December 2007
Educating Mom: Calm Replaces Chaos
on the Seattle School Board
Watch Cheryl Chow at a Seattle School Board meeting and you’ll likely see her put one finger over her closed mouth as she listens to other board members speak. It’s a conscious gesture that says a lot about her leadership style and personality.
“That physically reminds me, ‘Cheryl, you cannot say everything you’re thinking,’” says Chow. “I keep my mouth shut.”
She was the quiet, steady leader who brought the directors together after a low point in the board’s history about a year ago. She took the lead in hiring Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. Chow is also the board president who will help four newly-elected directors get up to speed.
Last month board incumbents Sally Soriano and Darlene Flynn lost their positions. They were considered “reform” candidates when they were elected in 2003. Voters were apparently ready for a change again, tossing them out and opting for Peter Maier and Sherry Carr. The other new leaders are Harium Martin-Morris and Steve Sundquist. The four novice directors sit down for their first public school board meeting Dec. 5.
But before we look ahead at the direction the new Seattle School Board might be going, let’s glance back to see how far they’ve come in the past year.
Board Meeting Gone Wild
During an October 2006 board meeting, parents screamed and cursed about proposed school closures while some board members cheered them on. Former Superintendent Raj Manhas endured racial slurs. Police arrested a man for threatening a woman. And to make the situation more maddening, students were in the room taking it all in.
I don’t know what went through the children’s minds as they watched obnoxious, disrespectful adults. I do know what Chow thought.
“It was a perfect storm situation with a volatile issue (school closures) that had been building for months. Unfortunately, I wasn’t totally surprised that it got out of hand,” Chow says. “I was amazed at how low it went. I felt embarrassed for the public as well as for the board.”
After the embarrassing meeting, Chow became the board president and enacted a public testimony policy – comments are only allowed if someone has signed up to testify in advance and the speeches are limited to three minutes – which has been enforced ever since.
“If you go to one of our board meetings now, they’re pretty boring,” jokes Chow.
Boring is positive in this case. Also positive is the district’s reserve fund. A $33 million budget shortfall, created under the watch of former Superintendent Joseph Olchefske, dominated the local headlines four years ago. Not getting as much media attention is the district’s current $26 million cash reserve.
So, if you’re under the impression that our Seattle School Board is made up of misguided misfits, that’s not accurate. Things are looking up. Don’t take my optimistic word for it though; consider these recent changes:
- Seattle Public Schools is aligning its curriculum – starting with math this year – so students learn the same things, in the same way, district-wide.
- The district is heading toward a more uniform, centralized way of managing schools. One example of that is the way it will distribute money to buildings. The new funding formula recognizes that every school needs a certain number of staff members to be successful. With the old system, schools were funded on a per-student basis, which was great for large schools but put smaller schools in a death spiral.
- Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson has promised more accountability, has ordered a bunch of audits, and has already acted to pump $3 million into three struggling schools over the next three years to bring them up to par.
There’s a New Board in Town
Martin-Morris, a Boeing executive, has an idea that he admits seems “a little kitschy” at first.
“I’d like to get an eight person scull, take it out on Lake Union and have pictures taken of the board with the superintendent all rowing together,” says Martin-Morris. “Eight people all rowing in the same direction. It’s symbolic. It’s what we have now.”
I interviewed each of the recently-elected directors. Many of them have worked together on various school projects over the years, and they all like each other. As simple as that is, that wasn’t the case with past board members.
“We will be a cooperative, focused school board,” says Maier, a consumer-rights attorney. “That’s not to say that all school board members will agree and have the same views, but we will work together and solve policy issues in an analytical way.”
That approach will be needed on an issue Chow says will have more of an impact on every student in the district than school closures. The district plans to change the way students are assigned to schools. The student assignment plan, which is in the very early stages of development, assumes students want to go to their neighborhood schools. That’s a good idea if your neighborhood has great schools. It’s a lousy one if you look around and see lame schools.
“The assignment plan is a challenge. It will be like trying to fix a wing on an airplane while we’re still flying,” says Chow.
“It’s a huge issue,” agrees Carr, a finance officer at Boeing. “The promise of being told you’re going to your neighborhood school and then we’ll work in the future to make things better there is a hard thing for families to accept.”
Sundquist, chair of Climate Solutions, says the board is “at a turning point” in terms of perception. Even during a low point in board history last year, voters supported the district’s operating and capital levies.
“Support of Seattle Schools is strong and now people just want to see results from the board,” he says. “With this new board I think they will.”
Committee vs. Policy Governance
(Please keep reading even though the heading sure sounds dull.)
The subject of whether the Seattle School Board should continue with its committee structure or adopt a policy governance approach is yawn-inducing, yet important. I promise this will be a simple explanation about a likely change in the way directors do business.
The board operates now under a committee structure. That means board members serve on different working groups. The Seattle School Board has executive, finance, student learning and operations committees with three members on each committee. Thanks for reading this far– I’ll pick up the pace.
The downside of a committee structure is that it creates a need for multiple meetings involving district staff and board members. With the committee configuration, only three members learn about a subject at one time. The information then needs to be relayed to the other members. More meetings.
“When does anyone get their work done?” asks Chow, who’s behind an effort to adopt a policy governance style.
With a policy governance structure, the board determines the “ends” or big vision for the district and the CEO or superintendent’s job is to figure out the “means” or how the organization gets to its goals.
A sports analogy might make this more exciting. The board is the team owner and the superintendent is the coach. The coach hires assistants and decides what each player does. The team owner doesn’t come down to the sidelines and call the plays. The owner simply evaluates whether the coach is getting the job done or not.
“We don’t need to know every little detail about everything,” says Chow. “For example, overseeing the budget doesn’t mean the board should get bogged down with details like how much a desk or toilet paper costs.”
There you have it. It’s a behind the scenes change the board president wants in order to keep the school board from micro-managing the superintendent’s work.
Linda Thomas is a freelance journalist and a Seattle Schools parent. Her kids aren’t in high school yet; are yours? Let her know what you love about your kid’s high school for a future column. What programs and features make your Seattle high school the best? Share your pride! E-mail her: linda@lindathomas.com.
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