-Thank you, everybody, for coming out tonight.
This does seem like a really significant
and timely conversation to be having right now.
You know, just by --
first of all I want to introduce our really fantastic --
I'm so excited to be talking to this panel
because we've got three really insightful,
knowledgeable former members of the school board
here tonight to, kind of,
share their insights and their understanding.
And maybe some of their ideas for, kind of,
how we move forward in terms of improving our schools
as Keenen was talking about.
And so first of all, Dr. Stephan Blanford,
who's currently the Executive Director
of the Children's Alliance.
And Stephan, you served on the school board,
if I have this correctly, from 2013 to 2017, right?
-Right.
And I'm still detoxing from that, so --
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then next to Stephan is Vivian Song,
who just recently left the school board.
Served from -- when did you start Vivian?
You were -- -Twenty-twenty one.
Yeah, you left -- oh, you started in 2021
and just left earlier this year in 2024.
And then at the other end,
Michael DeBell also served on the school board
from 2005 to 2013.
And Michael was the author a few weeks ago
of what I thought was a really must-read op-ed
in the "Seattle Times."
People, if you haven't had a chance to read it,
kind of, weighing in on your concerns
about moving forward currently with the school closure plan.
So with that, just to, kind of, tee this conversation up.
I mean, I've been growing increasingly frustrated
over the last few years
as I've watched what looked to me
like mounting problems with the school system.
And yet, in terms of the public conversation about it,
I really heard two things.
One was silence, right?
It wasn't getting covered, right?
For all the people talk about the Seattle City Council,
and this one, and the previous one.
There's an enormous amount of attention
that's being paid to what's going on
with Seattle Municipal Government.
And yet, not that sort of --
not even anything remotely like that was being paid,
I think, to what was happening with our schools
until very recently, right?
When the school closure plan came along.
There's been now a, kind of,
huge upswelling of pushback, concern.
A whole bunch of different -- you know, a lot of emotions.
And I think the media has, kind of,
woken up and is starting to pay attention now.
But that's a really recent phenomena
and some of this stuff has been percolating for a while.
So I really appreciate the opportunity.
I really appreciate that Seattle Channel is here today
and recording this.
And other folks, the --
Jane from the Seattle Hall Pass Podcast,
which is a must-listen podcast, is here.
So I've heard from some other folks in the media
that they're very interested
in what our panelists have to say today.
So let's dive right in, right?
I mean, it seems like I can just,
sort of, start reeling off the set of problems
that I see currently besetting the Seattle schools, right?
Obviously, a big budget deficit, $100 million,
academic stagnation or declining enrollments.
Controversies over,
you know, the recent move away from HCC,
the Gifted and Talented program.
You know, and of course,
the recent proposal to close up to 21 schools, right?
And as Kenan mentioned, there's some breaking news today
that at least for now,
they're talking about reducing that to four schools.
Though, that's something
I do want to delve into a little deeper
about what we think is going to happen going forward.
And so all of that taken together,
I think, has led to this very recent,
sort of, upswell of concern and criticism about
where our schools are at.
So let me start by asking our panel,
and Stephan, please, let's start with you.
But is it fair to say
that the Seattle School District is in crisis right now?
-Depends on what you define as crisis.
As I was -- as you were going through that,
I was also thinking about my kid
who started as kindergartner in Seattle Public Schools
and graduated in 2021.
And did fabulously well.
Many of her cohort --
my kid enrolled as a kindergartner
at Beacon Hill International School,
and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Like enrolled in the program,
got college credit for being in this program.
And there are lots of stories like that.
And so frequently we don't celebrate the successes.
And there are lots of them. Right?
But I think you have articulated well,
gone through a list of things that have me very concerned.
I was recently asked to author the voters pamphlet statement
for the levy that will be on the ballot in February next year.
And I'm very concerned about
when there is so much bad publicity.
What are the risks to our longstanding practice
of passing levies and supporting public schools here in Seattle?
I hope we've had large margins in the past.
So hopefully that will hold true going forward
as the city and the district
try to work their way out of the crisis that we are in currently.
But the litany of bad press that they've gotten is real.
And it is easy, I think, seductive for people to just,
kind of, go on the bandwagon and talk about all the bad things.
And feel like the district is woefully failing our children.
But it's a mixed story. There are a lot of kids.
The truth of the matter is the school district,
or the school that has the largest number
of national merit scholars in Washington state
is Garfield High School.
You would think it would be a lakeside
or some other private school, but it's Garfield High School.
And there are many other schools that are very high performing.
The thing is, is we've got to figure out a way
to make them high performing for all the students
that are enrolled in that school.
-Great. Vivian, weigh in.
How would you describe the current state of the district?
-Yeah, I think something
that I would unfortunately add to that list is student safety.
So I think the lowest moment of my time on the school board
was the horrible loss of life in one of our school buildings.
And really, very sadly,
we've had another addition at Garfield High School.
And there's been other incidences near
and around our schools of violence.
And that's not something
that the school district can solve on its own.
That's quite frankly something
that we need to be engaging with our city
and our broader community around.
But it's definitely something that makes all the other crises
that we have to solve much more challenging.
But I agree with your assessment that there are wonderful things
that are happening in our district.
Just yesterday, the school board did get a presentation.
They had an outside consultant presenting on some
of our academic outcomes of our students.
And the result is actually
that our school district is outperforming on metrics
of English and math relative to peer districts.
Like Portland and San Francisco,
and peer districts in Washington state.
And so there are things that are going well in our district,
and there are tremendous challenges as well.
-Michael. -Good evening.
I think the school district is in crisis
and I think it's primarily a crisis of leadership.
The schools themselves through many different twists and turns,
different school boards,
different superintendents have continued to perform quite well.
And there's a high level of satisfaction and loyalty
to many schools all over the city.
But the current school board has chosen a pathway
that has alienated many parents.
And they have not taken any of their responsibility
to communicate and include the community seriously.
So they're acting in their own echo chamber, so to speak.
And that's, I believe, what has gotten us to this point,
which then it's, sort of, a --
when that closure list was released,
it was a shock to the entire city.
