In lamenting last week’s disruptive School Board meeting — the one that likely led to Superintendent Raj Manhas’ decision to resign — Seattle P-I columnist Robert Jamieson brings up the issue of race and class, and how it played into Seattle’s school closure process.
Dollars and cents.
That is what the plan to close public schools in Seattle was supposed be about — how to save money, fix a cash crunch and improve classrooms.
Yet something else is there — something that Seattle, for all of its liberal pride, has trouble grappling with.
Race.
No doubt.
As a white male raised in relative privilege, I am uncomfortable attempting to speak with authority on issues of race, but from my personal experience fighting to save my daughter’s school from closure it became abundantly clear that the district is at times crippled by this issue, and the pervasive educational disparity that follows Seattle’s racial lines. Though I doubt it was intentional, there is no question that the district’s original school closure plan overwhelmingly and disproportionately impacted children of color. And yet at the same time, the district cynically raised the issue of racial disparity as a tool to drive a wedge through my daughter’s own school, in an effort to justify its closure. While racism is a sledgehammer that predominantly falls on one side of the divide, it can swing both ways.
Jamieson says that the closure plan was only supposed to be about dollars and cents, but I say that the district should have seen this coming. The closure process inherently pitted school against school and neighborhood against neighborhood; why shouldn’t we expect a bitter fight over shrinking resources to bring out the worst in us? That’s human nature.
Which brings me to my biggest criticism of Raj Manhas and the current school board’s attempt to lead our district through our current, dire fiscal straights — their inability to provide effective leadership towards solving the district’s real problem: inadequate funding.
School closures are nothing more than a band-aid on a gangrenous wound, a half-measure that can only lead to further cuts and closures down the road. While Manhas speaks bluntly of the Legislature’s stunning failure to adequately fund K-12 education, he never made an effort to unite the city’s parents in a drive to pressure their elected officials for more money. Instead, in a Vichy-like acquiescence to the political needs of a handful of timid legislators, he made school closures the centerpiece of his reform efforts, thus turning the district’s parents against each other. For all of his business acumen, and for all of his good intentions, Manhas simply could not provide the leadership our school district desperately needs. And neither can the current school board.
It has become politically unfashionable to throw money at a problem, but that is exactly what our schools most desperately need at the moment — specifically, a thousand dollars per student per year more, granted directly into the classroom. How did I come up with that number? I didn’t. The “free market” did. For that is how much the parents of our most affluent North Seattle and Eastside schools raise each year to pay for smaller class size, teaching assistants, art, music, foreign language and other enrichment programs that they deem necessary for their own children’s academic success. That is what the children of our poorer, predominantly minority neighborhoods are being denied.
On the surface, Washington state has one of the most equitable school funding systems in the nation, with only about a quarter of any district’s operating budget coming from local taxpayers. But over the years, as the state has failed to live up to it’s financial obligations, and per-student spending has steadily shrunk in real dollars, parents who could afford to make up the difference through PTA fundraisers, did. In Seattle, that has only exacerbated the disparities that already existed, creating a handful of affluent North End schools that are public in name but half-private in nature.
There is a stunning lack of equity between Seattle schools, and all the parents see it. So while it is unfortunate that the anger and frustration generated by the closure process should boil over into racial epithets, it is entirely understandable. Those of us faced with closure were asked to sacrifice our schools and the educational stability of our children for the good of all the district’s children, but deep down, we understand that it just doesn’t work that way. Some children simply benefit more from the current system than others, and nothing in the closure process suggests that this will change.
If like me, you believe that all children should have access to a quality public education, regardless of race, income, geography or individual special needs, then you must believe that all our public schools should be adequately and equitably funded. And until we meet this very basic need, no amount of well-intentioned reform will quell the rancor displayed at last week’s School Board meeting.
Some states are much more equitable than Washington, and provide 100% of their funding at the state level. I believe Hawaii is like this — basically one school district statewide. Many states are much worse than Washington.
