^{The Bottom Line} Seattle Public Schools Must Hire a Leader, Not a Manager

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is at a crossroads. The district is about to embark on another search for a superintendent, as the current superintendent, Dr. Brent Jones, recently announced his plan to depart the district early this fall. The replacement for Jones will be the seventh superintendent in the last 18 years.

SPS must depart from its practice over the past few decades of hiring superintendents who came through the public education system and operated with only a focus on the schools we have rather than the schools we need. We don’t need another “manager” who will get by for another two or three years with little or no improvement, after which a new school board will want a new superintendent. Frankly, we can no longer afford a status quo that is failing Seattle’s schoolchildren.

Fortunately, an alternative superintendent hiring template for the school board is readily available. Back in the early 90’s, the school board went outside the box and hired Major General John Stanford as superintendent. His tenure transformed the schools and the city.

I speak from personal experience. Though the SPS was not in as bad a shape at that time as today, the district had been floundering for years. So, I decided to run for the school board to see if we could make positive change. Elected in 1993, after a year of discussion with my board colleagues, we agreed that we needed new leadership and new ideas. We hired a business search firm rather than an education search firm, and we told them we wanted an experienced leader who was not an educator. The first batch of 40 resumes were mostly educators — not what we wanted. Those were rejected and we told them to keep searching. That’s when they identified Major General John Stanford as a candidate. 

Stanford had spent 30 years in the Army and had risen to the rank of major general prior to his retirement. He then spent four years as County Executive for Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta. In four years as Executive, Stanford had invested $1 billion in infrastructure, improved the county’s financial management, and moved the county from the bottom third of all counties to the top 10% in national rankings — all without raising taxes.

Here was an experienced leader who had turned around a government institution with great success — his qualifications were exactly what SPS needed. The school board told the search firm to bring Stanford to Seattle, and we hired him.

Stanford had not been in a public school classroom since graduating from high school. However, he was a skilled leader, experienced in bringing about positive transformation within government.

In a very short time, Stanford became the most recognizable person in Seattle. He not only transformed the district but also helped revitalize the City of Seattle. He held rallies to open the school year, initiated a city-wide reading program, visited every single school (96 schools) during his first year, made speeches to major organizations enlisting community support for the schools, and took many other positive actions.

In less than two years, SPS enrollment increased, absenteeism declined, and academic achievement began to improve. As a result, SPS became recognized nationally as a district on the move. In fact, at a PTA meeting I attended at the time, a parent came up to me and said that she and her husband had decided to move back into Seattle to have their child attend SPS. Quite the opposite of the mass exodus we’re seeing today, with families fleeing Seattle and SPS.

Any new superintendent must be equipped and empowered to address and resolve the many challenges facing the district:

First, the SPS school board must come together on a common vision for the district. Any new leader is going to demand a minimum of five supportive votes to take the job.

Second, the superintendent must be equipped to deal with the district’s $94 million deficit beyond banking on the legislature to bail them out yet again. Realistically, the district needs to reduce personnel by 700-800 people to balance the budget.

Third, the school district will be negotiating a new union contract over the summer to replace the current contract, which expires at the end of August. Since the district is in a financial crisis, the new superintendent will need to be the kind of leader who can stand up to a union that will likely threaten to strike if its demands are not met.

Finally, and most importantly, the new SPS leader will have a lot of operational work to do to address deep issues in a district that is losing students and whose academic performance is declining.

SPS cannot afford to hire another “manager.” A “change agent leader” with a proven ability to transform a government institution is what we need. There is another John Stanford-type leader out there. We just need to find him or her. The children and the citizens of our city deserve nothing less.