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Seattle Hall Pass Podcast
S2 E8 - Behind Closed Doors
Christie, Jane, and Jasmine break down the October 9 Seattle School Board meeting, where the board passed a resolution to close up to five schools. We discuss the surprise executive session, held behind closed doors, and the newly imposed controls on board directors' questions and interactions with staff and the superintendent. Finally, we opine on where Student Outcomes Focused Governance is taking us.
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Music by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist, logo by Carmen Lau-Woo.
S2 E8 - Behind Closed Doors
Oct 9, 2024 School Board Meeting
[00:00:00] Jane Tunks Demel: Welcome to Seattle Hall Pass, a podcast with news and conversations about Seattle public schools. I'm Jane Tunks Demel.
[00:00:14] Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson.
[00:00:16] Jasmine Pulido: I'm Jasmine Pulido.
[00:00:17] Christie Robertson: And today we are going to talk about the October 9th school board meeting. The headline from the meeting is that there will be up to five schools closing and that the list will be coming October 21st. And so I guess we can say that's the district's Option C.
[00:00:35] CHAPTER: pre-meeting
[00:00:35] Christie Robertson: But just a couple of days before the meeting school director Sarah Clark had an op-ed in the Seattle Times. And what did she say there, Jane?
[00:00:45] Jane Tunks Demel: Well, the headline sums it up. It says, "SPS board must make it clear the well-resourced schools plan is done."
[00:00:53] Christie Robertson: So she is clearly breaking ranks with the direction of the district and saying that she thinks that no schools should close. The feeling about the five schools closing has been that it's maybe just the tip of the iceberg and that over the coming years there will be up to 20 schools closing, but that's clearly Sarah saying we need to drop that plan.
[00:01:16] Jasmine Pulido: There's two quotes in here that I really want to point out. One was “I am also not convinced that there aren't other options to balance the district's 2025 26 budget”.
And the second quote, "I've looked and there is no data to show any link between closing schools and increasing student outcomes where equity is the outcome of consolidation."
[00:01:45] Jane Tunks Demel: And she also acknowledged the extreme upheaval this has been causing Seattle families. She said, "We need to pivot from posturing to amending. Apologize to the community for a year long emotional process with no outcome and do a total reset." And that really resonated with the Seattle Public School community, because we've all been waiting and waiting for the list of schools that are going to be closed. And finally, the list came out, and it was such a ham handed approach that it really felt upsetting to a lot of people. So just to hear someone acknowledge that it really gave a big sense of relief to a lot of people.
[00:02:23] Christie Robertson: So that was going into the meeting, and then on the day of the meeting, there was another rally outside of the building. Do you know how many people were there, Jane?
[00:02:32] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, that was a rally organized by All Together for Seattle Schools. They said there was about 150 people there. So it was parents and kids wearing red t shirts, holding up signs saying no school closures. And they had three parents speak from different elementary schools.
[00:02:52] Rally Speaker: I know that y'all feel me when I say it is outrageous and unacceptable that the families and kids most impacted by these potential closures are not at the table, not at the center of the table.
So we, and when I say we, I mean all the families and kids who aren't here, especially the BIPOC and immigrant families that have been left out of this process, that we are not the ones who should be giving our input on the decisions they are making. We should be the ones making the decisions about the schools that impact our lives and our communities. The futures of our young people. These are our schools. Whose schools? Our schools! Whose schools? Our schools!
[00:03:38] Christie Robertson: A couple of random notes from the meeting. All the directors were present in the house, including all three student directors. And they had an ASL interpreter. I felt so bad because they had one interpreter for five hours, and that's just kind of unheard of. Usually they won't have somebody interpreting for longer than like half an hour at a time.
Okay. So Jas, what struck you about the meeting?
[00:04:05] Jasmine Pulido: Whoa. There is a lot.
[00:04:08] Christie Robertson: Yeah, there was a lot, right?
