How democracy saves Seattle schools from bad superintendents

With the depar­ture of Jose Ban­da from the post of super­in­ten­dent of Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools, we’ve seen the usu­al hand-wring­ing and recrim­i­na­tions over the future of the dis­trict. Ban­da’s depar­ture led the Seat­tle Times to pub­lish an arti­cle and an edi­to­r­i­al decry­ing sup­posed med­dling by the board in the oper­a­tions of the district.

The edi­to­r­i­al hint­ed at the Times’s true agen­da — tak­ing away pow­er over the school dis­trict from the peo­ple’s elect­ed representatives:

By the widest mar­gin, most schools are over­seen by school boards, not boards and may­ors, or may­ors alone. But the chron­ic melo­dra­ma on the Seat­tle School Board cer­tain­ly stirs a curios­i­ty for a change in governance.

The real sto­ry, the one the Seat­tle Times does not want to tell for fear of under­min­ing their anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­da, is one of repeat­ed mis­man­age­ment by a suc­ces­sion of super­in­ten­dents and of a cen­tral staff that is unre­spon­sive or overt­ly hos­tile to the board and the gen­er­al public.

For near­ly 15 years Seat­tle has had super­in­ten­dents who lost pub­lic faith through bad lead­er­ship or out­right scan­dal. After the beloved John Stan­ford sud­den­ly died three years after being hired, his suc­ces­sor, Joseph Olschefske, left after a finan­cial scan­dal. Olschefske’s suc­ces­sor, Raj Man­has, quit after the school board lis­tened to pub­lic anger over a flawed school clo­sure plan he pushed through. The plan was quick­ly reversed when it emerged the dis­trict had bad­ly erred in its stu­dent pop­u­la­tion estimates.

Man­has’s suc­ces­sor, Maria Good­loe-John­son, was fired after anoth­er finan­cial scan­dal. Her imme­di­ate suc­ces­sor was the inter­im Susan Enfield, who like Jose Ban­da left the dis­trict when it became clear that the board was not going to sit back and let them have free reign over the peo­ple’s schools.

Ban­da left scan­dal in his wake as well. Though the school dis­tric­t’s finances appear sound, the hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ry of a Garfield High stu­dent who was raped on a school trip and failed to get jus­tice from the dis­trict sug­gests that Ban­da was not quite an effec­tive leader. 

Ban­da cit­ed the debate over math text­books in his depar­ture let­ter, but these are often con­tentious issues in any school dis­trict. A good super­in­ten­dent would have nav­i­gat­ed it more effec­tive­ly, accept­ing the board­’s deci­sion and mov­ing on. After all, math cur­ricu­lum fig­ured promi­nent­ly in the 2011 school board cam­paign, and par­ents had been vocal in their call for a dif­fer­ent approach. Rather than accept the ver­dict of the board that employs him and the pub­lic that he serves, Ban­da — already look­ing for the exit — used the issue as one of his jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for leav­ing. He was­n’t a good leader. He was a quitter.

The com­mon denom­i­na­tor here isn’t the school board. Instead it is poor qual­i­ty super­in­ten­dents who are not account­able to the board or the pub­lic, who believe the Seat­tle Times when they say the super­in­ten­den­t’s job is to do as they please.

These issues play out against the broad­er back­drop of an all-out nation­al bat­tle over the future of pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Since 2001 the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, under both a Repub­li­can and a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent, have pur­sued edu­ca­tion poli­cies empha­siz­ing stan­dard­ized test­ing, school clo­sures, and mass teacher fir­ings. These poli­cies have cre­at­ed siz­able pub­lic back­lash in cities large and small, in dis­tricts urban and suburban.

Seat­tle has played an impor­tant role in this back­lash. One of the largest boy­cotts of stan­dard­ized tests took place in Seat­tle in 2013. A major­i­ty of the cur­rent school board shares the broad skep­ti­cism of so-called “edu­ca­tion reform” poli­cies, a stance shared by large swaths of Seat­tle par­ents and voters.

Which brings us right back to the Seat­tle Times’ attack on the school board. In cities like Chica­go, con­trol of school dis­tricts have been tak­en away from elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives who might oppose mass teacher fir­ings, school clo­sures, and teach­ing to the test. The dis­tricts have been instead turned over to the may­or, on the the­o­ry that a munic­i­pal exec­u­tive can bet­ter over­see these unpop­u­lar reforms.