And there was no context for it.
There was no explanation of why we needed to do it,
other than the idea that there was a budget deficit.
So I think that the board is very much --
very out of touch with the city, the majority.
Not all board members.
There are some very sharp new board members
that are doing a wonderful job.
But they're continuing on a very politicized pathway.
And I hope we talk about that tonight.
-Yes.
And I do want to come back to that,
and dig deeper as we go forward in the conversation on that,
sort of, question of transparency and accountability.
I think there's a lot of concern
I've heard from stakeholders and other folks about that.
I also want to acknowledge that Sarah Clark,
one of the newbies on the school board,
is here today in the audience.
--- Leslie Harris.
-Oh, oh, and Leslie Harris is here as well.
Yes, hi, yeah. Former school board member.
So let's talk about the budget situation.
What should we make of that?
Obviously, the district's facing a $100 million shortfall.
It's been put forward as a reason why we need to close,
you know, up to 20, 21 schools.
Where should we go to figure out, like, how did this happen?
Is this Olympia's fault? Is it the district's fault?
Is it the contract with the teachers?
So please, in no particular order,
but weigh in on what your take
is on the budget situation of the district.
-Yes.
So one of the things that I did do when I was on the board,
I felt it was really necessary in every budget work session
that we had to start with,
what are the primary drivers of this budget deficit?
And we didn't actually get to that point.
It was really hard to extract that information
from the district.
And occasionally we would get, kind of, clues to that.
The primary drivers of the budget deficit
are special education spending.
And weirdly, you would -- the most recent update on this
you got from a levy presentation last week.
It's $74 million.
So a hundred million --
we have a hundred million dollar budget deficit
and 74 million of that is from special education.
Another -- the second largest source of that deficit
is transportation.
So neither of those are actually enrollment.
Small schools. -Right.
And one thing I would say to add on to that --
and Director Harris
and I had the great misfortune of being school board directors
during a strike, a teacher strike.
And you know, there are many people who were --
people that we thought were our friends, people
who as we were negotiating with the teachers' union --
which if you're not paying attention,
you would not know that they are very powerful in Seattle.
They can change elections pretty easily.
I got their endorsement.
I was very proud to get it,
but I wasn't sure I was going to get it for a lot
of different reasons.
Despite the fact that I'm married to a teacher, right?
But when we were negotiating with the teachers' union,
we had staff come in and say,
this is the max that we can afford as a district,
based on the funding that we get from the state, by and large.
And I will always remember being on vacation
and being called into a meeting that we were having virtually.
And being told basically
that the teachers union was demanding far more
than what we could afford to pay.
And I remember a teacher friend of ours calling and saying,
we are authorized to come to your house tomorrow
and strike in front of your house,
putting your family in danger.
And people that I knew and respected were like,
just pay the teachers whatever they want.
Teachers deserve to be paid adequately.
I agree wholeheartedly,
but we have constraints on what is fiscally responsible.
And if you pay teachers what they want,
there is no money for anything else for the district.
And I was elected under a mandate to try
to resolve the opportunity gaps that face our district.
So when I talk about some schools doing well for kids,
and other schools not doing so well for kids,
we have the fifth largest opportunity gap
of any urban school system in the United States.
So we are doing well for a lot of kids.
We are not doing well for our black and brown kids.
Seattle Public Schools has not.
And so my campaign was based on starting
to call that into question and resolve it.
And paying teachers well does not close opportunity gaps,
not in and of itself.
And so going to the point
that you were making earlier about it being
a low information environment,
where people don't talk about Seattle Public Schools
until there is a crisis.
People started to -- it started to be a crisis
because school didn't open on time.
And then it was an immediate crisis.
It was like the top story in the newspaper on a daily basis.
And we somehow
as a community have to have a longer conversation
than just the most sensational thing.
Like, ideally you would want to compensate teachers
and we are constrained by the levy lids
on how much we can raise in revenue
to support Seattle Public Schools.
When I ran -- you know, I think it has been surpassed.
But when I ran in 2013,
I got more votes
than any person had gotten in the history
of Seattle Public Schools elections in a contested race.
Because I was saying it's about the opportunity gap.
And then when it came to actually trying to execute
on that, there was a lot of resistance
that came from our inability to state --
our attention span shifts so quickly
that it doesn't allow for us to really grapple
with the complexity of running a billion-dollar institution,
which Seattle Public Schools is.
At one point almost $2 billion with the capital.
And so it is a very complex thing.
And when we start to talk about board qualification
to run a $2 billion institution,
I think that will be a rich conversation as well.
-The present school board has taken a hands-off attitude.
They dissolved the Audit and Finance Committee,
which to my knowledge had been in place
for most of the 100-year history of Seattle Public Schools.
When I was on the board,
it existed the entire eight years I was on the board.
And I was on it
and always thought
that it was one of the most important responsibilities
of governance, to manage the taxpayers money well.
This leadership group did not face the reality
that the big surge of money during the pandemic
was one time money. And of course,
there's a really critical distinction to money
that will be there every year.
Like state funding, or city partnerships,
or federal funding and money that is only there for one time.
And when it's gone, you're going to have a deficit.
So they knew this deficit was coming three years ago.
And by and large chose not to make any meaningful changes
in their budgeting until now.
And this begs the question, were they looking for a crisis
in order to enact a structural change that they were seeking?
And that was -- I think I alluded to this in my editorial.
It looks to me like they let the budget deficit grow
so they could try
and fundamentally change Seattle Public Schools
by closing all of the choice schools.
The K-8s,
schools that were different from the standard model.
So that's, kind of, what I see going on.
You know, budgeting is -- requires
that you pay close attention to the details
of what you're doing.
And Vivian's simple look at that there are elements.
There was a choice made to go to three tier busing
in order to be able to have secondary students sleep longer.
We had that choice when I was on the board
and we did not take it because it cost too much money.
Transportation is not your highest value dollar
for achieving educational outcomes
or addressing the opportunity gap.
So you know, budgets are documents
about what what's your highest priorities are.
