WTF is wrong with Seattle Public Schools?

With Erica gone this week David and Sandeep take a one-week vacation from city politics to take a closer look at the root causes of the problems facing Seattle Schools, including a controversial push by some district leaders to close up to 21 schools in the face of a nearly $100 million deficit.

Said special guest Robert Cruickshank, “This is one of the few issues where Sandeep is not wrong.” Robert is a Seattle parent and progressive activist, who currently leads Washington's Paramount Duty, which advocates for increased school funding.

Robert and Sandeep agree that the school district is floundering under bad leadership, but they provide different diagnoses of where to place the blame. Is the problem with our schools “neoliberal austerity” (Robert) or “wokery run amok” (Sandeep)? Or both? Listen to find out!

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Transcript

David Hyde: 0:00

Music. Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle. Nice. I'm David Hyde here with political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.

Sandeep Kaushik: 0:17

Hey, David.

David Hyde: 0:18

How's it going? Sandeep and a special guest today, Eric is out this week. Robert Cruickshank, the parent of three children in Seattle Public Schools and president of Washington's paramount duty and education funding advocacy group. Hi, Robert Cruickshank,

Robert Cruickshank: 0:33

Hey, David. Hey Sandeep, thanks for having me on this week.

Sandeep Kaushik: 0:35

Yeah. Thanks for coming on, Robert.

David Hyde: 0:37

As you might have guessed by that intro to Robert, we're gonna be talking about something completely different for this podcast. This podcast, which is Seattle Public Schools, education, and what Sandeep has been calling the shit show, actually, at Seattle Public Schools. So I just to set this up right the district is facing, it's like $100 billion plus deficit talking about closing. I guess the latest I read was for public schools to start to try and fill that gap. Part of the problem here is that the districts faced a drop in enrollment over the last five years. Fewer students means less money coming in from the state. You know, whose paramount duty as Robert, is going to be telling us is funding education, and the district's been spending more as a result of a 2022 contract in part that gave teachers a 14% pay raise over three years. But let's break this down, like starting, I guess, with the latest about school closures. What's the district talk talking about? I mean, this is what's really been in the news, and how are parents responding to that Robert?

Robert Cruickshank: 1:45

yeah, so back in September, the district shocked almost everybody, except those of us who have been watching fairly closely, by explaining that they are going to close 21 or 17 schools. They put out two lists, and on those lists in September included all of the k8 schools, all of the option schools, most of the alternative schools in the district. And this, this is what got parents riled up and paying attention, though, even those who had not been paying really close attention to what's happening in Seattle Public Schools, that it got the general public outraged, got state legislators outraged. City Council members were outraged. And a few weeks later, the superintendent came back and said, Okay, we've heard you. We're only going to close five schools as an initial set with words he used in the next school year, 2025, 26 and yesterday, he came out and said, Actually, we're just going to close four next year. Those will be North Beach in the Northeast neighborhood, Sacajawea in the Northeast Seattle, Maple Leaf neighborhood, Stevens, which is near Capitol Hill, and Santa slo which is in the Delridge part of West Seattle. But those are four schools that they are slating to close next year. Both the Superintendent and the Board President have said they still very much want to close more and they're planning to come back with a plan in June for long term fiscal stability. They say that is highly likely to include more closures in coming years. And this is, I think, shown a spotlight for a lot of parents on a wider set of problems and concerns that are at the district a budget deficit, which has led to cuts in large class sizes and other things that we can get into. But it has generally led most of the people in the city to think that there's a big crisis at our public schools. And I would certainly agree.

David Hyde: 3:28

Before we go to Sandeep. I mean, they're facing$100 million plus budget deficit. They've closed schools and then reopened them in the past. So you know, what's the big deal? I mean, it sucks if your kid goes to North Beach elementary or whatever, but like, why shouldn't they be closing schools to solve that problem?

