Seattle Schools Community Forum

Thanks to Miramac for this heads up on the report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Chamber Foundation and Institute for a Competitive Workforce about the Seattle School Board. I'm reading it now and so far I have found a couple of errors: Because there is no campaign contribution limit, they can exercise significant power.  (They being WEA and private donors.) Luckily, this issue got rectified during the last session of the Legislature and the campaign limits are the same as for other candidates.  They also have an error in their graphic which states that the seven Board members represent 5 districts and 2 at-large.   Not true. 

Following an executive session, the Board has amended the agenda for tomorrow's Board meeting by adding votes for the termination of the superintendent and the appointment of Dr. Enfield as the interim superintendent. From the amended agenda: Approval of this item would terminate without cause the employment of Dr. Goodloe-Johnson as the District’s Superintendent. See the Board Action Report here . And this one: Approval of this item would terminate without cause the employment of Donald Kennedy as the District’s Chief Financial and Operations Officer. With it's own Board Action Report . And finally this one: Approval of this item would elect Dr. Susan Enfield to serve as Interim Superintendent and authorize the Board President to execute an Interim Superintendent Employment Agreement with Dr. Enfield on behalf of the Board. With a Board Action Report as well. All of them are for introduction and action at tomorrow's meeting. Immediate action is in the best interes...

2:52pm Here's a link .

I copied that headline from the Seattle Times story . I take no happiness in this news. I knew about this, warned about this, and Dorothy and I were trying to ferret out the whole story. Apparently, documents got leaked and this report got out before the SAO was quite ready to release it. To let you know, earlier this month I wrote a white paper and sent it to the Mayor, the City Council, and the entire Seattle state legislative delegation. I called it " Approaching Storm: the Coming Crisis in Seattle Public Schools ." I did not include any information on this story as I had to make sure I had the facts in hand. This just adds to what is in the report. Coincidentally, I have a meeting today with Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw. When I first became aware of Silas Potter and the Small Business Program, I was suspicious. As we were told, the money spent over the last two years on this program had to be paid back to the Capital fund from the General Fund. That is one reason ...

The outside ethics counsel has delivered the first of two or three reports on ethics complaints brought against the superintendent for her failure to disclose her affiliations with non-profits with business with the District in the proper and timely manner required by law. This first report has to do with the superintendent's seat on the Board of the NWEA, the company that publishes the MAP tests the District bought. The outside ethics counsel concluded that the superintendent "did not violate the ethics policies of Seattle Public Schools ("SPS") by being a member of the board of directors of NWEA and not disclosing that board membership before the SPS first voted on the NWEA contract." The ethics counsel goes on to write that, as a matter of best practice, the superintendent and School Board members should disclose their non-profit board memberships and refrain from participating in matters related to those non-profits, but that " the current SPS ethic...

They are breaking out like a teenager! Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson was, and is, a member of the Board of Directors of the Council of Great City Schools . This relationship has never been disclosed in the minutes of a Board meeting. This relationship did not appear on her annual disclosure statement . The District awarded contracts to the Council of Great City Schools to perform a variety of audits and reviews of District programs and processes. She did not recuse herself from the decision to select the CGCS as the vendor for these contracts. She did not constrain herself from recommending CGCS to decisionmakers about awarding these contracts. These failures individually and together represent violations of RCW 42.23.030 and RC W 42.23.040 and, by violating those laws, they are violations of the District Ethics Policy E11.00 . I have, this evening, made a written complaint to the District Ethics Officer, Noel Treat. I gotta say, this doesn't look good for her.

By now, I think that we are all aware of the rules around conflicts of interest for school district officials. There are other prohibited activities as well. A question has arisen about whether Dr. Goodloe-Johnson encouraged other education folks, in this case the Council of Great City Schools, to use the MAP test as a measure of academic achievement in a study they were commissioned to do by the Gates Foundation. Did she try to sell MAP to CGCS on behalf of NWEA? There's no problem with that in general, but she shouldn't use her Seattle Public Schools email account to do it. More deeply concerning, some folks think her email contained a hint of quid pro quo in which CGCS would use NWEA's MAP for their study and Seattle Public Schools would, reciprocally, use CGCS to do the Alternative Education Review. There is also a lot of reason to dismiss those concerns. Nothing is spelled out that clearly. In fact, the pitch that she made to Mike Casserly at CGCS wasn't much o...

I... I... I'm speechless. You simply have to read it for yourself. The superintendent's report to the Board on her community engagement efforts . Please pay special attention to the Q & A that appears at the end. Goodloe-Johnson - great superintendent or greatest superintendent?

Yesterday Dr. Goodloe-Johnson gave her unapologetic apology for the false statistic about Seattle Public School graduates who met the entrance requirements for a four-year college. She only did it because the Board Executive Committee forced her to do it. It wasn't much of an apology - sort of "we should have told more people that we were changing the number" instead of what it should have been: "sorry we were deceptive". Here's her fake apology . Look hard. If you can find the word "sorry" or "apologize" in there, let me know. I couldn't find it. This is not, in fact an apology at all. If anything, she seems angry at the people who quoted the number for not attending a Board work session in which the change in the number was mentioned. She continues to pretend that the number was poorly explained instead of an intentional effort to mislead. In these ancillary notes to the official "apology" we finally see an actual...