And I think there's been some very large mistakes made.
-So let's talk a bit then about the leadership
and governance of the district.
Because this has already been coming up as a recurring,
sort of, theme of this conversation.
And first of all,
what I'm hearing is --
what I'm hearing from folks is quite alarming.
Right?
I'm hearing that there's significant tension
right now between some of the school board members
and the superintendent, Brent Jones.
And that some of the school board members,
in fact, may be, sort of, angling to,
in the not too distant future,
oust the superintendent and replace him.
And what strikes me as the oddest thing about that is,
what I'm hearing is that tension is not maybe rooted in,
well, we don't like your plan to close schools,
or this, or that. But it's a battle over the fact
that some school board members seem
to perceive the superintendent as not being --
or as being insufficiently invested
in this new governance model
that has been adopted called
Student Outcomes Focused Governance, right,
which is a very, sort of, benign sounding name to it.
And so I feel like SOFG, Student Outcomes Focused Governance,
there's a story there
that really hasn't been told or unpacked.
And so, Vivian, let me start with you,
because you were on the board right when SOFG got adopted.
So what is it and what's going on there?
So Student Outcomes Focused Governance was adopted shortly
before I joined the board.
And I did do the training to understand it.
And it formalizes the relationship
between the superintendent and the school board.
It says the superintendent does this.
The school board does this.
The things that I do like about it
is that it gets the school board to focus on
how the kids are doing academically.
It sets academic goals. We monitor them.
We spend time talking about them.
We get the staff to present to us what the strategies are.
But I really do think that there is a dark side
to this governance framework. And I took some notes
because I really wanted to quote from the manual.
In the manual,
there's a color-coded chart
and you have to achieve mastery of this framework.
And one section, it says,
you've achieved mastery of this framework
when there are no more than two board-authorized public meetings
and last no more than two hours.
Really? Like that's mastery of school board work?
Having no more than two meetings a month
that last less than two hours.
It cuts out a lot of transparency,
a lot of public input.
We were -- the board leadership, under this framework,
we had to take a vote to cancel all of our committees.
And that is why we do not have an audit and finance committee.
I've never heard of an institution
that does not have an audit or finance committee.
Let alone a government institution
that is responsible for $2 billion of public money
that is supposed to go to the education of 50,000
of our Seattle children.
And I just want to give you an example
of what is the consequence of this.
So you may not be aware
that there was a highly unusual financial transfer
that happened this summer.
There was an inter-fund loan.
The school board approved borrowing of $30 million
of capital fund money to cover a gap in the operating budget.
Now, if there was a finance committee,
what would have happened is the chief financial officer --
and I served on the finance committee.
The staff would have come to the finance committee.
They would have presented this idea.
The committee members would have asked questions,
and this would have been a public meeting.
We would have vetted the idea. We would have taken a vote on
whether or not we wanted to take this to the full board
for consideration.
If we didn't approve it,
they would have to go back and work on it.
There would be back and forth,
and it would have been done in a public process.
There would have been vetting.
What happened instead is in a May meeting,
it was intro and action.
So immediately, bam.
No questions asked by any of the school board directors.
It was approved.
A highly unusual financial transaction.
This isn't financial oversight.
Essentially, this is credit card debt.
The school board has no plan to repay this loan with interest.
And we already have $100 million deficit.
There's no public input.
There was no opportunity for the public to learn about this
because it was introduction and action.
There's no public testimony.
This is what happens
when you cancel the finance and audit committee.
And this is what happens with Student Outcomes
Focused Governance as your governance framework.
-I think we're doing a disservice to our audience
by not sharing enough about what it was
before the student focused governance.
And one of my complaints -- I didn't share,
but my doctorate is in education policy
at the University of Washington.
And one of the things that they would talk to us
about was school districts frequently --
school boards don't spend very much time focused on students.
They spend more time focused on adult issues.
So contracts and where the building's going to be,
and who's the contractor for that building,
and so on and so forth.
And when I became a school board director,
I was really surprised at
how little time we were spending actually talking about students
and their process through our schools.
I see Director Harris nodding that it was pretty...
Yeah. [ Laughs ]
It was pretty shocking to think that you run for office.
And when you are asked by the voters,
potential voters, they're all talking about,
so what are you going to do for my kid?
What are you going to do for the kids in the school, right?
And then you become a school board director
and it's like you get this stack of paper
for every board meeting that you have to get up to speed on.
And so very little of it is about
how students are performing,
what we could do to improve their performance.
So there was this idea that we would shift to a different model
that forced the school board to be more focused
on student outcomes.
But the problem, I think,
is that we as a city frequently elect people
who are single issue advocates.
Because we don't pay very much attention
to what goes on in schools.
And so we make a choice based on -- at the last minute,
based on vetting that may or may not --
I'm thinking of the stranger in particular.
That they do not do a very good job of vetting candidates.
And then they'll tell you to vote for one
or the other, right? And you choose that person
and that person may be the worst possible person for children.
And I've served with a few of them,
so I could tell you from personal experience.
And so we throw out the baby with the bathwater,
as it were, when it is --
when a program like Student Focused Governance
doesn't really get at the core issue.
Which is, how do we improve student performance?
Particularly when we elect --
and there are several current school board directors
that fit in that category of single issue advocates.
And I assume that some of you probably voted for them.
And so we are all part of the problem
when we're not adequately vetting candidates.
And if we get a chance, I would love to talk about
how do we improve the quality of candidates?
Because right now we're not getting very strong candidates
for a bunch of different reasons.
Starting with the fact
that you are working a full-time job as a school board director,
and you don't get paid for it. You don't get paid for it.
And so there are very few people in our community
who are qualified to do the work that would consider
that a job that you work a whole lot of hours for.
That you get no shortage of crap from the community at large.
And that you don't get paid a dime for it, in essence.
You might get paid $50 a meeting,
but I didn't -- you have to go through so much paperwork.
I didn't even -- I just left it on the table.
-Yeah.
-Policy governance is in many ways a smart way
to govern in a school district with essentially volunteers.