[00:04:09] CHAPTER: Sarah Clark + board dissent
[00:04:09] Jasmine Pulido: There was a lot. I guess what I'll start with is Sarah Clark. We just talked about the op-ed, but I personally found Sarah Clark to be more vocal in dissent in the meeting than I've usually seen her. What do you think?
[00:04:23] Christie Robertson: She put that op-ed out there. So everybody knows that she has different opinions. So maybe that made her bolder about speaking up.
[00:04:30] Jane Tunks Demel: Well, and I noticed at the last meeting, she abstained on a vote. And then this meeting, she had two votes where she was the only no vote, and we'll talk about those later. And I think even though she's the only one dissenting publicly, I think behind closed doors, there is some more conversation, and everyone's not exactly on the same page.
Publicly, Michelle Sarju and Liza Rankin have both said that we need to close schools. And during meetings, we've heard both Gina Topp and Joe Mizrahi ask more questions, and they both asked for a scaled-back plan. And so has Brandon Hersey at times. He asked at one point for a phased approach, which it now seems like maybe they're considering so that it wouldn't be 20 schools all at once.
So that, plus Sarah Clark's editorial, even though there were some criticisms that no one co signed it with her, but I think it's really great that she still did it. She put her stake in the ground, and she's standing by it and she's following it up with no votes. And I think healthy debate is what makes democracy stronger. And so I think it's awesome that she's doing it.
[00:05:23] Christie Robertson: There's a real tension building, I think. For the last few years, the direction of the board has been that the board acts as a body and to not show any public dissent. And I think maybe now there's still people are trying to make it even more like that, but there's other members of the board that are starting to maybe speak out a little bit more. And I definitely think it's important to have debate and dissent in public. That's how you think through issues. Even if you're going to act as a board, you need to be able to talk through the issues, I think.
[00:06:30] Jane Tunks Demel: And what's going unsaid here is that the board leadership, in my opinion, pushed out Vivian Song and Lisa Rivera. And part of the reason that happened was because they were not a hundred percent aligned with the board majority. And so after they were pushed out, it took a while to get some new board directors in. And now they're in, they've been in since April and they found their footing. And so now they're starting to express their opinions. So, it felt like the board was in lockstep on everything, but it turns out that they're not.
[00:07:06] CHAPTER: Executive Session
[00:07:06] Christie Robertson: Let's talk about the vote on the actual resolution.
[00:07:09] Jane Tunks Demel: Do we want to talk about the executive session first? Just because I'm wondering what they talked about then.
[00:07:17] Christie Robertson: Oh yeah. So let's talk about this mysterious event that happened right at the beginning of the meeting. Here is President Rankin announcing that they're recessing immediately into executive session.
[00:07:32] Liza Rankin: Um, Slight change to the agenda. I'm we're actually gonna recess now into executive session. Um, and when we come back, it will probably be about time for public testimony. So we'll rearrange a little bit and do, um, we'll do public testimony when we come back and then do progress monitoring. So it is 4:35. The board is immediately recessing into executive session to review the performance of a public employee.
[00:07:57] Christie Robertson: And for those who don't follow the board all the time, executive session means that they go to a separate room where nobody can hear or see them and talk privately. And they said it was to review the performance of a public employee. They have only two employees, the superintendent and the auditor. I believe it's almost always the superintendent when they do those evaluation sessions, isn't it? But I've never seen them do one, an evaluation session that was not on the agenda that they just, they just announced and they just left. And they were gone for what, like half an hour.
[00:08:42] Jane Tunks Demel: It was an hour.
[00:08:43] Jasmine Pulido: An hour.
Yeah, it was long. They, they meant to come back in half an hour, but they didn't come back until an hour.
[00:08:48] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah. I was there in person, and everybody there, we were like, what in the world is going on? And I would say after 20 minutes or maybe 30 minutes, Superintendent Jones, he came out, and he was walking around the boardroom. He was schmoozing with people, even reached out his hand to shake my hand as I walked by. And his wife was there in the audience.