I can't recall if I have already shared this, but last week I sent an email to Noel Treat, the District's Ethics Officer in which I made a number of Ethics Complaints - in accordance with Board Policy F11.00 Here is the text of the complaint(s): On January 6, 2010, Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson provided to the Board her 2010 Statement of Financial Interest and Potential Conflict of Interests . On this statement, the superintendent disclosed that she is a non-salaried officer of three non-profits: Board member of the NWEA, Board member of the Broad Center, and Board member of United Way of King County. Further, she attested that this list is complete to the best of her knowledge as of the date of her signing (January 6, 2010). This list, however, was not complete. The superintendent is now, and was at the time of her statement, a member of the Board of the Alliance for Education. The Alliance for Education is also a non-profit. I regard her failure to disclose this posi...

The Times has what they call "The Truth Needle" and Linda Shaw, their education reporter, filed a report this morning. Let me allow her to tell you: The claim: Starting in 2008, Seattle Public Schools reported that a meager 17 percent of its high-school graduates met the entrance requirements for four-year colleges. The district quietly quit using that number then recently revised it, without comment, to 46 percent. "... revised it, without comment ..." classic SPS. This is why, when you read a contract or a hard number, you should bookmark that page or print it out. It might just disappear and you'll feel like you got gaslighted (how old am I to use that reference). Now that 17% is out there in ether and even though many of us were left scratching our heads (how did all those seniors at Roosevelt get into college?), what can you do? This 17% number has been used by LEV, Seattle Foundation and many other "community" groups. What the Times f...

It's heartening to see difficult questions getting asked.

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson wrote a guest column for the Seattle Times about the new teacher contract. Much of it is disturbing. It is disturbing because it is inaccurate. It is disturbing because it is misleading. It is disturbing because it reflects a deep misunderstanding of the people in the organization she leads.

The Board meeting of May 5 opened with a story from Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson . It was the heartwarming tale of a teacher's interactions with a student, "little Teddy Stoddard". The Superintendent told it as part of her observance of Teacher Appreciation Week. The story itself was so sugar sweet it made my teeth hurt. I think four people in the room were struck with diabetes just from hearing it. Despite those charms, the story bugged me. It sounded like something from the Reader's Digest. It didn't ring true. It wasn't recent. It wasn't from Seattle. Doesn't she have any recent, local stories of teacher success? And what does it mean that she doesn't? More than that, her delivery of it bugged me. It sounded like she was reading it cold, as if she was reading it aloud for the first time. Call me grumpy, but everything about this story hit me sideways. Today I Googled it and, sure enough, the story is fictitious. See this site or this one . Why doe...

I went to the coffee with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson at Hamilton yesterday. It was very strange. She would often totally ignore a person's question and give an answer to another question - sort of like a politician at a "debate", but then she would allow the person to follow up, in which they would ask their question again. This pattern would repeat until she would finally answer the question, but with some weak "it would depend on the individual case", "these things take time and we are working towards that" or "that hasn't been determined yet" sort of weasel answer. There were a few questions and answers that I think merit notice. 1. A fellow noted that it is poorer students who change addresses most frequently and that the new SAP requires students to change schools if they move out of their current school's attendance area. He asked if that didn't put a disproportionate burden on poorer students by creating additional transitions for...

Charlie's comments on the KUOW thread about trying to understand Dr. Goodloe-Johnson's motivations fit in nicely with this interview I found on the Seattle Channel: Seattle Voices with Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, PhD 12/15/2008 Watch this in-depth interview with Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Seattle Public Schools' Superintendent, who has been making headlines recently with recommendations to close schools throughout Seattle. Learn about Goodloe-Johnson's background and what has inspired her to take on this difficult challenge.

Continuing from an earlier thread of suggestions for affected school communities , here are some more tips for school advocates. 1) Listen frequently and as carefully as possible to what the leaders (like Dr. G-J) and decision-makers (the School Board) are saying and writing. This is not as easy and obvious as it sounds. When you are upset, or believe the district is doing something wrong, it's easy to get so emotional about it that your head is filled with your own thoughts and arguments to the exclusion of being able to listen to others. But I think it's absolutely crucial when advocating for a position to understand as much as possible about the philosophies/beliefs/concerns of decision-makers and leaders. On that note: The Q&A with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson is now complete and can be read here on the Seattle Times site. I would encourage all parents involved in discussions on the closure and consolidation process to read it. She doesn't give away much....I think she'...

The Times is having an online Q&A with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson on school closures on Monday from 10:30 am to 11:30 am. Here's the link to submit a question.

Full slide deck of Superintendent's presentation from December 3rd Board meeting is posted here . Some interesting excerpts: "A team of former teachers and principals is visiting Elementary, Middle/K-8, and High Schools to do building walk-throughs. The purpose of these walk-throughs is to validate the functional capacity of each building, and the current use of these rooms. It is important that this data is correct so that it can be usedto help determine building functional capacities . This information will be shared with the building closure team and will be used to determine student assignments and program placements during the capacity management/building closure process. We are proposing a Tuesday work shop to go through this analysis." " Questions about amount of change to the Central cluster. Response : Central & South clusters contain a large number of excess seats. Staff are evaluating additional ways to eliminate the large number of excess seats in t...

I received this on Friday: Dear Seattle Public Schools staff members: I want to ensure that you have easy access to information about the capacity management and building closure process as well as answers to any questions and concerns you may have. This email provides updates and links to key information. On October 29, the School Board unanimously voted to accelerate the capacity management process, which is one of the five key focus areas for this year as we implement Excellence for All , our Strategic Plan. As we balance capacity in each area of the city, we are considering how to ensure that we provide equitable access to quality programs for all students. On Monday, November 3, the Seattle Times published an opinion editorial by the School Board that sets out the context for capacity management and building closures. At the School Board meeting on November 12, we discussed the guidelines and foundational questions that will be applied as buildings are considered f...