Seattle Schools Community Forum

I had hoped to do my endorsements all in one fell swoop but I still have three incumbents to interview.  But by week's end, I hope to be done. I'm sure some of you might think, "Why is she bothering to interview them when it seems clear she doesn't support them?"  My answer is that it is the fair thing to do.  Is there something I can glean from talking to them one-on-one that I have missed?  I have very few questions for them so I'm not grilling them.  My most basic question is this one: Going forward, what will YOU, as an individual Board director, do differently in your second term based on what you have learned from your first term?   I am endorsing Sharon Peaslee because I believe that: she has the skill set to get up to speed quickly (something that is key for new Board member) she has had the experience as a parent in three districts in our region she has the understanding of Special Ed because of her own children she has shown herself s...

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...

Part two of KUOW's series on the Pottergate backstory aired this morning.  Again, just riveting.   And again, you can read the transcript but the audio is better. More backstory in case you missed it is that one of the central early warnings was not just the Sutor Report but that the Daily Journal of Commerce, two years ago, was courted by the district itself to do a story on the Small Business Works.  In doing work for the story, the reporter had found out about the Sutor Report.  That, of course, changed the story. In the story, Lee Newgent, the Executive Secretary of the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council, raised several issues among them: "Giving out work to construction firms that didn't have construction licenses, wage violations, not doing any criminal background checks [or] fingerprinting of their employees while working with children."   He also stated that somewhere down the line " there are going to be criminal indic...

Here's the latest in the Pottergate saga from the Seattle PI. Thanks to connections in SPS I had a heads up on this but had not seen the details. (I know this information was also given to the Times but the PI seems to have beaten them to the first release of the story.) It doesn't look good for yet another couple of Board members, this time Steve Sundquist and Harium Martin-Morris. From the PI story: Two Seattle school board members were warned in late 2008 that a contractor hired by Silas Potter was unlicensed, paying below-market wages and not following safety rules on construction sites at two elementary schools, according to e-mails between the school board and union officials The contractor, Solar West Office Solutions, was investigated by the state Department of Labor and Industries, which ordered the company to pay $57,000 in back wages. However, the school district wound up footing the bill because Solar West's owner, Keith Battle, could not be locat...

Here's one other piece of this puzzle of a crisis - the tracking of the Sutor Group report. Back in early 2009, district communications, for whatever reason, had been talking up the Small Business Works program. The Daily Journal of Commerce decided to do a piece on it. But the reporter wasn't going to just do some fluff piece "look at this great program" based on what the district PR put out. He had done a public disclosure request and got the Sutor Group report. Apparently, he called the district with questions and word went out to upper administration from Communications; the Daily Journal of Commerce had the Sutor Group report and may call about findings. All calls were to be referred to Communications. Now MGJ put this in her daily Friday updates to the Board. Why no one on the Board thought, "What is this report and why does it have actions and responses that a reporter would call about?" The Board did not receive the Sutor Group report and w...

Charlie went over what he thought striking from the Board's Investigative report. Here's mine: Another factor that may have contributed to decisions by employees not to take their concerns to the Board was the communication protocol developed in conjunction with the Board and instituted by Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson. The communication protocol was intended to streamline requests for information between the Board and District employees and was not intended to cut off employees’ access to the Board. Although the policy explicitly encouraged employees to bring concerns relating to activities that were not in the best interest of the District to the attention of management and promised no negative repercussions for doing so, some employees, including the internal auditor, believed the policy prohibited employees from having direct contact with the Board or the Superintendent. (bold mine) We also discovered that the Superintendent plays no active role in the budget formatio...