So I don't know what they were talking about in that executive session. And it makes me really wonder, especially after our interview with Ben Gitenstein. During the executive session, I think they're only supposed to talk about what they say they're talking about. But I'm wondering, were they talking about the resolution that was coming up? Because there was no debate about the resolution. And I'm just wondering, where did they talk about this resolution? Because the last meeting, it was 21 schools or 17 schools closing. All of a sudden, there's a resolution saying five schools are closing, and no one had any questions about it.
[00:09:51] Christie Robertson: And then the people who brought the resolution, which we're about to talk about in a minute, stick with us. The resolution was brought by Gina Topp and President Rankin and those two were the last to come back from the executive session. They actually, I think, missed some of public testimony.
[00:10:07] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, slowly they started to trickle back in. First it was Director Hersey and Director Clark, and then Director Sarju and Director Briggs came out. I'm just wondering; I don't know the rules.
[00:10:18] Christie Robertson: And if you want to look into the OPMA rules, we have a link to them in our show notes.
But they have to say what it's about. And the performance of a public employee is always on the agenda. It's a very regular executive session for them to have. It's just not one that... like it's an evaluation, right? So you don't, like, evaluate somebody without telling them you're about to evaluate them.
[00:10:44] Jane Tunks Demel: Or without them there.
[00:10:46] Christie Robertson: Or without them there.
[00:10:48] Jane Tunks Demel: I mean, we don't know. The answer is we don't know.
[00:10:50] Christie Robertson: We don't know.
[00:10:51] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and they never said. As someone who's like a newbie, I was like, you know, I don't know anything really about executive sessions. And I was like, could they be talking to Sarah Clark about her op-ed? Of course, my mind is just going all over the place because I don't have any, like, grounding of, like, what it could be!
[00:11:13] Christie Robertson: I mean, again, it's an example of the board being super secretive and, just, it's not really fair to the public. Like I feel they should tell us what it's about. They are allowed to talk about some things in private. That's fine. But to just have us sitting here on a podcast speculating is not really that helpful to anybody.
[00:11:35] Jane Tunks Demel: Well, also, there were 25 people waiting for public comment, and they had to wait for over an hour. And eventually, they did start public testimony, and President Rankin and Director Topp weren't even in the room, and that actually to me, really upset me.
[00:11:53] Jasmine Pulido: Hmm. Mm
[00:11:54] Christie Robertson: Like they can take all the time they need, but then the public who gets two minutes, strictly, has to wait.
[00:12:01] CHAPTER: Resolution
[00:12:01] Jasmine Pulido: So let's talk about the resolution.
[00:12:04] Christie Robertson: It was brought by Gina Topp and President Rankin, and I believe was an outgrowth of Gina Topp's attempted motion at the previous board meeting, where she attempted to move that they direct Superintendent Jones to find four to six schools to close. And I guess she must have teamed up with President Rankin to find something that was agreeable to both of them.
[00:12:25] Jane Tunks Demel: So Christie, what did the resolution say?
[00:12:28] Christie Robertson: It says that they're directing Superintendent Jones to find up to five schools to close, so zero to five. And that they will convene a task force of community to help them with this process. It's pretty vague about it, but that is something that's very remarkable because the current rendition of the school board has not been very into task forces, while previous ones were. So it's great that they're wanting to get some community input.
[00:13:02] Jane Tunks Demel: And then they also asked Superintendent Jones and his staff to develop a multi-year plan to achieve fiscal stability in support of student outcomes no later than 2025. So that is a long-term plan instead of just a plan for next year.
[00:13:19] Christie Robertson: That was the resolution.
[00:13:21] Jasmine Pulido: There was very little discussion.
[00:13:23] Christie Robertson: No, very little discussion,
[00:13:25] Jane Tunks Demel: So that's my wondering,
[00:13:27] Jasmine Pulido: They're not allowed to talk about it before.
[00:13:28] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah. They're supposed to talk about everything in the open meeting.
And it just seems really unusual to me that at the last meeting, they wouldn't even let Director Topp make a motion for four to six schools to close. And now we have this new resolution and with like pretty much no discussion except for clarifying that it wasn't going to be 20 schools.
