Brent Jones Needs to Go
Over the last couple of months, the Seattle School Board has listened to Superintendent Jones and his team as they gave presentations on the progress of African American male students per the Strategic Plan. All that focus and effort and there has not been much to get excited about.
As well, the attempt at closing schools failed and failed miserably. There was nothing good about the plan that was presented or the thought process behind it.
Then comes the attempt to end the cohort model of the Highly Capable program without a real plan for how neighborhood schools would serve those students. And again, senior staff were forced - this time by the Board for once - to backpedal. (I have not yet listened to the latest discussion of this topic that took place at the Board meeting on Wednesday night.)
I'd also like to know exactly what was Jones' role in creating a high-level job paying six figures, as a personal favor to a friend. If I am wrong on this, I would love to hear a clear explanation of how it came to be.
I'd also like to know why, according to a budget report in 2023, it shows that when Anitra Jones was principal at Rainier View Elementary, her salary appears to be $225,000. If I am wrong on this, then I'd like to hear a clear answer as to what her salary was in that position. As well, is she at Rainier Beach High School? Because she's not yet listed as staff.
But what is the thing that makes me believe that Jones should go? The seeming lack of initiative and concern from the district over the death at Washington Middle School of 12-year old Arsema Barekew. She was killed last week by a runaway car that rolled down onto a sidewalk where she was standing after lunch.
The reporting from the Seattle Times shows how this immigrant family was not treated well by either SPD or the district but really, it's on the district to show care and attention to a shocked and grieving family.
But here's the main issue about SPS:
Officials from Washington Middle School and Seattle Public Schools did not contact the family until almost a week after the crash. Superintendent Brent Jones and several staff members visited the family at their apartment complex Wednesday morning and apologized for their “poor communication,” the attorney said.
Mekonnen and Yitna said they sat in the classroom for two hours with police officers, who told them their daughter had died but revealed almost no other details. Neither the school nor police provided an interpreter for the family, the couple said.
Almost a week?!?! There is NO excuse for this except that the district, once again, needed to circle the wagons first. It's shameful. And the principal should have called the district immediately and asked for a translator for the parents.
“All she would have wanted is the same thing as me,” her father, Berihun Mekonnen, said through a translator. Mekonnen, 39, spoke in the Ethiopian language of Amharic as he pinched the front of his black hoodie between his fingers. “The truth.”
Seattle Police Department and Seattle Public Schools officials have told Arsema’s parents few details about what led up to their daughter’s death, the couple said. The little those agencies have shared has created more questions — and pain — than answers for the family and their tight-knit Yesler Terrace neighborhood community.
On Wednesday, the family and their attorney, Daniel Ajema, accused investigators of prematurely dismissing the crash as an accident, allowing the district, school staff and the driver to dodge accountability.
To note, SPD has not publicly identified or arrested the driver of the car, a 51-year old woman.
“The way (Seattle police) approached them, explained things, was like, ‘Move on. This is an accident. Accidents happen,’” said Ajema. “But for me, there’s criminal negligence. There’s recklessness.”
The Times gets to why the district might have dragged its feet.
Who allowed their daughter and other students to walk outside, rather than exit from a rear door of the building facing the playground? How could the woman’s car travel 75 yards downhill when the street outside the school is fairly flat? And why, Arsema’s parents asked, did police not arrest the driver if her behavior led to a child’s death?
Honestly, I have never heard of middle school students being allowed off school grounds, even on the sidewalk in the front of the school during school hours. Anybody?
While Seattle police and school district officials held a news conference in English outside the school last Thursday, Mekonnen and Yitna said they were not told how their daughter died until two days later, when a detective visited them for the first and only time on Saturday morning. The detective referred to the crash as “an accident,” and said the family could not review surveillance footage because Arsema’s death was still under investigation, Ajema said.
And here's what Jones had to say:
As of Thursday afternoon, Seattle Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Jones said his “heart breaks for those who are grieving.”
Really? Because Jones says a lot of these platitudes and yet there are still safety issues. Whether middle-school students should be on a sidewalk during lunch should NOT be one of them. Some adult made this decision to allow it or not pay attention to what the students were doing and a child is dead because of it.
What is Seattle Schools going to do about it besides hand-wringing?
