Every Old Thought in the District is New Again

One speaker at last night's Board meeting was quite eloquent in speaking on the issue of waitlists. She said one thing about SOFG (Student Outcome Focused Governance) and it led to not one, but two Board members to later call it out. 

That speaker was SPS parent, Erin MacDougall. Here's the transcript of her statement. (bold mine)

Good evening, thank you School Board directors for your commitment to continuing to partner with us as we solve difficult problems together. 

My name is Erin MacDougall and I am the parent of three SPS students and an SPS alum.
The evidence of parent concerns about waitlists is pretty overwhelming at this point. Hundreds of emails sent to you, 500 signatures on a letter, and many media reports all describing how enrollment mismanagement is harming our students and families.

Instead of rebuilding trust after the school closure controversy, SPS has amazingly created more distrust. See, SPS has lost sight of its core mission, educating students. By ignoring family choices and refusing to move waitlists, you are pushing families out of the district.

There are real concerns about legal action.

The enrollment crisis affects every neighborhood with the highest concentration of applications coming from the south end. That’s for you Director Hersey; your people are talking to you and we’d love to hear what you think. 

Immigrant families simply want their children to stay together. Cleveland High School wants to survive. Enrollment of elementary schools are the best lever to engage families for the long term. More than 400 students never enrolled this year to the tune of $12M in lost potential revenue. Every student that doesn’t enroll is lost revenue for up to 13 years. And their younger family members, too. 

How is this equity and fiscal stability?

It appears SPS is deliberately reducing enrollment to justify future school closures. The Board has a responsibility to the electorate for effectively operating our schools. Yet the student outcomes focused governance, a right-wing governance model originally created in Texas is a model that allows the Board to evade its responsibilities and avoid fixing problems. 

Due to SOFG on enrollment, student safety, fiscal oversight, academic outcomes, HR violations, and much more, the Board is failing to properly ensure the district’s effective operations and ethical operations of our schools.

I’ll end early to just say that All Together for Seattle Schools has put together this handout to educate folks about SOFG and I’ve included a letter to the Pittsburgh Public schools from a number of national organizations urging them not to do SOFG. 

Now, after the main meeting, there was an Enrollment update and that's where a lot more was said. 

But right up front I want you to know that there was no discussion about:

- how, by micromanaging enrollment, the district has lost money via student loss (MacDougall points out how long and far that loss might extend.)

-that the district made that decision a decade or more ago to build mega-schools. This very much set the course on closing schools because once you build a huge elementary, you have to fill it. Was this ever discussed with parents or the public? Nope but now the die is cast. 

It is WRONG and DISINGENUOUS for Board members and senior staff to NOT acknowledge these facts. 

Why don't they? Because they want to blame parents for enrollment problems.

To state, I did not listen to the entire presentation by senior staff because I was sure of what would be said. 

- Director Brandon Hersey in a "who, us?" moment asked staff if they were looking for Board direction. Fred Podesta, COO,  said no, they are able to make decisions now. He said that they are looking for "potential waitlists" where there are "hot spots" but we can't make all moves because "students are not perfectly fungible entities." 

They will NOT be able to clear all waitlists. 

He also said it was "late in the game to be hiring teachers" (which might be a needed outcome if waitlists move).  Well, that's a self-serving statement. Why is it too late? Because you hoped this would all go away and did nothing.

Podesta also said, "People can call me." Charming but what's the number? I will attempt to find out.

Enrollment Discussion Highlights

Director Rankin launched into another lecture (and she seemed to have notes on her computer for this speech so she came ready). 

She explained how this discussion of waitlists was not one the Board should be involved in because that's the Superintendent and staff members' work. She said, "We meet twice a month and you meet weekly."

She seems to have forgotten that, under SOFG, they dumped one entire Board meeting a month. 

She claimed that in the '90s, SPS was trying a "charter school system" where schools compete with each other.  Charter schools didn't even exist in the '90s in Seattle. Yes, former Superintendent Joe Olchefske was kind of encouraging competition but so was John Stanford. 

She then stated, "That is right-wing, my friends, and not a governance model centered on elevating the needs of the entire community."

As I said previously, she bad-mouthed previous boards and superintendents throughout the meeting and this discussion was no exception.

She also said "Outcomes are very highly dependent on individual school principals who we also don’t support adequately as a system.”

She then said something about "SPS had a alternative program for students who survived trafficking." That may be but it must have been very quietly done.  She then said something about dead kids on the side of I-5 who got exited from neighborhood schools and transferred to Interagency and were ignored. "We can’t only talk about expedenitary learning which is awesome for all kids and there’s no reason that can’t be present in any neighborhood school."

Yes, hard to track where she is going.  I will say that many neighborhood schools and their principals do NOT want to take on expanding offerings because they have no resources to do so. That's why we have Option Schools.

Continuing:

We have spent what? The last 4 or 5 months talking about 15% of our students who have ALL of the options unless they have a kid with a disability. Then they don’t because then they could qualify for Highly Capable or be able to go to an Option School have access, have all the privileges and then that Option School could say we don’t have that here.

We spend all our time talking to some students who  think neighborhood schools are something to be escaped. Our neighborhood schools are incredible.

Especially those that are trying so desperately to cling to survival as their resources dwindle as enrollment declines but we're still making them hang on.