And it ended up passing with a 6-1 vote, with Sarah Clark voting no.
[00:13:58] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and Sarah Clark also asked a couple questions before putting a no. One was, were there going to be multiple proposals offered by the superintendent, in which the superintendent said no, probably singular. So either zero schools or five schools, but not 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. And then Sarah Clark asked if there would be a proposal of how to close the rest of the budget. What was the response to that?
[00:14:28] Jane Tunks Demel: He said there would be in January and that they would be talking about it several times in the coming months. But I think what she was asking is, she wanted to get some information on what the budget cuts would be before she would be able to vote on whatever plan he brings. And at the end of the meeting Superintendent Jones did go over the timeline. And here's what he said.
[00:14:57] Brent Jones: By the end of this month, I will release preliminary recommendations to not more than five school sites to create new school communities. My intent is to release this plan around October 21st, having incorporated what we've heard this evening in the coming days. The preliminary recommendation then will sit for a 30-day period of public review from October into November, during which time we will engage with the impacted communities to discuss exactly what the proposal would mean for them. Our goal is to be working side by side with individual communities and, where possible individual families during this period. We want to be able to share specific transition plans with school communities about the next steps for students, staff, programs, and services. Doing this work at a smaller scale will allow us to answer in specific and personalized ways. Uh, then we'll proceed with hearings for the public at school sites, which we intend to be completed by mid-December.
[00:15:59] CHAPTER: Budget Buckets
[00:15:59] Christie Robertson: And there was basically only one thing I heard that Superintendent Jones said about the budget during the meeting, and it was saying that there are three buckets that he's looking into going forward to close the gap.
[00:16:17] Brent Jones: I see three buckets that we need to tap into going forward to close the gap. First, we need state authorization for greater flexibility on financing our deficit. That should support approximately 30 million dollars towards next year's budget.
[00:16:32] Christie Robertson: What the heck is that?
[00:16:34] Jane Tunks Demel: Wait, Christie, what was it that he said?
[00:16:37] Jasmine Pulido: State authorization?
[00:16:39] Christie Robertson: "We need state authorization for greater flexibility on financing our deficit."
[00:16:45] Jane Tunks Demel: I wonder if that's referring to paying back the rainy day fund or the capital fund loan.
[00:16:52] Christie Robertson: Is he asking for more money from the capital fund?
[00:16:55] Jane Tunks Demel: Or he's asking for more time to pay it back because they...
[00:17:00] Christie Robertson: 30 million, he says.
[00:17:03] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, I think it was 27. 5 million dollars. That was the inter-fund loan.
[00:17:09] Christie Robertson: But that's just not paying that back.
[00:17:10] Jane Tunks Demel: That's part of their budget building process. Like, if you don't have to pay something back, then you have that money you were going to use to pay it back.
[00:17:18] Christie Robertson: Were they going to have to pay it back all at once?
[00:17:21] Jane Tunks Demel: For the inter-fund loan, they were supposed to pay it back by June 2026.
I think they might also ask for the loan to just be forgiven, you know?
[00:17:32] Christie Robertson: That would be much less worrying.
[00:17:35] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, and it's Seattle Public Schools’ own money, but it's just the money that's supposed to be for the capital fund.
And the way school funding works is that the capital fund is supposed to be used for buildings. And then the operations fund is used to run the school and pay everybody who's in the buildings. And those two funds can't be used for other purposes.
[00:17:59] Christie Robertson: Mm hmm.
[00:17:59] Jane Tunks Demel: Okay, let's hear what the second bucket is.
[00:18:03] Brent Jones: Second, we need about forty million dollars in support from the state to fund areas of special education, transportation, and materials.
[00:18:13] Christie Robertson: Which is...
[00:18:15] Jasmine Pulido: The legislative big three.
[00:18:17] Christie Robertson: Yeah, that's the legislative big three. Exactly.