So I would ask - what is the value that Jones brings to this district with all this churn and uncertainty and now, more sadness?
Comments
Brent Jones has been part of the problem for years. In 2021 he was made superintendent by Chandra Hampson and Liza Rankin, who short-circuited the hiring process because they believed he would carry out their orders to DOGE the school district: slash and burn everything. Close HCC, close 20+ schools, destroy student learning, chase everyone away.
Jones did this for a little while, until 2024 when it became extremely clear that this agenda was extremely unpopular. He came under intense pressure from city and state elected officials to reverse course. When he showed signs of doing so, Liza Rankin tried to fire him (in the summer of 2024). She failed to do this, mustering only three votes, and turning the rest of the board against her.
When Jones unveiled Liza's preferred closure plan in September, and the entire city rose in revolt, Jones realized he had to change course. Doing so infuriated Liza, and her allies Evan Briggs, Michelle Sarju, Chandra, SCPTSA, SESEC, and the Equity in Education Coalition, all of whom were and remain determined to close 20 or more schools.
Since then, Jones has been moving away from that bloc. Liza got ousted from power after she was nearly recalled. A new board majority tenuously exists and is beginning the work of trying to right the ship after all the enormous damage Liza-Chandra-Evan-etc did. Jones is starting to undo that damage, with his decision to save HCC for three more years being part of it (and further infuriating the Liza bloc).
But that bloc still exists and is still trying to implement their original agenda of mass school closure and pushing anyone they don't like to leave SPS. And Jones was part of the problem at SPS for a long time, and while now he is finally showing signs of wanting to clean things up...the hour is late, and old habits die hard.
Mekonnen's family has been poorly served by SPD and SPS. Jones did go to the school after the incident, but he was slow to reach out to the family, and SPD was their usual useless selves. Jones was slow not because he's a bad person, but because he's been around SPS too long, a district with a culture that is profoundly hostile to families, who think families are the enemy. So why go reach out to the enemy?
Liza et al are working to undermine Jones and have been pushing these stories to the media. And Jones has given them plenty of fodder over the years, and with the tragedy at WMS. His only path forward is to more aggressively reject the agenda of destruction that Liza and Chandra and SCPTSA and the rest of them still insist he implement.
But the rest of us are caught in the middle. We know we have to purge the Liza/Chandra/Evan/SCPTSA bloc from all levers of power within the district if our kids are to have even a chance of thriving. And we probably need a new, John Stanford-like superintendent who will totally clean house and make recruiting and retaining families a priority again.
Yet none of that can happen until after this year's pivotal school board elections. So do we hope Jones hangs on and tries to undo the damage? If Jones leaves now, who replaces him? Ted Howard, who is even more of a Liza-Chandra acolyte?
My conclusion is the only winning move here is not to play a rigged game, and instead work to elect a school board this November that is committed to sweeping reform, removing all traces of the Liza-Chandra-SCPTSA agenda and instead giving power back to the people. That needs to be the north star here.
Tazo Lipton
Having said *that*, are you at all surprised when this is the same person who was in charge when the shooting IN THE BUILDING at Ingraham occurred? Or the shooting on Garfield grounds that NOBODY has been charged with despite being in broad daylight and caught on camera? It's not like he's demonstrated some previous commitment to student safety that is now being turned on its head.
He has been a bad hire from day 1. If he was smart, he would have taken the short contract and bailed on this dumpster fire for another better-run district in another state. But he didn't and so...
He oversaw the district's capitulation to a dishonest SEA that claimed SPS was awash in cash - omitting that the cash was from one-time sources. While this is not 100% of the current budget deficit, it is a substantial percentage - likely the majority. Which then led to a need to do *something* to close the gap. Hmm... how about closing schools???
That mess has been well documented. First, SPS was going to close 20 schools, then 4, then none (for awhile) and now... maybe some at some point? His "solutions" have gone this way and that, creating chaos along the way that are quite similar to Trump's approach to tariffs and their effects.
If Trump were a superintendent, this is what it would look like.
Then he has overseen cratering enrollment but has zero clue on how to fix that either, because his ideological prison of Equity will not allow him to find ideas outside its walls. So his solutions have gone this way and that, creating chaos along the way that are quite similar to Trump's approach to tariffs and their effects.
