Seattle! - Fight for a Representative School Board

Dear Seattle residents, teachers, parents, students,

The time has come to understand the common problems our community faces at the hands of a few elite,  who share none of our interests. The time has come to show them for who they are, who they serve. The time has come to form our own School Board, elected by us, from among us,  in the spirit of true representative democracy.

What are the common interests of the Seattle community that have seen their schools destroyed, the curriculum trampled upon, good teachers transferred and let go in these past few tumultuous years? They are simply, preserving and enhancing a sound education for their children. What do they rely on to achieve this? They depend on a strong public school built on democratic values to achieve these aims. They do not possess the financial capabilities to cope with the current changes the administration is forcing on schools. They cannot easily pull their children out of a decaying school and transfer them to a private school. They do not like seeing the curriculum degraded and the chances of a good education and thus a decent job being deprived to their children. It is financially burdensome for them to send their children to after-school tuition (ex: Kumon). They find it difficult to pay increased fees for extra-curricular programs. They lack the business, political and other relationships that would allow their children a chance at social mobility. Thus, they depend primarily on a solid K-12 education followed by a university education to have a hope of assuring a decent livelihood for their children.

That is how the interests of the larger community, that at once appears diverse, are actually seen to have a high degree of commonality.

This majority community of Seattle relies on the Superintendent and the Seattle School Board to represent their interests. However, we ask, are the interests of these officials aligned with the interests of the community? If they are not, that would be problematic, as a group in power regularly advances its own interest. It is to mitigate these tendencies that we elect members of our community to serve local boards such as the School Board. But have we done a good enough job here? To answer this question, we now examine the interests of the School Board officials as a group.

A close look at the social position of these officials makes it clear that they belong in the upper middle class of society. The annual compensation for Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson is in the 300,000$ range. Apart from this salary, she may get paid by different for-profit entities due to positions she holds in their boards (ex: NWEA). Michael DeBell is a managing general partner of Meverick Ventures, a family owned real-estate investment. Sherry Car is a financial leader at Boeing. Peter Maier is a leading private practice attorney with a graduate degree from Harvard Law School. Steve Sundquist has an extensive background holding executive roles in the Russel Investment Group.  Kay Smith Blum is a former executive of Neiman Marcus and currently the co-owner and CEO of Butch Blum Inc, a European specialty designer-fashion store catering to the elite, where you could pick up a shirt for 400$. Harrium Martin-Morris is a Quality Assurance Manager at Boeing. Betty Pau is certainly the exception in this circle, a 30 year employee of the Seattle Public Schools.

Now that we realize the much higher financial capabilities of the Board, we can start examining their interests as a group. A good public school system is something they are interested in, no doubt. However, given a deteriorating public school and a less than adequate curriculum, they have more choices in avoiding their detrimental effect. Due to their financial position, they can choose the more affluent neighborhoods to live in, where due to higher property taxes, we find schools that are better funded. Their communities, having a higher number of single-earner families, are more engaged in the local PTA and play a remarkable role in managing sizable PTA funds for the best use of the schools as decided by the community. Thus they are somewhat immune from any mismanagement of funds by the SPS. Given a less than adequate curriculum, they are able to supplement the work of the teacher by after school private tuition and by spending time with their children. If their children face a problematic teacher, this group can wield their sizable influence in the business and political elite circles to change the situation for their children's advantage.

Thus, we see that the interests of the board are not necessarily aligned with the larger community. This is a result of their superior economic position giving them more choice, when it comes to their children and school.

However, there is a state budget deficit and the school board is asked to make cuts by their higher officials. Now, the school board will, naturally, work to minimize the impact of these cuts on their interests. And, unless the interests of the larger community are aligned with theirs, this results in them gravitating towards policies that harm the interests of the wider community. When the interests of the officials are aligned with those of the community, this poses no issue, and that is precisely why we value representative democracy. But we have just seen that the two groups have different, at times opposing, interests.

When faced with dividing a shrinking pie, everyone can't be a winner, and for the losses to be divided evenly, we need a true democratic representation in the body that decides the rations. And we clearly see we do not have this prerequisite in our School Board.

Faced with a shrinking or stagnant economy, the upper middle class faces severe competition from below. This likely makes them work even harder to limit the gains in education to the students of the upper middle class. They realize that a stagnant economy creates a larger number of low-skilled jobs and a fewer number of better paying ones. They want to, naturally, make sure their children preserve and build upon their current advantages in this race. This makes them want to work towards preventing the social mobility of the groups below them, in economic standing. They would much rather see poorer students being deprived a high paying job, than their kids falling down a rung in the economic ladder. This is a natural human instinct and we should not lose time blaming the School Board. What is required is for us to elect our own School Board with interests similar to ours.

Hereby, we have explained why we believe that the composition of the Seattle School Board is not representative of the wider Seattle Community that use its services. This is why we believe our interests are not served by this School Board. And that is why we must form a representative School Board, without delay.

In Part II of this article, we will attempt to lay out an appeal to the community to start forming a truly representative School Board. In the concluding Part III, we will discuss the challenges we are likely to face here and how to overcome them.