Robert Cruickshank: 3:46

Well, there are a couple reasons. First, it doesn't actually save very much money. Closing four schools will save them maybe $5 million they're still going to have nearly 90 million to cut. So that's a drop in the bucket. It causes enormous disruption, not just at the four that close, but at the other four schools that receive those students are going to have a huge influx of new kids and disrupt everything else. But the big thing that we've seen is that around the country, different school districts have attempted to handle either low student outcomes or budget problems by closing a whole swath of schools. Chicago being the most notorious example, when they closed 50 schools in 2013 and the evidence there is really clear that this does real damage to student learning and student outcomes. It does real damage to student well being, and it rarely ever produces real savings. I mean, you have so much costs of actually making the transition happen, you have to keep those buildings open and in good repair or sell them off, and you get a one time benefit, but not much else. But I think the big thing that we're seeing is that this is a maybe a drop in the bucket in a larger deficit, but it's also, I think the bigger thing parents are flagging is that this breaks trust. You have trust that you can send your kid to. The local public school, it's going to be there for you. But when the district came out and said, We're going to close 20 schools, and now they're starting with four, it's clear that there's a larger effort to close a huge number of schools in the city, and that makes people concerned that the public schools will not be there for their kid. And I think that's the existential issue that's being flagged here.

David Hyde: 5:20

Sandeep, your kids are done with Seattle Public Schools. What do you care?

Sandeep Kaushik: 5:23

Yeah, right. My son just graduated from Lincoln and start, you know, in the summer, and started in the fall. So but I had two kids that went through the Seattle Public Schools. My daughter graduated from Ballard a couple of years ago, but going through that experience as a parent myself, over the last few years, I've been growing increasingly alarmed at what I was seeing happening in terms of the leadership of the Seattle Public Schools. And there are, as we teed up at the beginning of this, there are multiple problems facing facing the district. I think, to be fair to the district, a significant part of the budget deficit we can get into this, you know, maybe isn't their fault or their responsibility. There's a state, you know, component here too. But nonetheless, I've seen a series of really bat shit leadership decision, I think, I think, you know, counterproductive, self destructive leadership decisions coming out of the Seattle schools in recent years, culminating in the school closure, stuff that looks to me like they're driven the school district into crisis. And are, you know, driving our schools into the ground?

David Hyde: 6:32

Okay, what's just one of them? And then let's hear Robert respond to that, what's one of those? And this is a technical term, right? Bat shit, leadership decisions?

Sandeep Kaushik: 6:43

Absolutely, that is a technical term. I think so. One that really got my attention early on was when the previous superintendent, Superintendent Juneau, described the city's Gifted and Talented program, the school's Gifted and Talented program as quote, unquote, educational apartheid, and basically called for its elimination back then. This was a number of years ago. The only reason it didn't, they didn't get rid of it back then was because there was a group of of parents of color who had been put on a task force to kind of look at, you know, how do we deal with equity issues, and how do we kind of kind of improve opportunities for for black and brown children in the district who objected to clothing they were like, we didn't want to close this program. We just want to figure out ways to get more black and brown kids to get the benefit of those sorts of good and talented programs. But nonetheless, so it didn't happen immediately, but nonetheless, they've sort of pushed forward and gotten rid of it. And I do think that's been a significant under acknowledged factor in the enrollment declines at the Seattle school district. You know that happened largely during COVID and we're sort of masked by that, and which is also, of course, leading to the cascading budget deficit. And we just seem to be in a race to the bottom here. And we can talk about why getting rid of a gifted and talent program, what the justification? For it is, and why I think it's a idiotic justification and counterproductive. But that's something that immediately caught my attention when it started happening.

Robert Cruickshank: 8:53

I think that that's part of the challenge that SPS is facing. Is, you know, most parents don't have their kids in the highly capable program, most parents aren't looking to put their kids there. Some do. But there is a larger question that the attempt to close that program raises, which is, does the district care about the academic achievement of their kids? Does the district want to provide different types of education to the kids? And this is something I hear from parents, which is that they want to know that the district will treat their kid as a individual child, and not as a widget that is like everyone else. And there does seem to be a push towards a one size fits all educational model. And this is the thing that I hear from parents that raises concerns. So when the district last month in September, proposed eliminating all the options schools which have some sort of different curriculum and different approaches that raise a lot of flags to parents that the district does want a one size fits all thing. So option schools in Seattle have been around for at least 50 years, and these are schools like tops, Nova, Licton Springs, Thornton Creek, Hazel Wolf suddenly started as like alternative program number one was a name given to one of these in the early 70s. And this is, you know, coming out of the 60s and 70s, and people wanted alternative curriculum, a little bit of hippie, little bit of social justice. We want to do things a little differently, and that resonated with people. And what the district found in the 70s and 80s, it was the Boeing bust and people fleeing the city for suburbs, was that this helps improve enrollment. This provides a different set of options. I'll give you just a quick story. You know, I was talking with my pediatrician, who was give to an annual checkup with my fifth grader, and said, Well, you know, gosh, I really think you should try to get your fifth grader into one of these k8 option schools, because he might have a better experience there. Oh, but they might close. Was it? And she just shook her head. So there's a recognition that the having different options out there for different kids helps, because again, not all children are the same, and these programs have been around for 50 years, but there has been a push from district leadership to try to homogenize the offerings that they're putting out there, and I think that that alarms families pretty fundamentally, even if you're not looking to ever get your kid in a highly capable program.

