The audience at The Stranger's school board debate last week got into it right away. The opening round of "yes"/"no"/ "dunno" questions, in which candidates were instructed to silently scuttle across the stage at Town Hall and line up behind signs indicating their answers, drew loud cheers and derisive laughter from the audience. It was shaping up to be an entertaining evening.
And then the candidates started talking.
It's not that the answers weren't substantive. Some of them were. And it's not like there wasn't any conflict. There was. It's just that so many of the issues debated seem so small in the face of a problem that is so dauntingly big: our refusal as a state to adequately fund public education.
On that one issue, no candidate had a satisfying answer. "Fundamentally, the problem is that the state has failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation," explained incumbent director Harium Martin-Morris to sustained applause. Exactly. Now what are you going to do about it? Both challengers and incumbents alike seemed equally stumped.
I don't mean to dismiss contentious issues like Teach for America (a program to bring college graduates into temporary teaching positions) or the achievement gap between North Seattle and South Seattle schools or the boneheaded way this and past boards closed schools in the face of a rising tide of enrollment. But with the district shaving another $45 million from its $570 million operating budget, and the state slashing billions of dollars from K–12 education over the past four years, all this talk about improving our schools is just that—talk—if we don't figure out how to pay for them.
No, money alone won't solve all our problems, and as Superintendent Susan Enfield emphasized at a Monday press conference introducing Seattle mayor Mike McGinn's new campaign to cut truancy and increase attendance, "The school district can't do it alone."
In response to studies showing a close correlation between attendance and graduation rates—on average, only 59 percent of ninth graders missing 18 days of school a year will graduate, compared to 87 percent of those who miss five or fewer—the mayor's office, working in collaboration with the district and other groups, launched the "Be Here, Get There" campaign, aimed at slashing chronic absenteeism through outreach and incentives. Students, classrooms, and schools will compete for prizes for improved attendance, including donated bikes, pizza parties, and a visit from the Molly Moon's ice cream truck. It's a worthy initiative with a feel-good message that costs taxpayers nothing. Kudos.
Now if only we would stop slashing the dollars the state spends to educate the kids who show up. 
