Hey! Look at That! Engagement Opportunities Around a New Superintendent for Seattle Schools

 I recently mentioned that the Superintendent Search Page at the SPS website had near zero on public engagement that IS part of the plan. I checked back in and there are updates. 

This info isn't exactly front and center for all to see. As well, it's on the SPS Facebook page but you likely won't find many young people there.

Here's the link for the State of the District Survey for Superintendent Search. The search firm, HYA, created it. 

The Superintendent Search Community Engagement Survey opened Friday, May 23 and is available in English, Spanish, Amharic, Somali, Chinese, and Vietnamese. The survey will close on June 30.

It says:

Thank you for choosing to participate in the State of the District Survey. As a school district stakeholder, your input is extremely valuable to the leadership of the district as they plan for the future. Please answer all items to the best of your ability. The survey is being conducted by Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, a third-party firm, which ensures that your responses are kept anonymous and confidential. 

Please note, your comments will be transcribed verbatim and may be made public; however, your comments will be anonymous unless you identify yourself.

- Stakeholder question

- Please rate the overall quality of education in the District. You are then given a series of statements to agree or disagree with on that quality of education.

-Priorities for the Future - a series of statements that you choose four from

- Quality of Programing

In this section you will need to rate the quality of specific academic, support and extracurricular areas and their program options. If you don't have enough information to answer any questions, you can skip it.

- Equity

Please select a response from the options below that best describes your agreement with each statement. You may skip any question you feel you do not have sufficient information to answer.

One statement I thought odd for this category:

Students have at least one trusted adult in the building that they can rely on for help.

Huh? I appreciate that HYA is trying to gauge how people feel about the district but nothing about qualities in a superintendent? Nothing about what people understand about the role of the superintendent? 



Student Engagement Sessions

SPS students, help shape SPS’ future! Come share your thoughts about the qualities you want to see in our next leader. Thursday, May 29 (virtual)

4:00 p.m. (meeting link)
6:30 p.m. (meeting link)

More information about these upcoming engagement opportunities will be added here soon. Interpretation in American Sign Language and our top 5 spoken languages will be available at family, student, and community sessions.



As I noted previously, there is a Community Engagement meeting with the Board on Wednesday, June 25th. No other details where available at that time but there are now. It is to be at James Baldwin Elementary, 11725 1st Avenue NE at 5:30 pm. There is no indication what the topic is to be.

Comments

Michael Rice said…
I filled out the survey, but I don't remember seeing any questions about the things that matter like class size, waitlists, advanced learning, crummy new math curriculum. It would be nice to weigh in on those things. Those are the day to day issues that define what education looks like in the SPS
5/27/25, 10:50 AM
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