A plurality of special election voters in Seattle disapprove of how their schools are being run

More than four in ten of Seat­tle’s most reli­able vot­ers have a neg­a­tive view of the way that Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are being run, while few­er than three in ten have a pos­i­tive view and near­ly a third aren’t sure, a city­wide sur­vey recent­ly con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

41% of six hun­dred and fifty-one Feb­ru­ary 2023 spe­cial elec­tion vot­ers inter­viewed by Change Research for NPI last month said they some­what or strong­ly dis­ap­proved of the way the Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are cur­rent­ly being run. 28% said they some­what or strong­ly approved, and 31% were not sure.

Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools is gov­erned by a sev­en-mem­ber board that cur­rent­ly con­sists of Liza Rankin, Lisa Rivera Smith, Chan­dra N. Hamp­son, Vivian Song Maritz, Michelle Sar­ju, Leslie S. Har­ris, and Bran­don K. Hersey, and an admin­is­tra­tion head­ed by Super­in­ten­dent Brent Jones, who was recent­ly hired.

Respon­dents were also asked to rate the board mem­bers’ job per­for­mance as part of a sep­a­rate ques­tion. Not a sin­gle one received a net pos­i­tive rating.

Most vot­ers indi­cat­ed they did­n’t have enough infor­ma­tion to share an opin­ion con­cern­ing the job per­for­mances of each of the board­mem­bers, which reflects the lack of cov­er­age Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools gets com­pared to Seat­tle City Hall.

Of the sev­en, respon­dents seemed to have the most famil­iar­i­ty with Rankin, but only by a lit­tle bit. The “not sure” respons­es for each board­mem­ber were all between sev­en­ty and eighty per­cent, with less than a quar­ter of the sam­ple express­ing approval or dis­ap­proval when asked to rate.

As men­tioned, how­ev­er, more vot­ers had an opin­ion on how the dis­trict was being run in gen­er­al. We did ask a fol­low-up ques­tion of those express­ing dis­ap­proval to ascer­tain why they’re unhap­py. Let’s review the toplines again and then delve into the rea­sons why spe­cial elec­tion vot­ers aren’t hap­py with Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools.

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of the way the Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are cur­rent­ly being run?

ANSWERS:

• Approve: 28%
  • Strong­ly approve: 2%
  • Some­what approve: 26%
• Dis­ap­prove: 41% 
  • Some­what dis­ap­prove: 25%
  • Strong­ly dis­ap­prove: 16%
• Not sure: 31%

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION (ASKED OF VOTERS WHO SAID THEY DISAPPROVED): What are the rea­sons you dis­ap­prove of the way Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are cur­rent­ly being run? Check all that apply.

• Unre­spon­sive dis­trict lead­er­ship: 50%
• Large class sizes: 43%
• Lack of atten­tion to stu­dent men­tal health needs: 43%
• Con­cerns about stu­dent safe­ty on cam­pus: 42%
• Low stu­dent test scores: 41%
• Focus on racial equity/Critical Race The­o­ry: 35%
• Prob­lems with deliv­ery of spe­cial edu­ca­tion ser­vices: 31%
• Changes to advanced learn­ing pro­grams: 30%
• Dura­tion of remote learn­ing in 2020–21: 28%
• Lack of focus on racial equi­ty: 17%
• Some­thing else (please spec­i­fy): 28%

And here are the rat­ings for the boardmembers:

QUESTION: Please indi­cate whether you approve or dis­ap­prove of the fol­low­ing local elect­ed offi­cials’ job performance.

ANSWERS:

• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Liza Rankin 
  • Approve: 10%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 16%
  • Not sure: 73%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Lisa Rivera Smith 
  • Approve: 8%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 15%
  • Not sure: 77%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Chan­dra N. Hampson 
  • Approve: 8%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 16%
  • Not sure: 76%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Vivian Song Maritz 
  • Approve: 9%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 14%
  • Not sure: 77%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Michelle Sarju 
  • Approve: 9%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 14%
  • Not sure: 77%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Leslie S. Harris 
  • Approve: 9%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 13%
  • Not sure: 78%
• Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Board­mem­ber Bran­don K. Hersey 
  • Approve: 8%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 14%
  • Not sure: 77%

Our sur­vey of 651 like­ly Feb­ru­ary 2023 spe­cial elec­tion vot­ers in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton was in the field from Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 26th, through Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 30th, 2023. All respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.2% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

An out­right major­i­ty of fifty per­cent of the sub­sam­ple of dis­ap­prov­ing respon­dents cit­ed “unre­spon­sive dis­trict lead­er­ship” as the top rea­son why they are not hap­py with how Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are being run. That’s a seri­ous indict­ment of the lead­er­ship of Dr. Brent Jones, top dis­trict offi­cials, and the sev­en-mem­ber board.

In addi­tion to the fol­low-up ques­tion above, we gave respon­dents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell us in their own words what feed­back they’d give to the board if they had the chance. Our sec­ond fol­low-up ques­tion to dis­ap­prov­ing vot­ers was, “If you could sit down with the Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools super­in­ten­dent and board, what feed­back would you give them? What con­cerns would you share?”

