Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Seattle Times is reporting the following: - Silas Potter was sentenced to 3 years, 7 months in jail.   He could get credit for the eight and a half months time that he has already spent in jail. - One accomplice, David Johnson, was convicted in early November of 30 counts and will sentenced in early Jan. - Potter and Johnson "are jointly responsible for restitution of $168, 275." - The other accomplice, Lorrie Kay Sorensen, was sentenced to 60 days of home detention with electronic monitoring.   She must pay $83k in restitution. The most basic lesson is accountability. There was failure from the top down.  Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, the superintendent at the time, is the least responsible but she should have realized that Mr. Potter's direct supervisor, Fred Stephens, was distracted by the murder of his son and the subsequent trial.   Additionally, employees within JSCEE either feared or avoided Potter; that was a well-known situation and yet no o...

Honestly, I just don't get the Times.  So now they have trotted out an op-ed against BOTH levies (and, gotten the name of the pro-levy supporter, Greg Wong -not Wang - wrong to boot).  It's yet another person who is late to this party of "accountability" and yet this guy even casts a bigger swath.  And he's a public school parent who wants both levies to fail.  I understand his unhappiness but failing the Operations levy won't change that.  In fact, if he wants to see our district fall to its knees, let the Operations levy fail.  He gives NO solutions to what might happen after that failure - not so helpful - but yes, he's voting against both of them.  (He also points out "big-city cronyism" from the Potter scandal.  Yes and that came at the hands of a superintendent who swept in with big changes supported by the powers that be.  Let's remember that.) I'm with him on changing how we run SPS and frankly, changing the protection...

District updates: I asked the Board about their stand on I-1240 and received this reply from President DeBell: A Resolution opposing I-1240 is on next week's agenda  for introduction and action.  It was recommended unanimously by the Executive Committee to the full Board at yesterday's meeting and will be posted tomorrow.  This follows the Renton School Board's rejection of I-1240 as well.   So here how it is lining up against I-1240: Community groups, many legislators and other elected officials, the Washington State PTA, the Washington State School Directors Association, the Association of School Administrators, the principals' association, numerous labor groups, and, I predict, a huge number of specific school boards.  On the other side: Billionaires, LEV, Stand, DFER, many editorial boards and all the people who believe that by voting for charters they stick it to the teachers union.  (I say the latter because I have tracked the editoria...

According to the Detroit Free Press  Gregory King has been hired as a principal for one of the elementary schools in the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan, the school district of struggling schools administered by Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The press release from the EAA referred to his twenty years as a teacher and a principal and that he won an award in Atlanta. It doesn't mention his service in Seattle and it certainly doesn't mention his recent ethics violation. EAA elementary school principals will be paid $120,000 a year. And that's in Detroit. I guess Lowell should be looking for a new principal.

Don Kennedy, the former CFOO of Seattle Public Schools was kicked out on his ass a year ago. The School Board softened his landing with six months' severance, but now we know ( from this Seattle Times article ) that he has landed in clover as the interim operations chief in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At $900 a day, and assuming a 260 day contract, that's $234,000 a year. Any questions? He'll have to get back to you on that. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, as we know, has been made the superintendent of the state-run district in Michigan which is made up of all of the "failing" schools taken over by the state. I have no doubt that she got that position based on her analogous success with the Southeast Education Initiative here in Seattle. In case you're wondering, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson really did declare that effort a success. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson rather famously (or infamously) denied any responsibility for the scandal in the RSBDP saying that she couldn't be expected...

My, but this was a year of change for Seattle Public Schools. Change at the top. The biggest news of the year was the sudden dismissal of the superintendent, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The Board, which had dragged their feet from June to March in response to the State Auditor's report, acted expeditiously between their receipt of a report from an internal investigation of the Regional Small Business Development Program and their decision to fire the superintendent. We can make all kinds of conjecture about why the Board decided to fire her, but we need to give strong credence to their stated reason: they no longer felt that they could trust her. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson had been losing the Board's trust bit by bit in a number of other incidents over the course of the previous three years. The "Pottergate" scandal was just the last step - a big one - that took her over the line. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was fired "without cause" and took a year's pay (over a qua...