So much to unpack. First, I don't think any school is being forced to stay open. And, during the closures discussion, I didn't see one school put its hand up to close. Are some schools suffering because of low enrollment? Yes, and again, some of that is manufactured low enrollment. 

We had an opportunity last year to decide restructure like letting our system flex with enrollment and consolidate schools or keep them all open and change staffing models.

Something about we missed holding them accountable said that "we asked in January for different scenarios of budget options" and “we’re not going to have any.” 

BOOM! Folks, there it is. This is why she wanted to get rid of Jones. He didn't hold firm on her dream (truly, it is) of closing Option Schools last fall. So she wants to hold him accountable.

And what is "flex enrollment?" She seemed to be saying that when enrollment is high, it's okay to have choice but on a "downcline" (sic),then it's bad. 

And, she has the COO right in front of her so why not ask - where are those different scenarios? Podesta is just as guilty as Jones for not getting that ask from the Board to the Board. 

She then claimed that the Board has NOT implemented any new governance and, based on what is happening, "it's still the status quo. We're not doing it (implementation)." 

Again, they are spending many dollars on SOFG and the Board HAS indeed made changes in their own work. That JSCEE staff seem disinterested in that work may be telling the Board something.

Then we come to Director Hersey's statements.

It’s comedy it is how often we hear that SOFG is is ruining a district that has already been ruined. If you go back and look at every single public comment for the last 30 years but we are not even implementing it with fidelity.

The district is ruined or in ruins? Is that what he truly thinks? 

When we do not communicate, the conspiracy theories fill the void and people will make whatever it is they want to serve whatever it is they might be advocating for at that moment. And it’s not their fault. It’s ours because we are not going a good enough job of communicating. 

He then did said something surprising saying that Cleveland is a hot spot his region and he would "like to see some movement on Cleveland's waitlist." But he circled back to enrollment saying that as one school's enrollment goes down, another's goes up and it is "creating chaos." 

What if enrollment WASN'T tanking? No one talked about that issue at all.

Topp got them back to the topic at hand. 

Then, out of the mouths of babes, comes Student Director Colin Bragg. He explained how he had actually been tracking the Board for years. 

People do not understand what is happening, how we got here, what the solutions are. 

It takes 5 clicks through a maze of a website to get to a memo that is barely readable.

People at engagement are told what they know but not asked what do you know and where do you know that from?

Change doesn’t happen in a day and that’s what they want. (I believe "they" is referencing parents.)

He thinks much of what is said is performative per his history of being in the district. 

(I want to note that Bragg's colleague, Safiya Ilyas, had said in her remarks early on in the meeting, that they hoped to put together a student director manual to explain how things work and the student director's role because they came on and had no idea what to do. Do you remember who pushed for this, rushed it through? I do. It was Chandra Hampson. These kids TRULY want to do a good job and contribute.)

There are a couple of directors who walk around while the discussion goes on. Director Michelle Sarju has always done that and now Director Sarah Clark does as well. Problem is, they seem to be unaware that when they do that, sometimes they block the camera or even the interpreter. 

In Sarju's remarks, she says she has been demanding interpreters the entire year and said D/HH families had been asking for this for 35 years. She mentioned the phrase "take the targeted to the universal."

Well, that's exactly what they did with Black boys over the last three years. What have they learned from that to spread out to other groups? From the published outcomes, not much. 

Also, there were a couple of speakers - ones from the Bilingual Orientation Center and one speaking for non-English speaking parents - who ALSO have been complaining for decades about being ignored. There had been a newcomer class at BOC for students just getting here from another country to help ease the confusing transition to American public education. Apparently, those classes have gone away and they just stick these kids in classes with little support. 

Parent Manuela Slye said language barriers were a constant problem that the district just seems to be okay with.

For all these groups - and I will include Native Americans in there as did Laura Gramer when she was speaking for D/HH families - the district has not done right by them. 

President Gina Topp forged on, saying that it appeared that perhaps they could move some waitlists this year and then create more systemic changes for next year.

But then came exactly what I think was in the air the whole time. This time it came from Enrollment Director Faauu Manu who stated that she had been with Enrollment for 12 years.

I want to address the root cause. I understand deeply our communities of color. The root cause is deeper than these waitlists. There is a privilege and entitlement that goes beyond and those voices are heard over and over and over. They are very loud and very influential. And very powerful. 

But they are a community and they do matter. (I believe here she was speaking of communities of color.)

Those who don’t come to meetings don’t need to chant or get rowdy and hold signs. How do we protect all of our school and the underserved students who consistently fall behind?

If we do these lofty goals of a western type of language, culturally speaking it doesn’t mean much to those families and their children. They trust you to take care of their child. 

Everything old is new again. Or maybe, it's the same old song. 

This war that rages between parent groups - staff is only too happy to use and stir that pot when they can - is never good. But staff points to activism and calls it "rowdy." It is always "privilege and entitlement" when some families advocate, no matter what. And you have people like Liza Rankin who believe families who advocate are all two-parent, two-income families and their kids will ALWAYS be alright.

It is not possible for anyone to know every family's situation and struggles. Being dismissive of some families does NOT - in the end - help other families. 

In this way and manner, the senior staff and the Seattle School Board are very good in their communications.