We have had times
when we've had over-involved school board directors.
And that was something that I encountered quite a bit.
Leslie and I were two-term people.
You know, a little bit crazy to run again
when you know how tough the job is,
but -- and so when I read about this move,
I thought, okay, that might work.
However, they swung way too far in two different ways.
First, they basically ended any rigorous interplay
with the community.
With, you know, doing a lot of outreach,
asking what people thought, what they wanted.
Having lots of opportunities to listen to the community,
because you only have two meetings a month.
So they essentially only have
one business meeting a month now.
The other thing is that their goals are
extremely narrowly focused.
So they are focused only on the academic achievement
of Black male students.
And that's certainly a very worthy goal.
It's an important goal.
And that's one of the groups
that deserves a lot of attention.
But when I saw the school closure proposal,
I thought,
how in the world
could they be closing all these high-performing schools?
Ten of them had wait lists. They're really popular schools.
They're anchors of their community.
But you know,
perhaps one element of that was that, well,
they weren't impacting the academic achievement
of Black male students. So therefore, it's acceptable.
Again, we're in a funny situation here
because they have not explained their criteria
for choosing those 21 schools.
So we're left to wonder
about what the longer-term plan might be.
But I do think that they are too narrowly focused,
and they are not connecting to the community.
One of the things that I learned
when you wanted to get something big
and important done on the school board,
you had to really work hard to first convince
the majority of your fellow board members.
And then convince the staff, the teachers especially.
And then convince the parents,
and then convince the community at large.
So it was a long process. That's the way democracy works.
If you don't build buy-in,
even if you get the change you want on paper,
people won't follow through, so --
-So just to sum up on the Student Outcomes
Focused Governance,
because I think what I've heard from the three of you --
and please weigh in if you think I'm mischaracterizing this.
But the general idea
that school board members should be focused on student outcomes,
that that should be a top priority is,
of course, a great idea. A benign idea.
Something that makes perfect sense.
But what we're really talking about here is a very specific,
rigid, structured,
kind of, top-down system
that has been developed by an outside organization
that acts as almost --
I mean, I've heard several people use the word cult to,
sort of,
describe how the alliance for the Great City Schools works.
And there's a guru guy, and you go to trainings
and these conferences, and you become a --
it's like Scientology, kind of, a little bit.
Like, it's got that vibe to it, maybe.
And it leads to these weird things.
Like we get rid of the audit committee.
Or we should have less meetings where we talk to the public,
because they're getting in the way of, you know,
what is perceived to be the Student Outcomes
Focused Governance. Or these committees are --
an audit committee doesn't make any sense
because it's not about student outcomes,
so therefore we don't look at the finance stuff.
-I actually think it's more about implementation.
-Yeah.
-You know,
in defense of Student Outcome Focused Governance,
the idea of getting rid of committees
is that all board members participate in the committee.
So instead of an audit and finance committee
that is specifically two or three board members
that become the experts and then bring back --
vote on an issue in committee
and then take that to the full board.
The entire board is supposed to be experts on all the things.
And, you know, I think the reality is it's very difficult
for the board to be --
even if they were highly qualified, it would be difficult
to have them be responsible for everything.
That's why committee structures usually work in lots
of different organizations.
You appoint two or three people who are interested,
want to spend the time, and become experts on that.
And then hopefully the rest of the board
is deferential to their expertise
on that particular issue.
Not rubber stamping, but at least give the --
feel like they have appropriately vetted anything
that they voted out of committee
for the entire board to consider.
I think the real issue here, which I'll go back to again,
is we don't have the right board to be able --
with the right disposition and demeanor
to be able to execute on anything like that.
There's a reason
why this is implemented and used by lots of different districts
across the state of Washington and across the country.
And for some of them it actually works.
So the cult designation of it,
you know, I might argue with that a little bit.
But it has much more to do with, who do we elect?
And then what do we expect them to do?
And the reality is because it's a low ballot issue.
Because most of us vote for a board member
and then we don't even know who that person is, right?
And we don't call them.
We don't -- there's no accountability for them.
They get to operate as free agents.
And frequently they are listening to the voices
in their community who are in some cases the loudest voices,
or have a very specific thing that they want to have done.
And that skews us in directions
that are really harmful to the long-term interest
of the district and the students that are enrolled in it.
-Vivian, you eluded the cult.
So you should speak up on that.
-Well, I think --
-I used the word cult, Vivian didn't.
-Just to be clear -- -Yeah, yeah, it's on me.
-I think that the --
so I think there are districts
that are using policy governance.
But Student Outcomes Focused Governance
is very, very specific.
And it is very rigid and unforgiving in the ways
that I have described.
Like they --
the board has to grade itself on a monthly basis on its progress
and its implementation.
So they are scoring themselves
on have they actually achieved mastery
in having two meetings a month that are less than two hours?
And reporting back to their coaches.
-So let's talk -- let's get into the meat of this
and the controversy over school closures, right?
Which is obviously a huge issue.
It seems to be, kind of, in flux right now.
We had the announcement today
that the push is now to close four schools this year.
But it's not clear what that means going forward,
you know, in subsequent years.
And Michael, I mentioned at the top of the program
that you had recently written an op-ed about this.
So expressing your opposition and concern
about the original school closure plan.
So explain what your concerns were.
-Any responsible school district needs to manage
the capacity of how many schools they operate
and the number of students that they have.
But there are multiple tools to do that with.
And one of the most important ones,
and one that I referred to in that article, was enrollment.
So enrollment is not a passive situation.
You don't let enrollment happen to you.
You can actively recruit and you can compete for market share.
And that was the philosophy that we had when I was on the board,
that we have lots of students, families in the city
that send their children to private school.
Let's go get some of those students
and bring them into our public school program.
That grows our budget.
That allows us to hire dynamic young teachers.
It fills up our schools so that you have --
a full school is a more efficient school to run.
And the cost of that extra student is far less
when you're filling out classrooms.
So that's one point.
I don't begrudge them the fact that,
you know, enrollment fell partly because of the pandemic.