I believe local districts can get up to 24% of their overall funding through local levies. Certain districts are grandfathered at a higher level, if they already had higher local levy amounts many years ago when laws were passing limiting the local levy. These include places like Bellevue and Mercer Island — over 30% of funding from local levies. Not to mention that Bellevue and Mercer Island have lots of valuable real estate in relation to students, and can get this money with a much lower local levy RATE per thousand of assessed value.
But I would submit that educational funding is much more unfairly distributed accross the state of Washington — i.e. compare a poor rural district with a wealthy King County district. This will be far more shocking than the disparities within the Seattle school system that might result from PTSA groups raising more private money in wealthier neighborhoods.
It has become politically unfashionable to throw money at a problem, but that is exactly what our schools most desperately need at the moment – specifically, a thousand dollars per student per year more, granted directly into the classroom. How did I come up with that number? I didn’t. The “free market” did. For that is how much the parents of our most affluent North Seattle and Eastside schools raise each year to pay for smaller class size, teaching assistants, art, music, foreign language and other enrichment programs that they deem necessary for their own children’s academic success. That is what the children of our poorer, predominantly minority neighborhoods are being denied.
Two children from a middle school in the Northeast cluster came calling selling magazine subscriptions to raise funds for their schools. I’m supposedly in a “poor” Seattle neighborhood — my criterion for stating such is that the house prices here don’t indicate a “desirable” area: it’s an overlooked and affordable zipcode and the median income here is $60K/household. Are poorer, predominantly minority neighborhoods in Seattle being denied the opportunity to sell magazine subscriptions?
“Angela” from a P-I soundoff comment to R. Jamieson’s piece wrote something that made me think maybe it’s not so much race, but culture? Immigrants of all races do care an awful lot about education. Most of us haven’t been in the US long enough to have the sense of entitlement native citizens have. When initiative ballots don’t go the way we’d like them to, we find another way.
Second language instruction is not compulsory in Seattle’s school district (I’d like it to be). Prop. 88, an initiative to provide more funding to art and music, was rejected by Seattle voters, most of them liberal. I have no problem with people paying out of their own pocket for non-compulsory programs.
If you believe that all children should have access to a quality public education, regardless of race, income, geography or individual special needs, then you must believe that all our public schools should be adequately and equitably funded.
No parent who’s blogged about this is offering any solutions or ideas, only “Manhas didn’t ask the parents for input prior to the announcement of school closures, so good riddance to him.” There’s a busing program for delivering kiddies to their cherry-picked schools. If that gets cancelled (maybe it’s more expensive than closing schools?) does that help the children achieve a quality public education? If so, then cancel the busing program.
But over the years, as the state has failed to live up to its financial obligations, and per-student spending has steadily shrunk in real dollars, parents who could afford to make up the difference through PTA fundraisers, did. In Seattle, that has only exacerbated the disparities that already existed, creating a handful of affluent North End schools that are public in name but half-private in nature.
One such school in the northeast (what I perceive as the most affluent cluster in Seattle Public Schools — “North End” is commonly perceived as Shoreline/LFP/Bothell) was initially on the closure list, for reason of “lack of parental participation.” This confused me, as I had carpooled with a parent of a student there, a parent who volunteered for the Science Fair, who described energy and turnout and funds raised through auctions and activities there. Several parents guessed that the school was on the closure list in a gesture of “equality” — even schools with predominantly white populations of students could be closed.
The unpaid School Board members now not only have to grapple with the continuing lack of funding problem, which I would agree in lieu of additional information stems from a lack of state funding and from voters’ decisions to not be levied further, but with choosing a new Superintendent. I have to consider where my child is going to school next year. I’m lucky to have choices to make, but I won’t consider Seattle Public Schools if they are unable to provide the environment and programs my child needs and would benefit from.
Just asking: is there any % of annual real estate tax that goes toward Seattle Schools? If yes, then surely the rising house appreciation, which no doubt even predominantly minority neighborhoods have experienced, would provide at least some temporary surcease from lack of budget funding.
