Over the past few months, parents of students at Seattle Public Schools have come to expect an email newsletter on Sunday nights from the new superintendent, Ben Shuldiner.
“I've always believed that the job of the superintendent, and really the job of any leader, is to be as communicative as possible and be transparent,” Shuldiner said.
Shuldiner said his fondness for those email updates goes back to his days in Brooklyn as the founding principal of the High School for Public Service. Most recently, he was superintendent of schools in Lansing, Michigan, where he touted, among his accomplishments, raising the district's graduation rate from 62% to 93% percent. He also spoke of big gains in AP pass rates in Lansing as well.
Shuldiner met with KNKX for an interview at the district’s central office, bright and early on a Monday morning.
Interview Transcript
KNKX’s Emil Moffatt: You visited all 106 schools in your first 100 days here in Seattle. Was there a common throughline that sticks with you from those visits?
Superintendent Ben Shuldiner: I think there's multiple common throughlines, right? It’s that our students are awesome, our adults are awesome, there's some amazing things happening, and in fact, if you just saw the Stanford-Harvard study that came out, you know Seattle, writ large, is doing very well for its children.
But the other thing that stood out was that we are really under-serving a handful of populations and naturally, [that’s] not okay either. There were some schools that were amazing and some schools that really were not serving children well. Maybe it's the building itself, maybe it's what's happening in the classroom, maybe it's about a lack of music and art and things like that.
So, 106 schools, they're all unique in their own special way, but the overarching thing was, as a system, we're doing really well, but for specific populations and specific groups, we're not, and that's what we really need to focus on.
Moffatt: So, how do you go about addressing those disparities?
Shuldiner: It's a great question. Children will rise to the level of expectation. They really will. It's amazing. When I was running a school, we used to say to kids not “are you going to college?” but “which college are you going to?” It changes the mindset, because now a kid says, “Oh wait, I get to go to college, oh, now I'm going to go think about which college.” But if it was a question [of whether or not], well, they could say no, right?
I think what we have to do, with understanding the "soft bigotry of low expectations," is saying we need to focus on acceleration, not remediation. We need to expect our children to do well. I mean, children really will rise the level of expectation, and we just have to be really thoughtful about that. And what I've seen in our schools is there's some places that do that really well, and there's some places — I think, well-meaning — are not expecting enough from our children, and that happens, and then you see these wide gaps in proficiencies.
Moffatt: You've set a lofty goal of being the best public school system in an urban area in the U.S. What does that look like to you, tangibly?
Shuldiner: I think it looks like a lot of things. One thing it'll be when you walk down the street and you ask parents “where are you going to send your kids?” They go, “I can't wait to send my kid to the Seattle Public Schools.”
You know, there's about 20,000 kids in Seattle that wake up every day in Seattle and go somewhere else, go to private, they go to charter, they even go to other districts’ public schools. And so I think what it's really going to look like is everybody in Seattle goes “wow, I want to send my kid to the Seattle Public Schools.” But right now I'm in the phase of, I want to understand why a family might choose. And I will say that some of the things that I hear is, historically, this district has not made it easy to move quickly, to move up to the skill level. I hear “my kid is bored, my kid's not being challenged,” things like that, that we need to really take care of.
But on the flip side, I also hear “my kid has special needs and is in special education, they're not getting the support they need” as well. So I think there's a panoply of reasons, and we have to address it, every single one of them.
Moffatt: There's been projections that the school district faces up to a $100 million deficit right now. You've said that there could be big cuts made and efficiencies found in the central office.
Shuldiner: We've already cut almost $10 million from central. We've cut about $10 million from the schools, but again, to put it in perspective, the schools are three times as much of the budget, so the fact that we're cutting more centrally than at the schools, I think, is really indicative of my belief, which is the central office needs to take the hit much more than schools do. But the other thing to think about is we have a budget of about $1.35 billion. We're $100 million in the hole. We're about to go insolvent. It is a big deal.
Moffatt: Prior to your time as superintendent, there was the possibility of school closures floated and large public outcry about that. Is that something you could still see on the table?
Shuldiner: Absolutely. I mean, what I've said since I got here is everything is on the table. Mergers, consolidations, cuts. Who knows? Maybe we'll figure out a way to raise revenue. I don't know, right? But we also have to be really thoughtful about advocacy, politically. How do we go to Olympia and say “look, we really are structurally not funded the way we need to” Just some data points: We spend 77% more than what we get on transportation. Well, why? Because the formulas for transportation are statewide. Have you ever seen Seattle traffic? It's a little different, right? We have special ed needs that a lot of school districts don't. There's a lot of other ways of thinking about funding that could help us.
But look, at the end of the day, I'm the superintendent, and people have hired me to make sure that this district stays afloat, and we're going to have to make decisions that's going to be in the right for children, but also so that we don't get taken over.
Moffatt: As the leader of the largest school district in the state, do you feel eyes on you as far as, statewide, “what is Seattle going to do?”
Shuldiner: Oh, absolutely. And look, Seattle is this amazing, wonderful city, and you know, eyes have been on Seattle for generations, and so, yeah, we're the largest school district in Washington. We're also probably the largest school district within, like, a five-state region, too. You know, I don't think North Dakota or South Dakota have school districts this size. But it's okay. We always think about this: the child first. We center the child, we try to make decisions that are best for children and our students, and of course, our adults as well. And yeah, let people look. I hope they look because Seattle is a special place, and I think the things that we're doing now, and we will really set a standard for education in America.
Moffatt: Superintendent Shuldiner, thanks so much for your time.
Shuldiner: Thank you.
