Memo to Mayor Wilson: Be the Education Mayor

My suggestion for new Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is to shift her priorities to actually reforming schools. I fear her ambitious affordability agenda will run into funding problems, particularly now that the city and Seattle Schools are deep in debt. Her civic agenda could be a formula for a slow erosion of her popularity. As it happens, there is a strong agenda for change in a key aspect of Wilsonian equality — improving Seattle public schools, starting with school boards. She could be the education mayor.

The way to start is to improve dramatically the Seattle School Board, from which reform will flow. Making its slow way in the Legislature is a package that would do that. It’s been cooked up by a group of educational reformers (including some previous reformist board members). Soon, these ideas will surface in the Legislature, and they need a boost from the new mayor.

There are four elements to this package.

• First, pay board members much more, such as $40-50,000 a year for part-time work. (The current rate is $50 a day, capped at $4,800 for a year, which discourages good candidates and encourages sorehead candidates.)
• Second, set aside serious money for professional development. I would add: Give each board member the funds to have a research assistant, crucial to standing up against the dominating administration, which badly outguns the board.
• Fourth, allow the Seattle Mayor (with some guidance respecting experience, or picking from qualified candidates) to appoint 2-3 of the seven-member board. This key (and controversial) reform would encourage qualified people to accept appointment, avoiding having to run for election, which is mostly determined by the funding by the Teachers Union.

For myself, I would also change the way Seattle elects its board members. Currently each candidate must live in one of seven districts, and that district’s voters alone get a say in the primary, with the top two candidates facing each other, city-wide, for the general election. This system encourages a narrow agenda, pitting local schools against other districts’, rather than a system-wide approach. This current system locks in candidates who “deliver” for a district or for specialized interests.

The besetting problem for Seattle Schools has been rapid turnover of the superintendents, as well as board members. True reform requires the board support of a superintendent who can stay for at least five years. The revolving door of Seattle School superintendents precludes the staying power of real reform. Brent Jones, who recently quit, served three years (2021-24), Denise Juneau held the top spot from 2018 to 2021, and Larry Nyland served 2014-2018. Three-years-and-out is no way to run a school system and build support for serious reform.

The new superintendent, Ben Shuldiner, arrives from a much smaller school district (Lansing, Michigan, with 10,700 students or one-fifth the Seattle district). He taught in New York City schools and is a Harvard graduate. The Seattle Schools’ hot seat is now mostly of interest to rising stars eager to leave, not proven big-city leaders.

Prior to that, the Municipal League endorsements of board members (now defunct) were based on experience and competence (outweighing special interests). The respected board attracted leading citizens and always included a Boeing executive on loan, such as Phil Swain.

These days, the unpopular Liza Rankin (from north Seattle) is serving a second term and dominates the board. Many board members get elected and quickly depart or withdraw; or they get tossed aside by the forces for status quo when running for re-election. The shaky reform caucus (Gina Topp, Vivian Song, Joe Mizrahi) badly needs a leader and a fourth vote.

The other main problem for Seattle Schools is the high percentage of capable students who leave for private schools or the suburbs. About 20-25% of school-age students now are enrolled in private schools (including lower-cost parochial schools), putting Seattle second in the nation among major cities for this defection. Motivated students are the key to classroom esprit, as I well remember from my daughters going to Garfield High School. K-12 is the crucible for kids; college is too late and too fraught.

The last mayor who really cared about Seattle Schools was Norm Rice, who served from 1990-98 and who instituted a levy to butress non-educational aspects of student support. Since that time, improving Seattle Schools has slipped from the public agenda, and the Alliance for Education shifted from being a force for reform to supporting diversity programs in our schools. We need the new mayor to lead the charge, creating a reform coalition and broadening her appeal to voters.