Talking with Chris Stewart about school choice in 'resource-rich, equity-poor' Seattle

I talked with Chris Stewart last weekend to close out the Washington State Charter School Association Conference. Chris is a writer, speaker and advocate for school choice as a means to a better education for students of color.

We talked about equity and disparity in Seattle, and Chris accurately described us as “resource-rich but equity-poor.” It made me wonder what will ever motivate us to change if we continue to have this much capital flowing into a city with this much racial segregation and discrimination baked into its schools.

We talked also about the national perceptions of charter schools, too, and about how to distinguish Washington’s charters from an unhinged federal administration advocating for odd versions of school choice. How do you stay on the right track when you’ve been given a longer leash for all the wrong reasons -- or by someone you fundamentally don’t trust?

Chris said he's "agnostic about the school, but religious about results,” talking about the pointless in-fighting about process that is happening among folks who agree that our inequitable education system needs to change. Later, someone asked a great, fairly obvious question: what results is Chris looking for exactly? What constitutes a high-quality education in the end?

Chris’ answer was simple: he wants schools to start by teaching black and brown boys to read and do math. He said you can find most of the benchmarks on the road to prison or to college in terms of literacy and algebra. First teach all kids to read and write, he said, and then let’s go from there.

That’s such a low bar! And yet it makes too much sense. If we haven’t mastered the first step, we can’t expect to take the 10th, but it threw me for a loop, for sure. Why are we having high-level conversations about education when we haven’t gotten to a point where we can teach all kids to read and write?

Yet that very truth necessarily brings to mind deeper questions. To ask what results I’m looking for is essentially like asking why I am sending my kids to school in the first place. And to frame those expectations against a school system that isn’t teaching all kids their letters and numbers… well, what’s realistic? What’s ideal?

My mind had started racing the moment the question was asked, thinking about social-emotional nurturing and liberating curriculum. About whether he’ll be taught, as I was, that Black history is the history of slavery, that communism is to be feared, and that manifest destiny explains the disappearance of indigenous people.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy writing along these line about what's wrong with our schools — and rightfully so, I think, since there are, frankly, so many problems. I'd like to continue exploring the more positive manifestations of this work, though, and to start thinking creatively about building the positive characteristics we do want as we educate our kids.

What "should" school be? What do I want and expect for my own kids and their education? For all kids?

These are big questions to explore, and I don’t think anyone has all the answers yet, but one thing I know for sure is that the charter school sector in Washington is having the conversation. The conference showed that charter leadership in our state has a keen awareness of the inequity in our schools, along with a willingness to ask tough questions and then take new, bold action. That’s something I haven’t seen from our traditional public school district in Seattle.

SPS has already hired Erin Rasmussen to be Emerson's new principal

My oldest son is a student at Emerson Elementary School in South Seattle. Our current principal -- Dr. Andrea Drake -- announced her resignation last month effective at the end of the school year.

Larry Nyland, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, sent an email to Emerson parents and families last night announcing that they had already filled the vacant position. Erin Rasmussen, currently an assistant principal at Aki Kurose, will be Emerson's new principal -- the school's fourth in four years.

I've heard nothing but good things so far about Ms. Rasmussen and her commitment to equity, and I look forward to the prospect of lasting change at a school that needs it most. Here's hoping this is the beginning of the end of institutional neglect at Emerson.

Here also is the full message from Superintendent Nyland:

Dear Emerson Elementary School community,

I am pleased to announce that Erin Rasmussen has been selected to be the new principal of Emerson Elementary. 

Ms. Rasmussen was selected because of her demonstrated commitment to racial equity, her impact in closing opportunity gaps, her outstanding administrative experience as an assistant principal at Aki Kurose Middle School, her knowledge and skills around teaching and learning, and her passion for building positive relationships with staff, students and families. The interview team, made up of staff, parents, and central office administrators, was particularly impressed with her focus on empowering student voice, her commitment to increasing the numbers of students of color in honors classes, and her belief that every child is brilliant. 

As an assistant principal at Aki Kurose Middle School for the past three years, Ms. Rasmussen oversaw the math and science departments. She led professional development at the school in areas such as cultural competency, standards-based grading, and supporting students who qualify for special education in the general education classroom. She has also led professional development around Multi-Tiered Systems of Support at the school and district level.

Ms. Rasmussen earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Whitworth University, and her Master of Education degree at Seattle University. Ms. Rasmussen is also a National Board Certified Teacher.   

Principal Rasmussen is excited to be continuing her work in southeast Seattle and is looking forward to partnering with the students, staff, and families of the Emerson community to make a difference for every student. Her official start date will be July 1, 2017. We will be scheduling opportunities for staff, families and students to meet Ms. Rasmussen before the end of the school year.

I would like to extend my thanks to Principal Andrea Drake for serving as principal for the past two years. Her deep commitment to the Emerson community is greatly appreciated. We look forward to having her come to district office this coming year to help design culturally responsive school supports in service of eliminating opportunity gaps across the entire system.

Thank you Dr. Drake, and welcome Principal Rasmussen to Emerson!

Sincerely,

Dr. Larry Nyland

Superintendent

Seattle Public Schools' Advanced Learning Programs 'magnify inequity'

A white student in Seattle Public Schools is 20 times more likely to qualify for “gifted” or “advanced learning” programs than a Black student.

The problem is so bad that last year at Cascadia Elementary School in North Seattle, all 529 white students had tested into the “highly capable cohort” -- the school’s advanced learning program. The school had just 49 Black students to begin with. Only two of them were part of the cohort.

That’s right: All 529 white kids at Cascadia were considered “highly capable,” and every Black student but two was not.

Seattle Public Schools’ Advanced Learning department was set up to support top-performing students. Just as opportunity gaps exist across racial and socioeconomic lines throughout our public school system, Advanced Learning in Seattle Public Schools disproportionately serves privileged students.

Contributing to this is a policy that lets students who do not pass the school-administered test pay hundreds of dollars for a psychologist to administer a private test, giving wealthier students even greater access.

