Who's in Charge in Seattle Schools? Part Two

 Public Testimony at the Tuesday, Nov. 19th Board meeting

At each Board meeting, it feels like Rankin is getting more and more annoyed at having public testimony. This meeting she spoke of civility and said, " This public testimony is one-way facing, offered to public." Well, the Board has to legally have it at meetings so there's no offering to it. 

She also said that if people want to interact with the Board, the Board will talk to community in the spring. Seriously. Well, the last "community meetings" were by invitation ONLY and not advertised to the public. 

That's not public engagement. 

The public testimony was very moving. There was not yelling or blaming but thoughts that resonated. One issue frequently stated was that Special Education students would NOT see good outcomes and get shuffled around... again.

Sadly, there were a number of people who signed up to cheerlead for the levies. The Board was NOT going to ever vote against the BARs for the two levies so it felt a bit like those people hijacked public testimony unnecessarily.  

There were many parents from Sanislo and Sacajawea but one of the first was from Cedar Park, talking about "community-based schools" being best. This was something of a theme. He said that the district may have "optimized per square foot" in these new big buildings but that it doesn't build an inclusive community.

He mentioned something Rankin said that I have also heard Marni Campbell say - namely that “we overbuilt” these mega-schools and now collateral damage is we need to close small schools because of lack of enrollment.

Again, I don't think they "overbuilt" - I think this was all part of a long ago plan to shrink the district. But I don't think they anticipated the massive budget problems and are now desperate. Several staff have said that even if enrollment was up, they would still want to close schools. 

 

Another parent, this time from North Beach, said that the district was not being transparent with what they are spending BEX capital dollars on. Her take for BEX is that they should be upgrading the middle and high schools and doing essential maintenance on elementaries. 

That WAS the path BEX was taking. The district redid all the high schools - save Sealth and Ingraham which have had piecemeal upgrades. At the same time, at reasonable prices, they renovated many elementary schools. The next piece was to be middle schools and they REALLY need it. But something shifted when they built the mega-schools and the capital folks turned away from that plan. 

 

A Sanislo 2nd grader said that when she heard about her school "I was frozen in shock, thinking why, why?" 

 

Apparently Director Topp and President Rankin toured Sacajawea which is in Rankin's district. This visit comes into play later in the meeting.

 

A 14-year veteran teacher at Sanislo talked about their diverse community as a neglected school. She said the families had felt this neglect.

 

An epidemiologist and Sacajawea parent came to the mic and said that she had done the research and closing schools disproportionately hurts poor children and children of color. 

 

Another Sacajawea parent said what was stated over and over - "There is no clear path to better student outcomes." She said they had been given three days notice for a meeting at the school. She also said that the numbers don't work because moving them to John Rogers means that school may be overenrolled from the start. (John Rogers is slated to hold 500 students - I can't verify if she is correct about it being overenrolled if Sacajawea's community joins Rogers.)

 

Another parent who had taken in students with challenges said one of them at been at Interagency and had seen his site close. She said, in tears, it was all part of the school to prison pipeline. She also stated, "The governance structure of the SB that creates a topdown system that prevents true engagement and understanding with what the community needs."

She went on, sighing deeply and trying not to cry:

School communities tried to meet with President Rankin and the rest of the board to make our voices heard and ask for real engagement. It has been made clear to us that no one is interested in co-designing a future with our communities. I do not take the recall effort lightly and I really wish we did not have to do this. But I am part of the recall plan for President Rankin.  

 

A Dunlap parent said, "Closures should be the last resort." She questioned why there are so many directors and/or supervisors in JSCEE as well as the many consultant contracts. She noted that with the current plan, two schools could lose their Title One status (and the dollars that follow). 

And she asked, "Who will be held accountable if this plan fails?"

 

The president of the North Beach PTA stepped up to talk about the growth at her school. She said Viewlands is growing as well and merging them would create the largest kindergartens in SPS as well as a the largest elementary.  She also stated that it seemed unlikely that the district could keep their community together as they are promising. 

