Michael DeBell, the longest-serving member of the Seattle School Board and for years its president, exudes weariness as he sums up his tenure in an organization recently labeled at risk for becoming “the poster child of a dysfunctional” board. “It’s a job that didn’t get any easier the longer I did it,” sighs the real-estate investor and former high-school PTSA president, who is not seeking re-election this November after an eight-year run.
After an evaluation of the board came out last week, prepared by consultants and based on interviews with board members themselves and the district’s senior staff, it’s no wonder why. The 70-page report is astonishing in its negativity, going way beyond the periodic gripes heard over the years about board bickering and unproductivity.
That comment about being a poster child of dysfunction? It’s a quote from the report, like others cited anonymously. And there are many of that ilk, revealing divisiveness so deep that board members can’t look each other in the eye and relations with staff so strained that employees feel threatened.
“Every day, I am embarrassed,” one board member told consultants from the Mercer Island Group, which prepared the report.
And as some see it, it’s not just board members’ self-esteem at stake; the board’s perceived toxicity may be driving away talent.
At a U District coffee shop last week, DeBell said that based on conversations with former interim Superintendent Susan Enfield, he believes the board led to her mysterious withdrawal from contention for the permanent position. After Enfield withdrew, so did two other candidates, leaving only current Superintendent Jose Banda in the running.
What exactly is causing this malaise? Part of the problem is a power struggle on the board, which has split into two factions labeled by some members as the “old” and “new” guards. The old guard: DeBell, Sherry Carr, and Harium Martin-Morris. The new: Kay Smith-Blum, Marty McLaren, Betty Patu, and Sharon Peaslee.
After she was elected president in a 4-3 vote, Smith-Blum gave the old-guard members one committee assignment each, while giving those who’d voted for her three—a move she said was meant to allow the board’s senior members to take on other time-consuming tasks besides committee assignments, like legislative advocacy. To DeBell, though, it felt like a way of marginalizing the long-serving members, and still evokes bitterness.
Over coffee last week, DeBell called Smith-Blum “not very trustworthy” —a comment that drove the board president, upon hearing it, to send an angry e-mail to DeBell, other board members, and the superintendent, demanding a retraction.
Another point of contention is the perception of micromanaging, a charge that has dogged the school board off and on for years. In the evaluation, a number of those quoted say board members have taken demands to top district staffers and school principals, who felt their jobs were at risk if they did not acquiesce. The report does not say what these demands were, although it refers to board members’ involvement with personnel issues, such as telling the superintendent that he “has to get to rid of this person.”
Even with the passage of a DeBell-sponsored resolution that defined the board’s role last year—one that includes setting policy and overseeing the superintendent but not the day-to-day management of the district—the problem persists. “Yes, I know it is not my job to meet with principals,” the report quotes one board member saying. “But sometimes you have to do things to make change.”
Such a viewpoint is undoubtedly fed by some real problems in the district, like the lack of oversight that allowed former manager Silas Potter to oversee a personal fiefdom, doling out small-business contracts to people who did no work and offered kickbacks. (He pleaded guilty this spring to 36 counts of theft in King County Superior Court.) The scandal led to the firing of then-Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, and likely contributed to the 2011 defeat of two school-board incumbents by McLaren and Peaslee, both reform-minded activists.
During the 2011 campaign, charges arose that members were too hands-off, whether in asking questions about finances or dealing with perpetual complaints that the district is not listening enough to its families. Has the district now swung too far in the other direction?
Even some members of the new guard seem to allow for this possibility. Although she asserts that the evaluation paints too negative a picture, McLaren says she wants to understand her role better and to get “clarity on the transgressions” she is guilty of.
“There’s plenty of missteps to go around,” concedes Smith-Blum. She says new members inevitably face a learning curve in figuring out their roles, and suggests—somewhat ironically, given the recent tension between the old and new guards—that “mentoring” should be available to help new members. Unless board dynamics improve dramatically, though, they’ll likely need not only mentoring but a strong stomach.
