The elections this fall represent a complete turn over for our local leadership. Not only is Seattle City Council moving to a district election process, but our long time Seattle School Board representative Sherry Carr is leaving and will be replaced by a new face.
My understanding is that the school board’s role is to be like the board of a company- it chooses the superintendent, helps them set priorities and policy, then evaluates the superintendent and chooses whether to keep them on. The school board is not supposed to muck about with individual personnel issues or school issues except by going through the superintendent.
One funny thing is that there are 7 school board seats in Seattle and 7 district seats being elected to Seattle City Council, yet the geographical maps for who represents what are entirely mismatched. Why does one school board district contain all of Wallingford while the City Council district splits us? Why do City Council districts number clockwise from bottom up while School Board districts number top-down? Because government.
Anyhow, the upshot of the map is that all of Wallingford and Green Lake are in Seattle School Board District 2, so I’m planning to interview the 2 remaining candidates for the Seattle School Board District 2 race, Rick Burke and Laura Obara Gramer. Here’s the questions that I’m thinking about asking- please pile on with changes to the questions or suggestions for new questions or format issues or what not in the comments. Thanks!
1. School Assignments: Wallingford does not currently have a neighborhood elementary school, with both John Stanford and McDonald being designated as language immersion option schools. School assignment policies mean that people directly across the street from these schools may not get into the schools even if it is their first choice, instead being assigned to BF Day or Green Lake.
Do you see a need to change Wallingford’s school assignment policies or curriculum to address this issue, and if so, how?
2. School Reform vs School Communities: There’s been obvious tension between the top-down, test-centered school reform movement and school teachers. School reformers argue that it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of teaching in order to achieve better outcomes. Teachers argue that tests are a poor measure of a teacher and that administration should be focused on supporting school communities instead of passing judgment on them.
How do you plan to navigate this rift, and what path do you see for improving schools without alienating teachers?
3. Simplifying Programs: SPS provides many differentiated learning opportunities for advanced students like APP, Spectrum, ALO, and IB programs. Some argue that Spectrum in particular creates more troubles than it solves and should be replaced with differentiated learning programs like Walk to Read and Walk to Math.
Further, SPS provides a wide range of option schools, some of which are under-enrolled like Licton Springs here in Wallingford. Some argue that SPS should close the most under enrolled option schools so that SPS can focus its resources more efficiently.
Do you believe any programs or option schools at SPS should be wound down or changed, and if so which ones?
4. Professionalism at District HQ: A key problem at SPS district headquarters has been turn over and people dropping the ball and not following through. The result has been budgetary and planning problems coupled with law suits and compliance failures. On the up side, some are saying the situation appears to be getting better as of late, particularly in Special Education.
What do you see as the main remaining issues that need to be fixed at district headquarters, and how do you plan to help make those changes?
5. Closing the Achievement Gap: A vast amount of resources at SPS and in the Families and Education Levy are concentrated on trying to close the achievement gap by focusing supports on schools with high levels of free and reduced lunch students. Some of these efforts seem well intentioned but ineffectual, while others seem so focused on drilling minority students in order to raise test scores that schools are drained of their sense of community and joy.
What do you think of current efforts to close the achievement gap, and what changes would you like to see made to it?
6. Priorities for the District: Running for the school board and then being on the school board are both crazy hard jobs full of contentious, emotional issues, and you will get paid nothing for your efforts. We assume there’s something motivating you other than a love of little people, or else you would just become a teacher.
What are the top one or two priorities that you hope to accomplish for Seattle Public Schools by being on the School Board?
7. Evaluating the Superintendent: Finally, your primary role on the school board is to evaluate the superintendent. Larry Nyland is still arguably in his honeymoon period, but there have been promising signs regarding compliance improvements and an ability to deescalate conflict that were not evident in the work of his recent predecessors.
How would your rate our current Superintendent’s efforts so far?
