My unique voice is needed on the Seattle School Board. My experience, both in my own classroom, and substituting in dozens of other classrooms, is unparalleled on the school board and in district administration. I've engaged with hundreds of students over time and in different settings, talked in depth with teachers at every level, with administrators, and with support staff. I have witnessed, first-hand, the fallout from misguided policy decisions. In many different situations I've seen this frustrating reality: “The powers that be” often seem oblivious to the challenges that students, teachers, and staff overcome on a daily basis.
I am committed to seeing ALL of Seattle’s children have the best public education in the country. Our community and our students are entitled to no less. I will draw from my 34 years of Seattle School District experience as a parent, teacher, and education advocate to provide effective and community-focused decision making. I consider myself an ally of all groups and individuals who stand against institutional racism and oppression.
I’m a seventeen-year resident of the Delridge neighborhood, the parent of three children who attended Seattle Schools and the grandparent of a student at Washington Middle School. As a parent, I served as president of Washington Middle School PTSA and also worked on district-level issues. After earning my K8 teaching credential in 1987, I taught in a preschool setting for 8 years and later served as co-coordinator of The Homeless Children's Network, a program of Family Services of King County. In 1999, I began substitute teaching in the district. After earning a Math credential, I then took on my own SPS classrooms where I taught middle and high school math for 4 years. As a teacher at Southlake High School, I facilitated the Save Our School Committee in its formative first year; the community ultimately succeeded in bringing a new Southlake Building to the Rainier Beach neighborhood. I began teaching 7th grade math at Denny Middle School in 2002. In 2004, frustrated with the math curriculum, I returned to substitute teaching city-wide, and a brief stint as a Head Start teacher, until retiring in 2009.
My experiences from 6 years of substitute teaching drove home the damage being done by ineffective instructional materials, and on retirement, I began to devote more time to educational activism. I was lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the 2009 high school math textbook adoption – that board decision was ruled “arbitrary and capricious” by Superior Court Judge Julie Spector. (Later, in a return to “normalcy,” that ruling was overturned following district appeal.) Seattle’s math achievement continues to decline using these textbooks.
I'm a math nerd, it's true, but math texts are only one example of the dysfunction and misdirection of our school district. What has motivated me to run for school board is the regularity of such events as
- the closure of Cooper School, scattering its student community all over West Seattle
- the funding of fraudulent and unproven programs
- a disruptive New Student Assignment Plan
- the hiring, necessitating the later firing, of an incompetent Superintendent
- the sale, at a huge loss, of district property under questionable circumstances
- Most of all: the huge number of unnecessary obstacles that children face, daily, in our schools.
Together, we can bring the wisdom and guidance of the community back into the Seattle Public Schools.
-Marty