But I do think that dismantling the highly capable program
and threatening to dismantle
all the choice programs are extremely destructive
to that idea of competing for market share.
Those are programs that people liked.
They don't cost the district any more.
In fact,
the lowest cost school in the district per pupil
is John Stanford International School,
which is dual bilingual in Japanese and in Spanish.
So a highly enriched curricula that parents seek.
There's a wait list there.
It doesn't cost any more. It costs less.
And that leaves more money
to devote to those three goals that they have
of improving academic outcomes for Black male students.
When I was on the board,
again, we used a weighted student formula.
We shifted money from affluent schools
to less affluent schools, but we used poverty.
We used class, not race, as our arbiter.
And that was -- essentially had broad consensus.
People in the city agreed.
Even parents at schools that got the least amount of money said,
yes, that's fair.
We should do that.
Growing your school means keeping your best schools open
and replicating them.
And this closure plan, the one that was presented,
was doing just the opposite.
It was going to shut down the bilingual immersion program
in the north end.
It was going to close lots of popular schools, K-8s,
where community ties get built that run pretty deep.
Your parents are out of school for nine years.
That's longer than you would normally have.
And so parents get more involved.
That's an opportunity, and it's a choice.
Yes, the class cohort is smaller,
but again, parents like that.
So offering a variety of different programs
seems like a very important strategy.
And it's one that goes way back
to John Stanford superintendency.
Now, as I mentioned in that article,
and I would say it now, the trade-off was, okay,
we're going to let schools try lots of different things.
But if they are unsuccessful or they can't fill the school,
then we may have to close the program
or even close the school.
So the accountability was built in,
but it was based on academic achievement and enrollment.
And not on the -- well,
I still don't know what the closure plan was based on.
That would be very helpful if we had the criteria.
But no, I think that this was --
the fact that it was withdrawn so quickly was evidence
that was very poorly conceived
and is not in the long-term interests of the city,
and especially of the schoolchildren of Seattle.
-And Vivian, I obviously want you and Stephane
to weigh in on this as well,
but just as a point of clarification,
both the current school board president
and the superintendent at various points
in the not-too-distant past have said that even
if there wasn't a budget shortfall,
they would still be pushing to close some schools.
So obviously there's -- and we're, kind of,
alluding to the fact
that there's some other stuff swirling around here that's,
kind of, driving that school closure conversation,
and I wonder what your take on that is.
-Right, I think the board president has been very clear
about her long-term desire to close option schools.
And the school district in the last couple of years
has held the wait lists for the option schools.
So there has been opportunity to actually enroll
more students into the option schools.
But the district has pursued a specific strategy
to hold those lists instead of actually actively enrolling
students into Seattle public schools.
There would be simple things
that the school district could do to promote a strategy
of enrollment, like -- and I have suggested this to them.
You could move up the school choice window
from April to March.
Which is when private schools release their decision letters,
and then be part of the consideration set, for example.
But you know,
if you've got board leadership
that has a desire to close option schools,
you're not going to make those kinds of decisions.
But just, kind of, based on the names of the four schools
that were just released,
this is clearly a real estate plan, not a student plan, right?
Three of the four schools are -- -Name the schools.
-It was -- -Sanislo.
-Sanislo into Highland Park, Sacajawea into John Rogers,
North Beach into Viewlands, and then Stevens into Montlake.
Now, three of those schools
are moving into brand new school buildings.
So this is really about a real estate plan.
And I think one of my,
kind of, points of feedback about this is,
this should be about a student plan, right?
Like, we should be thinking about --
these students are not widgets, right?
We should not be moving kids around.
Like, let's be a little bit more thoughtful
about who these students are.
What are the needs about the students.
What are the needs of this community.
Let's not just be moving kids around because it's convenient
and we have a brand new building.
So I hope that this is --
perhaps this is just the preliminary plan.
But I hope this will be the next phase of the discourse
when it comes to this list.
-And I'll just say quickly,
as someone who was writing my dissertation
when the last school closure situation was taking place.
We were talking about school closures.
And Michael could probably talk about this a whole lot better.
We decided to close a few,
and then enrollments went up,
negating the reason for some of the closures.
And so there's a strong argument,
thinking about the fact that -- your statement about it,
this being a real estate plan.
The importance of actually keeping the school,
like keeping the ownership of the school,
even if it is closed.
Because we don't know what the future will hold.
We know that we're in one of the most childless cities
in the United States.
Seattle, Washington is one of the most childless cities
in the United States. But we also know
that demographic shifts happen really quickly.
And that a school that was slated to be closed
because it didn't have enough enrollment
could change very quickly.
Neighborhoods shift really quickly.
And in particular,
I know because my kid went to
Beacon Hill International School.
When that school opened,
because it was a language immersion program,
real estate went incredibly high in the first year
of the program,
and there were a whole lot of parents who wanted to go,
who moved into the neighborhood,
so they could go to that school.
So there is high potential, if we do it well,
to actually increase enrollment, like Michael was saying.
-And just to put some numbers around that,
Gene Balk, the FYI guy at "The Seattle Times",
did an analysis of the latest census numbers.
And we went from having a market share,
public school market share, of 80% five years ago to 75%.
So we lost about 4,000 students to private school enrollment
in the last five years.
And we do have low birth rates in Seattle,
but there are plenty of children to fill our schools,
but we have to fight for them.
We have to actually want to attract all those families
to public school.
And it's doable, because that's what we did, and it worked.
-So to continue the conversation,
I mean, it seems to me that when we're talking about --
well, we're, kind of, eliminating the gifted
and talented program.
HCC is, kind of, going away and being dispersed.
When we're talking about closing what are
quite popular option schools, right?
One of the, sort of, pushbacks I've heard is,
well, these option schools may be popular but they're --
essentially they're too white, right?
They're schools
that are attracting a certain segment of the population.
And if our focus is going to be on the poorer kids,
on the Black kids, on the brown kids,
you know, maybe we do need to get rid --
in the name of equity, right, get rid of these things.
So that more resources will then be devoted back to
where the concern is.