David Hyde: 11:06

Let me, let me rewind a little bit here, because we're talking about enrollment declines. I remember reading about this in 2022 Asian families, especially fleeing the district. This was also during COVID. There's a lot going on. It's kind of hard to figure that stuff out. So what did both of you think about these enrollment declines? Because you both have sort of referenced them, but, but you know, how do you how do you know what's really going on?

Robert Cruickshank: 11:33

Yeah, we don't know for sure. The state legislature essentially ordered the district to conduct an enrollment study and gave them money to do an enrollment study to try to answer this. But there are a few things we do know for sure, most of the decline happened in 2020 and 2021 since 2022 enrollment has been pretty flat. In fact, as Danny West neat found and wrote about this week, as well as Albert Wong, another parent who's active, enrollment has started to grow at Seattle Public Schools very slowly, but it is starting to pick up, especially preschool and kindergarten. So we, while we don't know for sure precisely why enrollment has declined, we can hear from parents who have left, and I know some parents who have left, that is a mix of things. Some people got priced out. Some people wanted their kids back in person before the district opened up in person, and some people were alarmed at Elimination of different offerings for their kids. Hopefully that study sheds full light on it, but to me, the big takeaway right now is that SPSS enrollment is starting to pick back up. So why would you close a bunch of schools and take away a bunch of programs when you might wind up knee capping that enrollment growth, which should be welcomed.

Sandeep Kaushik: 12:40

I take the point that we don't know, but here's one thing we do know, right? We know that the school district was, like I would say, ostentatiously uncurious about why they were experiencing these huge enrollment declines, right? They, they very, not very publicly, because they didn't talk about it. But they, they very conspicuously, like, you know, chose not to like, sort of like, hey, let's ask. Let's do exit interviews. Let's ask parents, why are they taking their kids out of the public schools? What's going on?

Robert Cruickshank: 13:16

I mean, there's very much an attitude of, you know, if you don't like it, you can go private,

Sandeep Kaushik: 13:20

yeah. And in fact, this will get to a sort of the deeper points about what I think is wrong here with the thinking of SBS leadership. But I actually think there is an attitude among some of the leading members of the school board that, hey, if the kind of more affluent, you know, disproportionately White or Asian families and kids depart the district. Well, you know, don't let the door hit you on the way out, because, frankly, you guys are taking resources away from the poor black and brown children you know, who are now going to be better served you know, of you and your fancy schmancy programs and gifted and talented stuff, you know, take that to private school motherfucker and you know, and, and we'll focus on the kids that matter, right? I think that is.

David Hyde: 14:07

with what's wrong with that. I mean, I mean, you say it in a mocking voice, but, but, but spell it out. Why do you why is that problematic?

Sandeep Kaushik: 14:14

And I'm exaggerating and using a lot of curse words as I'm doing it too, but, but it's fundamentally misguided, right? Because if you actually look at studies of public schools and what works and what doesn't, socio economic diversity in public schools is a key variable for better student performance. So what the studies show is that when you have you know, white flight or affluent flight from public school districts, right? When the schools become kind of resegregated, essentially, and and the places where it's only the kind of poor and minority kids who are left, those kids don't do better. It isn't like there's, oh, we're well resourced now for these kids, those schools, those kids, do worse, everyone loses, right when we have that kind of bifurcation that happens in education, where, where there's a private system for those who can afford it, and the and the kids who are left behind, you know, have to do this sort of one size fits all. Model, the data couldn't be clearer that that is a bad outcome. It leads to bad results for everybody, right? And so this notion drives me insane. It makes me really pissed off, because I think they're doing a huge disservice to the kids that that some of these school board members, I think very rightfully want to help and lift up by adopting

Robert Cruickshank: 15:40

Yes, yeah. And I'm happy to come at this these sorts of attitudes. from the left wing perspective.