[00:18:20] Jane Tunks Demel: So, I guess everybody, this is something statewide, all districts need more funds for these three things, and so, there's going to be a lot of advocacy to that, and it's also included in the Seattle School Board's legislative agenda. So it's transportation, special education funding, and then MSOC, which is, what does it stand for, Christie?
[00:18:41] Christie Robertson: Materials, supplies, and operating costs.
[00:18:44] Jane Tunks Demel: I think it was WASA who first, who called it the Big 3, Jas, and I don't know if you know about this. The Washington Association of School Administrators and WASSDA, which is the Washington State School Directors Association, both of those organizations have agreed to advocate for those three things at next year's legislative session.
[00:19:07] Christie Robertson: So, and then the third one is find 30 million of internal efficiencies.
[00:19:14] Brent Jones: And third, we have to find about thirty million dollars of internal efficiencies and make some very hard choices. Require reducing staffing, further efficiencies in program essential support, and run fewer buses, and adding a third bell time to reduce transportation costs.
[00:19:34] Christie Robertson: So that's cuts. The 30 million is cuts.
[00:19:37] Jane Tunks Demel: And those are the cuts they already had listed in the previous proposal. So let's see. It's 30 million in internal cuts
[00:19:46] Christie Robertson: 40 million from the state
[00:19:48] Jasmine Pulido: And then 30 for flexibility.
[00:19:51] Christie Robertson: So that's the one I hadn't heard before.
[00:19:53] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, so that would be the 30 million dollars. Did they say 30 million dollars of financial flexibility?
Okay, well that's the 30 million dollars they were going to save by closing schools.
[00:20:03] Jasmine Pulido: Hmm. Oh, I see. So really, what the buckets are saying is that this would be our plan instead of closing schools to solve the deficit.
[00:20:15] Christie Robertson: Yes.
[00:20:16] CHAPTER: Change of meeting tone and terms
[00:20:16] Jasmine Pulido: Can I bring up something?
[00:20:18] Christie Robertson: Yes.
[00:20:20] Jasmine Pulido: I just want to mention that I didn't really hear them say well-resourced schools at all. Did you?
[00:20:25] Jane Tunks Demel: Thank goodness.
[00:20:27] Christie Robertson: Oh my gosh! Are you right?
[00:20:29] Jane Tunks Demel: Let's, let's just call it school closures.
[00:20:31] Jasmine Pulido: I think so. Especially in the last speech at the end of the night, the superintendent's speech, there was no term well-resourced schools in that speech.
[00:20:40] Jane Tunks Demel: Oh, I have it where the beginning of the meeting in superintendent comments, he does talk about well-resourced schools. He says it twice.
[00:20:49] Brent Jones: When we talk about well-resourced schools and right sizing, I wanna begin by sharing where we stand with well-resourced schools. As I shared last meeting, I am listening, we are listening, and we're trying to be responsive. And later this evening, I will be sharing next steps for moving forward with a significantly smaller number of school consolidations.
In guiding that decision, here are some of what we've heard.
Move at the speed of trust. While we recognize that our enrollment numbers do not align with our current number of schools, we acknowledge the need for community and board support before pursuing large-scale changes.
Family assurance. Families are seeking clear assurances regarding the services, programs, and supports available during transitions at new schools.
Expanding successful initiatives. There's strong community interest in enhancing effective programs such as dual language immersion and particular special education services. We want to collaborate with you to share our successes and attract more families to our schools.
Interconnectedness. Our school consolidation efforts are closely tied to broader district initiatives aimed at improving academic outcomes and balancing our budget.
We have not gotten this right yet, as I've shared in my message to our community. Causing anxiety, disruption, has never been our objective. While we are stepping back to do this at a different scale, I want to reiterate that the underlying facts that led us to pursue consolidation in the first place have not changed.
[00:22:29] Jane Tunks Demel: So, so he did use it, but...
[00:22:32] Christie Robertson: But only twice.
[00:22:34] Jane Tunks Demel: I still think it's worth noting.
