Seattle Times Editorial Board and the Superintendent
The Seattle Times Editorial Board has weighed in during the early days of the SPS superintendent search,
Dear Seattle School Board: Seize this chance to make major changesI mostly agree with the Editorial Board.
They open with what they noticed first thing during Superintendent Brent Jones' announcement.
Watching the video of Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Brent Jones announcing his unexpected resignation, a viewer might wonder at his demeanor. Jones is relaxed and smiling, almost beaming. The feeling conveyed is one of happiness, perhaps relief.
They continue about the trials Jones has faced but, oddly, left out safety issues.
Every step of the way, Jones was navigating yet another stumbling block: the Seattle School Board.
Haranguing the board for past failures will accomplish little, however. The best course of action now is to seize this moment as a welcome opportunity for a badly needed reset.
There's pointing out issues and then there's haranguing. They could have said that the Board made confusing statements and decisions that likely confused Jones and made his job harder.
Or, they could have pointed out that, by adopting Student Outcome Focused Governance (SOFG), for the governance of the district, the Board changed the game. The Board gave A LOT more power to the Superintendent. All that leeway and he still failed?
Here are their suggestions:
- Appoint an interim superintendent pronto, someone who can get up to speed before Jones leaves on Sept. 3. That will be especially important since the district’s contract with its teachers expires Aug. 31.
I think (hope) they mean bring in an interim to work alongside Jones so that when he leaves, that person will be ready to be the superintendent until a permanent superintendent is vetted and selected.
The Times worries about a strike.
- They speak of listening and including parents and families. Here it is in its entirety:
It is time for the school board to recognize that highly engaged parents committed to public education are an asset. They haven’t been treated as such, and their frustration at being ignored over concerns around student safety and advanced learning exploded last fall. The fever pitch forced SPS to back off any discussion of school closures — forget about generating momentum for a vision for the future.
Seattle School Board, these families are your friends. Or could be. More importantly, they are your clients, and their dissatisfaction is directly tied to sagging enrollments, which affects how much state money flows to the district. So do the math: Seattle families should be cultivated — not alienated.
- The board’s seven members must put aside past differences and get on the same page — for the sake of students today, not some hypothetical future. Stop making excuses for the facts: Roughly three-quarters of low-income kids in Seattle are unable to do grade-level math. Enrollment is down by nearly 5,000 students because parents are pulling their children out. It’s not inflated home prices or low birthrates, and it insults your community to claim such.
Zing!
- Lastly, transparency in selecting a new superintendent will be essential to rebuilding families’ trust. Let people meet and question your finalists. Solicit parents’ input and consider it seriously.
Amen.
Many comments are about the direction that the district took in their strategic plan and they want more attention to basic academics.
I had this to say (partial):
I see the point on getting an interim in there but it cannot be someone internal to SPS. There are NOT good candidates at the top. I hear that former superintendent Susan Enfield is still around; she might be a great candidate.
Comments
Think about it like if SPS were put into binding conditions (certainly a non-zero prospect) and the overseer came in and just started cutting everything non-essential to the mission and provided the district a hard reset. That person will demonized by the board, "the groups", and all sorts of other people for doing what needs to be done and - more importantly - is legally required of them in a binding conditions situation. Of course, they will be there precisely *because* the board, the current superintendent, SOFG disciples, etc have all comprehensively failed but never mind that. They will be able to point at someone as "the bad guy."
Melisa, you are 100% correct that the interim or even the next superintendent CAN NOT be from SPS. Anyone in the administration has the taint of failure and has probably clawed their way up via politics as amply documented in this space and the comments. I would argue further that the person they ultimately hire should not be a product of any education college.
I have no doubt I will be disappointed in ways both expected and surprising.
-An Angry Angry Parent
Emile
Emile
School board director is an odd position, because the people tugging their sleeves or yelling at them during the course of their service are nearly all parents of students in the system, but the voters who decide who wins the seat are mostly not that. Any director who treated parents as clients would not get the Stranger endorsement and would not win the election. As for parents with the means to leave the system -- any director who treated them as clients would be trashed by the Stranger and would lose badly. Totally not gonna happen.
People are smarter than they look. The swing vote in Seattle school board elections are child-free renters who are locked out of home ownership because the city is too expensive. They know well that good schools = high housing prices. Bad schools, especially schools that are unattractive to wealthy families = lower housing prices, and that's a good thing if you are a child-free renter. The Hampson-Rankin vision of a dumbed down system with low ceiling that prioritizes implementation of woke ideology and employs mostly POC as administrators -- that has an electoral majority in Seattle. All the "dysfunction" seen in SPS by activist parents does not exist to most voters. To most voters, it's just matter of tax the rich, blame Trump, otherwise no problem. If you spend too much time listening to complaining parents, you lose sight of reality.
A BIG yes to this. But do I think child-free renters vote progressive in hopes of low-grade education to keep housing prices down? I do not. I hope to have a conversation soon with someone at The Stranger because they are now THE alternative to the Seattle Times (and good for them because that took years).
It is best to allow a new board to hire the next superintendent. Otherwise we will have nothing but the same old..same old.
- Same Old Same Old