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Being a college board member requires the flexibility to carry accountable people who find themselves consultants — educators, budget-writers, safety and development professionals — in topics the place you doubtless aren’t. That’s not simple to do, and loads of trustees shrink from it.
Within the case of Seattle Public Faculties, board members oversee a gargantuan $1.2 billion budget, in order that they have to be ready to ask laborious questions, demand correct accounting and problem the path of district leaders — particularly when pupil outcomes counsel all isn’t properly.
For these causes, the editorial board endorses Christina Posten, a former principal, for District 2, on the Seattle Board of Training. The incumbent, Lisa Rivera Smith, made it clear in an interview that she doesn’t imagine it’s her function to get deep within the weeds of budget-scrutinizing, contract-negotiating or a lot else past broad coverage oversight.
“We actually depend on our workers to make judgments which can be sound,” she mentioned.
Present outcomes warrant a extra aggressive strategy.
The latest lecturers’ contract, which Rivera Smith endorsed, helped to place the district in a $100 million gap, and shutting that hole will undoubtedly have an effect on college students. As well as, 4 years after the district opened its Workplace of African American Male Achievement, scores for Black youth are worse than they have been earlier than. Essentially the most perplexing factor about Rivera Smith is her obvious lack of shock at these items.
Posten, in contrast, bristles with urgency, desirous to have some “laborious conversations” with SPS leaders. “We hear plenty of lovely phrases,” she mentioned. “We have to see motion.”
Within the face of Seattle’s gaping price range gap, each board member is definitely bracing for the blowback from mother and father when anticipated faculty closures are introduced after the election. Requested what she would shield at any price, Rivera Smith mentioned property. “I can’t promote any buildings.”
Posten, a profession educator, mentioned she would safeguard something related to curriculum, instructing and studying. She advocates trimming salaries and workers at district headquarters as a substitute.
That gained’t do a lot to shut a $100 million gap. However Posten, a former principal at Whitman Center Faculty, conveys actual ardour about bridging the hole between conversations that happen within the summary, at college board conferences, and the methods these choices play out on the bottom with precise youngsters.
Rivera Smith mentioned one in every of her proudest accomplishments is the passage of a clear vitality decision that may “get the district off fossil fuels” inside 20 years. For that, she ought to be counseled. However beneath the present board, there’s no cause to imagine this admirable purpose will ever be reached.
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