To me it seems like: it’s public school education, so the public has a say how its tax dollars are spent. If the public is voting down levies to help the schools, then the SPS has to make budget cuts and the parents and guardians of school-age children fend for themselves. As a parent of a school-age child, I might not like it, but I know that I’m in the minority, and I’ll find some way of getting my kid what he or she needs. Maybe cut down on lattes, or get a second part-time job, a switch to a vegetarian diet, or more bicycling, or colder house temperatures, but I’ll find a way.
Tell me… if librulism is such a great thing, why is seattle such a shithole?
Why are seattle schools among the worst in the country. And why the fuck would anybody send their kids there and fuck them up for life?
Or do fucked up kids turn into moonbat dems as adults? Yeah, that’s it…
MTR
I’ve never seen anyone so apt to consider their opinion as reality as you—except another Republican. I think it comes from living in the insular little world of talk radio and op-eds. It gives you the notion that what other poor, stupid slobs in the world see as “reality” or “objective fact” doesn’t matter; just holding an opinion makes it real.
MTR:
Tell me… if librulism is such a great thing, why is seattle such a shithole?
+
You aren’t very well-travelled, are you Mark? A shithole compared to what? Jakarta? Manila? Detroit? Memphis? Your back yard?
Why are seattle schools among the worst in the country.
That’s a flat-out lie. Find a big city in the US with better schools than Seattle. Comparing an urban center with suburban enclaves is an apples-to-oranges issues. I’ll tell you an unfortunate truth: All other things being equal, school test scores correlate very highly with socioeconomic background. This gets in to a bunch of things including how different groups of people value education (unsurprisingly, educated suburban professionals think that going to university is a good way to get ahead. Poor urban populations, not so much), time spent (if one person in a couple is well-paid, the other can stay at home to look after kids full time. If both parents are working 12 hours a day to pay rent, that doesn’t happen), and basic resources (underperforming children of affulent parents and poor parents can both call $60/hour tutors to provide remedial instructions. Only one set of parents can back that call up with cash).
This doesn’t mean that all children of poor parents underperform academically, or that all children of rich parents walk straight into Harvard. However, for a large group, you will find a substantial correlation.
Now, let’s focus on one other thing, since we’re talking about large groups. Statistically, the average 6 year old weighs 45 pounds. That’s really fucking great, because that average 6 year-old doesn’t exist. There will be a set of 6 year-olds who will vary in weight from about 25 pounds to about 100 pounds.
Tests do not measure schools. Tests measure individual children. These are turned into an aggregate that has some meaning, but can also be deceiving if they’re not read correctly. Did you just like fucking sleep through your statistics class? Or are you lying about having a PE?
On a personal note to demonstrate the schools aren’t completely worthless, my daughter started kindergarten in Seattle last year. She went into kindergarten being familiar with the alphabet, and perhaps a 200 word reading vocabulary. At the end of that year in kindergarten, she was reading at 3rd-grade level. While I’d like to take a little credit for that, her teachers did a lot of the heavy lifting.
5 jsa on commercial drive, is your daughter in a public school? And are you here in SEA, or in YVR? If you’re in YVR why wouldn’t your daughter be educated there?
I wouldn’t think to risk your daughter’s safety by asking what school, but do you think you could volunteer at least the cluster in which your daughter is receiving this accelerated education? Some Seattle parents are having to consider their education options, and the much-publicized problems of SPS are being weighted in at least a few parents’ minds…
A true dilemma,
1) I work in YVR, but my primary residence is in Seattle. I am currently on contract here through Dec 2007. After that, I lose my work visa and get to go somewhere else. I am too old and sedate to force a gypsy’s life on my kids because I jump around a lot. My contract may be extended past 2007, at which point I will consider moving everyone here. That hasn’t happened.
2) My daughter was at Maple Elementary on Beacon Hill last year, and at Lowell Elementary this year. (Lowell, for those of you outside Seattle is the school where they send the academic overachievers. Cool program. Everyone should go there). I cannot say enough nice things about Maple. The principal, Ms. Pat Hunter has done an amazing job at shaking various trees for money, since (as Goldy points out) it’s hard getting money from the parents.