David Hyde: 15:45

Right. Erica's not here. This is why you're people should realize that Robert is a long time kind of progressive activist, oh yeah, transportation and other issues. He's not just an education advocate.

Robert Cruickshank: 15:55

I come this from the left. And, you know, I believe in Medicare for all. I believe in universal health care. I believe everyone should be able to get shocking their health care. You know the way you get it in Canada or the UK, and we have that for public education right now. We have education for all anyone can send their kids to the public system, whether you're rich or poor, whatever your background is, and the idea is that you're going to get your need met there, just as we on the left want that for healthcare, and we believe this is an inherently good thing. You want everyone in that system, because that's how everyone thrives. We're all pulling together, working in the right direction. And who pays for it? Well, that's where we have progressive taxation, right? Yeah, some wealthy child can go to a public school. That's great. We love that, and their parents are going to pay more for it. If you talk to people in the UK or Canada and talk about bringing in private healthcare options, they're dead set against it, because they believe that erodes the public system. Same thing with education, when you tell parents, oh, just go private. Pay for it privately, you're eroding the public system. You see that you start introducing things like means testing and all sorts of things when you don't have universality, when everyone is not in and pulling together, public goods and public programs fall apart. So you can make that argument from the left. You can also make these similar argument that you know, if you want people to be educated the way Seattle wants them educated, not the way that moms for Liberty wants them educated, you got to have people in the public system learn the values we want them to learn. You, if you say to people, go private, you know, then you're have a civic problem on your hands, too.

Sandeep Kaushik: 17:32

Yeah, just to, just to add on to that, because I, I think this is an argument that should be made from the left. In fact, part of what pisses me off is I'm hearing people, ostensibly on the left, making a kind of opposite argument, and that drives me crazy, right? But 10 years ago, I did the, I did the campaign for the pilot for the Seattle, you know, high quality preschool program, right? Which is a, which is a, a really successful program to create a public preschool, subsidized or free for lower income kids in the city of Seattle to help sort of address what we find from the research is that by the time kids get to kindergarten, some kids are already behind, right? Some kids have had all the benefits of a two parent household, and, you know, they've gone to preschool and have gotten all this sort of pre public school educational development, and a lot of poor and minority kids don't have that and sort of start out from the get go with two strikes against them educationally. So that's what the purpose of that, that that public preschool program was to help create the situation entering the public schools that would actually address the persistent opportunity and achievement gap that we've seen in the Seattle schools. And great program, super successful. But as pulling that program together, they researched what was happening in other other cities that were doing similar programs, and Boston was a classic example. They had a very successful program that they'd set up, and what they had found is it wasn't successful at the beginning, because it was limited primarily to poor kids, right? And once they opened it up and made those those preschool classrooms, socio economically diverse, what they found was it helped all of the kids at every income level did better in those preschool classrooms. And the same thing is shown in public education. You know, elementary school education as well. That socioeconomic diversity, that interplay of people of different races and circumstances and children of different is good for all of those kids, right?

David Hyde: 19:38

Isn't that an argument then, Sandeep though, against having gifted and talented programs like you know, wouldn't it's not. Yeah, maybe underperforming kids do a little bit better to have mainstreaming what, I don't know what you call it, but like everybody in the same classroom.

Sandeep Kaushik: 19:52

I think if you're Liza Rankin and you're the school board president, that is, I think, the thing, or Evan Briggs, or some of the folks on the on the school board right now, I think that is what they think they're saying, not just the Gifted and Talented program, but Robert was talking about the option schools. These schools are disproportionately white, right? And they're disproportionately parents, you know, families coming from more affluent circumstances, right? So those are programs that are taking resources away from the kids that we want to help. That's the thinking. But no, I don't think that's the right way to think about it. I do think there's a lot more we should be doing to make sure that these programs, whether they're the option schools are gifted and talented, language immersion, what have you is more, you know, socio economically and racially and. Diverse, right? And there are things we can do to bring more black and brown children into programs like like HCC, right? So that, so that gets a benefit, right? Now, you know, there are barriers for poor kids, and you know they're fair. There may be language barriers, cultural barriers, right? That, that that keep them from applying and getting their kids into these programs, so we should be doing the hard work of identifying those kids and getting them into the programs, along with the more affluent parents who are getting their own kids in, right, so that everybody benefits, right?