One message on that last statement. One thing the district neither knows nor controls is how many students WILL stay in SPS, how many will travel to the consolidation school OR how many will request a different placement. It HAS been stated that there might be a temporary enrollment rule for students from a closing school.

 

An immigrant father came forward to say that they live within walking distance to Sanislo and if it's closed, he doesn't know how his child will get to school. He said he had trusted SPS "for stability for my family." 

 

Another parent from Stevens PTA said that she understood they were "trying to be good stewards of the budget but they were not being so for community. We're a resource, ask us." She also questioned why the district hasn't done anything to encourage enrollment. That's a good question to ask the Board, too.

 

Another parent, in tears, has a child at Sanislo. She said, "Nice buildings don't build good education." She called the plan "evil" and said "we refuse and rebuke your plans to transition our students to other schools."

She ended with speaking directly to the Board, "Your names will be the ones (in history) who closed our schools."

 

One of the last parents to speak said her son at Stevens will be on his third move if this goes through. She said he had special needs and each move is very hard on him. 

 

Another parent from Sanislo asked, "How can we trust a superintendent who took a pay increase when we are almost $100M in debt?" and "I'm mad but I'll keep it civil. We are about to destroy communities."

That ended public testimony.

Then we come to President Liza Rankin. She looked pale and seemed muddled (this may have been because she needed to get on a plane right after the meeting to attend the WSSDA conference in Spokane.)

What happened in that period of public testimony was that the veil of SOFG got lifted from her and out came the real Liza Rankin (or at least the one I met many years ago). 

She was crying and it was not a few tears.  She said:

- We don't have a system that welcomes all kids at every school. 

This might be true, especially for Special Education students. However, she knows that not every school can serve every student. That would surely be financially impossible. It would have helped if she were a little more nuanced in her statements but again, she was crying. 

- If the community can understand the challenges and see that at the center are our kids, they can be brought along and they can actually help us come up with stronger solutions. 

And I’m so angry to be right here in a completely preventable place and I’m so sorry that you all have to take your time to come down here when for a year, we have on behalf of you and your children and the entire Seattle community, demanded that we acknowledge that there are issues and demanded that we get a plan that centers students.

Your questions haven’t been answered, our questions haven’t been answered.

To which I would ask - so where were you as the person in direct leadership for parents and community? 

I do not believe that any of what Rankin did or said was a performance. Do I think it helped the meeting or the conversation?  I do not.

 And it sure was wrong to act mystified at where the district is on closures, especially when SHE is the one who is pushing hard on SOFG.

- She said she was neuro-diverse and "it takes a ton of masking." She said she was trying to be "professional but I don't know what that means."  I would assume her gum chewing was a calming mechanism but I would also say that it - and she brought up the word - not professional. 

I note that I have a neuro-divergent son. 

- I can’t take five years of it has been too much for me to continue to believe in a system that keeps letting so many of us and our kids down.

What is interesting to me as a long-time observer is how there has never been a true Special Education champion on the Board. Oh there have been those who ran for the Board and said they would be but not really.  (See Jill Geary.). 

Here's Rankin with her own personal experience as well as one of her own children and yet, she says she doesn't know what to do. And again, her focus has been on SOFG when all the while there were real issues out there. But somehow it's not the Board's job to point out issues or engage with staff. 

This whole incident shows how SOFG does NOT work for parents and communities. I hope she sees that.

- I can’t see how the plan that we have right now is in alignment with any of the things that we’ve asked for.

Applause for that from the audience.

- She went into a detailed explanation of Sacajawea's program which is 40% Special Education students. 

It's a real missed opportunity if we had started the conversation where we did start it, does it mean to have a school that is well-resourced, what does it mean to have a school that can serve every kid? It would have been recognized that Sacajawea has a special program to replicate. And I think it still can but it’s not up to me to have ideas but you know what, I have nothing to lose at this point.

