Seattle Schools Community Forum

Following up on my analysis/thoughts on the Peters/Dale Estey race in District IV, I had promised a thread on this issue of so-called School Board "dysfunction ." As I have pointed out, in the Board evaluation, not a SINGLE member of the Board called the Board dysfunctional.  One Board member said if they didn't trust each other more, they would become "the poster child for a dysfunctional Board."  That's far from saying that they are.  (One senior staff member did call them dysfunctional.) Now if you read the whole evaluation, you can see there are issues.  No denying that.  BUT, what the Times and Dale Estey and all these people leave out are all the pages of comments - by both the Board and senior management - about the good things said about the Board as people and as Board members. Also, as previous reported, the Board voted in unison or 6-1 about 98% of the time.  That's not a dysfunctional Board.   This lack of balance in the election ...

The annual Board Evaluation , presented on July 3, 2013 made it clear that the Board would focus, over the coming six months, on defining the role of the Board. Two of those six months have passed, but I haven't seen any greater clarity on the role of the Board nor any overt effort to reach consensus on it. But Seattle isn't the only Board seeking clarity about their purpose.

The Board met briefly last night to finalize the language for the narrative summary of the Board evaluation. It was a Kumbaya moment. For a minute there I thought they might actually all join together in song as they declared a "fresh start". They pledged to put the past behind them and go forward in a spirit of trust. I'm not kidding - they went around the table and each pledged. I'm okay with putting the past behind and facing forward, but let's not pretend that fresh starts and accountability are not in direct opposition. You can't preach accountability and then write off past bad actions with a flippant Hakuna Matata. Seriously, if I were a Board Director and I knew that there was going to be this sort of general amnesty on past transgressions I would have taken the opportunity to do something really nasty and divisive - like give a newspaper interview and call a board colleague untrustworthy. I think it's a bit ironic that they re-pledge themselve...

I am going to attempt to do some live blogging from the Board's Work Session to evaluate their work. I had wonder how this might go and I already see some unfamiliar faces sitting in the Board waiting area (they look like consultants) and the facilitiator, Bob Ness, that the Alliance likes to use. Quite by coincidence (I'm sure), the Alliance released some study they did on "effective" school boards.   I only read the executive summary but didn't see anything particularly new or striking in the work. The meeting starts in a few minutes so let's see how this goes. The consultants are from a firm on Mercer Island called Mercer Island Group. Everyone is quite jovial. But that seems to be changing when they see the scores they gave themselves on their self-evaluation. On a scale of 1-4, with 2.55 being average, they come in about 2.7. Worst one?  Is the Board working together effectively?  1.3.  And boy, they certainly don't believe someone el...