Robert Cruickshank: 21:18

I think that's right. And I think this is where, again, you if, if a progressive or a Seattleite is listening to this and doesn't really have kids in the system yet and doesn't understand education. You can continue to make the analogy to healthcare when we want universal healthcare, Medicare for all. We're not saying people only get a hospital visit and a yearly wellness check. We're saying you get to go see a specialist. You get to go have whatever need you're bringing to the table met through the public system. Same thing with education. There are highly capable children who live in Southeast Seattle, who are black, who are brown, who are immigrants. This is not limited to affluence, but if you are affluent, it is easier to get that identified presented. You have an easier way to work the system. So the district has two options here. One is to reflect that and address that, and do actual inclusion, do actual equity work, which is to figure out how you get kids from these lower income communities into these programs, because they need them too, while also providing the information, the resource they need for their

David Hyde: 22:20

And you know, if you are progressive and you're neighborhood schoo. listening to this, and don't have kids in the system, and say, I don't really care about school board elections, I don't really care about the schools, and yet, you talk a lot about equity, just fuck you. Like, what is wrong with you? Like, you don't actually care about you don't care about equity at all, if you don't care about what's being talked about today. I mean, seriously, like, it's amazing in this town, how much people care about the next mayor and talk about equity and don't pay any attention to the public school system. Which Where do you think fucking equity happens? Yeah, so much. So depressing.

Robert Cruickshank: 22:56

We talk about a school to prison pipeline for a reason. You know

David Hyde: 22:59

It is just so depressing. People who tell me they don't care about school board elections or schools, you're not ethical. You're not ethical, if that's your attitude,

Robert Cruickshank: 23:08

well, people are going to start paying attention. You know, this, this whole thing about closing schools has got people's attention. Finally, thank God.

David Hyde: 23:15

Well, mostly parents, though, frankly, like, if you don't have kids in the schools, what? Yeah. And, you know, look, listen to these numbers in 2022, around three quarters of Washington eighth graders were not proficient in math. You know, these are not people who are going to be like, jumping up and getting jobs at Microsoft and Amazon when they graduate. Three quarters of Washington students. I don't know what those numbers are for Seattle Public Schools, but I wanted to kind of turn it to the kind of question about performance, because you're kind of hinting at that. But you know, of course, a lot of this has to do with COVID and blah, blah, blah, but help me understand kind of where we are in terms of performance in Seattle Public Schools, and how much attention that's getting from this school district and the school board

Robert Cruickshank: 23:56

Seattle Public Schools. They got a presentation this week at the board meeting, which shows that among peer districts, when you compare big city districts to big city districts to big city districts, Seattle to like Cleveland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle does better, generally speaking, in terms of, like, student performance on tests. Seattle, you talk to most parents, they think their schools are pretty good. They think they're getting a decent education, but there's a big divide. There's a gap, you know, people call it the opportunity gap. People call it the equity gap, whatever you want to call it. It's students of color, especially low income students. And in fact, it is the thing that the consultants told the district on Wednesday of this week, that it's really income more than race that drives the divides where students are falling behind. They tend to be lower income. And this is not something that should surprise anybody. This is the story of America under capitalism, right, that lower income people get left behind. Now, Seattle likes to think of itself as a progressive city, and one things we say we care about is social justice and racial justice. That should mean we're going to try to figure out how to lift up everybody, especially those students, who aren't getting their needs met. And I think we're about to see a big debate in the city again. We've seen it time and again the last 20 years, and I think it's about to come. It's about to come back, whether we're really focusing on test prep and getting kids to do well on high stakes tests, or whether we're trying to do something broader and more comprehensive in terms of educating these kids. But you're not going to get there if you try to treat students as widgets and give them a one size fits all education, which is the district really wants to be going,

