Principal Placement in Seattle Schools

In advance of a very serious story about personnel in Seattle Schools, I did want to talk about principals and in specific, high school principals. 

Currently, there are two schools with interim principals - Chief Sealth and Hale. Now I have learned that the wonderful Martin Floe at Ingraham High will be retiring soon (probably by the end of this school year). 

I have to wonder what the district will do with Joe Powell who was principal at Alan T. Sugiyama High and was recently removed after an athletic tuition scandal. I would hope that he would not be placed at any of these larger high schools. 

Then you have the installation of Principal Anitra Jones at Rainier Beach High School as an assistant principal. They already have two assistant principals and only the larger high schools have three. I'm not sure how the district can justify the expense of three for a smaller high school. But maybe, the district will pull an assistant principal from one of the larger high schools to fill the three positions I named.  

It's interesting because the district installed a new permanent principal at Sugiyama High fairly quickly. Not sure what input they got from the school community.

My point is that years back, the district would NOT dare to just install any new high school principal. The high school parent communities were very strong and demanded to be part of the process. I myself had been on a search team when Roosevelt needed a new principal. We didn't even have to ask for parents and students to be on that team; the district just put a call out for those members. 

But things have changed and I'm not sure for the better. There does seem to be a revolving door of principals and that's not good for any district. 

What is odd are the Executive Directors who are supposed to oversee principals in their regions. I have rarely seen a news story about a scandal that had a comment from an ED. For me, that begs the question - what did the ED know about what was happening at Sugiyama High? It's such a small school, I find it hard to believe no one was asking questions about the enrollment of the school. To note, the ED for that region is Katrina Hunt.

I will also note that I have heard from several parents about their unhappiness over the ED for the northeast, Dr. Mike McCarthy. 

What is a bit disturbing is that a few years back it was Dr. Mike Starosky's job to oversee EDs.  But that shifted just a couple of years back with Dr. Rocky Torres-Morales taking on that work and Starosky becoming an assistant superintendent for academics. As I mentioned previously elsewhere, Torres-Morales was on leave for nearly a year before recently coming back. Who was overseeing all that ED work for that period of time?


Comments

Anonymous said…
Thank you for calling out Dr. Mike McCarthy. He has been a bully to administrators and teachers as long as he has been in the District. He has refused to meet with parent representatives, cherry-picked issues to elevate, traumatized school staff, and demonstrated a general disregard for school communities. He has failed to learn the history of a school or community or even existing District policies and procedures. Somehow he has escaped any accountability. Might it be because he is doing the District's bidding? Might he be serving as the attack dog for the HR department eager to move along people who know where the skeletons are buried? Either incompetence or intentional negligence-- either way, not good.
2/27/25, 1:51 PM
Anonymous said…
Isn't Anitra there as a co-principal? I didn't see "assistant" in the article, although they said the principal would be supervising her. NESea mom
2/27/25, 2:10 PM
Melissa Westbrook said…
No, she's not there as co-principal. From the Times:
"District officials said that Jones, an award-winning school leader, works “under the direction” of Rainier Beach High School’s principal, Annie Patu." The district says, "Jones started working as a “principal on special assignment” at Rainier Beach on Feb. 3, according to Bev Redmond, the district’s chief of staff and spokesperson."

Jones is taking "employee evaluation training and has to complete labor-employee relations training by Feb. 28th." So because she is allegedly ONLY dealing with students, it's okay. If she is working at RBHS, it's on the downlow because she's not part of the staff roster.
2/27/25, 3:52 PM
Melissa Westbrook said…
I want to add that SEA is not fooled nor happy. I don't think the district can be believed when they say that teachers are valued if this is what they do when a principal acts against staff. Wonder if this incident might come up when teacher contract negotiations start.
2/27/25, 3:55 PM
Anonymous said…
Those exec directors of schools positions have been useless for a loooooong time. Even when Eberts and Tony Ruby were there (who can't forget Tony Ruby? He was the worst). Brent Jones had all of them reapply for their jobs, just to rehire most of them (Not Ruby). I see your complaints about McCarthy and let's just say his favorite move is to intimidate teachers by sitting in their classrooms out of the blue. The kind of bully you do not want to have around your kids.
To close with a golden button, Katrina Hunt. Part of the Sisterhood. All the sisters dolled up and showed up at Alliance for Ed Gala past year. I had to leave. I could not stand being in the same room with so many people that have done so much harm. True story.

Just Facts
2/27/25, 3:56 PM
Anonymous said…
How is Katrina Hunt supervising anyone, or even still employed with SPS? I didn't know anything about her, but googling her name shows this story: https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-school-administrators-helped-an-abusive-seattle-teacher-stay-in-the-classroom which is pretty damning. Tired of all these principals who fail upwards even after things that they should be fired for.

Fed Up with SPS

2/27/25, 7:59 PM
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