We saw many areas of agree­ment across the open-end­ed responses.

“As an edu­ca­tor, the Seat­tle school board is a joke,” one respon­dent told us. “They said they would not allow Brent Jones to apply for the per­ma­nent super­in­ten­dent posi­tion yet a year lat­er they just [hand] it to him. Super­in­ten­dent Jones then went on to hire his friends for high rank­ing salaries posi­tions even though many of those employ­ees were known to not be good.”

“Focus on the prob­lems in the class­rooms and build­ings today,” said anoth­er. “Law­suits about men­tal health of the stu­dents seems like a head­line grab­ber to me rather than the impor­tant work of the board. Spe­cial edu­ca­tion has been ignored for too long. It’s embarrassing.”

“Get back to basics,” was the mes­sage of yet anoth­er respon­dent. “You need to focus on the core mis­sion — edu­cat­ing stu­dents. All the rest is noise. Trim the bloat­ed bureau­cra­cy sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Put resources in the class­rooms. Get the com­mu­ni­ty involved more in the edu­ca­tion of the future generations.”

“Make the cen­tral office effi­cient. Push resources and peo­ple to schools,” agreed a dif­fer­ent respon­dent. “More open lines of communication.”

“The dis­trict is craven. It is so afraid of crit­i­cism by cer­tain groups that it will sus­pend staff and admin­is­tra­tors on any pretext.”

“Need for more account­abil­i­ty in con­tract­ing — bus ser­vice con­trac­tor deci­sion is ridicu­lous (to reward con­trac­tor when over­billing and not deliv­er­ing con­tract­ed ser­vice). Just an exam­ple,” said a fourth respondent.

“We need to focus more on engage­ment and safe­ty and less on test scores,” said a fifth respon­dent. “Stu­dents are no longer being held account­able for dis­rup­tive behav­iors and lit­tle learn­ing is hap­pen­ing in most schools. We need to engage stu­dents where the pas­sions are and include more recess and authen­tic play time as this is where SEL growth actu­al­ly occurs. With this growth will come improved behav­ior and more bet­ter learn­ing out­comes overall.”

Even among vot­ers who approve (we asked them their own open-end­ed fol­low-up ques­tion, which was, “You indi­cat­ed you approve of the way Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools are cur­rent­ly being run. Why did you give this answer?”) we saw some unhap­pi­ness expressed with dis­trict leadership.

“I believe we have excel­lent teach­ers and good inten­tions for our kids,” said a respon­dent who said they approved of the way that the schools were being run. “How­ev­er I only some­what approve because I think that the dis­trict is too focused on imme­di­ate needs and not long-term needs. For instance, why did the strike/discussions need to go all the way to September?”

“I some­what approve,” echoed anoth­er. “I think the dis­trict is top-heavy in admin­is­tra­tors at JSCEE [John Stan­ford Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion­al Excel­lence]. They also are not as sup­port­ive of edu­ca­tors as they could be.”

“My chil­dren attend­ed SPS. I gen­er­al­ly liked their teach­ers, who were engaged, car­ing and help­ful. I don’t much care for the cen­tral office,” said still another.

These are just a sam­ple of the more than three hun­dred com­ments we received.

For our team, the pri­ma­ry take­away from the respons­es to our SPS ques­tions is that a lot of vot­ers — even a per­cent­age of those who say they approve of how the schools are being run — are dis­sat­is­fied with the dis­tric­t’s gov­er­nance and admin­is­tra­tion. The dis­trict has gone through a lot of super­in­ten­dents in the past few decades, but long-run­ning prob­lems have persisted.

In our view, the dis­trict needs more than just a new super­in­ten­dent. It needs trans­for­ma­tive lead­er­ship that can cat­alyze a change in the dis­tric­t’s culture.

The dis­trict needs and deserves admin­is­tra­tors who demon­strate through their actions that they care just as much about the city’s stu­dents, edu­ca­tors, and sup­port staff as Seat­tleites do. It needs a cul­ture that is root­ed in the val­ues that Seat­tleites share, like empa­thy, open­ness, and mutu­al responsibility.

The school board has the pow­er to hire and fire the super­in­ten­dent, who in turn has the pow­er to hire and fire senior staff. A strong and effec­tive board seems like a nec­es­sary pre­req­ui­site to hav­ing a strong and effec­tive super­in­ten­dent, and in turn, senior staff who are com­mit­ted to being account­able to Seat­tle school com­mu­ni­ties rather than default­ing to aloof, top-down governance.

Elect­ing such a board will require grass­roots orga­niz­ing and the devel­op­ment of more infra­struc­ture to enable vot­ers to fol­low what’s going on at Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools. It’s evi­dent that exist­ing media cov­er­age of SPS is insufficient.

That needs to change. Hope­ful­ly, local pub­li­ca­tions like The Urban­ist, Pub­li­co­la, The Stranger, and the South Seat­tle Emer­ald will answer the call, step up to the plate, and address the crit­i­cal need for more SPS cov­er­age in the com­ing years.