HCC has been a target back in Juneau's days and while it has been given a stay of execution, anyone who has bene watching that program knows its days are numbered - sacrificed again on the altar of Equity, Jones' religion. Why would HCC parent believe Jones or SPS on that? They've delivered on nothing, prevaricated without shame, and will continue to do so.
The light dollop of corruption just kind of fits in with Seattle handing out contracts to "charities" that sometimes are run by actual criminals with no review of results. It's both unsurprising and in some ways the smallest problem. I dream of the day the district has high academic standards, is cranking out national merit scholars and people WANT their students to attend the schools and the "scandal" of patronage is the biggest problem to worry about.
I could go on and on and on. He is a lightweight, hired by a board full of ideological nincompoops who maybe saw him as an empty vessel for their foolish plans and ideas. Also as not-Juneau, which is amusing because she was also a failure. If you think of the superintendent like a CEO then they need to either have a vision or be a very solid manager. Ideally both. Jones is neither.
- An Angry Angry Parent
It is unconscionable he did not reach to the Mekonnen family. But what did you expect from the guy that showed up to Bridges to meet with parents OVER A WEEK after the shooting? He and his PR person are very crafty at making people believe they care. But they know how long it took Jones (and Topp) to come to meet Bridges/Interagency parents. Most importantly, the question remains: WHEN WILL THEY BE BACK TO BRIDGES TO FOLLOW UP ON THEIR PROMISES OF ACCOUNTABILITY? Don’t hold your breath.
I hope you take the time to watch the last board meeting and how Brent Jones put Guercy at the front, to talk about the strategic plan, the very document that will guide the district in the next five years. See how Jones was nodding, proud of his little boy’s word salad. I am not trying to be mean but I have no other way to describe it.
This is a new low for this district, and it is incredibly hard to watch a Black leader failing his Black Kings and in this case, a Black immigrant family. No information, no condolences, no language access for them, but a mouthful of big words for the media.
So as far as I am concerned, any board member that voted YES for his contract extension needs to look inward and face the fact that they failed us all: students, families, teachers, staff. JSCEE is a sad, sad place. I invite anyone to walk in during business hours and see what I am talking about.
So please please continue calling this out, and printing comments like mine, that need to remain in anonymity because I would lose my job I said anything out loud.
Board members: If you are reading this: You are complicit of the harm perpetrated on thousands of students: HC, ELL, Sped, MKV, immigrant, refugees, gen ed, everyone.
Clark, Mizrahi, Hershey, Topp: Get out and take your superintendent with you.
Working Dad
"possibly some questionable supervision contributing at the school level." Really? No, this is negligence. Protecting the entire district does not mean he couldn't go to the parents, look them in the eye, and express sorrow for their loss.
And I'll tell you now if it was not an immigrant family, this would have been handled different.
I perhaps came off a bit more harshly than intended, so my apologies. Obviously, I have very little good to say about the superintendent and his performance so I don't think our opinions of his performance diverge very much.
However, I would wait until the investigation is complete into the accident before rendering judgment with respect to negligence. The Seattle Times pieces are rather lacking in specific detail aside from the car model, distance traveled while unattended and that SPD is involved. I don't really know which street it rolled down (I'm not familiar with the area) or how much slope there is on the street. I would also add that my kid has had walking field trips to parks and such during which time a very similar accident could have occurred. Would that be negligence? I think that would depend on the circumstances.
As to the comment that it would have been handled differently if it was not an immigrant family, I will defer more to you on that. I'm not sold, but perhaps I'm naive. Maybe my recollection is bad but I didn't exactly see the district or superintendent cover itself in glory in the aftermath of the Ingraham shooting either and I don't think that was an immigrant student. If I recall, the failings were much the same, though I guess Jones posted a bland letter with a crisis line in the immediate days after the shooting. To me the Ingraham shooting is true negligence - and I suspect the wrongful death lawsuit will demonstrate that in court whenever it proceeds unless SPS decides to settle it to avoid further embarrassing revelations.
I guess my point, clumsily made, is that Jones' leadership has provided ample evidence that he doesn't belong in the job *long before* this accident and it's frustrating when lots of people should have been screaming for him to be fired (or at the least to not renew his contract) before now. At any rate, I sincerely do appreciate the work you do here.
-An Angry Angry Parent