Brian Terry is a parent of two Thurgood Marshall students, and he’s also part of a committee working to change this inequitable system. He said that by fifth grade the majority of white students in Seattle’s “Highly Capable Cohort” program (also known as HCC) got there by paying for one of these tests.

“In effect, the program magnifies inequity,” Terry said.

I’m a white parent with two biracial kids, and I was labeled as “gifted” by two different school districts in the late ‘80s. I was part of the magnifying glass that makes today’s system so likely to exclude my own kids.

But what does it even mean to be an “advanced learner?” What did it mean to be “gifted?”

I can tell you that in my case, I had many gifts, but none of them were about me being some kind of rare intellect. I had two college-educated parents, including a mother taking a break from her career teaching elementary school to stay at home with me and my sisters. That was a gift. Plus, I took standardized tests written by white people for white kids. I had white teachers with reasonably high expectations for white students. I had just about every advantage.

And it turns out I’m living proof that being an early reader doesn’t necessarily translate into lifelong scholarly prowess. I was a top prospect, but I never blossomed into an academic Hall-of-Famer. I did fine.

My kids, meanwhile, will still get some of the same privilege I enjoyed at home, but they aren’t likely to get the benefit of the doubt from the system.

Think about it: my kids are twenty times less likely to be identified as "gifted" than they would be if their mother was white. That is staggering.

Claudia Rowe of the Seattle Times wrote a thorough, much-needed examination of this advanced-learning gap across the Puget Sound, and it’s worth reading to get an even fuller picture. When she touches on the private testing phenomenon in Seattle, she explained how the district recognizes the inequity in its system but has so far responded only with a hollow gesture:

[State officials] flat-out reject the kind of private intelligence testing that is popular as a gateway to gifted-and-talented programs in Seattle.

“When students are privately tested, they’re getting a completely different experience from the usual Saturday morning cattle call,” said Jody Hess, who supervises programs for the gifted at the state education department. “It’s just far more likely that a child is going to do better on that kind of test than they might in a group, and that’s a built-in advantage only available to families of means. It’s a privilege of wealth.”

Recognizing the inequity, Seattle offered to cover the cost of private testing for low-income students this year. But its list of suggested evaluators includes none in the city’s low-income neighborhoods.

As often happens in Seattle Public Schools, we know that district officials know about this inequity.

In fact, the official committee I mentioned was formed as a result of that knowledge. The district awarded an Equity Grant to Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, so this committee has been working since then toward their goal “that the composition of the HCC (Highly Capable Cohort) program reflects the district’s racial and socioeconomic diversity.”

Now the district is reviewing its advanced learning programs, and Terry said the committee “wants to send the school board and district staff a clear message: We are holding them accountable for equity in advanced learning.”

All in all, this all gets a little weird, and it shows the dysfunctional approach to resolving inequity in Seattle Public Schools.

The district knows about the inequity in its Advanced Learning programs. That much is clear.

The district has chosen to act on that knowledge mainly by offering to pay for private tests in inconvenient locations for low-income students, and by forming a parent committee to apply pressure back on itself to force the district to change its own inequitable practices. So, they’ve done a lot, but they haven’t gotten much done.

We can help bring this charade to an end. The committee is asking people in the community to step up and attend at least one of the remaining four SPS board meetings to either give two minutes of testimony or simply fill a seat and hold a sign.

Sign up here to select a specific date to stand up for equal access to advanced learning opportunities for students of color in Seattle Public Schools.

The next meeting is Wednesday, May 17 at 5:15 p.m. at the Seattle Public Schools office in SODO.

Principal Drake is leaving Emerson Elementary

Dr. Andrea Drake will be resigning as principal at Emerson Elementary at the end of the school year to take another position with Seattle Public Schools. Her two years at Emerson were marked by high staff turnover and a leave of absence last fall that sparked controversy.

Here is the letter that went out by email to Emerson parents:

Dear Emerson Elementary Staff and Families,

I am writing to let you know that after much consideration, I have accepted a position in the Seattle Public Schools district office to support the Eliminating Opportunity Gaps work. It was a difficult decision because I have enjoyed serving as your principal so much and I am proud of the progress we have made together; but I am excited to approach this new chapter. I will still be a part of Seattle Public Schools, as I take on a body of work that I am personally passionate about. In my new role, I will have the opportunity to help design culturally responsive school supports and aid the entire district in eliminating  opportunity gaps. My start date will be July 1, 2017.

Leaving Emerson staff, students, and families will be difficult. In a short time, we have made great progress in implementing our vision and goal to maximize daily instruction, reengage our families and community, and improve student attendance, in an effort to accelerate the academic achievement of our scholars. Emerson Elementary is an amazing learning community that prides itself on working together to make a difference in the lives of students, and I have valued being a part of it.

As we work together to finish out the school year, the district office will begin the process of working with staff and families to identify the qualities the school community is looking for in its next leader. Staff and families will both be represented on the hiring team to ensure a good fit. I am confident that Emerson Elementary will be in good hands. I will finish out this year and work closely with staff to ensure a smooth transition to the 2017-18 year; I know our staff will also continue on the path we have laid together.

Thank you for embracing and supporting me these past years. Emerson Elementary will always have a very special place in my heart. I know Emerson Elementary Eagles will continue to SOAR higher because of families and staff like you. I will truly miss you and wish you all the best and look forward to supporting you in my new role.

Sincerely,

Andrea Drake, Ed.D.

Principal, Emerson Elementary School

 

I wish Dr. Drake all the best in her new role, and I look forward to hearing about the progress she and the district are able to make in closing our persistently appalling opportunity gaps. This is all about the principle, not the principal.

Dr. Drake stepped in less than two years ago as principal of a school long suffering from systemic neglect. That's not exactly an easy job. She also took a mysterious and much-discussed leave of absence last fall. In the end, her tenure as Emerson's principal was short and tumultuous, just like all of her recent predecessors. She wasn't able to beat a broken system.

