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Title : Who Should Be Seattle Schools' Next Superintendent? Jeanice Swift
link : Who Should Be Seattle Schools' Next Superintendent? Jeanice Swift
Who Should Be Seattle Schools' Next Superintendent? Jeanice Swift
The Board is to vote, on Wednesday night, April 4th, at the regular board meeting, on who to offer a contract to be superintendent. Given that they worked all day yesterday (Friday, the 30th), I would assume some consensus was reached on that person. I think the Board and their search firm, Ray&Associates, did find some excellent candidates.However, please DO continue to let the Board know your thoughts. It may help Board members to feel secure about the choice they will make.
spsdirectors@seattleschools.org
I believe that Seattle Schools would be well-served and lucky to have either Jeanice Swift or Denise Juneau. These two women are very different in how they communicate and have very different backgrounds in education. But both are devoted to public education and making it better for the children they serve. I was very impressed with them.
My pick would be Jeanice Swift but I would not be unhappy in the least if the Board picked Denise Juneau. Why Swift?
I was struck my Dr. Swift's positive demeanor and her insistence that she wanted to come in and listen and honor work that has come before. That is fair and wise and makes me breathe easier. She seemed knowable about issues that affect all districts and even honestly offered that her district's attempts to balance out PTA fundraising dollars hadn't worked well. It's not often that an candidate will admit a less-than-successful initiative in a public forum.
But I did some more homework and called the school board president in Ann Arbor. Her name is Christine Stead and she sent me lengthy comments.
She said they would miss Swift terribly if she left but they would wish her well and that she is "legendary."
In Stead's own words:
When she arrived, our enrollment had declined by 200 students due to years of cuts and a revolving door at the top, making substantive progress challenging.
She had the know-how to launch 7 new initiatives and engage our community. These 7 new programs yielded an increased student population the next year of almost 300 students.
The new programs were designed to make significant progress in closing the achievement gap, address buildings with significant culture and performance issues, and make changes in leadership that sent a strong message that we were in a new day. Since then, our district has grown ~1,200 students; our finances are much-improved (difficult in the state of Michigan where there is nothing short of an assault on public education - Betsy DeVos' influence is strong here and has been).
She has been overwhelmingly successful in inspiring our community's trust again. We have been able to grow programs, hire more teachers, give raises, among other things. We have struggled a bit this year with replacing some key leaders in a timely manner and that has caused some things to take longer to implement - this is perhaps the only area where there have been some challenges this past year; and yet she has managed that as well as anyone. She has earned enough credibility here to ask for patience while she finds the right person for key roles (e.g., CFO, COO to name two, which have now been addressed).
Dr. Swift completely immersed herself in Ann Arbor when she arrived. Her listening tour spanned months; 92 community meetings. People felt heard. This was the foundation for what to do next: short and long term. This approach was wildly successful and you could say she was seen as nothing short of a hero at the end of the first year. You cannot out-work her. She would likely do something similar there. She has a great memory and is great at building relationships, which becomes important for the specific changes needed in buildings and longer-term systemic changes.
In her annual State of the Schools, the theme is 'How are the Children Doing?' based on a Kenyan greeting. She also knows that having an excellent teacher in every classroom is key to closing the achievement gap. We have worked hard to make this possible, and that has been challenging to do. She does not shy away from challenges.
If anyone can adapt to a larger operation and city, she can. I have seen her become an excellent superintendent here (she was not one previously; hiring her was a risk for us). There are parallels in Ann Arbor, where our average Superintendent tenure is ~ 2 years. We are very hard on our Superintendents. We are often cited as the most educated city in America. That brings with it high expectations.
And yet we are also one of the most diverse school districts in our state. This year, Caucasian students comprised 49% of our student population for the first time. We also have a very diverse socioeconomic range. I believe Dr. Swift knows how to get at what needs to be addressed, how to manage and build a large team, and she has a great read on people (this may be one of her greatest strengths).I read this words and thought, "This is the right person at the right time for Seattle Public Schools."
I believe that she is not interested in ANY larger district (we have a few here in Michigan). I believe she is specifically interested in Seattle. I do expect that she is sought after - and will continue to be. She has earned that.
But as I said, I would also embrace Denise Juneau as I believe her quiet leadership and commitment to minority students would serve our district well.
Superintendent Andre Spencer is a personable man with an easy-going style and a commitment to public education. But I found his remarks at the Thursday night event vague and felt uneasy about how many times he made the choice to frame education to business needs. Again, it is not about training workers - it's about creating citizens. Those two are not mutually exclusive but I'm not sure I heard that from Spencer.
I also believe his ties to ed reform groups like Teach for America and the Broad Academy are wrong for Seattle. Our district has not embraced Teach for America, choosing instead, to work with SEA and others to create the Seattle Teacher Residency, to grow our own (which is a method all three candidates endorsed). We had a superintendent that came out of the Broad Academy with disasterous outcomes. Not again. As well, he seemed to be for tying teacher evaluations to test scores which would not be popular with the SEA.
Lastly, I understand there was a press conference with the candidates (that somehow I missed) and that all three said they were not for charters. Superintendent Spencer's record does not seem to reflect that he is not for charters especially since he attended a "choice" convention recently.
The Seattle School Board has been criticized in some quarters for the superintendent search. Funny thing, I pulled out my file from the last search, in 2012, and lo and behold! the same things were said. Group X didn't think they got enough input and Group Y wanted to be in the room for the Board discussions. I will agree that when school started, the Board should have announced their intention to start the search and laid out a timetable.
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