Thanks for highlighting a critical public service (schools) at a big price tag ($1B+/year) that somehow gets no real press. If you follow the Board discussions, the district is draining emergency dollars as a last step before officially running a deficit and it is unclear what happens after that. I take issue with the term “micromanage” because the Board has been very tolerant of the shaky direction the district is going. Please keep a light on this topic. We’re all waiting for a list of school closures to come down; it is June and no public engagement on this yet!

Being on a school board was the worst experience of my life. I have no idea why anyone does it. I was so happy when my term ended.

You neglected to mention that Student Focused Outcome Governance eliminated committee meetings with the exception of state required Audit and Finance meetings- which the board has decreased to every four months- from every month. A previous board INCREASED committee meetings aka oversight when there was a scandal of over $1M.

Student Focused Outcome Governance means the district is LESS transparency.

One board member has complained that they are no longer getting reports related to overseeing the district's $1.3B per year budget. And the BEX oversight committee? Well, that means directors are not getting information directly. They have to wonder whether the oversight committee actually saw the information.

In terms of student outcome, good luck. Comb through OSPI data and you will find that only 8 percent of students at a south end high school have the ability to pass a state math exam. Try looking at a south end elementary and you will find the same dismal results.

Kudos to district watcher Melissa Westbrook. She has been a district watchdog for approximately 20 years. She knows what is going on.

Lastly, as Totoman points out, there has not been public engagement on school closures.

As Totoman points out, the board has been very tolerant of an $131M deficit for the upcoming year and enormous deficit the following year.

To note, the Board eliminated all the committees that they could ( that provide discussion and oversight) except the two named in the story because those two are legally required. If the Board could have, they would have eliminated those as well.

Don’t fall for Liza Rankin’s nonsense about accountability. Let’s go over more of SOFG.

Moves agenda setting for Board meetings solely to Board prez and Super.
Raised Board oversight of district spending from $250,000 to $1M. And the Super only has to report that spending quarterly to the Board.
The Board spent nearly $20,000 to send 6 members and a staffer to a SOFG conference this year.
Under revamped Board policy, Board members cannot ask staff for data or information related to items on the Board agenda. Board members can only ask for “ clarifying” info.
The costs for learning and implementing SOFG have not been madd public. Why not?
If this governance model is so important, why no public engagement? The only way parents and the public could have listened in to Board discussion was ad Hoc committee meeting held in the middle of the week, usually at 10 or 11am. That’s not engagement.

Plainly put, SOFG makes the Super more powerful than the elected Board.

FYI, to note, Superintendent Brent Jones PROMISED public engagement for closing schools in 2024, in June. There has been none and none is scheduled for the rest of June.

To note, the Board eliminated all the committees that they could ( that provide discussion and oversight) except the two named in the story because those two are legally required. If the Board could have, they would have eliminated those as well.

Don’t fall for Liza Rankin’s nonsense about accountability. Let’s go over more of SOFG.

Moves agenda setting for Board meetings solely to Board prez and Super.
Raised Board oversight of district spending from $250,000 to $1M. And the Super only has to report that spending quarterly to the Board.
The Board spent nearly $20,000 to send 6 members and a staffer to a SOFG conference this year.
Under revamped Board policy, Board members cannot ask staff for data or information related to items on the Board agenda. Board members can only ask for “ clarifying” info.
The costs for learning and implementing SOFG have not been madd public. Why not?
If this governance model is so important, why no public engagement? The only way parents and the public could have listened in to Board discussion was ad Hoc committee meeting held in the middle of the week, usually at 10 or 11am. That’s not engagement.

Plainly put, SOFG makes the Super more powerful than the elected Board.

FYI, to note, Superintendent Brent Jones PROMISED public engagement for closing schools in 2024, in June. There has been none and none is scheduled for the rest of June.

.

Melissa Westbrook influential? Don’t make me spit my coffee.

She is influential, Miss Apatos. Sorry about your coffee.
As for this piece, the school board hasn't been micromanaging the district. Maybe things would be in a better state if they had been. (Maybe not. But I see no evidence of micromanagement here.)

This is such a strange article. Although it is in The Stranger, so there's that. The Stranger conveniently jumps into education coverage the week before endorsements start piling in for the August primary! (Also the same time the Seattle Times is doing something similar.) Where were you when SOFG was first proposed? What kind of due diligence have you been doing on behalf of the public to ensure that proper democratic values are maintained, communities have input and say on how their schools are run, how equity (and not fake-quity) is being implemented (and not just talked about)?

I ask because propaganda and talking points placed on your desktop for editing right before endorsements is not journalism; that's no better than publishing press releases as "news." The Stranger must, as a team, step up to help meet the challenges of understanding various education crises.

Look, no one but AJ Crabill knows what SOFG even is. The writer of this article makes it seem like Ben Gitenstein doesn't know, but no one knows, OK? The writer herself doesn't even know. If you start reading down the SOFG reading list Crabill gave the board, you'll notice a lot of self-published (aka non-published) "good vibes" writing, but no actual research or evidence. It's just a rehashing of ideas he lifted from his previous service on a small school board in Missouri, although called Kansas City Public Schools it's one of dozens of districts and oversees only 15,000 students. As a reminder, Seattle has close to 50,000 students with over a hundred school buildings. It's facile and not innovative, but our board majority has fallen for it like unsettled souls in a 1924 Christian revival tent.

And Crabill as assistant superintendent in Texas has helped implement a massive charter-ization of schools there. I'm pretty confident that union-busting moves like this lay in store for us in the near future, too, if we don't wise up.

What SOFG means in practical terms is this:

Minimal to zero governance transparency to the public
Hear no evil, see no evil, say no evil: board directors who don't know anything because they've given the district permission not to tell them anything can offer no better governance than three monkeys on the branch of a tree
SOFG gives the board cover for the likely bankruptcy and an OSPI-appointed receiver as soon as next year, where CBAs and many other contracts will be unilaterally canceled or altered
SOFG is a tool in the neoliberal toolbox for undermining school governance as evidenced by...
"Student outcomes" = code for tons of standardized testing, which incidentally is racist, and with the Gates Foundation a sponsor of Great City Schools and indirectly of Crabill's SOFG stuff you can surmise this is just a stealth ed reform thing that conveniently lines the pockets of test companies' officers
No other district using SOFG, and I mean no as in "zero," has any data or evidence to show SOFG even works, not even a little bit. It's a fad, not a governance model.

We need to see some data points and not just talking points on all of this.