I want to talk to you then. I am considering heading to YVR on contract so I can change my voting riding to a YVR one from the South Surrey one, and maybe sponsor my family. (I am already qualified to work in Canada.)
*My kid tested at a near 98% cognitive level (he’s not yet in SPS, but was tested for other services). Do you suppose he stands a chance at Lowell? He’s in preschool and has maybe half the reading vocabulary your daughter had entering kindergarten.
A true dilemma @ 8:
I am American, not Canadian, so voting ridings are something I know very little about, other than mine (Vancouver East) is as predictably NDP as Seattle is Democratic. Do as you’d like there. It is rude to comment on the politics of a country I am not a citizen of, and I won’t do it.
If your kid tested at 98%, he would probably qualify for Lowell. The test administered is the CogAT Form 6. This is combined with a teacher’s recommendation for enrollment into the Spectrum (90th percentile and up) or APP (98th percentile and up) programs.
I will note that Seattle is miles ahead of Vancouver in providing enrichment programs to students. Programs like Seattle’s Spectrum and APP do not exist here. As much as I kick on standardized testing (get a beer, put on some mellow music, and listen to me bitch for about an hour on testing and what’s wrong with it) I am a little frustrated that the Vancouver School Board has a lack of transparency with quantative data on its schools. Most of the parents I talk to here are happy enough with the schools, but there are also no standardized tests or other information on the schools that is published by the VSB. We are forced to rely on secondary data from the Vancouver Sun and the Fraser Institute. It suffers from a lot of the same issues I have with standardized testing in the US, coupled with much poorer access to primary data.
Feel free to email me. I’m wumingzi at gmail dot com.
I remember reading a little note in the paper, perhaps last year or the year before, of a high school in Bellevue holding an auction to raise money for the PTSA to raise some of that “extra money” to fund those “extra programs”.
One of the items being auctioned off was a reserved parking space right at the front entrance. Some proud parent paid over a thousand dollars so his kid wouldn’t have to walk from the student parking lot, like the rest of the kids. (I don’t remember the exact figure, and my attempts to search for the story on-line failed to find it).
I was pretty offended. A public asset was being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The students were taught that they are not equal with one another. And how do students from Seattle compete by selling magazine subsciptions and candy bars?
rhp6033 @ 11:
Welcome to the world of modern school funding.
I don’t know what the PTSAs collect over in Bellevue. David says $1000/head. That sounds about right. It’s in line with the checks I wrote last year, and will write again this year.
I have a grownup job, and writing a check for a grand is a lot cheaper than sending my kids to Bush School. Off in cul-de-sac land I suspect it’s par for the course.
Obviously some South Seattle parents have money, but the vast majority don’t. My conversations with PTSA heads here have indicated they can get about $20-$40/head from the student body through candy bars, magazines, etc. The large checks generally come from the teachers themselves.
David misses the point.
The SDS does not and can not own the kids. That said, it is absurd to suggest that parents in any part of Seattle should not be able to enrich their kids schools. It is equally naif to imagine that any tax scheme will ever raise enough money to make such fund raising obsolete.
That said, it seems ot me there is very different tack. Lets start wiht the doable. Lets do away with all regional HS in Seattle, create a set of great central schools and let the kids and parents choose and compete for these schools.
That will not solve the grade school problme but in one fell swoop it wipes out the Rainier Beach issue and allows Garfield and Roosevelt to serve the whole city (as they should).
Next, let wipe out the fiction of race based achievement. All kids should achieve as much as they can and HOLDING BACK UPPER CLASS KIDS OR ENCOURAGING THEM TO LEAVE DOES NOT IMPROVE THINGS FOR BLACK KIDS! Instead, we should do the ebst we can for all kids and ask how kids are doing against a yardstick that recognizes where the kids are coming from.
AS for $$, this is a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, the state provides too few dollars, but parent complaining about decreases in $$ that come with feqwer enrolled kids is quite another matter.