Drake's replacement will (if you count Barbara Moore, Drake's temporary replacement last fall who has remained on staff) be Emerson's fourth principal in four years. Think about that. My son will, as a third grader, have his fourth different principal at the helm next fall.

So, clearly this is nothing new. It's no surprise, then, that my questions are also recycled (from my Oct. 24, 2016 post):

"It seems clear that our [last] state superintendent (Dorn), our region’s ED with SPS (Aramaki) and our locally elected school board rep (Patu) are all well aware of the problems at Emerson.

Our leaders know that our school is failing us. This is, in theory, why we elected them, why our taxes pay their salaries. They are our advocates, a mouthpiece for the students and families in the communities they serve. And they know that our kids are being treated inequitably.

So, what’s going to be different this time? What will be done to change Emerson’s future and give our kids access to the education they deserve from their neighborhood school?"

Of course, if we keep asking the same questions, we can expect to keep getting the same answers. I don't expect the broken system that created and perpetuates this inequitable environment to magically turn around and start working in Emerson's favor.

This is why school accountability is so important. Our leaders know that Emerson's needs are not being met, that it is struggling with intense staff turnover and operating on scant resources, all while trying to serve a high-need population of students.

Our system is failing to hold our schools and districts accountable, and we as parents and community members have no true levers to force change.

So, in the end, it comes back to hope. To searching as parents for a reason to believe that this is the time things will be different. We will have a new principal at Emerson again next fall. Hopefully he or she will be a transformational leader who will guide Emerson all the way into some new and brighter days. It can be done, that much I know. But history tells us not to hold our breath.

I suppose the real question is whether or not it's worth more years of our children's lives to find out whether Emerson can turn around. For now, we just keep hoping for the best. At what point does hope become willful ignorance?

Seattle teachers vote against McCleary walkout

The Seattle teachers union voted down a proposed one-day walkout meant to pressure the legislature to fully fund its McCleary obligation.

This would hardly be unusual for Seattle's teachers. In fact, this would be their third strike or walkout in the past three school years.

We've all been agreeing for years now that we need a solution that fully funds our schools. I'm glad to see the teachers recognizing that taking a day of classroom instruction away from their students will do more harm than good at this point. Or at any rate, it's not going to apply such pressure as the legislature hasn't already been feeling.

From Paige Cornwell of the Seattle Times:

Union members who voted no questioned the effectiveness of a walkout, as well as the disruption it would cause for students and families. Lawton Elementary teacher Lyon Terry said his experiences with the 2015 walkout and strike led him to vote no on the proposed walkout.

“We walked out to fund education, but we ended up having to strike anyway,” Terry said. “My interpretation was that it wasn’t effective in that way. I don’t think this one would be, either.”

In addition to possibly changing the last day of school, students in some Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes are scheduled to take exams on May 1. The AP exams, which students can take to earn college credit if they score high enough, can be rescheduled, union leaders wrote in an email to members. But the IB exams, which students in the program take to earn their IB diploma, can’t be taken on a different day. [Union President Phyllis] Campano said she has heard more concerns from members this year than the last time they voted on a walkout.

Interestingly, Seattle City Councilmembers Mike O'Brien and Kshama Sawant jointly told the city's teachers through the South Seattle Emerald, "If you decide to go on strike, we'll have your back."

I give Sawant a mountain of credit as a fearless voice for equity, but in this case, it seems like she and O'Brien might be seeing this issue for what they wish it were, rather than for what it is.

They write of the May 1 walkout as part of a larger show of resistance throughout the day, and they fold SEA's potential action in with other labor rights issues:

We applaud the incredible courage Seattle educators are showing in considering strike action on behalf of their students, their schools, and all those in our community under attack from the Trump administrations. Your bold actions are an inspiration for working people everywhere.

May 1 will be a historic day of resistance, with immigrants, women, students, and workers taking the streets across the country. In California, a coalition of SEIU locals, United Service Workers West, and workers center members (nearly 350,000 workers altogether!) are preparing to go on strike.

From the Fight for $15 to the NoDAPL campaign, Seattle’s movements of working people have again and again acted as a catalyst for change nationally. Now, Seattle’s labor movement is helping lead the way on bold May 1 action.

UAW local 4121, which represents graduate student workers at the University of Washington, are also voting on a similar strike action. And importantly, last week, the Martin Luther King County Labor Council passed a resolution in support of local unions taking strike and protest actions on May 1.

The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that the state legislature is unconstitutionally failing to fund public education, and yet this outrage has continued for years. Underfunding of public schools impacts students of color in particular, as well as young people from low-income households.

This misses the mark for me. Teachers' rights as workers are not at stake, unless you consider the gross under-representation of people of color in the field -- 80 percent of current Seattle Public Schools teachers are white -- so this walkout would have been a students' rights issue, not a labor issue.

And, thankfully, the union voted against it in the end. I appreciate that they will maintain continuity in the classroom while finding other ways to advocate for a legislative fix for McCleary.

Let's unpack SPS Board Director Rick Burke's understanding of integration

We have a dysfunctional school board in Seattle, and that has been fully on display in discussions about opening a new elementary school in North Seattle's Cedar Park neighborhood.

The north side of Seattle is an overall whiter and more affluent community than the south end, but most Cedar Park residents are people of color and, it so happens, average a lower income than folks in the surrounding neighborhoods.

A group of north-end parents saw a school comprised almost entirely of students from these under-served demographics as doomed to low achievement. They formed a coalition and wrote a letter that eventually found its way to the school board suggesting Cedar Park Elementary open as an option school instead of a neighborhood school.

The board liked this idea.

"I think we have an opportunity to shine here," said board VP Leslie Harris during the Nov. 16 board meeting, "and to make lemonade out of what potentially was a big lemon in setting up a ghetto school."

Seattle Public Schools

“To open Cedar Park as an attendance-area school with potential of high concentration of disadvantaged learners feels like a disservice to the community," Dir. Rick Burke said during the same meeting (in the video at 1:53:00), "but combining the community demographics with a natural tendency of an option school to draw in more affluent families provides a natural balance to demographics.”