And Stephan,
I know you've done an enormous amount of work
on equity concerns.
So I'd love you to weigh in on this.
Is that the right conception of
how equity is supposed to work in the district?
-No, I don't think that anyone would say
that you eliminate choice for white people
in order to ensure racial equity.
That would be an argument that says
that you're dumbing down the potential of all students.
And I don't think the city stands for that.
I know educators don't stand for that.
I have not heard the rationale for closing option schools.
And I think we are doing a disservice by not allowing those
who think that they should be closed
to have the opportunity to speak about why they would close.
I know from friends I have who had kids
that were enrolled in option schools
that it was a positive situation for them.
Black and brown kids, as well as white kids.
And I know that option schools, which by the way,
for those who don't know,
option schools are schools that are outside of neighborhoods.
That if you can provide transportation,
you can go to those schools.
You can enroll your kid in that school
if you are willing to provide transportation for that kid.
And so -- in some cases, Director Harris.
And so I would push back really strongly against the idea
that you either have the equity or you have options.
You can -- there are many districts,
particularly districts --
urban districts that serve lots of kids of color
that have option schools.
We have an interesting situation in Seattle
where, because of the configuration
of our neighborhoods, and the bridges, and all the rest,
it is difficult for many parents.
Particularly parents of color who tend to be lower income,
to choose option schools.
And so that tends to make them wider
than they otherwise would be.
-But presumably there are things we could do
to try to rectify that within the option schools, right?
-Yeah, absolutely. Change --
-Bring that opportunity to a broader range of --
-Yeah, change the boundaries about where --
what neighborhood actually can serve those option schools.
Yeah.
-I do want to open it up to questions from the audience.
But let me start it off because school board director,
current school board director, Sarah Clark's here.
And Sarah, you also wrote an op-ed recently saying,
hey, it's time to say that the district's
"well-resourced schools" plan needs to fall by the wayside.
Right? That this isn't going in a good direction.
This is not about well-resourced schools.
That there's other approaches.
Can you just say a few words about that to the audience?
-Just get on the mic. -Yeah, let's see if we can --
-Well, thanks for having me tonight
and giving me the opportunity to share a little bit.
I think the panel has done a great job of laying
out the challenges before us with Seattle Public Schools.
And really, you know, from my observation,
we did not do a good job engaging the community.
And I concur with a lot.
You know, we should have been more open and transparent about
why certain schools were on the list.
And there should have been a lot more thought put into,
I think, transition planning
and just the whole scope of the options that we released.
And you know, systems change takes time.
And I've been trying to tell my colleagues this for a while.
And regardless of what governance model we're using,
we can only move at the pace of human change.
Because we're talking about changing the behavior
of our educators.
And so thinking that we can close 25 schools
and increase student outcomes on the back end
is just flawed logic.
And from where I sit,
and I do have a master's in education policy.
And so I really felt that because of the damage
that we did based on the lack of community engagement,
the lack of transparency
that we should pull back and really put this plan to the side
at the level of four schools.
It's not going to solve our budget problems for the '25,
'26 school year.
And meanwhile, next year we have elections, levies,
teacher contract negotiations.
And we need support from the entire community
to have good outcomes on those.
And so those were a few of the reasons
why I wrote that op-ed and,
kind of, the point that I was trying to get across.
-Yeah.
You mentioned that not doing a good job on transparency
and, kind of, communication and vulnerability.
Robert, you're here in the audience.
Robert's been -- -Take the mic.
-Oh, here.
Robert's been one of the, you know, leading voices, I think,
on the parent side who are, sort of,
critics of the school closure plan.
So Robert, do you want to weigh in for a bit on this,
kind of, transparency? What's your beef?
-I mean, you know, the perspective of someone
who has three kids in the system right now
and deeply believes in public education,
like I come from a family of educators.
I'm just, kind of, appalled at where the leadership is going.
But I think everyone here has said
that we have great educators. We have great schools.
I think most parents would agree with that.
That the quality of education
our kids are getting is generally good.
And there are kids who are being left behind
and we need to take care of that.
But I think there is a growing groundswell of parents out there
who really feel the need to turn the ship.
And to reorient this district in one
where we are bringing people together
to lift up the needs of every child.
The ones who are doing well and the ones who are not.
Rather than closing schools and pitting families and schools
against each other.
How do we bring everyone together to say,
all right, you know,
this student over here is going to need a lot of resources,
and a lot of help, and let's do it.
But this one over here still needs some resources as well.
Away from this model that is scarcity mindset
and one towards it's an abundance mindset.
So that's what I hear from a lot of parents
who really believe in this district.
Who were shocked when they saw a plan to close 20 schools.
And now are like, eyes wide open.
Wondering what they can do
and mobilizing to think what are we going to do
to have different policies?
To maybe elect different school board members next year.
To really chart a better course for the district.
Because this is a city -- you know,
there are a lot of big cities in this country
that have abandoned public education.
Where the number of people
who send their kids to private school
is far larger than just 25%. But I think this is Seattle,
we would like that number to be as close to 100% as possible
in the public system.
And so when I talk to parents,
there is that really strong belief that we can
and must do better.
And try to figure out how do we get there from here
and a real openness to hearing different solutions.
-Thank you, Robert.
So let's open it up to questions from the audience for our panel.
-[ Speaking indistinctly ]
-Or I can repeat the questions, and --
-I'm going to say something
that's a little bit controversial.
And with a good feeling of this conversation so far,
I'm going to throw something into the mix
that may be a little bit upsetting.
I agree with what you're saying wholeheartedly.
My experience as a school board director
is that there are a lot of parents
in Seattle Public Schools
that would go along with everything that you said.
As long as it's taking care of their kid.
And what I observed as a school board director
who ran on a very explicit anti-racist,
racial equity argument,
was that what I call passive progressivism.
People who are progressive, but passively.
Until it affects their kid and their school.
We have to do some really difficult things
to turn the ship, as you would say.
And to ensure that kids who are having a good experience
continue to have a good experience.
But take kids who are not having a good experience
and ensure that they have a good experience.