You should also ask about the capacity crisis on the North end. High-school capacity shortfalls is one of the biggest issues facing Seattle School District in the next 4 years. There are estimates that the north end will be 1500 seats short by the time Lincoln High School opens in 2018 or 2019, and potentially 500 seats short even then. The likely interim solutions may involve extended or split schedules (some students start early, some late). What is their solution to High-school and other capacity issues?
Thanks Ragweed, I’ll add that into the mix
No additional questions, but wanted to thank you for your efforts to keep us informed. The district discrepancies are crazy!
Hello,
I am a 20+ year educator who worked as a teacher in SSD and now I substitute teach.
Good questions. Thank you for this article.
What is the role of the school board? To whom is it most answerable?
School board is elected, it’s answerable to you. The role is described as best I can in the article. For more:
http://www.seattleschools.org/district/schoolboard
Thanks yikes! Great to hear validation from somebody with experience.
Good questions. I’d like to add two more topics:
1. I don’t think we can have a meaningful conversation about the racial achievement gap without also talking about the racial discipline gap. The Seattle Times has had a nice series of articles about the issue – but they only have numbers for the district as a whole. How much variation is there in suspensions by race and infraction within SPS and what are you going to do about it?
2. The new “smarter Balanced” tests were quite controversial this spring. there was a lot of grumbling about opting out. The notice from SPS said that students who did so would be given a “0” when computing the schools overall test score – a severe collective punishment for an individual decision. Whose policy was that? SPS’s or the state? what are you proposing to do to address parental concerns about tests : appropriateness of the test itself, length of time devoted to administering the tests (a couple of weeks for each grade level this year), amount of time devoted to teaching how to take the test rather than the curriculum per se, etc. ?
ps – I think fruitbat’s question is a good one to direct to the candidates. You’ve given us your take, but others may differ – e.g. actively setting district policy (in coordination or opposition to the state) vs a thumbs up or down on the superintendents decision. After all, corporate boards vary widely in their performance of their duties. I think candidate answers might be very revealing.
I’ve been on several local non-profit boards over the years, one with an annual budget just over $1m. In my experience there is a huge difference between: doing a good job as a board member in policy areas, micro-managing and leaving just about everything to the executive director (superintendent) and central office staff.
It seems leaving most everything of consequence to the super and central office is the goal as implied at the beginning of this article which toads the SPS central office party line. If that is the case, why would you bother asking School Board candidates much of anything of substance regarding policy, since experience and articles in local media have shown the central office ignores, obfuscates board pronouncements and effectively does what it wants while pretending to follow sheepish board directions – ineffectually.
Former Seattle School boardmembers say their first task after election is to attend a multi-day SPS board boot camp run by the central staff where they are told basically: hire the superintendent then shut-up and let that person run the show, oh yes pass the official budget spoon fed by the super’s staff. As a consequence of this mindless approach to non-managing an $810M org, the SPS board has no fully independent staff of their own. The tiny clerical staff they do have are under the thumb of the central office (super does their performance reviews). When all issue data, policy papers ..etc originate with the central staff, how can the board resist being led by the nose to predigested conclusions which serve central office agendas. Which is why we are treated over the years in Seattle to management scandal after scandal.
Corporate boards that take the hands-off approach, over time often find the company has been pillaged by the executive staff while boardmembers slept and collected stock options awards. Same is generally true in the non-profit world as outlined in the authoritative book “Managing the Nonprofit Organization” by management scholar Peter F. Drucker. Boards MUST work thru a middle path that is neither micro-managing nor policy abdication. All this begins and ends with their own staff, not one supplied and controlled by the superintendent. It would also help for the board to be paid commensurate with their public responsibility. If you pay the board of an $810m per year enterprise basically nothing (as we do today), you can expect them to effectively manage nothing of consequence that has not been blessed in advance by the central office. For district policy insight wallyhood.org should peek behind the curtain – interview the key staff lieutenants of the SPS superintendent where education policy originates and reform goes to die.