Having gone deep into the district’s books and numbers over the past few years, I can attest that yes, there is a ton of waste in SPS, but the irony is, that it almost all occurs among the centralized, non-union staff members largely “hooking up” their friends, family members, construction industry pals, publishing companies, and old college roommates to the public dole, within JSCEE HQ downtown. It’s not the schools, or the individual communities they serve wasting money. It’s administration. It’s gotten a lot better under S.I. Banda, but it has a long way to go still. Cronyism and Nepotism is rampant in all areas of City and County Government, worse than in the schools. But it is getting better in SPS, I can attest. And with Schmitz, Lafayette, and AH literally in crisis, its time for this levy money.

A little history: Beginning with former SI Goodloe-Johnson, under pressure from the State to reduce costs, SPS began to mimic the corporate model of highly paid, high-power executives cutting the “waste” from the schools underneath them. (No matter that those “savings” were offset with ridiculous expenses like massive amounts of unused technology and people to maintain it.) But step one was closing under-utilized schools. And what happened? Enrollment was booming at the time, the city’s birth-rate was exploding as millenials were opting to start families in the city, instead of on Snoqualmie Ridge and in Issaquah, kindergarten classes were being added at Lafayette, Schmitz Park and elsewhere, daycares were all full and expanding, the Y was adding soccer and baseball teams, etc., yet the geniuses downtown wouldn’t listen and closed schools. This wound up costing us tens of millions of dollars, because reopening a school after one year without occupancy requires it being brought up to the current building code. So, the geniuses downtown, trained by big-shot CEO’s from the private sector and former military leaders, through the Broad Institute and elsewhere, closed a bunch of schools to save money, only to be caught by “surprise” a year later, that they should not have done so, as they could no longer deny the obvious: that enrollment was about to explode, particularly in W.S. and Lake City/Wedgwood.

So, yes, SPS wastes money, but it’s not in neighborhood schools funded by the levy. It’s in the ridiculously top-heavy administration, full of non-union staff, cooling their heels and making bad & costly decisions until they transfer to work for the City of Seattle or State of Washington when an old friend comes calling.

We need transparency and vigilant community watchdogs to watch what happens downtown, and drag it, kicking and screaming into the daylight, because when we attempt to simply starve the beast, it never hits the pocketbooks or budgets of the people it should. How would it, without transparency? Instead, it deprives schools, teachers, and students. Transparency and oversight is the answer; not voting against levies, believing somehow, somewhere, it will change the behavior of the corrupt individuals in the system. It won’t. And it only hurts the kids.

The Answer is not to scream, yell, and deprive. It is to do what people like me do all over the district. Go to school board meetings. Confront staff. Make public information requests and publish e-mails on websites so the public can see where the money goes. Don’t cave into peer pressure at your local school when you see or experience corruption. Follow up on it until something is done.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Starving the beast never works. The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.

And btw, I’ve had my kids in both private and public schools, and they’re currently thriving in public school. We have great schools in W.S., public and private, and we are lucky to have the choices, costly or not, because they all well-serve the area we live in and love for our kids. West Seattle is about to build 2 new larger schools at AH and Schmitz Park at Genesee Hill, while retrofitting and reopening Fairmont Park. I don’t think I’ll ever hear the complaint, “there’s too many kids around here.” But if I do, it will be music to my ears.

Nobody likes to pay more taxes. Me neither. But look at it this way: West Seattle is getting a big bite of this particular levy, this time around, and its about time more of our dollars come back home, isn’t it? There’s a silver lining to every black cloud, and this time it’s our turn. It could be a lot worse.

As I understand it the plan for the closure of the Arbor Heights school was only in name. They were originally going to move pathfinder there but the parents put up to much resistance. So they “closed” Cooper instead and put pathfinder there. Language is powerful; school closure has a completely different meaning from physical plant closure in their lexicon.

Look at the top post of this thread.

Why do you even bother responding to someone like WSDAD?

We are FOOLS. And, I have never even had kids…

Still always vote for schools, though…

Watching the anti-tax crowd trying to spin this election. GOOD TIMES!

The neat thing is: the anti-tax crowd is out in force on commentary on news sites.

In Seattle, most call them the 27 per cent.

Cheap losers.

This is wonderful news, since the old one is an inch from imploding into a pile of mold and dust.