Among the small army of campaign operatives, consultants, and policy advocates who have attached themselves to the fate of leading mayoral candidate Ed Murray, nearly all share a trait that Mayor Mike McGinn’s campaign considers more than a coincidence: They once worked for the man McGinn vanquished, Greg Nickels.
To name a few: Christian Sinderman, whom Nickels hired to coordinate his ill-fated campaign for Secretary of State last year, will be overseeing the mailing effort for Murray.
Sandeep Kaushik, the ex-mayor’s communications director during the 2009 campaign, is a partner in Soundview Strategies, which has to date been paid $6,000 by Murray for political consulting services. Kaushik is the spokesman for the Murray campaign.
Murray’s pollster, EMC Research—which conducted a large voter survey in May to the tune of a $30,000 fee—was Nickels’ pollster in 2009.
New Partners Consulting, which performed opposition research for Nickels in 2009 and helped with crisis communications in the aftermath of the December 2008 snowstorm, is also now in the Murray camp. The firm has been paid $9,790, according to campaign disclosure reports.
Meanwhile, Nickels’ former deputy Tim Ceis, who earned the nickname “The Shark” for his hardball tactics during his tenure as Nickels’ enforcer, is helping out by, as he put it, “just trying to raise a little money for Ed.”
Mayor McGinn’s campaign manager, John Wyble, maintains this is all about payback by Nickels loyalists who found themselves on the outs after McGinn beat Nickels in 2009. “I think some of these people weren’t ready to leave. They liked running the city and they want to do it again,” says Wyble.
Counters Ceis, “I think these people are more motivated by their business interests. Wyble shouldn’t be personalizing the campaign this way.”
Ceis’ involvement in the campaign comes by way of the independent political committee People for Ed Murray, created earlier this month to raise funds (the senator is barred from raising money himself when the legislature is in session). The committee is chaired almost entirely by Nickels loyalists—many of whom, according to multiple sources, believe Murray has the best chance of any of the eight contenders to defeat McGinn and take city hall.
One of them is former Mayor Charley Royer, a longtime Nickels supporter who served, on least one occasion, as his campaign surrogate in 2009. Also expected to play a major role on the committee is Lisa MacLean, who worked in all three of Nickels’ mayoral campaigns.
Democratic political consultant Dean Nielsen, who created the independent campaign committee, pooh-poohs the extensive connections, citing the fact that he’s worked on a number of campaigns against Nickels. “I really find the assertion that this is some kind of Nickels thing is kind of bizarre. I just beat Nickels in the Secretary of State race with Kathleen Drew . . . I was with [Paul] Schell in 2001, and didn’t support anyone in the 2009 primary. I personally haven’t spoken to Greg in at least five years, maybe longer,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Politics is a business. People go where the work is.”
Indeed, several Nickels department heads who found themselves out of work when their boss was ousted have attached their fortunes to Murray. While they all initially supported Tim Burgess for mayor, Patricia McInturff, former Seattle Director of Human Services; Adrienne Quinn, former Seattle Director of Housing; and Ken Bounds, former Seattle Superintendent of Parks, have now endorsed Murray.
No love is lost between Murray and McGinn. Murray seriously considered mounting a write-in campaign after Nickels lost in the 2009 primary. Earlier this month, Murray told Seattle Weekly that if McGinn survives the August 6 primary—which he fully believes McGinn will—“I think this is going to be the ugliest campaign Seattle has ever seen.”
To which Wyble responded on his blog, “Ed, you would be better served to keep your sleazy attack dogs on a leash, get your campaign out of the gutter, and join the rest of us in a rigorous debate about the future of this city.
“We can all waste our time taking potshots at each other. But I think the voters would appreciate if Ed Murray told his consultants to pull their heads out of the gutter and focus on why Ed should be the next mayor.”
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