And there are hard choices that need to be made in order
for that to happen.
And I fear that a lot of people
will get on board with that idea.
But when it comes to potentially taking away from their school,
the school that their kid goes to,
that they won't be down for that cost.
And so we can't dress it up and make it appealing
and then not follow through.
Because anytime any school district closes schools,
the students who bear the burden of that school closure
are low income Black and brown kids.
Over and over, and over, and over again.
And here in Seattle we need to do it differently.
We say we're progressive
and we need to actually live up to that this time around.
-Ben, did you have a question? -Yeah, I did. Sorry.
-Yeah, and just to repeat, Ben,
a recent school board candidate
was asking a question about the politics.
How do we fix the politics around getting a school board
that really reflects the conversation
we're having in the room today?
What do we need to see happen
when there are these impediments, you know,
that are out there?
-Michael and I have gone through several iterations
of trying to answer that question.
And I believe in many ways it starts with --
-- our community has to have a different conversation about --
we say schools are terribly important.
And our numbers for support for public schools
are off the charts.
They're far higher than most other cities
in the United States.
From May 1st through May 15th,
which is usually the filing deadline,
I basically block out my schedule.
And anyone who's interested in being a school board director,
I talk to them.
Usually someone will say, you need to talk to Stephan.
Vivian and I had a long conversation before she ran.
And when I'm talking to them,
I'm trying to convince them to actually file and run.
I'm telling them the difficulties of campaigning
and what messages resonate and which ones don't.
And I'm always shocked that there are very few people
who choose to do it.
And frequently when I'm being honest with them,
there have been several people who've said,
I was thinking about it, but I'm going to opt out.
Right?
We have to have candidates, and multiple candidates who are --
who have some connection to schools.
Who care about students, like, significantly,
and can run an organization.
Because the reality is you're given the keys to,
you know, a multi-billion-dollar organization.
And I served with people that --
and I try not to throw school board directors under the bus.
Because if you run, then I support you, you know.
Because it is a hard job.
But I served with people
that absolutely were not qualified
to be school board directors. Absolutely.
And the difficulty of trying to call together enough
of a majority to get good things done for a city
that desperately wants them to be done,
particularly when you're playing with politics,
and you're playing with a press
that sometimes is adversarial to the interest
of the school district, makes it really hard to recruit people.
And as I shared before,
most people who fit the criteria that I've laid out would never,
never, never consider running. My wife said to me,
she could not believe that I was actually going to do it.
And we're still dealing with the challenge of the four years
that I served a long, long time ago.
-Michael.
-I was on my way out retiring from the board
when Stephan was running.
And I remember thinking, he's brilliant.
He's going to be great.
How do we get him to follow through?
And sure enough, he did and did a great job.
You know, I think the missing ingredient is
the power of parents.
There's 50,000 students, roughly.
That's quite possibly 50,000 voters.
But they are not organized in any kind of effective fashion.
And the Seattle Council PTSA has been captured, I would say,
by a bit of an activist bent.
And so they're not offering any real leadership.
There's the opportunity.
Parents have the biggest stake in the game,
but they don't always participate effectively
in school board elections.
And I have had multiple conversations
with school communities that were on the closure list.
I guess a few folks read that piece I wrote in "The Times."
And I keep telling them, look, you've got to organize.
You know, it's just like anything else in democracy.
You have to organize
and pursue your interests actively and effectively.
So over the last, I would say, seven or eight years,
essentially, activists,
political and community activists,
have dominated the school politics in our city.
And they have very strong agendas.
And look, we know now exactly where it's gotten us to.
This crisis situation that we're in,
that they didn't pay any attention to the budget.
Several of them just said, I don't care about the budget.
Education is more important than the budget.
Well, you know, you're the fiduciary of the taxpayer
as a school board director.
You can't do that. You can't say that.
You're completely abrogating your responsibilities.
So you know, you've got to look for,
as Stephan was saying,
look for people who have the chops to do it.
I mean, it's certainly not easy.
We could professionalize it a little bit.
I think it's not a bad idea to pay people something.
When I was on the board,
there was a guy who said, that's hairdo money, or $50 a month.
It's been $50 a month for the last, like, 40 years.
-Since 1987. -Yeah.
-I have a quick follow-up question.
What about cities that avoid electing school boards
and they're appointed.
We'd be better off --
-- the mayor appointed school board members?
-Third rail, third rail.
-So what he's talking about is mayoral appointment.
And many school --
many cities have a mayor
that gets to appoint some number of school board directors.
There are complaints that that's anti-democratic.
There are also studies that say
that it's more effective to have some
of your members appointed by the mayor.
One of the things that I had to do
when I was doing my doctoral research
was look at a meta-study of all of the studies
that say it's good or it's not good.
And if you're looking -- if the measure is,
does it produce better outcomes for students?
The research says it's mixed.
In some districts, it actually does.
But in many districts,
the mayor appoints someone
who is equally unqualified to be a school board director.
Because they are paying patronage to someone
who helped them get elected.
And the result of that can be just as bad as,
you know, us electing someone that's unqualified.
-Vivian, do you want to weigh in?
-I would be interested in some efforts --
and I think the state legislature has taken steps
in that direction.
I participated in a commerce department study
on school board director compensation.
I actually did calculate the amount of money
I spent out-of-pocket on childcare
to attend school board meetings and
shared that with the Department of Commerce, for example.
I think that there's a statewide association
for school board directors.
I think there's no training, actually.
There's, like,
30 minutes of training on Open Public Meetings Act,
and that's about it.
There's a training around finance, budget preparation.
You would be surprised.
They really don't give you much preparation for this role.
And so I think there's a real opportunity
for this state to set school districts up for success.
And by the way,
Seattle is not alone in terms of its financial woes.
I was talking to a senior leader at the district
who participates in an association
with other administrators around the state.
There are now 31 districts
that will likely be on the verge of binding conditions.
Which is essentially they're unable
to balance their budget for the upcoming school year
without some major investment from the state.
-Out of 296 districts in Washington state.
-Yeah.