[00:22:35] Christie Robertson: Yeah.
[00:22:35] Jasmine Pulido: Okay, well, I just want to mention in that speech, there's a lot of different language. That was the first time I heard him say "merged communities" versus "consolidations" or "closures," and he said that multiple times. I also put "explain the benefits of change," which I thought was really interesting. I've never heard them say something like that before. Oh, and this last one, "continuity with flexibility." "The goal is to keep communities intact." And that was the first time I've heard them talk about that at the school board meeting.
[00:23:07] CHAPTER: Progress Monitoring procedures and control
[00:23:07] Jasmine Pulido: Can I mention other things, or does someone else want to go next? Okay. I wanted to talk a little bit about the facilitation of types of questions that was happening for the Progress Monitoring section.
[00:23:20] Christie Robertson: Progress monitoring. Oh my God. Yeah, I have a lot about this.
First let's just include a quick primer for those who don't know. Progress monitoring is part of student outcomes-focused governance. It is where the board regularly, they're supposed to do this every month, looks at the outcomes provided by the superintendent – the outcomes for the goals and guardrails that the school board has set. And checks to see whether any progress is being made. That's progress monitoring.
[00:23:55] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. I, again, I'm still pretty new to watching the meetings, and I had never seen something like this, where there was a discernment between strategic questions, technical questions, and tactical questions.
[00:24:10] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, that comes up on occasion with student outcomes-focused governance. But at this meeting, they went even farther. Here's how Director Briggs explained it.
[00:24:21] Evan Briggs: Questions during the session should be limited to anything that's strategic in nature. Strategic questions are trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities. So sort of like big, big picture, high level stuff.
A technical question would be trying to understand how something is measured.
And a tactical question is a question that's trying to understand how something is done. So like, more detail-oriented questions
[00:24:48] Christie Robertson: This is a student outcomes-focused governance thing. They're supposed to only ask strategic questions. The general idea is you're supposed to trust each person to do their job. The board is supposed to check the superintendent's job. The superintendent is supposed to check top administrator's jobs. But like for the board to get into the technicalities of how a strategy is being executed. It's just not their expertise, and they're not going to be able to offer anything of use to those staff.
[00:25:25] Jane Tunks Demel: Well, that's the theory.
[00:25:27] Christie Robertson: That's the theory, is that they're just going to be getting in the way and mucking things up. If the board starts saying you shouldn't do the reading program this way, you should do it that way. Well, they don't know they're not PhDs in reading science or whatever.
[00:25:44] Jane Tunks Demel: But they would never say that, you know. They're asking for more information. Like, like Brandon Hersey had a question, and it was deemed to be a tactical question instead of a strategic question. And I don't think he was trying to micromanage what they're doing.
[00:26:04] Christie Robertson: Let's listen to what he asked.
[00:26:07] Brandon Hersey: Have y'all done any analysis on other districts that have implemented these types of measures? The reason that I ask that question is I'm trying to get an understanding for what growth and what timeline we can expect based on that analysis.
[00:26:34] Evan Briggs: That sounds like a tactical question. So let's get that in writing later.
[00:26:45] Liza Rankin: Maybe. (unintelligible) comparison.
[00:26:50] Brandon Hersey: I'm just, so my bigger question is, we've had this conversation a lot about the fact that our goals are very high, as our expectations for our students should be. And we are on the precipice of a new strategic plan in which those goals will change. My concern is that, in that transition, given the conversations and feedback that we have received as a board, I'm trying to understand how do our expectations with what we're receiving here tonight dovetail with where we're headed. Um, and that's a conversation we can have at a different venue, but I think that, that's what I'm trying to glean understanding from.
[00:27:34] Christie Robertson: I remember him, yeah, trying to twist himself into knots to get it to be a strategic question.
I get the theory, but it's, I think, very problematic to control to that degree, what the questions can be,
[00:28:00] Jasmine Pulido: Okay. So if the board directors are not allowed to ask technical or tactical questions, then who keeps the staff accountable for those particular things. Anybody?