Burke is inferring here that a school needs "more affluent families" (code for "more white families," whether he is conscious of that or not) to make a school worth investing in. Referring to a school without those affluent families as "a disservice to the community" shows that on some level, Burke knows the district won't be able to adequately educate the kids in Cedar Park.

SPS has the fifth-worst opportunity gap in the nation and a documented history of disproportionate discipline of students of color. If the district opens a new school made up entirely of those pesky demographics, the entire board knows they will fail to give those kids an excellent education. "Balancing demographics" helps balance overall test scores and overall outcomes. It allows the board and the district to continue to perpetuate opportunity gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines without doing so in a glaringly obvious way. It allows them to avoid addressing the systemic problems within the district that create these gaps in the first place.

Turning Cedar Park into an option school displaces the local community as well, which means this plan represents a well-disguised form of gentrification. Option schools are modern-day "white flight schools." This is will happen with Cedar Park as it has happened elsewhere.

Burke and Harris show that they know this, but again, they do it very subtly. "Disadvantaged learners" is code for "students of color." Knowing that creating an option school would even out those demographics shows an understanding that it would bring gentrification. It's just that they see that as a good thing.

School integration is a tricky issue, in no small part because it's trying to buck the reality of our segregated lives and our segregated society, but it's one of the only initiatives that has truly helped eliminate opportunity gaps.

Some argue, without using these exact words, that the white/affluent kids are so "advantaged" that they'll elevate the class around them, essentially -- that "advantaged learners" will rub off on the poor, unfortunate souls around them.

That's an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Genuine diversity in a school allows more strengths and learning styles to flourish. There is inherent value in diversity and differing perspectives.

And as far as schools go, the numbers are clear: a more white/affluent student body means better teachers and teacher retention, stronger external funding, stronger principals and leadership -- stronger privilege, essentially. Through integration, that privilege is spread out a bit more and is made available to more students of color, giving them easier access to wealthier PTAs, to more privileged teams and organizations and people.

It's not that sitting next to a white kid makes a kid of color smarter. It's that they actually get access to higher-quality elements of the inequitable system.

Historically, however, white families and families of privilege have resisted integration. The only way to actually solve this problem has been to put together policy, pass potentially controversial legislation even in the face of pushback, and do the hard work of changing hearts and minds of people with privilege.

Change is scary. We of privilege don't tend to give up our privilege voluntarily. We push back against threats to the status quo, even if we don't fully realize or articulate what we are doing or why. For our inequitable systems to change, we have to be prepared to make and stand by unpopular decisions, or we need to be honest with ourselves and know that we are failing the students who most need a voice.

Please help our kids get the school board leadership they deserve

I'd like to point your attention toward the dysfunction of the Seattle School Board. Many of the directors on the board have consistently shown a troubling lack of racial awareness, and it's been having a seriously negative impact on the kids in our district for many years.

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Dir. Leslie Harris described a Cedar Park school full of low-income students of color as "a ghetto school."

It's time for things to change.

I wrote a blog post Sunday about Dir. Leslie Harris, the recently appointed board vice president who used the term "ghetto school" during a board meeting last November. It sparked a particularly inspiring response from one former principal.

This earlier post also gives some more background on the problematic dynamics on the board:

A grassroots coalition just stopped the Seattle School Board from adding $11 million to the deficit

These are just a couple examples, of course. I'll also be writing this week about Dir. Rick Burke's troubling take on integration and about more racially sleepy comments from Dir. Harris.

Seattle Public Schools has documented problems with disproportionate discipline of Black students, and the district is home to the fifth-worst opportunity gap in the nation. These are more than just politically incorrect slips of the tongue from a well-intentioned board of directors. Each microagression and each offensive phrase represents the pattern of thinking that still guides our schools. 

The West Coast is leading the resistance against the Trump-led Republicans, and Washington State has been at the forefront of that movement in a very real way. On a local level, however, we still have elected officials making oppressive decisions -- especially when it comes to education. It's time that our local politics better reflect our bold commitment to equity.

If you have more stories illustrating our problematic school board in Seattle -- and I'm sure you do -- please share them with me. We need the voters in our city to know who is representing their kids and their schools.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for everything you're doing to create better schools and a better world for our kids. They need us to rise up now more than ever.

A grassroots coalition just stopped the Seattle School Board from adding $11 million to the deficit

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The dynamics of the Seattle School Board perfectly captured in one photo: the four white people are smiling as the three people of color look less thrilled.

A truly grassroots coalition of parents and community leaders swooped in last week to stop the most recent example of dysfunction on the Seattle School Board threatening to fortify and perpetuate inequity in the district.

With Seattle Public Schools already facing a $74 million budget shortfall, and with many district schools in dire need of more teachers and support staff, the board’s chronic commitment to inequity was on full display last week as it prepared to allocate $11 million for new textbooks.

On Saturday, Jan. 21, Erin Okuno, executive director of the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), learned about the board’s proposed expenditure and sent an email to a group of friends and colleagues. By Tuesday, when the vote to approve was scheduled, her letter to the board and district staff (below) had signatures from 27 concerned stakeholders.

To: Seattle School Board Directors and Leadership Staff

We are asking you to defer approving and purchasing English Language Arts Curriculum. Educators need to be prioritized over books – Educators Not Books. Purchasing $5-million in new curriculum means money will be taken from elsewhere. Students will bear the burden if new curriculum is purchased; adding another $5-million to the already devastating deficit will mean students of color will see more loss of educators in their schools.

We recognize curriculum hasn’t been purchased in 20-years — this is not the year to make such a hefty investment. The investment made will be on the backs of students who will benefit more from stable relationships with educators than from new books.

The board and school district has publicly said they will prioritize and protect educators in this budgeting process. Purchasing curriculum is counter to this public commitment. Our message is simple: Educators before books.

