A group of parents, educators and community members calling itself the Seattle Shadow School Board, is encouraged to see that 12 school staffs have now passed resolutions of “no confidence” in Seattle Public School Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson.
The 12 are: Ballard, Franklin and West Seattle High Schools, Schmitz Park, Sanislo, Laurelhurst, Maple, Green Lake, Adams and John Rogers (signature #340 on the Community Declaration of No Confidence) Elementaries, Orca K-8, and Ida B Wells.
These brave school staffs join the 376 individual Seattle citizens who have signed the Community Declaration of No Confidence in the Superintendent here: http://www.petitiononline.com/S3B62010/petition.html
Dr Goodloe Johnson is currently undergoing a performance evaluation, with the School Board also having to decide whether to award her a salary increase, bonuses and an extension of her contract until 2013.
The majority of community comments include calls for the sacking of the Superintendent and point to her many failures, from the $48M school closure/re-opening fiasco (which for Capitol Hill families included the closing of two schools – TT Minor Elementary and Meany Middle School – despite the District’s own reports that the neighborhood would see an increase of school-aged children of anywhere between 31-100% between 2008-2012), to her continuing conflicts of interest to degradation in services provided to Special Ed children and to the mismanagement of funding for the Native American program, threatening its continuity.
These votes parallel the concerns of many parents and community members, as also shown by opinion surveys conducted over the past three months (link here to one of them: http://www.cppsofseattle.org/News/May10/supt-surveyMay2010.pdf), and by a straw poll currently being run by the Queen Anne & Magnolia News Online, where 79% of voters think Dr Goodloe Johnson is doing poorly, with 11% saying she’s performing adequately and 11% saying she’s doing a fantastic job: http://www.queenannenews.com/
The Seattle Shadow School Board is asking the School Board not to renew Dr Goodloe-Johnson’s contract and to consider terminating her employment due to her ineffective leadership, poor decision making and management of Seattle schools on so many fronts.
If you also feel strongly that the School Board should not (at the least) renew her contract, let the Board know that by signing the Community Declaration and spreading the word.
The online Declaration will close on July 7
th and will be presented to the School Board at its meeting that evening.
For further information, contact:
Sahila ChangeBringer
member, Seattle Shadow School Board
tel: 206 679 1738
The fallacy that some would have you believe is that parents LOVE the valiant Supt and her fantastic achievements. Uh, sorry, but she has undone some much that was good about Seattle Schools. Neighborhood schools will take us back to segregated, separate and unequal schools. Special needs children will be closeted and be allowed to stultify. Parents and PTAs are now expected to raise funds for basic building maintenance while the Supt indulges the education reform movement with banal initiatives. We need some competency in the executive, and some governance from the worthless School Board.
People in the Seattle School District should have serious reservations about the ethics of a superintendent who sees no problem with sitting on the board of the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), and fails to mention her position on that board until after the district awards a $370,000 contract to the firm! Do your research, and then sign the petition. An excellent website to explore is: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/ You will find many excellent well researched articles there.
oops, sorry, meant to recommend this comment cos this is one of the major complaints many parents have against MGJ and the Board – that she has multiple conflicts of interest and has not been forced to divest herself of them, and has not done so of her own accord, but the page wobbled just as I was hovering over the “recommend” icon and I got the “report abuse” field instead…… many apologies!