THIS!!! (Part Three) - Governance

I know we just got through a tumultuous and exciting midterm season. (And we have just one more race to call in Alaska and I have no doubt that Mary Peltola will prevail.) 

But in 2025, there were important races in Seattle for the School Board. Four seats, a majority, were up. One important issue was Student Outcome Focused Governance (SOFG) which had taken ahold of the Board like a fever. But most of the candidates running clearly said they did not support it. 

Indeed, those candidates were elected. Director Liza Rankin who was not up for reelection seemed sulky about the whole thing, trying to say SOFG was misrepresented. And after spending about $125,000 on SOFG "training," it seemed like it was over. Board committees came back into being but unfortunately, we still have just the one Board meeting a month. 

However, it appears that governance between the Superintendent and Board is back but under a new name - Delegation Policies. 

I urge you to write NOW to the Board and ask pointed questions. What will the change to this "Delegation" governance mean about what the Board will be doing with their time AND what their individual relationships with constituents will be. 

Write to the Board at: schoolboard@seattleschools.org. HOWEVER,this email  address will also go to the superintendent. I don't know why the email JUST for board directors email has gone away. 

I also wonder if money is being - yet again - spent on this effort. I will endeavor to find out. 

The worry for me now is that newer members may have been convinced this is what is really needed. Director Jen LaVallee and Director Katie Smith seem to be leaning towards this along with the obvious members Liza Rankin and Evan Briggs. 

When Briggs ran, she said this (from the Seattle Times):

She said the framework was designed to avoid the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen,” where too many people’s input can muddle decision-making. She saw value in SOFG’s guidance to delegate decision-making to those with appropriate expertise.

When LaVallee and Smith ran, they both were against SOFG but they did leave the door open on the governance issue. 

When Director Vivian Song was running, she said:

People are constantly policing each other to see if they are adhering to SOFG or not,” Song said. “The consequence of that was a lot of gatekeeping, a lack of transparency, and we were just not talking to each other.”

As well, Director Joe Mizrahi said:

Mizrahi said SOFG made it difficult to address issues unless they were framed explicitly as a student outcome.

“You can’t measure student safety — that isn’t an outcome, that is a student feeling,” Mizrahi said. “There are probably proxy things you could measure to find a way to include it, but we don’t have to twist ourselves into pretzels. If we aren’t an SOFG district, we don’t have to find the SOFG way to do it, you can just do it.”

Just to note, Director Smith's seat will come up for election sooner than the other members who were on the ballot with her in 2025. That's because she is just finishing the term of former director Lisa Rivera who resigned early. 

I've said this before but I reiterate - of course, there needs to be a clear understanding between the Board and the Superintendent about roles and abilities to act. I have no problem with the Board looking at what other regional districts do or even looking beyond the state for information to guide this governance work. 

One good thing about the Seattle School Board as compared to other boards both regional and out of state is that they have kept a civil tongue with each other. You can read about (and see videos of) very unpleasant Board meetings where people are passive-aggressive, angry, call names, ignore others on the dais, etc. That rarely, if ever, happens in Seattle and I applaud that belief in being civil at all times. It's not just about decorum; it's about being able to listen without getting angry and out of line.

As well, those days of the Board being accused of the dreaded "micromanaging" seem long gone. Many, many years back you did see individual Board members talking to principals about issues and trying to intervene with the superintendent. 

You saw Board members talking to media as if their one voice counted. It doesn't because school board is a team sport and one where in public, they speak with one voice. 

Here's what I find troubling.

If it looks, talks, and walks like SOFG, it doesn't matter its name. The documentation on this work smacks of SOFG, just maybe a kinder, gentler one. The documentation does NOT sound like any director wrote it and sounds like a compilation from various orgs that has been cherry-picked for this purpose. 

It's sheathed in edu-talk to the point where you may not even understand what is being said. 

What else?

1) In every single committee meeting since October - no matter the committee name - this issue of delegation policies has been on the agenda. Why is the Operations Committee including this? The Audit & Finance Committee? 

The Board created a whole new committee just for policy and that's where this belongs to start with. So I am suspicious that all these committees are going over this issue. 

