Firefighter G.F. Sevilles visiting classroom at Halloween, 1966: Item 75723, Seattle Fire Department Slides (Record Series 2801-09), Seattle Municipal Archives

I felt the need to respond to MvB’s post about Seattle Schools because I’m no longer “outside looking in” with our school system. I’m a parent now, having endured the process of school selection and the ups and downs of kindergarten.

As an actual SPS parent…I find it amazing any kid gets taught anything at all. 

Large school systems are caught in a bind because they have to educate all kids. And educating all kids is the morally correct thing to do. But this leads to what I think are unfair comparisons.

Comparing a charter school to a regular public school is like comparing a boutique to a big box store. Of course the boutique is going to have more of what you want. But it’s also going to lack a lot of things you may need because of how specialized it is. And that’s been the case with charter schools–when some kid outside their specialization pops up, say a kid with undiagnosed dyslexia, they have nothing to offer for support, but you know, the school district does.

I ran into that shopping for a school last year. I went to what I thought was a fine parochial school, great test scores, diverse, solid teaching…but I mentioned my daughter is showing early signs of ADHD, and it was suddenly: “We can’t help you with that; you’re on your own.” If you’re outside of the norm, you’re on your own.

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Now, it’s not that much better with Seattle Public Schools, an organization whose communication style can be best described as “written by unicorns, implemented by Sasquatches, and chaired by the Snuffleupagus.” That is, if it exists, I haven’t seen it. And I’ve heard stories of people going to the mat repeatedly with the district just to get help mandated under ADA and the Rehab Act. I’ve heard stories of parents fighting to get their kids 504 plans written and parents fighting to have the 504s removed from their kids files. On the other hand, at least they have something to fight.

And that’s the worrisome part to me about these charter school reformers–they’re more than willing to yank their “special snowflakes” out of the public schools, but everyone else’s “special snowflakes” with any issues get drop-kicked back into a school system that’s now choc-a-bloc with discipline problems, learning disabilities, and kids that cost more to educate than the per capita rate.

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And at the same time, you have a lot of parents and guardians who really just don’t care, and the district is aligned to deal with that plurality. Last year I got read the riot act about my daughter’s behavior and then flipped out as a result (since it brought back some painful memories of my elementary school teachers trying to convince my mother to have me institutionalized–I’m not kidding about this.)

It took me a while to realize my daughter wasn’t the problem. The problem was the district assumed I didn’t care, and therefore I must be made to care. 

Here’s what I think about all these damn reform ideas that get half-assed through every couple of years: 

STOP.

Let’s focus on reforms that have been tested and proven. Like smaller class sizes. Like mentoring teachers and weeding out the burnouts. But more than that, let’s focus on getting schools the right way around on leadership. 

One thing I’ve learned is a good school is made up of:

• Good principal
• Good teachers
• Parents who give a damn
• A strong PTA
• Solid communication on all levels

Any of that falls apart, the school gets bad. And the thing is, Seattle is full of schools where some part of that is going badly. Do-nothing principals. Burned out teachers. Parents that are out to lunch. Weak and ineffective PTA leadership. No communication.

All the charter school crap in the world can’t fix these problems. They just shift them to a new venue. Or, they shift the parents and teachers and principals who would do something into places where they can be isolated from the parents and teachers and principals who don’t care. And the compartmentalization of America soldiers on. 

And it frustrates me, too, that the loudest voices in this whole mess are people like Charlie Mas, who openly protests against any idea, good or bad, and the fly-by-night editorializers like Tim Burgess and Richard Conlin, who drop some Surely This pet solution into the conversation to muddy the waters some more. (That said, all of Tim’s kids went to public schools, so at least he has some experience with this system.) And then there’s Mayor McGinn, who launched his campaign talking about the city taking over SPS but has been completely silent since then. Talk about a fly-by-night platform.

You know, as I’m writing this, I’m realizing there’s a far bigger problem:

You, collectively, don’t care.

Maybe you, singular, do care. But you, us, this nation, we don’t care. We complain about it all, but our solution is to slash school funding over and over again. We worry about “our future as a nation” but conveniently forget that our future is in school right now. Or maybe education just isn’t as important as whatever it is we care about today. Mosques in Manhattan. Taxes. Paris Hilton’s latest drunken spree. 

Or maybe it’s the opposite. We throw money at the solution because we’re Good Little Liberals, but we don’t ask for a return, and God forbid us from ever asking for assessment because That Destroys Education! Meanwhile, we do nothing to help bolster creativity. 

Let’s stop trying to solve the problem like some old patent medicine show–throw whatever at it and then walk away when it doesn’t work. Let’s start treating this like cancer–research, testing, treatment, palliative care, prevention, many cures for many different problems. If we treated cancer the way we’ve treated the public school system the last 40 years, breast cancer mortality would still be very high and everyone would be smoking like chimneys because lung cancer has nothing to do with tobacco. 

Solving Seattle Schools’ problems will require a community effort to collaborate and innovate. It will also require the end of the half-truths, backbiting, bickering, simple solutions, stereotypes, and political bull that’s been shoveled around for years. Here in town the Hutch and the University of Washington run a billion dollar cancer research, prevention, and treatment economy that has fundamentally reshaped the war on cancer.

If they, two of the most ego-laden academic environments on this planet, can collaborate on that, then why can’t the School Board, City Council, teacher’s union, PTSA, and anyone else that wants or needs to be at that table collaborate on a War On Bad Education?

After all, education, like cancer, takes years to progress. Editorials, like snake oil, only take an hour to put together and sell.

The biggest thing, though, is that we all have to give a damn again about our neighborhood schools. Every one of them needs tutors, or classroom helpers, or money, or whatever it takes. And I’m looking at all of you unemployed twentysomethings on Capitol Hill. You’re not doing anything in September, anyway, not with nine percent unemployment. Go walk down and offer your services. If they don’t know what to do with you, keep showing up. Like I said, communication in this district is non-existent. Get your background check done and start doing what needs to be done. They need you, even if they act like they don’t.