May­oral con­trol is thus a delib­er­ate attack on democ­ra­cy in order to force through reforms that might not sur­vive the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. No won­der that Tim Burgess and Reuven Car­lyle, two of Seat­tle’s lead­ing pro­po­nents of teach­ing to the test and under­min­ing pub­lic schools through char­ter schools, are quot­ed exten­sive­ly in the Seat­tle Times arti­cle attack­ing the elect­ed board for doing their jobs.

As it turns out, may­oral con­trol is extreme­ly unpop­u­lar, and may cost Rahm Emanuel his job as may­or in next year’s election.

It is also not very effec­tive. I’ve worked in a may­or’s office, serv­ing in the admin­is­tra­tion of Seat­tle May­or Mike McGinn from 2011 to 2013. The idea that a may­or would pro­vide close over­sight of the schools is ridicu­lous and flies in the face of reality.

Seat­tle’s may­or over­sees 11,000 employ­ees in 27 depart­ments. They include two huge util­i­ties, Seat­tle City Light and Seat­tle Pub­lic Util­i­ties, that would be big busi­ness­es were they pri­vate­ly owned. It includes the Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, itself a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty. And of course, it includes the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment. Over­see­ing the police was near­ly a full-time job for May­or McGinn, just as it is for any may­or in any city.

If Seat­tle’s schools were under may­oral con­trol, they would have to com­pete with all 27 oth­er depart­ments for the may­or’s atten­tion. He or she would be able to devote only a brief amount of time to the schools. Instead real con­trol would be exer­cised by a bureau­crat who is sev­er­al steps removed from the voters.

In oth­er words, pow­er would real­ly rest with a super­in­ten­dent-like fig­ure who would recre­ate all of the fail­ings of Seat­tle’s recent string of school superintendents.

Seat­tle’s school dis­trict suf­fers not only from a series of bad super­in­ten­dents. It also suf­fers from a cen­tral staff that is incom­pe­tent and con­temp­tu­ous of the pub­lic and par­ents. Cen­tral staff were lead­ing an effort to try and under­mine the board­’s math cur­ricu­lum deci­sion until Ban­da final­ly called them off. They bad­ly mis­man­aged the process of draw­ing new school bound­aries in the fall of 2013. They have failed to resolve long­stand­ing issues with spe­cial edu­ca­tion and advanced edu­ca­tion. And as we are see­ing with a fed­er­al Title IX inves­ti­ga­tion spurred in part by the Garfield rape case, the cen­tral staff are unable to guar­an­tee the basic safe­ty of stu­dents or com­pli­ance with fed­er­al civ­il rights laws.

The last thing Seat­tle needs is a super­in­ten­dent who has too much pow­er to imple­ment their will. What we need is more democ­ra­cy and a board that is even more involved. State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ger­ry Pol­let under­stands this well, as quot­ed in the Seat­tle Times article:

“There are some areas where I would encour­age the board to delve deep­er and man­age more,” Pol­let said, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the spe­cial-edu­ca­tion depart­ment and the con­tin­ued over­crowd­ing of schools.

Seat­tle res­i­dents and par­ents care deeply about their pub­lic schools. They want them to be great. They have opened their wal­lets, repeat­ed­ly, to sup­port pub­lic edu­ca­tion. They’ve elect­ed a school board that reflects the pub­lic’s desire to be engaged par­tic­i­pants. A good super­in­ten­dent will embrace this spir­it, reject­ing the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, unpop­u­lar, and inef­fec­tive “edu­ca­tion reform” poli­cies of pun­ish­ing kids and teachers. 

A good super­in­ten­dent will instead empha­size the basics. They’ll clean out the cen­tral staff and replace them with com­pe­tent peo­ple who treat the pub­lic with respect. The next super­in­ten­dent will be a nation­al leader in blaz­ing a trail away from stan­dard­ized tests and fads toward holis­tic edu­ca­tion prac­tices that ensure every child gets a good education.

Those are the qual­i­ties the Seat­tle school board — and the peo­ple of Seat­tle — should demand from the next super­in­ten­dent. The board and the pub­lic should be full part­ners in the process, and should strong­ly assert their duty of over­sight to ensure the super­in­ten­dent and his staff get it right. A good super­in­ten­dent will not be fazed by it.

After all, that’s how good pub­lic schools are run in a func­tion­ing democracy.