[00:27:08] Christie Robertson: The superintendent.
[00:28:10] Jasmine Pulido: The superintendent does. Okay.
[00:28:13] Jane Tunks Demel: Again, this is all student outcomes-focused governance.
[00:28:17] Jasmine Pulido: I see.
[00:28:18] Christie Robertson: So, to summarize the changes happening to progress monitoring, they are:
- Senior staff are no longer going to be coming to the meeting. It's just going to be the superintendent. So the superintendent will have to know better exactly what's happening in his departments. And if there's questions that are too detailed, he won't know the answers to them, so the board won't get the answers to them, so the public won't get the answers to them.
- And so then the second change is, there's new rules around the questions that the board can ask. They can only ask strategic questions. With some lenience for technical and tactical questions but no answers to those in the meeting.
- And then the third change is they will be voting on whether to accept the progress monitoring report based on criteria.
And those are three big changes. Those are three really big changes that were just announced kind of out of the blue there.
[00:29:18] Jane Tunks Demel: And they'll be able to reject the report based on certain factors. And Brandon Hersey had a great question about this. Let's listen to what he said.
[00:29:28] Brandon Hersey: I've got a question around the purpose of that. Like what does that do for us?
[00:29:36] Evan Briggs: That is a great question. I bet Liza could answer.
[00:29:40] Jane Tunks Demel: And then Liza says there's the three questions
[00:29:44] Liza Rankin: So those three questions, does the reality match the vision? Is there growth towards the vision? Is there a strategy or plan sufficient to cause growth towards the vision? If the answer to all three is yes, then we accept it, confident that our system is meeting our goals for children.
[00:29:59] Brandon Hersey: Mm hmm.
[00:30:00] Liza Rankin: If the answer to only one or two is yes, we may want to table this and ask for more information later.
[00:30:05] Brandon Hersey: Mm hmm.
[00:30:06] Liza Rankin: If the answer to all three questions is no, then we would want to reject the report and decide what steps to take to remedy the, um, lack of making progress towards the goals.
[00:30:20] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah, that was interesting. And after this Director Hershey pointed out that such a vote could seem performative.
[00:30:29] CHAPTER: Signs they want to fire the superintendent
[00:27:28] Christie Robertson: So Jane, do you want to talk about your theory about where this is pointing?
[00:30:29] Jane Tunks Demel: So I think there's a lot of signs that they are trying to build a case to oust the superintendent. President Rankin was quoted when the Seattle Times did an article about the new superintendent's contract, and she said, this is a better contract than we had before and it still allows termination without cause.
So I think if they reject the report and the outcomes aren't going up... according to student outcomes-focused governance, if the outcomes don't go up, that's a fireable offense for the superintendent.
[00:31:07] Jasmine Pulido: Oh. So it's kind of like, they're sort of like setting a trap, and then once he walks into it, then they can fire him.
[00:31:19] Jane Tunks Demel: Well, I mean, they still have to have the votes.
[00:31:21] Christie Robertson: But you guys, so how does that help kids?
[00:31:25] Jane Tunks Demel: It doesn't, it doesn't help kids. I think the constant churn of like kicking off school board directors or kicking out the superintendent, like it's not... demanding to close 20 schools. None of that is helpful. It's, you know, it's just a huge distraction.
There's one other thing. The part that worries me about the questions is that since Director Briggs said that any tactical or technical questions can only be answered by email, that means the public won't see it. So, that's an example of their interpretation of student outcomes focused governance making things more opaque to the public.
[00:32:09] Christie Robertson: And I think it's a level of oversight that's really important because... so here's an example, we all know that the data are not good on student outcomes on their goals.
I disagree with their interpretation of their data as they presented it. Like, I'm not getting into the weeds of how they collected the data or anything like that. But there are graphs in there that they put up the graph, and then they have an interpretation of the graph. And I just don't agree with the interpretation. I think it's incorrect. And I think that a board director should be able to, it doesn't make sense for them to just take the interpretation of the data without questioning it.
