Yet ANOTHER Seattle Schools' Scandal With Huge Possible Ramifications

Because if this story gets legs nationally, watch the coverage be yet another black eye to SPS.

I just want to remind folks that this is a district that pays executive directors very well to oversee its principals. 

It's a district that (apparently) gives principals HUGE amounts of freedom to oversee what principals (apparently) think are their kingdoms. 

All this keeps costing the district in the public's perception of it as well as yet another large payout should all that has so far been reported is true. 

I don't know if you recall but I reported a month or so ago about some kind of "internal audit" at Nathan Hale High School that had been done by its principal. Which I thought was odd.  Given that Roosevelt High's principal apparently could not perform a decent audit of her own athletic program, I see that perhaps NO principal should ever do their own "internal audit." 

Here's the situation from KING 5 News (bold mine):

A former Nathan Hale High School student said she was a freshman when her classmates began accusing her of supporting genocide in Gaza. 

In a lawsuit filed by her family last week, the teen alleged she was subjected to “rampant antisemitism” throughout the 2023–2024 school year, following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 

The complaint includes two photos of swastikas found on campus and accuses the school’s principal and vice principal —William Jackson and Makela Steward-Monroe — of failing to meaningfully intervene or protect the student. 

The lawsuit outlines multiple incidents of harassment, including a student spitting on her, death threats, and antisemitic remarks such as “Hitler’s plan should have worked” and “I hate the Jews.”
The lawsuit claimed the harassment escalated, culminating in what the family describes as a hate crime before summer break.

So SPS has a totally bullshit response that I'm not going to allow to grace this page.

Here's how it played out on one particular day (bold mine):

According to the complaint, on May 22, 2024, several students visited the girl’s classes throughout the day, trying to lure her into the hallway. By her final class, a group of about 20 students had gathered outside her classroom, demanding she come out. 

Her teacher locked the door. 

“We mostly shut the blinds but you could see some people trying to look in or banging on the door or yelling we know you’re in there come and get what you deserve,” the student said. 

She was eventually escorted to the office by a security guard, and the school came up with a plan to have her be accompanied by an adult at all times while on campus.

Her mom said the plan did not last long, and she felt she was left with no other option other than to transfer her daughter to another school.

“One day after, you know, giving her an escort, (Principal Steward-Monroe is) immediately telling me we can't keep this up and that we can't keep her safe, even though she'd seen the footage of, you know, these kids banging on the door," the mother said. 

“I felt totally helpless," said the student’s mother, Jennifer, who declined to share her last name. "It’s horrible. I remember appealing to the principal.

Naturally, this student is now at a different school and I'll bet it's not in SPS. 


Questions abound.

1. What are the teacher's thoughts about this? Did she/he/they complain about their own safety to SEA? Because if the students had entered the room and the teacher stood between them and the threatened student, what would those students have done? Attacked the teacher?

2. Of course, the district isn't going to give her a private bodyguard forever but hey, what WAS the plan given how terrible the atmosphere had become?

3. What do I think happened? That this girl, probably Jewish, didn't go along with what some other students demanded that she should think/feel about the Israel/Gaza war. And some kids decided she wasn't allowed her opinion and she needed to be punished for that.

Any decent administrator would have, upon receiving report after report, talked to their VP and counselors and probably convened a grade by grade meeting. Bring in speakers from different sides and allow (civil) discussion. Was that tried? Was anything tried except that "we don't tolerate X,Y, and Z at Nathan Hale High School." 


Funny thing, I wonder what the Board thinks. What Superintendent Podesta thinks? Wonder what might get said at the Board meeting on July 2nd or are they all going to pretend this didn't happen? 

Because it is happening throughout the country and it is now at the door of SPS. 

Again, what's the plan for safety in Seattle Schools' high schools?