Sandeep Kaushik: 25:24

Yeah, and I think we're getting kind of fundamentally to the heart of the debate that's happening, right? That's finally starting to happen, the long overdue debate, I think, because for a long time, and we should get into this too, I think part of the frustration with the district that I have, and I know Robert shares this, is that, um. So they obscured all of these problems between behind a kind of almost impenetrable wall of bullshit spin and happy talk for years. I mean, they've been cooking the school closure stuff for several years, right, while basically publicly not acknowledging that, right, and kind of saying, oh, everything's great, and we're gonna have these meetings and talk about how we're gonna have well resourced schools and stuff as they're sort of teaming all this stuff. So anyway, there hasn't been the kind of open conversation and debate, like we're or like we're having now about what's going on with our schools and until very recently. So that's one big, big frustration, but, but, but I want to get to, get to, just to finish the point I was making, we're getting to the heart of the argument, which is we're having a debate in the city about what equity is, right? What do we mean when we say we want equity right? You know, whether it's in our schools or wherever, and it turns out there are big differences in how people are conceiving of this concept of equity when it comes to our schools that is leading, I think the people running it have a very wrong headed concept of equity that is leading to very bad places that is not going to help black and brown kids.

David Hyde: 26:55

Let me, let me, let me, let me reframe it by asking it this way. Then starting with Robert, which is, is the, is the fundamental problem facing public schools? Is it a money problem?

Robert Cruickshank: 27:07

Yes.

David Hyde: 27:08

We're seeing school closures. So from your perspective, you're a you're an education at, you know, funding advocacy person, that's your job. But like, is this fundamentally a money problem?

Robert Cruickshank: 27:18

Absolutely, if you are telling someone that they need to renovate their house, and they tell you the bill to renovate your house is$100,000 and they give you$10,000 you've got a problem. You're not gonna be able to do the renovation. If we're looking at a Seattle Public School system where we recognize that some kids are doing well, but others aren't, and we're saying all right now we've got work to do, real work to do to lift up those kids who haven't been getting the education they deserve, yet you're going to have to do it with less money. That's a problem. That's where, again, we come at this from a progressive perspective. We believe that taxing wealthy people and taxing big businesses to shower money on our schools will help with this. It absolutely does. That's why the Constitution of the State of Washington says not only that, it's the paramount duty of the legislature to fund education. They use the word ample says ample provision for public education, and that was written in 1889 they know what the word ample means. It's more than just barely enough, it's substantial amounts of resources, so that all these schools have everything they need to educate the kids, and they aren't scrimping and trying to scrape by.

Sandeep Kaushik: 28:23

Robert is making this argument, right? And Robert and I have talked about this where, where Robert sees a real problem, and in some of the bad thinking that's driving the problems we're seeing in our schools in Seattle, rooted in a kind of concepts of Neo liberal austerity, right? And, and, and that there, there's a lack of funding and, I think there is some real truth to that. And just

David Hyde: 28:47

What is Neo liberal austerity?

Robert Cruickshank: 28:49

I mean, it's basically the idea that, you know, there's not enough money to go around. So rather than take it from the people who have the money, the wealthy and the big corporations, we just move it around within the system. Let's cut somewhere else and put that money into the schools who need it the most. And that is, to me, absurd and unnecessary,

Sandeep Kaushik: 29:11

Yeah And just, you know, I think there's Robert's obviously been focused in a lot of his advocacy work on Olympia, right? And on on education funding coming out of Olympia, and just for context for for our listeners, right? So the big driving force here was, there was a huge Court decision called the McCleary decision, right? When Robert talked about the constitutional provision in Washington state that requires the state to amply fund education. So the the court, I think it was in, was it in 2012 was it all the way back in 2012 the Washington State Supreme Court found the state to be violating the Constitution by underfunding education, essentially. And so there was a series of downstream impacts of the McCleary decision, and what the legislature came up with to resolve this constitutional violation was that they said, we are going to put more Olympia money, state money, into education. But the flip side of that was that they somewhat further restricted the ability of local jurisdictions to raise their own local levies and money, because there was a gap between rich districts, you know, raising more money, and poor districts raising more money, right? So just to finish the point here, that led to some very good results for a while. Right in 2019 we peaked at more than 50% of the state budget, slightly more than 50% of the state budget going to education. But in the subsequent five years, that has now slipped down to what 42 43% of. Percent of the state budget is going to education. So I think Robert's point that there has been a disinvestment in Olympia, or a lack of prioritization in Olympia, is a sound one, right? I mean, and it's not just districts in Seattle that are feeling this. We have districts all around the state that are facing budget shortfalls and budget crises because they're, they're, they're

