I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself optimistic that Seattle Public Schools are headed in the right direction

Another new year is upon us, giving us a reminder to pause and get our bearings, to look backward with gratitude and forward with clear intention.

For me, part of this process ends up being a series of questions that I ponder for days. What do I want to keep from 2018, and what will I let go of? What am I prepared to do now — or to stop doing — that I wasn’t a year ago? What do I wish I’d done more of in 2018, and how can I incorporate that into the coming year?

I looked back and noticed, among other things, that I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking and writing about the ways our schools fall short. I have focused on glaring flaws and failures and on the more painful aspects of our deeply inequitable system of public schools. I’ve been focused on the negative, in other words.

Up until now, I have spent more time pointing out what I don’t want — my vision for our schools has been a conversation about what we need to eliminate or change, but not always a conversation that includes what our schools might become. I talk a lot about the inequity in our schools, about tearing down existing systems, but what does equitable education even look like? What might rise up to replace it if the current system does crumble or change beyond recognition?

To simplify things, I broke it down to a much smaller question. We need to close our opportunity gaps before our schools can consider being anything but part of the problem. How would that look?

In other words, what do I want?

What is my vision for an equitable public school district in Seattle? And beyond envisioning, what would actually need to happen to get us to that promised land?

I have some ideas — and more questions — and I’ll start laying out and discussing that vision in the coming days and weeks. It’s time for us to start moving forward with a clear vision that is as grand and ambitious as our commitment to fighting inequity is unwavering.

Before I really start diving down that rabbit hole, though, I think it’s important to acknowledge the progress we’ve seen in Seattle’s schools recently.

Seattle Public Schools hired a new superintendent last year, and when the Seattle School Board narrowed its list to three finalists, the public was invited to a question-and-answer session with each of the candidates.

As I wrote at the time, almost every question the candidates were asked that night centered on equity — or the lack of it in our schools, and the pressing need for that to change. It was a wildly different conversation than we heard when Chris Reykdal was elected state superintendent a couple years earlier, and it was a much different conversation than was had when any of Juneau’s recent predecessors were chosen.

The school board’s subsequent decision to bring in Denise Juneau as our new superintendent was a particularly inspired one. She was the right choice. She took the helm of SPS in June, and overnight we went from milquetoast Larry Nyland to Juneau, a leader with a track record of initiating bold changes in the name of equity, not to mention our first Native American superintendent as well as our first openly gay superintendent.

Aside from the changes at the top, I continue to notice little pieces of what feels like important progress. School board meetings in Seattle always begin with an acknowledgment of the indigenous land we occupy. I’ve heard talk of a program sending groups of teachers for multiple in-depth meetings with current prison inmates to imprint the school-to-prison pipeline as a reality rather than just a concept. Juneau and Reykdal each spoke publicly and clearly to ensure that all students knew they were safe and valued in our schools, even as different messages were being sent by the federal government.

Little things? Sure. But impactful. And particularly noteworthy is the fact that these sorts of things weren’t necessarily happening even just a few years ago. If we are to look back someday and see that things have changed, these could well be the first steps. Or we’ll look back and realize that these were good first steps, but that we didn’t have the backbone to see it all through.

And the thing is, I know this is just scratching the surface. So, I ask humbly for your help. What else is happening that I should know about in our schools? Can you give me more reason to be hopeful, more stories about the progress our district is making? Can you tell me more about the teachers meeting with inmates, or about something that gives you hope for the future?

And if not that, are there more areas we need to shine a light on? What else is happening that also needs to change?

Thank you for your thoughts and your optimism as we look ahead, and thank you for doing what you do in important times like these. It’s going to be a good year.