eg, "Vietnamese" are Further From Education Justice than "Chinese"...so what do you do about the large Hoa community that came here via boats in the 70s and made up many of my peers growing up), and in general be clueless about even being clueless. Thus to me there is no "equity" candidate here. Just a selection of pools of understanding.
I will end this by also saying that despite my annoyance at a lot of behavior, I *firmly* believe everyone running for office and who has been in office has been trying to do good. I do think we've moved further up the spiral on things like understanding of the race issue. I think the next level however is uncharted territory...where most of the city is aligned on wanting equity as a priority, but folks are hard set on different ideas for what is the "true" path. It is an in-fight.
So that's the basic choice.
Do you think the current direction is correct and just needs a doubling down on implementation?
Or do you think it needs additional viewpoints and a different set of skills.
All of that must be evaluated in the context of a 104MM, yearly, ongoing shortfall that CANNOT be solely explained by things like declining enrollment (district has actually be doing an amazing job of patching budget holes to hide the effect for a decade). And if you worry about equity between these two candidates...well, read my previous paragraph.
Choose your own adventure.
Also, feel free to repost and disagree, repost and agree, or whatever.
Comments
However, I disagree with this statement: "Every city in the state is affected by this. Seattle more than most because of cost of living and stupid-ass state-legislated caps on how much we can locally source via levies.
Levy caps are a mechanism to create equity throughout the state.
Hampson and the Seattle Council PTSA have run the district. Hersey, Sarju and Rankin fall in line. It is time for a different board.
Levies are counter productive when they tie our hands to offset our own higher cost of living. Why do we keep giving credence to the old saw that equity = “the same?” I mean, Seattle could tax poorer communities via the state to get us there but that hardly seems fair/equitable. Ed funding advocates really stepped in it with McCleary and the opening for the state legislature to muck things up.
Disagree
Let's re-focus and center students, and forget about the pettiness of the adult world for a moment.
***********
OK - we can't.
Back to tearing each other down. It's Seattle.
Exhausted
-Blue dog
Special Ed is a shell game meant to rob students with disabilities of their allowance money. Ever see IAs out at recess or in the cafeterias? Those IAs are funded solely for special education… but recess and lunch aren’t special ed classrooms are they? That’s YOU stealing the special ed money from a vulnerable kid and then blaming the kid for costing more than they deserve. Ever notice that there’s a kid with a disability sitting in a normal classroom? Guess what. That whole class of 38 students is then billed to special ed if the teacher happens to have a dual endorsement, even if there’s no actual “specially designed instruction” anywhere in sight. As to “we aren’t getting better outcomes”. What outcomes? Outcomes for students with disabilities isn’t measured. So, how would we know? Stop the stealing and blaming.
Reader
Just stop. I’ve got two kids with learning challenges and I’d never accuse another parent of “stealing” because some poor underpaid IA is supervising students in the lunchroom. I’m so tired of the infighting and grinding down of parents who stay invested in this public schools system. It’s wearing on solidarity, and the few extra instructional minutes arent worth scrapping it over. I’ve been there!
Triangulated
Second -- to Perplexed's point, SPS takes money given to them by the state that is intended to go to every school, and instead pours it into schools mostly in SE Seattle. Maybe that's a good idea and maybe it's not, but that is why most schools in Seattle are providing so much less than comparable schools east of the lake.
Fact Based
SPS parent/voter
Get a grip. Nobody’s saying anything about the rate of compensation for IAs or teachers. SPS IAs are in fact an exceedingly well paid lot when considering what other districts pay and the amount of education required. No college degree required!. The fact that you don’t care about a divergence of resources away from special education means you don’t actually care about those students. Goodie for you! Is your kid even in special Ed? A “learning challenge” doesn’t mean they qualify for special education. You seem to think that divergence is negligible. Maybe it is if your kid has minimal needs. The claim the SPS “overspends” special education and that, in turn, is the source of the district’s financial woes must be countered. Such claims are a prelude for service reduction for the most vulnerable and underserved students: those with disabilities.
Reader
Seattle ended-up paying for McCleary along with other Democratically led parts of the state. Poor areas i.e. Aberdeen simply does not have the same level of income- as other parts of the state. So, yea, poor people in Seattle ended-up paying for other low income parts of the state.
The court recently looked at school capital costs. Seattle was lucky that the Supreme Court wouldn't look at the issue- because Seattle wouldn't have the capacity to raise a plethora of levy dollars for capital projects.
Some of people that pushed to raise the levy cap in Seattle are the same people trying to limit PTA funds- in the name of equity. Ironic.
-Skeptical
Also. If “some poor underpaid IA is supervising” your student at lunch, when do you think that same “poor underpaid IA” takes her own duty-free lunch and multiple 15 minute breaks? (She is entitled to those duty-free breaks under contract, and schools do provide them). Well obviously she takes those breaks once the students are back in the classroom. She is then unavailable to provide instruction when it is needed.
Reader
Blue Dog:
"Perplexed, we spend much more per SPED student on SPED services than any of those districts. That's the gap you see in offerings. We don't know why- we aren't getting better outcomes, but we don't know where the money is going or if we have harder kids or what."
So I cannot speak to better outcomes in other districts for Special Education students; it's entirely possible but I doubt it. What we DO know is that even after the state legislature raised the cap on how much they will fund, SPS still has more kids than the cap. They are legally obligated to help all these kids and therefore, they spend more. I haven't done an assessment of numbers in the Puget Sound region, though.
I suspect that SPS does get some high-need students whose costs are very high. Not sure if that is true elsewhere.
Go heckle some private or homeschool families about divesting from the public schools system. The families left here don’t deserve any more noise than they have to deal with trying to survive this education. This isn’t
Group Therapy
You haven’t been paying attention. OSPI has indeed cited the district for the blatant abuses of the dual cert trick. BALLARD High School actually bragged about the practice to parents at open houses as a way they found to save money by stealing it from sped students. But as per usual, the practice persists despite sanction, though somewhat less. High schools ROUTINELY double list classes in their catalogues with 1 teacher as both a special ed classrooms and as general education classrooms. How can that be? General ed is a fulltime job. Then, the teacher then is paid from program 21, that is special ed. A dual class like that is fine, but it is not a special classroom by any measure. The correct measure whether something is special ed is based on a single question “Is the teacher delivering specially designed instruction for each student on an iEP?”. General education is a FULLTIME job. If there’s one teacher and ANY general education students, then the class is 100% general education. Students with disabilities are ALL general education students first and foremost. The presence of a student with a disability in a general education classroom is not a debit card for everyone else’s use even if the teacher got a special ed endorsement. In fact, that student costs not 1 nickel more to general ed. The dual cert trick is nothing new, BHS even recruited specifically to continue its dual cert pilfering. It is not done with sped staff who generally don’t have credentials to teach general Ed. It is done with selected general Ed staff who happen to have a sped endorsement. It is outrageous to bill any of that to program 21.
Another way to steal sped money? Use sped staff as subs for general ed instead of hiring an actual sub. Happens all the time. You can steal from ELL too. Cancel sped or ELL for the day. Who would ever know?
Reader
North end elementary, middle school, and high school parent
Bezos just left he state. Good luck.
If Bezos would really prefer Florida to Washington, I'm glad he's going there. There are more important things in life than low taxes.
Cheapskates