The State Auditor's office has determined that the sale of the Martin Luther King, Jr. building to First AME church did not violate any laws and there was no conflict of interest.  However, digging deeper, there are some interesting items. Update:  I got it wrong about Noel Treat being on the selection committee.  The selection committee was made up of Don Kennedy, Ron English, Holly Ferguson and Chanin Kelly-Rae (public member).   Mr. Treat only attended the August 2010 meeting with MGJ at the request of Ron English (and this was right after Mr. Treat was hired). New Update:  Yoo hoo, Seattle Times?  Are you there?  There is nothing at their website on this story.  I have searched and I found nothing.  What an odd thing (especially since it clears the district).  Maybe they are worried about what this looks like to voters in terms of the School Board incumbents.   The lobbyist's name is Clifford Traisman (it is unclear to ...

The SunSentinel. com has a story on the six semifinalists named for Broward County schools superintendent job.  The list does not contain Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson's name. The finalists come from all parts of the country including the superintendent of the Bethel School district in Spanaway, WA.  They are expecting to announce a new superintendent on September 14th. 

Lastly, on this latest batch of e-mails were two interesting ones from the e-mail of Maria Goodloe-Johnson. One is frightening and the other is a bit of schadenfrueden for our pal, Michelle Rhee. In June of 2010, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson wrote Wendy Kopp, the head of TFA, for advice on someone to head SPS's Human Resources department. Wendy wrote back inquiring: …whether you might be open to considering candidates who may not fit the traditional requirements/profile ( e.g. not necessarily 10 years of HR-type exp) since many of our strong leaders have not had the most traditional paths but may be interested and compelling candidates for a role like this one. MGJ We are absolutely interested in non-tradional candidates.  You have also prompted me to think about revising the 10 years and adding strategic thinking and transformative leadership as required qualifications. Wendy One more thing - - we were talking with a high-potential TFA alum in WA state about this and before he throw...

So out in Philadelphia, they ousted their Superintendent.  She was due, under her contract, $1.5M but they paid her $900,000 to leave (of which $400k came from anonymous, private donors).  Boy, they really wanted her leave.  It didn't help that she did this (from the Huffington Post ): With the situation becoming increasingly untenable, Ackerman faced it head-on Thursday in a speech to district principals. She publicly challenged school board members to "sentence me ... or set me free" in what many saw as an unannounced farewell speech. She entered the room to Sade's song "Is It A Crime?" – which became the theme of her remarks. She also read Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise": "You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I rise." Ackerman then referred to the past year as "full of lots of challenge and controversy for me" and said her cr...

. ..like I know Susan Enfield on the subject of TFA, well, like me, it will give you pause. It took awhile but I finally got through all the SPS/TFA e-mails that I received.  In a separate thread, I will post some additional quotes that will show a timeline of discussion, laughter, friendship and an almost absolute irritation/disregard for the public's input and for public process.  Don't you know that if the public didn't keep asking questions and writing to elected officials and public officials that a lot more could get done at SPS and TFA? This thread is to talk about themes and impressions.

The West Seattle Herald ran an interview with Director Steve Sundquist where he says some pretty interesting things.   (They will be running interviews with challengers Marty McLaren, Joy Anderson and Nick Esparza soon.)   The Herald made one mistake (I believe) which was to only list the other incumbents running and not their challengers. 

From the Stranger comes reporter Riya Bhattacharjee's look into Peter Maier and red flags that he either didn't follow-thru on or didn't wave in the faces of his colleagues.   The key one? As chair of the school board's Operations Committee, Maier acknowledges that he read warnings in a document called the Sutor report, commissioned by the district, about irregularities with a small-works contracting program, originally a component of the regional small-business development program. Peter had The Sutor Group report (given to him at an Ops Committee meeting by Stephens).  I have never heard Peter say why Stephens gave it to him (and only him) but that seems to be the case. At a March 6 school board meeting, right before the board unanimously voted to fire superintendent Goodloe-Johnson for her role in the scandal, Maier said he had been alerted to the problems and didn't tell the board. Bhattacharjee was looking for evidence that it might have made a d...