The Seattle School Board has been dysfunctional for many years. It is currently controlled by a four-member white majority whose common thread seems to be a shocking willingness to articulate their basic ignorance for issues of racial and socio-economic inequity in our schools.

To be clear, much of this budget shortfall will evaporate as soon as the legislature passes its funding package and closes the levy cliff, whether temporarily or forever, so there is some understanding that this $74-million issue won’t truly mean carving $74 million out of the existing budget.

But at the same time, the board still has to balance the books. They still have to pass a budget. And many schools in the district, especially on the south end, are staggeringly under-resourced. Emerson Elementary, as just one example, is running two long-term substitute teachers out there every day in two different classes all year this year. This textbook gambit was just the most recent case study in the board’s oblivion to the racial and socio-economic implications of their decisions and positions.

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Rick Burke, District II School Board rep, is passionate about math textbooks.

Rick Burke, who represents north-end District II, ran on a “better textbooks and curriculum” platform. In fact, first on Burke’s list of his “educational passions” is “providing explicit, effective instructional materials for our classrooms. Instructional materials are the shared communication tool for students, educators, families, and student supports. Good ones are an asset, ineffective ones slow down learning and take more time from already-busy teachers.”

Jill Geary (District III) articulated a similar concern that teachers are spending evening and weekend hours preparing lesson plans, thinking this math expenditure would lessen that burden. Maybe it would, to some extent, but teachers have to differentiate their instruction anyway, so a new textbook does not take the place of preparation.

This is how much of the board dysfunction plays out. Board President Sue Peters (District IV) and Vice President Leslie Harris (District VI), along with Burke and Geary, form an all-white, all-un-woke voting bloc, and so naturally they all agreed on this particular issue.

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Stephan Blanford, District V school board rep, must wish he was't so alone on this crazy board.

Betty Patu, who’s my rep in District VII, and at-large member Scott Pinkham seem to be swing votes, so they’re not fully part of the bloc, but they’re not reliably there for us either.

Stephan Blanford (District V) is the only consistently bold voice for equity we have on the board, and in the days leading up to the Jan. 24 vote, he had heard from the Bloc in no uncertain terms that, despite his vocal opposition, he would be outvoted and the textbooks would be purchased. This seemed doomed to be another 6-1 board vote serving evidence of his perpetual solo mission.

Instead, this particular story has a less-lopsided ending. After hearing from Okuno and company, the board temporarily changed directions. They came to a consensus to put the curriculum on the buyback list, meaning when they get money back from the legislature, it will be one of the top things to spend on at that time. That’s reasonable.

But the board also quietly showed they were willing to sacrifice staff for these math textbooks without ever quite owning up to it. Had they bought this curriculum, they would have had to displace staff.

The board indicated they would probably be able to bring those teachers back in the fall. But if you’re a first-year teacher who has worked hard, you’re about to get a notice telling you you’re on the chopping block — that you might not have a position to return to, no matter how hard you’ve worked, no matter how successful you’ve been. Are you going to stay and wait for that maybe, or are you going to go down to a district like Highline and get a job under stronger leadership and a functional board of directors?

That type of ripple effect multiplies the negative effects of our board’s oblivious decisions. Each individual vote has its own ramifications, but collectively it also builds a district-wide culture of inequity.

Seattle Public Schools are extremely segregated racially and are producing one of the country’s largest opportunity gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines. Letting this kind of leadership guide our schools is what dug this hole and created these gaps to begin with. Letting it continue is to openly fail to represent the kids who most need a voice in their corner.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Erin Okuno and everyone who joined her to swoop in from their regular life and intervene on this small issue. Like with everything else, we can’t count on anyone else to take these bold actions. If our kids are going to have better schools, it’s up to us to make that happen.

'Still I look to find a reason to believe' in Seattle Public Schools

Seattle Public Schools announced recently that it will face a $74 million budget shortfall if the state legislature does not "fully fund education." Since that phrase has been so overused in Washington that it's lost all meaning, it seems safe to assume SPS will have to make some pretty enormous cuts.

Stephan Blanford, our strongest and often lone voice for equity and reason on the incessantly dysfunctional Seattle School Board, wrote in a piece for the South Seattle Emerald about his fears that our more-voiceless south-end schools will bear the greater burden of these looming cuts:

"I know I am motivated more by fear — fear of the kinds of cuts that we will need to make in December and January as the board grapples with a deficit that has grown to $74 million. I am deeply troubled by the ramifications these cuts will have in classrooms across the city and the uneven impact we could have on schools serving low income students and students of color. And I am motivated by my knowledge of what has happened in the past.

First, the uneven impact. Academic research demonstrates that seniority-based teacher layoffs disproportionately impact schools serving low income and students of color. This is because those schools tend to be staffed with newer teachers having less seniority – the last hired is often the first fired. Many of our principals will tell you that they’ve finally gotten a good mix of older/experienced and younger/energetic teachers in their buildings. As a result, many are optimistic for the first time in their careers about the chances of closing our achievement/opportunity gaps — unacceptable gaps that are larger than nearly every big city school district in the nation.

Secondly, based on recent history, I have come to believe that the school board that I serve on is not sufficiently oriented to or motivated by the need to eliminate the gap, in spite of the fact that the majority of students (53%) served by Seattle Public Schools are students of color. Obviously, not every student of color is in the gap – in fact, many students of color outperform their peers. But for those that don’t, there was very little outrage or even discussion when the board learned of our national ranking in a story that was reported back in May. I’ve frequently seen members of the board disregard advice from the staff and parents when it conflicts with the narrow interests of some of their constituents. During the months when we first learned of a possible budget deficit, some of my colleagues were much more interested in how to spend last year’s $10 million surplus, which could have made a sizable dent in the projected deficit. Many of the choices that were made during that exercise only make our achievement/opportunity gaps worse.

Why does this matter?

If you have a child in Seattle Public Schools, or are troubled by the growing gaps based on family income, race and ethnicity, gentrification, the school-to-prison pipeline or any number of societal ills confronting our city, region and nation, you too should be concerned! At the root of each of these problems is society’s failure to adequately prepare our children to reach their awesome potential. IT IS CRITICAL THAT WE STEP UP NOW."

