Seattle Schools Community Forum

Not a complete bust but not a great interview with these candidates on The Conversation this afternoon.  First, KUOW should make up its mind on the format.  For District 2, the candidates were interviewed individually and for a longer period of time.  (There were three of them.) For District 6, they had them all in the studio and interviewed each for a much shorter period of time but did allow them to interact.   I think it would be better to have the interaction among candidates AFTER the primary and allow people more time to get to know these candidates now.  Steve was first.  He was asked about Pottergate and the sale of the MLK,Jr. building.   His answer will now set the tone for his campaign.  He says they acted promptly when they had the State Auditor's investigation report.  What!?   If he is saying he had no idea anything was wrong until that point, he was simply not paying attention.  He stated that the...

In her West Seattle Herald interview, Position 6 candidate, Marty McLaren , has a lot to say about the math adoption.  From the article : "I administer the COMPASS® test in the Assessment Office," McLaren said. "The math scores are abysmal. Some are from West Seattle and Chief Sealth graduates. They should be ready for college algebra but their math skills are at middle school levels."   (The office she refers to is the South Seattle College office of student assessment.) Just Google "Washington State Report Card", scroll to "Seattle Public Schools" and the low math competency rates and high dropout statistics seem troublesome. Only 60 percent of students in 4th grade are meeting the standard, dropping to about 50 percent by 10th grade.  Cliff Mass endorses her in the article: "She has a deep interest in not only math education, but in reforming the dysfunctional School Board and District.  She will ask the questions that ...

From KUOW: Seattle School Board Race Position 6 The Conversation at 12:00 p.m. Four candidates are vying for Position 6 on the Seattle School Board, including incumbent Steve Sundquist. How do the candidates plan on handling continuing budget cuts and what are the specific issues facing the West Seattle School District? We speak with all four candidates and take your questions. So it looks like right now they have all four candidates - Sundquist, Joy Stevens, Marty McLaren and Nick Esparza - scheduled to speak.  This should be informative.  I would urge you to write to them if you have specific Position 6 questions you think should be asked ( weekday@kuow.org ). From the District: This summer, Routing Specialists at Seattle Public Schools are working hard to develop bus routes for the District's new Student Transportation Plan. The Routing Specialists are responsible for developing the streamlined bus routes for new neighborhood-based Transpor...

I attended last week's Metropolitan Democrats meeting.  It wasn't an endorsement event but rather, one for their members to get a first look (and listen) to candidates ranging from King County Council to School Board Directors.  It was a good chance to hear from the School Board candidates (although not all were present).

The Stranger Slog (ever the smarty-pants bunch) gave the three District Position 1 School Board candidates a pop quiz today.  From the thread: I n front of the SECB right now are incumbent Peter Maier along with challengers Sharon Peaslee and John Cummings, who appear sane but must be nutters because they want—actually want —to be on the Seattle School Board. First we're giving them a civics quiz —eight questions you're required to know in high school—then what do you want to know? Put your questions in comments and we'll try to ask 'em Unfortunately, they didn't print the questions but I'll try to ring someone up tomorrow and ask what they were.  Congrats to Peter Maier who came in first at 87.5%, Sharon Peaslee at 87% and John Cummings at 75%.  It is pointed out that those scores are all better than most Americans and most educators (again, no idea where these stats came from). 

Publicola had a good take on the Board elections based on Sherry Carr challenger, Kate Martin, who says that some of Sherry's high donors from her last election "own her."  What is interesting is that these are some of the city's heaviest hitters and Sherry says she doesn't know most of them.   If out of $149k of donations from my campaign, $84k came from 8 couples, I, as a candidate, might want to reach out to those people and meet them.  (I would just feel weird accepting that much money and not even talking to them.) The article also reports that so far Carr has raised over $9k and Martin $1500. Update:   I would like to add that Carr had most of her donations in her first election come in under $100 and the trend is continuing in this one.   I suspect that is true for most candidates but it's possible to look it up.

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 ...

Charita Dumas, one of the challengers for Steve Sundquist's position, is stepping out of the race to support Joy Anderson who is also running against Steve.

Just back from the 36th Dems Endorsement meeting.  It was a lively evening (made better by a Chair who knew how to keep things moving - bless him). No school board candidate was endorsed.  Both Sherry Carr and Peter Maier had motions for sole endorsement by the group and both motions failed.   I think the reason that motions for other candidates failed was because they had not been interviewed by the Executive Board and no one knew them.   There were some interesting things said.  Highlights: Councilman Tim Burgess (who did get an endorsement for his reelection) made the motion for Peter which isn't surprising considering Peter has endorsed him.  (I cornered Burgess about doing that endorsement before even considering other candidates.  He said that the district's work isn't done but they are making progress.  He couldn't get away from me fast enough and frankly, it was troubling because he's never done that with me before.)  He was the...

Principal movement again:  Looks like TOPS is losing its principal Jo Lutz-Ervin, to Lafayette.  The current principal of Lafayette, Virginia Turner, is going to Coe.  No idea who will lead TOPS. Congrats to Ballard High for its Fifth Avenue Theater award for Outstanding Orchestra for excellence in High School Musical Theater.  At the Washington State Dems luncheon today, both Governor Gregoire and Senator Ed Murray said that if they had $1 left in the budget, it would have gone to education.  $2 - it all would have gone to education.  I get that they are sorry but I'm not sure saying that helps.  One School Board candidate has dropped out.   According to the Stranger Slog, Michael Maddux, in District 3 (Martin-Morris) has stepped off the list.  He has endorsed challenger, Michelle Buetow.  "I think Buetow will consider what's best for the kids instead of just what's best for the administration ," says Maddux, citing Buteow's ...