The principal, Ms. Pat Hunter has done an amazing job at shaking various trees for money, since (as Goldy points out) it’s hard getting money from the parents. – JSA on Commercial Drive
That’s because libruls are cheep bitches and bastards when it comes to paying out of their own pocket for education. They think it’s the government’s responsibility to education them. They like the nanny state.
I will agree with you that Seattle does have a high – high school graduate rate > 80%.
Cluelessness, you’re still an IDIOT!
I was pretty offended. A public asset was being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The students were taught that they are not equal with one another. And how do students from Seattle compete by selling magazine subsciptions and candy bars? Commentby rhp6033— 10/26/06@ 5:06 pm
I would bet that highest bidder was a donk. You moonbats just banned dodge ball, and tag. No wonder they don’t walk their kid to walk from the parking lot. He/she/it wouldn’t be fit!
So jsa on commercial drive, why is that about South Seattle peeps? Maybe they don’t get much of a chance in librul land.
Let me clue you moonbats in about blacks. We will grab the brass ring just like anyone else. The problem is what you whitey’s temp us with. Take for instance rap an gangsta music. When you dive down to the bottom bottom line it’s you honkies who won the record label. Research it moonbats. When you look at Mina, Arkansas, stupid Maxine Waters shut up when it was found out drugs came from them thar hills in Arkansas.
Oops… That should be who won the record label. But won also works now I think about it. The most money wins.
Our school auctions off the place in front of school. The money goes back into the building in the form of enrichment, extra instruction via a tutorial program, etc. My kids school is high end . . .
Stable and sufficient funding must be found for all schools. Every school should have an enriching curriculum and afterschool opportunities for kids.
While that meeting obviously showed the racist nature of the closures . . . decisions have to be made and supported.
What a hell we’ve created in this District.
That’s because libruls are cheep bitches and bastards when it comes to paying out of their own pocket for education. They think it’s the government’s responsibility to education them. They like the nanny state.
No puddy, it’s called that a large number of parents in South Seattle are poor. As in, they are scrambling to make money for rent, groceries, gas money, and a little extra for a rainy day.
Yes, you can take the McGavick approach and say that our poor live pretty OK, and I would agree with that to a point. When the PTSA passes the hat, these folks don’t have fat bank accounts to write checks out from.
You know where to find me. Why don’t you come down here and take a look around before you fire off assumptions about what life is like in a place you don’t live and you’ve never been.
As some one whose public education career began at Greenlake Elementary in Seattle and ended at Newport High School in Bellevue, I always felt a sort of guilt about going to school somewhere where the district had so much money that they would have paid their teachers more if they could have (salary caps), so instead they spent money on frivolous shit no one used like Smart Boards and digital projectors…especially when I knew that just on the other side of the lake there were kids whose schools were being threatened with closure. Almost all of the Bellevue kids I went to school with went to college and are getting degrees and less than half of the kids I went to elementary school with are. It’s an entirely unfair system and I feel like I was somehow complicit in it in attending the schools that benefitted from it. In a state where the chief constitutionally-enumerated goal is to provide citizens with a quality education, it is disappointing and humiliating that the Seattle School District has gotten into such dire financial straits. Change needs to happen, but it seems hard to know where to begin.
wtf are you talking about?
Other districts in the state are getting by with the same funding as the SSD. The Everett School District and the Snohomish school districts are building schools. They did it by passing special building levies
If the people of Seattle want to keep their schools in their neighorhoods open, great. Let them pay for it. Put a special levy before the people to keep open all of the schools that shouldn’t be kept open. Don’t send the problem to Olympia to get fixed. Because we all know that’s not going to happen.
Give them a choice to vote for….either cough up more money to keep these schools open…or vote to close some of them. But, then again I keep thinking about that monorail. Seattle voters are some of the dumbest voters in the state.
oh and to Mark the Redneck…..
The graduation rates in the Seattle School District has fallen to 49%. Seattle is extremely liberal That means that 51% of the students in the SSD will be working to qualify for a Wal-Mart Pension.
The Yakima school district only graduates 37% of its students. Yakima is extreme conservative. This means that 63% of these students will make great apple pickers.