If you want to lose hope altogether, read the comments on Blanford's article. He's met with defensiveness, privilege and skepticism, often admittedly from the north end residents (and from Charlie Mas, who loves chiming in on our issues from wherever he's at).

This isn't about dividing the city into a north and south end. That's already been done. We are already the have-nots. It's not that there are no low-income families in the north end, or that there is no money in the south. It's that these are two very different places, home to two very distinct populations. Our city has been largely segregated for ages.

Blanford's fears are based in reality, and part of that reality is that schools like Emerson exist in a different realm of Seattle Public Schools than their north-end counterparts. At Emerson, we are already operating with two long-term substitutes where we should have full-time teachers. We are one of the only schools in the city with such a high percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch that it's just given to everyone. We've had four principals in four years.

This is, by definition, a high-need school, but it's serving mostly low-privilege students and families, which means it gets ignored. Then when someone tries to speak up about it, the overwhelming response is defensiveness.

But we should just keep plugging away, believing things will change. I'm trying.

We're progressive in lots of ways in Seattle, but that doesn't give us a pass on all the ways we're still way behind the times. We have the fifth-highest achievement gap along racial lines in the country. It persists because comfortable, privileged white moderates dominate the conversation about education locally.

We will keep speaking up from the south end, from the other sides of all the borders and barriers. The question becomes, when will people listen? I'm looking for a reason to believe that will happen soon. It needs to, because my kids won't be kids forever.

El álbum fue grabado el 5 de febrero de 1993, como parte de la serie "Unplugged" de MTV. Rod Stewart se reunió, por primera vez en casi veinte años, con Ronnie Wood, compañeros en The Face.

What will it take to undo institutional neglect at Emerson Elementary?

I live in South Seattle. My oldest son goes to Emerson Elementary, our neighborhood public school, and it’s gotten some long-awaited attention in the past couple months.  

Emerson Elementary School in Seattle, circa 1920

The Emerson community has been a long-term victim of institutional neglect — despite serving a high-need population, the school sees chronically low resources and high staff turnover. In a system whose schools in wealthy neighborhoods are propped up by parent donations, advocacy and involvement, the schools in lower-income communities are left to fend for themselves.

It’s no surprise, then, when these schools struggle. Emerson, for its part, was downgraded from a “priority school” to a “superintendent intervention school” after last spring, and nearly every teacher in the school exercised the accompanying opportunity to “displace” and leave Emerson.

Not surprisingly, almost every family in the neighborhood with privilege is also finding a way to choose another school — and why wouldn’t they? Kids of color, as a result, make up almost the entire student body at Emerson, and that has been true for years. Emerson draws from an extremely diverse part of town, but "diverse" means exactly that. There are plenty of white kids around the neighborhood, too. Most of them just aren't at Emerson.

On a state level, our schools have been under-funded for years, and the legislature seems if anything further from resolving the McCleary mandate than it was whenever we checked in last. And even if by some magic our schools are soon “fully funded,” Emerson’s issues will remain. Funneling more money into an inequitable system won’t solve issues of inequity.

The voices of the Emerson community began to be heard for the first time in a long time this fall when principal Andrea Drake’s leave of absence garnered some media attention. That led to a community meeting in November to discuss Emerson’s past, present and future with Kelly Aramaki, executive director of Seattle Public Schools’ southeast region, and our local school board rep, Betty Patu. It was an unexpected spotlight and an unexpected opportunity to change the course of our struggling school.

The following is an email sent from Kelly Aramaki to the Emerson mailing list on Monday, Dec. 12:

Dear Emerson Families,

Thank you for so warmly welcoming Dr. Drake back. I know that she appreciates the welcome and well-wishes she received from families, students and staff. Thank you also to those of you who were able to attend the Emerson family meeting with School Board President Betty Patu, myself and other district leaders on November 17. We recognize and acknowledge the challenges Emerson Elementary has faced over the years and the community’s concern about insufficient funding, support and attention. As Director Patu mentioned at the meeting, we are committed to doing better by Emerson students and community.

As promised at that parent meeting, this is a follow-up letter to share more information and to answer questions asked that evening. The following are key points we’d like to give more information on, as well as answers to questions raised that evening. We know that much more dialogue with the community is needed moving forward, and will use this is a starting point.

The Need for More Support for Emerson – One of the key points made that evening was the need for more support for Emerson than what has been given in the past. We agree. This year, the district has allocated additional family support to Emerson through a Family Engagement Coordinator who will work alongside Yolanda McGee, the Family Support Worker. We have allocated two building substitutes (one full-time, one half-time) to provide more consistent substitutes when teachers are out sick. We also allocated additional funding to make the counselor full-time. We are providing the school enhanced professional development support to support the teachers and staff. We are providing enhanced leadership support for the building administrators. Through the Families and Education levy funding, Dr. Drake and her team have also secured additional resources for students such as whole-child support in partnership with Seneca. We have also allocated an additional math specialist to support students who are struggling with math. Looking to next year, the district and school are working with the Seattle Education Association (teachers’ union) to pursue a new model for school improvement that leverages family and community engagement.

Recruiting the Best Teachers – One of the most important factors in a child’s education is the quality of the classroom teacher. A number of concerns were raised at the parent meeting regarding recruiting and retaining the best teachers. Last February, Dr. Drake and I, along with Ms. James and Ms. Dusin, went to the Washington Educator Career Fair at the Tacoma Dome to recruit and offer contracts to teachers who are not only extremely qualified, but also passionate about working in schools with a diverse community like Emerson. Human Resources has invited us to do that again this year to fill any vacancies with the best candidates. In addition, Human Resources is protecting Emerson from any forced-placed teachers. Any teacher who comes to Emerson will be interviewed and approved by an Emerson interview team. Our goal is to find, support and retain outstanding teachers who are committed to the Emerson community.