From AP via Seattle PI online: Former Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall knew about cheating allegations on standardized tests but either ignored them or tried to hide them, according to a state investigation. An 800-page report released Tuesday to The Associated Press by Gov. Nathan Deal 's office through an open records request shows several educators reported cheating in their schools. But the report says Hall, who won the national Superintendent of the Year award in 2009, and other administrators ignored those reports and sometimes retaliated against the whistleblowers. The yearlong investigation shows educators at nearly four dozen Atlanta elementary and middle schools cheated on standardized tests by helping students or changing the answers once exams were handed in. The investigators also found a " culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation " in the school district over the cheating allegations, which led to educators lying abou...

First up, a commentary from David Brewster over at Crosscut about the upcoming elections citywide.   It gets so much wrong about the School Board that Charlie and I just couldn't stop ourselves.   I'll just hit the highlights: It was different with the Seattle School Board , where all four members of a particularly inept board were swept away (or declined to run) by an informal slate of business-backed, big-organization-experienced newcomers. The result was a transformed board. It changed overnight from a board dominated by petty bickering, meddling, superintendent-undermining, inexperienced bumblers. This time there is a swarm of challengers. I don't know much about them yet, but none seems to have much community stature.  I wouldn't call the previous majority on the Board inept at all but throwing that at all four of them seems wrong (especially if you know those women).  I'm not sure what "big organizations" that Steve, Harium and Michael ...

Update:  The Times' editorial board weighed in today on this subject.   They are shocked! and appalled! to find this kind of thing happening.  Well, it may have happened under MGJ but some of the stock players are still there.  They end with this: The school district is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of tax dollars. A legacy with consequences. No kidding. It appears that Ron English, the interim General Counsel, is peeved over the Seattle Times' article about the sale of the MLK, Jr. building to First AME church. He is asking the Times for a retraction and a copy of the audiotape of the interview with him.

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson continues to seek employment this time in Tampa Bay, Florida.  The deadline was May 25th but they are thinking of extending the period to Monday, June 6th. The Commissioner of Education in Florida is the equivalent to the State Superintendent in Washington State.  He/she reports to the Governor as an agency head.  The salary range is $195k-275k. Reading through the qualifications, I noted a few areas where Dr. Goodloe-Johnson might run into trouble: • Inspires trust, possesses self-confidence, and models high standards of integrity. • Possesses excellent communication skills and can effectively establish dialogue with all stakeholder groups. • Is a “team player” who inspires others by example. • Creates an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, open channels of communication and shared decision-making. The TampaBay.com site says this: We provided a partial list  on Thursday evening. Here are the additional names provided this aftern...

SPS reports: An Aki Kurose teacher has been selected for a Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange.  Math teacher Suzanne Mayer was the only Washington State teacher selected for this honor.  She will travel to India in August and stay until January 2012.  A teacher from India will take her place during that time period at Aki Kurose.  Robert Ettinger, a teacher at Mercer Middle School , received the Amgen Award for Teaching Science Excellence.  He receives $5,000 and Mercer receives $5,000 towards science development there.  Ettinger was chosen to receive the award because of his creative teaching methods and effectiveness in the classroom, according to Carol Pawlak of Amgen Washington. Center School students Tara Conley, Riley Moffitt, Jasiah Ruby, Sophie Mitchell and Sam Wolk won the 48-Hour Film Off at the  National Film Festival for Talented Youth. Their film, Jam the Jam, was both the audience and judges' favorite.  Center...

Thank you to Dora Taylor for the heads up.  Dr. Goodloe-Johnson is one of two finalists for the superintendent job in Newark, New Jersey (the other is a TFA person).  The story is at NJ.com. Apparently Dr. Goodloe-Johnson wouldn't go on record with the press about what happened here in Seattle but the recorded interview captured this: "The board terminated my contract without cause," she told the group, immediately bringing up the finance issue "They decided, I think, based on a lot of things — I think politics, reform, union pushback." Her Broad pal, flack Tom Payzant, says she's one of the best urban superintendents in the country.  The proof of that is nowhere to be seen but apparently he thinks if he says it enough, it will be true. You know, Maria, it's not a good idea to misrepresent the past but like I say, we all need one good rationalization to get us through the day.  Yours seems to be that you are blameless in everything. Interesti...

I attended an event on Thursday by a group called First Thursday which is a black community group that supports its community businesses and groups.  Their speaker was King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.  I attended because it was advertised that he would speak about Pottergate.