That really, I think, pressures the district staff to put a bright shine on what they're saying. Like, they can just take whatever data they have and say that it's good. And nobody's going to question it. And I think that's exactly where this is heading.
So I think that's, that's really bad to say that you can't, you can't really dig into what we're presenting to you and ask detailed questions about it and make sure that you believe what we're saying.
[00:33:30] Jane Tunks Demel: But you can vote to reject the report,
[00:33:32] Christie Robertson: You can vote to reject the report, but you're not allowed to ask the proper kinds of questions or raise the proper kinds of issues that would cause me to reject it.
[00:33:42] Jane Tunks Demel: And that's why, in my opinion, these changes are being used to build a case to try to oust the superintendent.
[00:33:52] Christie Robertson: A change of superintendent is not what's going to help our kids. In my opinion, that's just going to cause more disruption.
[00:34:55] CHAPTER: Student Outcomes Focused Governance
[00:34:04] Jasmine Pulido: In the end is, we talk about helping kids and that's what student outcomes focused governance is supposed to be.
[00:34:11] Christie Robertson: I'm beginning to sour on the idea that if you get farther and farther away from details,
[00:34:18] Jasmine Pulido: Right.
[00:34:18] Christie Robertson: that somehow it will make things be better for kids.
[00:34:22] Jane Tunks Demel: I think what it is, is that because it's also the, this board majority's interpretation of targeted universalism. And their interpretation of student outcomes focused governance. It's like, they're taking these things, which are not necessarily flawed in and of themselves, but the way that they're implementing them is very flawed.
And so I, I don't think it's necessarily the fault of student outcomes-focused governance. I think it's just implementation of it or how it's being done in Seattle.
[00:34:58] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I would say that's yet to be determined only because I really want to see what it looks like implemented in other districts and to see, are they implementing it different? I think that will give us a nice comparison of whether implementation is what the concern is here.
[00:35:16] Christie Robertson: I guess it's one of the problems of consolidation of power, because SOFG consolidates power in the president of the board and the superintendent as, like, that's the interface. And any system that tends to consolidate power can potentially go astray. There's just fewer checks and balances, right?
[00:35:39] Jane Tunks Demel: Yeah.
[00:35:40] Jasmine Pulido: Well, yeah, the more oversight you take away, the more accountability you take away, then things can go in not an intended direction.
So basically the underlying assumption SOFG makes with this discernment of questioning implies that trusting people to do their job also means that, on the opposite end, accountability equates to inherent distrust. But that's incorrect. Accountability can also be simply about having a natural check. That helps to make sure the system is functioning well. Because no one is perfect and mistakes do happen.
That's my concluding thought about that.
[00:36:25] Christie Robertson: And I guess I feel like I need to add that SOFG adherents would say that the system is all about accountability. It's all about the accountability chain from board to superintendent, to senior staff, to all the other levels of staff. I guess what it is is that it's a very controlled kind of accountability.
[00:36:40] Jasmine Pulido: I think where the problem comes in is that if one person in the chain makes a mistake, there's nobody else to be a second check for that role. And it could have a cascading effect. Like what you said, Christie, if there's a big technical flaw, like it's missed in an accountability check in this chain, then it's misinforming the strategic plan. And big decision making is being made out of bad data.
Hm. So, what do you think about the direction the board is headed? Email us at. hello@seattlehallpass.org.
[00:37:30] Christie Robertson: That concludes this episode. Thanks for listening to Seattle Hall Pass, and you can find our show notes at seattlehallpass.org.
[00:37:41] Jasmine Pulido: While you're at our website, you can also click the donate button to help us fund our costs. We're not quite there yet. So contributing as little as the price of a cup of coffee once a month is so helpful to us.
[00:37:53] Jane Tunks Demel: I'm Jane Tunks Demel.
[00:37:56] Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson.
[00:37:58] Jasmine Pulido: And I'm Jasmine Pulido. We'll see you next time on Seattle Hall Pass.