2) This is what is stated as something of a mission statement:

Ensuring the board is accountable and open to the public, including

seeking divergent and diverse perspectives in its decision-making process

The Board’s currently adopted policies delineate between Governance and Administration but do not distinguish strongly enough the Board’s ownership and authority over policy and the Board’s own work. 

 

To implement best practices and align with our peers in Washington State and urban school boards across the country, and to make progress on the board goal delegated to the Policy Committee, the committee presents for approval the section of a Governance Policy Manual to establish a clearer framework for the board’s work.

What is the Board's work?

The board is responsible for setting these policies in collaboration/consultation with the superintendent; the board and the superintendent are responsible for following them; the board holds itself and the superintendent accountable to them.

That's a good, brief overall explanation. To continue: 

The Superintendent is employed by the Board as the district’s Chief Executive

Administrator/Officer. The Board will provide direction to the Superintendent through written and adopted policy approved by a Board majority.

Except where Board approval is required by law or established in Board policy, the Superintendent is authorized to determine the specific academic programs, instructional practices, organizational structures, staffing models, curriculum implementation strategies, and other methods used to achieve the Board’s Academic Outcome Goals within the expectations of the Board’s Guardrails.

3) And then there is this:

As part of the work on the Annual Board Goal assigned to the Policy Committee, “Ensure the public is well-informed of the Board’s roles and responsibilities,” the Committee is committed to updating policy to make clear the roles and responsibilities of the Board for itself and the public.

Has this been openly discussed at Board meetings? Or even mentioned that this work is happening in committees? I haven't seen that.

So how is the public "well-informed" about the Board's "roles and responsibilities?" 

Oh, is this going to be an after-the-fact kind of announcement? Because then we get to number 4.

4) Folks, I want to point out that there has been talk within the GOP about a new way to explain what electeds think about their roles after they are elected.

Basically, it is saying that "I ran for office. I told you my priorities. I told you how I think my thinking/experience would help the governance work for SPS. Well, now I've been elected based on that information I gave you so you need to get out of the way."

"You knew what I would do when you voted for me. The end." 

So you elect someone and that means you endorse ALL of what they think under governance? That's just giving them carte blanche to do whatever they want under the guise of "you voted me in." 

Which brings me to number 5.

5) Is the Board telling parents and the public that their work will fundamentally change with this new governance?

Because folks, the one thing that seems slighted is what the Board's relationship is and what its duties are with parents and the public. 

I know that most people would say that the directors are the public's oversight AND representation for the running of Seattle Schools. I look at the documentation and I do not see this. 

It feels very much like what I said in number 4. After you (the Public) listen to the candidates and then you vote, your work is over (as well as any kind of perceived influence you think parents and the public should have). 

6) As well, it continues the SOFG process for the Board rating its work, both as a board and individually. Know what had been starting to happen with SOFG on this point? Pressure was starting to come to the superintendent and senior staff for them to do a lot of self-reflection. They were not happy. 

There is nothing wrong with a semi-regular look at at your work and its outcomes but boy does this feel like a lot of navel-gazing. 

7) Much of what is documented sounds like a cut-and-paste and not written specific for SPS. It does NOT sound like it was written directly for this Board. 

Building on the work and recommendations of the Policy Committee from 2025 and using the WSSDA Guide for Effective School Board Members and the Washington School Board Standards framework, it was determined that delineating the board’s responsibilities in policy sections would be effective progress toward the goal assigned to the committee. This also aligns with practice in many other WA and US school districts.

Boards that ignore or allow themselves to be distracted from research-proven elements associated with high levels of student achievement risk losing the public’s confidence and jeopardizing the success of their students and staff. To avoid that scenario, boards should improve their effectiveness through self-assessment and goal-setting in relation to the Washington School Board Standards. Over time, doing so will set in motion a repeating cycle of embodying the standards, facilitating student success, and growing public trust.

It's fine to align the work with what WSDDA - the Washington State School Directors' Association - says. But every single district is different and so if one district, like the biggest one in the state, does their work differently than other districts, it does NOT make them ineffective or wrong.