-I have been looking at some of the other big cities
around the country and what's going on with their school.
San Francisco is going through a very similar,
kind of, battle over school closures.
Where the superintendent just got ousted, essentially,
by the mayor,
who has now appointed, you know, somebody else
to run the schools.
But there's a huge parental backlash
going on around closures.
Or in Chicago right now, there's a battle between the mayor
and the superintendent over --
the mayor is very close to the teachers' union.
Teachers' union helped elect a mayor.
And now the teachers' union wants certain things done
fiscally that the superintendent is saying -- you know,
so I do wonder, yeah --
-And there are several districts in Washington state
that have been taken over by Moms for Liberty.
So it comes from both sides.
It comes from the progressive side.
And it comes from the super conservative side,
that frequently ousts the superintendent
and the leadership team.
Because there are lots more programs
and educational services
that are trying to treat the whole child.
Not just treating them as a student,
but thinking about their behavioral health
and trying to put things in.
And all of those programs are targets of Moms for Liberty
and other conservative groups.
And so you get a couple or three board directors elected,
frequently not saying that they're moms for liberty.
And then they immediately start to undo that stuff.
And if any educator stands in their way,
they just get them out. And I will tell you,
you don't have to go very far to find that.
My wife works in Highline Public Schools right now.
And they have, depending on how you count it,
two board members right now who are Moms for Liberty types.
And so this is not like an eastern Washington phenomena,
or super conservative phenomena.
It plays out locally.
-So in the last few minutes that we have left,
I want to, sort of,
try to close on a more, sort of, forward looking note.
I mean, I think we've, kind of,
had a chance to dissect some of the problems
the district is facing.
But I'd like each of our panelists to weigh in.
Where do you think we should go from here?
You know, what's the pathway forward, right,
to get to a better outcome?
A more stable and successful district.
-I think it's imperative that every person in here
ask hard questions of the candidates
who are running for school board.
Starting with this first question that I always ask,
which are, what are the four responsibilities
of a school board director?
And most people cannot answer it.
They don't know what the --
there are four enumerated responsibilities
that school board directors have.
And most people don't know that, that fundamental thing.
We have to do a better job of encouraging people to run.
Educating them so they understand what the job is.
And holding them accountable once they're in the role
to ensure that student outcomes are improving over time.
And we're resolving some of these opportunity gaps
that have been historic and persistent.
That's where I'd start.
And wish me luck, wish all of us luck in recruiting people.
And you recruit people too, right?
So if you know someone
who should be a school board director,
you know, talk to them about their civic responsibility.
We can't be the global powerhouse that we should be,
that Seattle should be,
without a high-functioning public school system.
And as you've heard,
we are struggling to have that right now.
-Yeah, I'm actually in agreement with you.
I think it's really important
that we get some functional leadership in the school board.
I've been working with some parents who are in here
to start a political action committee.
And where our primary goal is candidate recruitment and voter
education around school boards.
And I think in terms of immediate steps,
I think the public really needs to participate in the discourse
that's happening around important financial decisions
that our current school board is making.
I think there needs to be more questions asked about
why these closures are happening.
I don't know that they're necessarily necessary.
-So Stephan mentioned recruitment,
but, you know,
you could also consider, you know,
several people here have run for school board.
So don't take that off your list.
Never know.
So the immediate most pressing issue is
to balance the district's budget.
And that's something that I spent a lot of time
on when I was on the board,
because we went through the Great Recession.
And our state legislature cut our funding rather dramatically.
And we had to react quickly.
It wasn't something that we created.
I feel like, to some extent,
the district leadership has created this crisis
by not acting sooner.
We have to begin immediately negotiating
with the teachers' union to raise class sizes.
That's the one thing you can always do
when you have a deficit above a certain level of your budget.
It's written right into the contract.
Now, that may not be popular, but it's absolutely necessary.
Eighty percent of the budget is labor costs.
So you know, trying to operate fewer schools
and solve a 10% of your budget deficit will never work.
It's impossible.
And I do think, as I mentioned in my article,
that we should lay off,
or get rid of some of the administrators downtown.
Starting with the people who wrote the closure plan.
Too many overactive, zealous administrators just makes
life harder for the schools.
I've heard that so many times from principals and educators.
That downtown all they do is make our life miserable,
and we're out here doing a good job educating kids.
Well, you've got to break that pattern.
So yeah, we need a change in direction very, very clearly.
But we need --
as both Vivian and Stephan have said,
we need a persistent effort, and scrutiny,
and attention from the media
and from our politically active members of the community.
Because we got here because no one was paying attention.
And people didn't even realize what the governance model was,
except for those of us inside baseball
that follow it all the time closely.
Well, this is what the governance model has produced.
So wow, we better change it. And that might take an election,
but you know, something's got to change, and quickly.
Or else we're going to really hurt ourselves
as a school district and as a city.
We should be welcoming every child
and giving them the maximum opportunity to succeed.
Regardless of color, regardless of income,
regardless of where they live in the city.
That's our mission. That's what we should be doing.
So we should be out hustling to get everybody we can in.
And I do believe that affluent families will allow money
to be transferred out of their schools,
because it happened once.
John Stanford introduced the weighted student formula,
and every low-poverty school lost lots of money.
That's
when all the PTA fundraising started in this city.
That was the exact result of it. They lost millions of dollars
but no one -- there was really no serious opposition.
Everybody understood that's the right thing to do.
Move the money to the kids with higher needs.
Have greater staffing at those schools.
That's still true.
That's why this closure plan makes no sense at all.
Because you're actually closing schools
that are the source for moving money
to the higher-needs schools still.
So I think we can do this.
We just, we need new leadership.
-I'm getting a sense that next year's
school board races are not going to be the same,
kind of, sleepy, low-profile affairs
that we had the last cycle.
And that there seems to be some organizing opportunities here,
if nothing else.
So thank you, everybody, for coming out tonight.
Thank you especially to our really knowledgeable,
insightful, and -- I love it, very candid panel
of former school board directors here in Seattle.
So give them a big hand. Thank you.