In one of the first reports I've read about the School Board elections, the Slog's Riya Bhattacharjee (I think her name should be in the next spelling bee - it's that cool) weighs in. Most of the new candidates are running because they are tired of the corruption and cronyism in Seattle Public Schools. Some want to focus on closing the achievement gap and raising test scores. Others are just sick of the influence a plethora of foundations have on education these days.  At least one of the candidates is a reluctant one who says he's running because he is tired of mediocrity in our schools and the "business as usual approach" of our school board. Another lists this thing as his campaign website. This one sued the district against its new high school math textbooks in 2009. It's an interesting group, right? But then she editorializes a little and it's very funny (because it's so true): I've always found it really amusing h...

Updated 6/9/11 to include additional candidates. Update: I have long advocated for anyone who runs to take a basic finance course at a community college so the candidate would at least know how to read a spreadsheet. This is a large, complex organization and it's easy to get lost and then depend solely on staff for information. I note that UW's Extension course has a 9-month program, Certificate in School District Business Leadership, that looks very good for any potential School Board candidate. It's not cheap but you can take the courses separately. It covers a lot of ground that any candidate might need to get up to speed on in order to do the work. District 1 Peter Maier www.petermaierforschoolboard.com John Cummings - cummingsforschoolboard@gmail.com Sharon Peaslee - sharonpeaslee@gmail.com District 2 Sherry Carr - www.carr4kids.com Jack Whelan - jackwhelan1@comcast.net Kate Martin - www.katemartinforschoolboard.com Terrence J. Menage - mmigrant...

Charlie brought us up-to-date in a previous thread on School Board candidates.  I'd like to add some new information. First up, the King County Democrats had an endorsement meeting this past week.  None of the incumbents won an endorsement.   Apparently, Sherry's was the closest vote but she still lost.  Initially, both Michelle Buetow (Harium's announced challenger) and Kate Martin (Sherry's announced challenger) both won endorsement from the endorsement panel.  But they held a hand-count vote and Kate lost endorsement by a handful of votes.  Michelle retained her endorsement and was the only candidate for School Board endorsed. I have seen campaign letters from Steve Sundquist and Sherry Carr.  Both are somewhat disappointing.  Both are asking for early endorsements.  (FYI, Peter seems to have quite a large number of endorsements at this stage.)  Steve's is much shorter.   He points out the NSAP passed and new teach...

Kate Martin has announced her candidacy for the School Board in District II. Sherry Carr currently occupies that seat. Ms Martin is frequent commenter on this blog. She has been following the District closely for about six years. You can read a large body of her work on Seattle schools and public education at www.theseattlejournal.com From her press release: Kate Martin would like to see the District do more of what works, less of what doesn't, and put more of its scarce resources directly in the classrooms rather than layers of administration, excessive high stakes standardized tests and other areas that do not benefit students. She would like to see the District engage proven strategies more and ideological aspirations less. She thinks that all students need and deserve a personal learning plan (Individualized Education Program) and that schools, students and their families need to build stronger relationships in order to collaborate and work from the same playbook to ens...

It will soon be time for endorsements for the fall elections. The endorsements come from the Democratic Party legislative districts, from the King County Democrats, from a variety of advocacy organizations, and from the newspapers. The political organizations have endorsement meetings. At these meetings people in the organization get up and speak about the candidates - usually in support. It is not unusual, however, for someone to speak against the endorsement of a candidate. If you are an active member of the Democratic Party within a legislative district or at the county level, be ready to speak at the endorsement meeting in support of school board candidates or in opposition to them. I have seen how influential an impassioned talk from a member can influence the vote of the body. The advocacy groups have their own means for rating or endorsing candidates, but if you are a member of one of those groups, see what you can do to influence that process. You might wonder about how n...

I'm thinking of making a web site called "Change the Board" in which I - and others - would advocate for the replacement of the school board majority elected in 2007. The site would have a general argument for replacing the board majority in general and would also have specific arguments for replacing each of the four individual board members. The web site would be just one part of a whole campaign. There would be other parts than just the web site. It would include press efforts, rallies, truth-squads (to critically examine board campaign claims), online ads, and maybe even some yard signs. I'm thinking that we could promote "Change the Board" as an independent effort separate from each of the individual challenger campaigns. I'd like to try to build some momentum behind "Change the Board" that could support all challengers. The costs on something like this could be pretty minimal. Would this add to challenger campaigns or detract from ...

Here is the campaign web site for Director Maier . He promises "the leadership we need!" He has a long list of endorsements but little reason to vote for him. I signed up for his mailing list.

Director Martin-Morris' campaign is off and running and he has a new website to prove it. There are several striking features to it.

In an earlier thread, skeptical wrote about Director Sundquist: Sundquist also opened the last, hardest, of this year's budget sessions by making a sweeping statement that staff's board recommendations should be baseline accepted as the starting point of discussion. For that reason alone, he does not deserve re-election. Which actions or statements by Board Directors make them un-deserving of re-election? I'll provide the second one. At the Board meeting of November 17, 2010, Director Martin-Morris scolded his Board colleagues for trying to verify a statement made by Dr. Enfield. He lectured them that they should just accept her statements as true and not insult her by verifying them. For that reason alone, he does not deserve re-election. The statement in question proved false, a fact he knew when chastizing his fellow Directors, but that didn't slow him down one bit.

As previously reported, there is a bill in the State Legislature about 14-year-olds being able to vote in school board elections. KUOW's The Conversation will be featuring a discussion with Senator Scott White, who is sponsoring the bill, as well as two students from Garfield High School. This on KUOW 94.9 FM at noon.