Concerns About Vacant Positions –  This year, we have struggled to fill two classroom teaching positions. Parent concerns were heard regarding the challenges of rotating substitutes in those classrooms. We now have long-term substitutes in place for both of those classes.  We will do better to ensure that students in those classrooms are receiving the same level of education as students in other classes. That includes getting regular homework and updates for parents on their child’s progress.

City Year & After School Activities – Due to the particular needs of Emerson students, the school decided to fund a partnership with Seneca instead of City Year, because Seneca’s program and services were more aligned with the needs and goals of the school. Regarding after-school activities, we have opportunities in place this year for students such as choir and instrumental music. Additionally, we have after-school academic supports for English Language Learners. The school is looking into other after-school opportunities for Emerson students for next year.

The Budget Crisis – Concerns about the current budget crisis, the “levy cliff” and how schools are funded were raised at the meeting. This is a concern that impacts all of our schools. We are doing everything we can to mitigate the impact of the budget cuts on our students and schools. For more information about the current budget crisis, we encourage you to attend a Community Budget Gap Meeting on December 15 from 6:30 – 8:00PM at South Shore PK-8 School or on January 3 from 6:30 – 8:00PM at Franklin High School. For more information on this, please go to www.seattleschools.org.

Future Parent Engagement – Parents asked about future opportunities for Emerson families to talk with school and district administrators. I will coordinate with Dr. Drake to provide future opportunities for families to talk directly with school and district administrators about Emerson Elementary and to get updates on how we are better supporting the school.

Those are all the updates we have for now. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, I encourage you to contact Dr. Drake at Emerson. She is more than happy to talk with you about the school’s vision and to receive any questions or feedback you may have. If your concerns are about district support for Emerson, please feel free to contact me as well. Both Dr. Drake and I are passionate about and committed to helping Emerson students succeed in school and in life. Our unified goal, along with the staff, is to make sure that Emerson becomes one of Seattle’s most successful schools for each and every student in the Emerson community.

Have a wonderful week and a joy-filled winter vacation.

Sincerely,

 

Kelly Aramaki, Executive Director of Schools

 

This is a very nice letter, and the community meeting was a great first step -- as long as it's a first of many steps. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting, so maybe I would feel differently had I been there in person, but I struggle to find hope in these words. Despite the best intentions, Julian’s school will still have TWO long-term substitutes for the rest of the year where there should be full-time teachers. This is not a road map for foundational, long-term change at a school that desperately needs it. It’s more of a list of current problems, immediate band-aids, and lofty aspirations.

But then again, what did I expect?

Too many low-performing public schools like Emerson seem doomed, forgotten, stuck getting by as best they can. It’s a systemic problem. Emerson Elementary School — and its students and families — are just victims of an unfair capitalist system of education. People like Betty Patu and Kelly Aramaki mean well, I'm sure -- they don’t have a foot on Emerson Elementary School’s back. They're working within the confines of the same inherently inequitable system.

For now, I think the key here is that our leaders are willing to listen. If this is a first step with bigger steps soon to follow, then great. If this is the best we can do, then Emerson is stuck. Either way, we still have work to do.

SPS put Emerson principal on leave after visit from school board rep

Last week was an exciting week in Seattle Public Schools. The city's teachers boldly came together to declare that Black Lives Matter, igniting support from the district and the community.

That all overshadowed a difficult week at Emerson Elementary, however. Parents were informed last Sunday (Oct. 16) that second-year principal Andrea Drake would be going on leave, and it's not clear if or when she will return. For now, Drake will be replaced on an interim basis by Barbara Moore, who will presumably do for Emerson what Frank Robinson did for the Washington Nationals a decade ago: come out of retirement to sleep-lead through a transition.

This is from the email to families from Kelly Aramaki, executive director of schools for SPS' southeast region:

“I am writing to let you know that Dr. Andrea Drake, Emerson's Principal, is currently on leave. During her absence, Ms. Barbara Moore, retired principal of South Lake High School, has graciously agreed to step in as acting principal. Ms. Moore is one of Seattle's finest leaders and will be a strong and steady support during this time. Ms. Moore and Ms. James, Emerson's Assistant Principal, will be working closely together and with the staff to ensure that everything moves forward smoothly. Your child's learning is our number one priority.”

As I understand it, Principal Drake did not volunteer to take a leave of absence. Seattle School Board member Betty Patu visited Emerson recently and met with some teachers. I don't know what exactly Patu was told or what she discovered, but something about the conditions at Emerson prompted Patu to go directly to Aramaki, who saw fit to place Drake on leave.

Drake had reportedly mismanaged the levy process as well, but whether or not there is any substance to that rumor, Drake’s brief tenure at Emerson has been far from smooth.

View fullsize

Photo by Matt Halvorson

My son goes to Emerson. Principal Drake took the helm just prior to the start of the 2015-16 school year, and from one parent's perspective, the school has languished in low expectations for its students ever since. Last fall's curriculum night, for instance, was far more focused on the importance of attendance and uniforms -- essentially showing up and wearing the right clothes -- than anything academic, let alone anything rigorous.

Last summer, state superintendent Randy Dorn changed Emerson's designation from a "priority school," which it had earned due to persistently low test scores, to a "superintendent intervention school." This change gave the school's teachers an option to stay at Emerson or leave to pursue other positions within the district. Almost every teacher left.

Working conditions at the school seem to have remained unkind to its teachers this fall. Emerson still does not have a teachers union representative.

When SEA voted unanimously to wear custom Black Lives Matter shirts on Wednesday, Oct. 19, teachers at Emerson asked to take part. Principal Drake's response to her staff’s request to participate was a firm "NO." Then she explained herself by telling her teachers that "all lives matter.”

She’s entitled to her beliefs and her own ideology, but if that’s the culture being established at my son’s school, then I appreciate the change of leadership. It’s not that I take issue, necessarily, with this particular example of upheaval at Emerson.

I take issue with the larger pattern of constant turnover and consistent underachievement at the school. I take issue with the fact that we have every reason to believe this will just keep happening.