We have an opportunity and what if we learned from Sacajawea and use that model to train more educators in inclusionary practices? What if we rebuilt that school? At a size of 300-350 and take out best practices. Sanislo has a great outdoor space, what if that was an environmental learning center.?

One, I'm a bit confused if this was her first visit to Sacajawea which is in her district. (And I believe that  every single director, in their first year, should visit every single school in their region.) Because if she HAD visited before, wouldn't she have known about how that school works and championed it long ago. 

I absolutely LOVE the idea of looking around the district and SEEING WHAT IS WORKING AND REPLICATING IT. But staff is going to pull their hair out by handfuls and say, "Are you kidding?" We have all we can do to try to close this gap and now is not the time for new initiatives?" And they would be right but it sure looked good for her to say that. 

And then Director Michelle Sarju jumped in with her usual flare for speechifying. 

I so appreciate Liza losing it because what you’re witnessing is it was going to happen is that there are seven humans on this dais who made a decision to be a public servant. I’m looking in my emails right now and I have so many bullying messages from parents, people who I thought were my friends. And we are doing the hard work and this is not easy work and unfortunately, what’s about to come after Jan 20th, 2025 is going to be devastating to this district because we actually didn’t do our work that we needed to do before that.

This board is not trying to just close your kid’s school and destroy communities but save a system for all of your kids. We want high quality public school education for every kid in this district.

There isn’t a plan and we can’t do this if we can’t assure parents that we’re not going to damage their children. Not once again, have a child who’s going to be on their 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, school. Not healthy.

We will take a public vote, up or down, that’s what we are gonna do in public. I am not interested in abandoning this, I want an up or down vote. We need to speak to the community because we have not been speaking to the community. I ran for this office for kids and I have not been able to lean into that. This job should not be political or hard.

100% focused on kids, instead we have weaponization, parents attacking parents. School board members attacking school board members.

Do we need to close schools? The answer to that is yes - I see you shaking your head - but we do but we to do it to benefit all kids not just some. That’s our work.

We going to take an up or down vote, period, on the current situation.

Then Rankin seemed confused about what she could do and asked about making a motion (presumably for the Board to vote against the preliminary plan which made no sense). Sarju said, off  "I don't care" and asked whoever came forward to speak to use a microphone. This from the director who repeatedly speaks off mic. 

Legal counsel Greg Garver said there was no Action item for that to happen. Rankin explained that she would like a motion now rather than in January to reject this plan. Garver said there was Board Policy 6883 that lays out what is supposed to happen. He did say she had to power to schedule special board meeting where such a motion could happen.

Rankin, who had calmed down, now seemed jokey and said, "So powerful I can schedule meetings." 

Garver added that "I do not think it would be appropriate for the board to come to a final vote tonight when that process has not played out. 

The second thing is the board in October passed a resolution that directed the superintendent to come forward with prelim recommendation and following that there would be site-based hearings. So I do not believe it can be put on the agenda tonight to come to a final vote.

What you CAN do is postpone those hearings although the sooner the better because notice of them has already gone out and is in the Seattle Times.

What is hard to see at nearly every meeting is how confused Rankin is about what she can or can't do and when. She asked, "o if I were to, in my role as president postpone the hearings and the preliminary recs would be rescinded and that would halt this current process?"

Sadly, the camera was never on the Superintendent because I would have liked to see his face. 

Garver answered by saying, "For school closures the responsibility  for the first action is by the super. I am his attorney as well and he has not asked me for advice and he has a right to have confidential attorney client communications."

Ranking said she would be happy to take a recess and I see no objections from anyone. 

Or the other Board members decided the best course of action for them was to stay silent. 

Garver then played along and said, "You do have the incredible power to declare a recess" and Ranking said, "Drunk with power." I could see Sarju trying to signal to Rankin but I am unsure if Rankin saw it.