So, Barbara Moore becomes Emerson's third principal in three years and its fourth in the past five. For the most part, our neighbors with access to other schools will continue exercising that option and avoiding Emerson altogether.

And who could blame them?

The building is home to some excellent, dedicated teachers and support staff, but they need more help. Emerson is also home to a few hundred beautiful little kids and their families, and we’re depending on our leaders in the district and on the school board to step up and give our kids the education they deserve — or at least something equivalent to the education most students on the north end are already getting.

It seems clear that our state superintendent (Dorn), our region’s ED with SPS (Aramaki) and our locally elected school board rep (Patu) are all well aware of the problems at Emerson.

Our leaders know that our school is failing us. This is, in theory, why we elected them, why our taxes pay their salaries. They are our advocates, a mouthpiece for the students and families in the communities they serve. And they know that our kids are being treated inequitably.

So, what’s going to be different this time? What will be done to change Emerson’s future and give our kids access to the education they deserve from their neighborhood school?

SPS home to fifth-worst racial achievement gap in the U.S. -- after eliminating equity and race relations dept. in 2008

Seattle Public Schools boasts the fifth-worst achievement gap between white and black students in the nation. Progressive Seattle trails only Washington D.C., Atlanta, Charleston and Oakland when it comes to racial inequity in education.

What’s worse, in as much as that’s possible, is that the first (and last) director of equity and race relations saw her position eliminated along with the entire department in 2008. She now says the district knew plainly about the gap 10 years ago and actively denied and suppressed knowledge and conversation around the issue.

Seattle Times columnist Gene Balk has written a straightforward, jarring account of a school system operating with deeply embedded structural racism. It is the kind of writing that should shake people awake, the kind you hope will spur action, because the inequity is so plainly laid out that it can’t be missed or misunderstood.

The nation’s big-city school districts that rank alongside Seattle for the widest white-black academic gaps — Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Charleston, S.C.; and Oakland, Calif. — all have high levels of segregation. This tends to concentrate kids with social and economic disadvantages in certain schools, which compounds the obstacles to achievement they face.

Seattle schools, too, have become increasingly segregated. In 29 of the city’s 98 public schools, at least 80 percent of students are black, Latino, Asian American or Native American.

But segregation alone might not explain Seattle’s white-black achievement gap, says Caprice Hollins. She served as the district’s first director of equity and race relations from 2004 to 2008, at which point her department was eliminated — and her job along with it.

“I was hired out of this realization that we needed to pay special attention to our students of color. And we were making inroads,” Hollins said. “Then the department shuts down — the new school board no longer supported it. And it’s not until years later that they’re restarting this work. There is always this restarting of the work, depending on who the leadership is.”

But during her tenure there, she faced strong resistance to her often bold approach. “The real understanding of equity,” she said, “is where we recognize that not everybody starts out on a level playing field.” So Hollins advocated for a redistribution of resources more heavily toward children of color in struggling schools.

“And white parents might start to say ‘what about my kids?’ They’re not recognizing that their kids already have what they need,” she said. “But just having this conversation becomes a very sensitive, political thing.”

When speaking with parents of color, she heard time and again their sense that their children weren’t being treated the same as white kids in the classroom. Hollins instituted mandatory workshops for teachers and administrators that focused on issues of race and equity, and which addressed issues that can make some folks uneasy — concepts like unconscious bias and the existence of white privilege.

Not surprisingly, this stirred up controversy. Some saw Hollins’ approach as political correctness run amok. That overshadowed any success she had — and during her tenure, the racial gap in standardized test scores narrowed modestly.

But complaints about her from white parents mounted, Hollins says. The district shut down her department, which a spokesperson said at the time was not related to the complaints.

Hollins thinks it was.

“They panicked,” she said. “Rather than pushing back and saying, ‘hey, look at our data here, this is why we are doing this,’ instead they said, ‘Caprice, you need to stop.’ ”

Hollins sees Seattle, despite its progressive reputation, as a community that struggles like any other when discussing its institutional racism and why its black children aren’t succeeding.

“People kept saying to me, ‘stop talking about it,’ ” she said. “But we have this achievement gap. How are we going to solve this problem if we can’t talk about it?”

Perhaps, with the release of this glaring new data, we’ll finally find a way.

The district has now reinstated the department, and in fact, Hollins was recently brought back to do professional-development workshops.

You should read the entire thing, and share it with everyone you know with ties to the state of Washington, because while Seattle’s discrepancies are the state’s worst, the city’s brothers and sisters across the state are struggling with similar issues as well.

You know it's bad when students end up teaching the class themselves

How many ways can we let our kids down? If you are a public school system it seems the ways are innumerable.

Case in point: due to dysfunction in the Seattle Public Schools students in one class are teaching themselves, even though there are three teachers on staff paid to do the teaching.

Julia Furukawa, a senior at Garfield High School, has taken the lead in teaching her Concert Choir class - a task she preps for during her AP Statistics, AP Biology, and History classes.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat says the problem stems from adults "behaving badly," and kids getting short-changed.

He reports:

It’s a sore point because the district is astonishingly employing three adults related to these classes. One is the former choir director Carol Burton, whom the district fired last year for multiple lapses on a field trip. She was reinstated by a judge last week but remains on paid leave as the district figures out whether to let her return to Garfield.

Another is a replacement choir director who mysteriously bolted midyear but who mysteriously also remains employed by the district. The third is a sub called in to oversee the classes, but who has no music experience.

Bottom line: Since that fateful field trip to New Orleans in early 2015, the choirs have had no real instructor for about seven of the 12 months the school has been in session.

[...]

Most every adult at every level — from the original choir teacher to district staff who didn’t warn the school of a student with behavioral problems to the superintendent who has seemed more concerned with legal liability than getting these kids a teacher — all failed these students to one degree or another.

It's one thing to keep the pressure on the state for full-funding of our public schools. It's another to demand the district isn't paying teachers not to teach.

If you want to read the full face-palm inducing story, read it here.