Robert Cruickshank: 31:06

and I to on that point, on Wednesday night, there was an enormous Town Hall up in Edmonds. Three different school districts got together. There were nearly 1000 people packed into the gym of Edmonds Woodway High School to talk about what they called the education funding crisis. And they had eight state legislators there to hear from the public about how bad things have gotten, talking about enormous class sizes. Same thing we're seeing here in Seattle, where students in some middle and high school classes are seeing classes of over 40 kids per teacher, where they're having to lay off support staff. Students aren't getting their needs met. So this is a statewide problem, but what we're facing here in Seattle in particular is the exacerbation of a district leadership, both in the superintendent's office and the majority of the board that are responding to this in all the wrong ways. Going down what I would say is a fairly Neo liberal path of we're going to make cuts, and we're going to try to, you know, just focus on a couple people the expense of everybody else, and call it good, not realizing that's going to crash the entire system.

David Hyde: 32:10

Robert, I mean, Democrats have a trifecta in Olympia. I can't remember how close to or exceeding a super majority we are right now. But you know, this isn't a Republican neoliberal austerity problem. So, I mean, are you saying they should cut other progressive good things, or, you know, like, you know, where's that money going to come from?

Robert Cruickshank: 32:31

I mean, the money comes from the pockets of Washington's wealthiest people and wealthiest corporations. You know, again, the Seattle Times had a poll this week that showed 66% of people think we need to put $3 billion more a year into our public schools, and 65% of voters said, take it by taxing the rich. That's consistent. That's not a new finding we've seen over the last several years.

David Hyde: 32:54

But is it? Is it an allocation problem? In other words, Sandeep saying it's only 42 or 43% of the budget. Should it be over 50% if that's the case, no matter how big the budget is it's going to be funding education at the expense of other things which are always going to be underfunded, like untreated mental health. You know, just go down the list.

Robert Cruickshank: 33:13

I think the argument I have is that you need to fund all those things because all those things affect education. Mental health affects education. Health care affects education. Housing affects education. If a child or their family isn't housed, isn't being fed, isn't getting other needs met that will show up in their performance in the classroom. So back during the McCleary discussion about how the legislature was going to solve it, Republicans had a mantra of fund education first they wanted to take it out of other priorities. And our argument was, No, that's a problem, because that's going to hurt students too. You got to bring new money to the table. So we're not, you know, pitting everybody against each other. That's the progressive answer. The progressive solution here is, there's a lot of money in the state. Washington has a very high GDP we're one of the highest GDPs anywhere in the country. There's a lot of money in these big corporations and wealthy billionaires that can be brought to bear on this situation.

Sandeep Kaushik: 34:06

And one thing that we should note that has been a positive development in recent years in Olympia is that, you know, this was a 10 year project right of progressives in Olympia to pass a capital gains tax, which they finally successfully did. And I forget 21 or 22 right? And dedicated that money to education and early learning funding and school construction funding, essentially. And it's raising an enormous, you know, significant amount of money, right? It was$900 million in its first year from a very small number of extremely wealthy people that goes into the education, so that's a big win now that now I and just a note here, I'm directly involved in this fight, but there's an initiative on the ballot right now to repeal that capital gains tax, right? And I'm on the no side of that, trying to stop it. I'm optimistic that we will defeat this effort to repeal the capital gains tax, but there have been some efforts in Olympia right, to try to go go farther in terms of progressive taxation. That capital gains tax was a big win, you know, a kind of signature win for progressives in Olympia in in recent years. But I think, Robert, you're saying they're just more that needs to happen there. I'm my point is, I don't know about how much more taxation we need out of Olympia. Those are political battles, but I do know, whatever the funding pie is, I don't think education is getting enough. You know, I think the 2019, levels of prioritizing education ought to be the standard in a. To be a going forward, even if that does lead to some cut somewhere else, right? That's what our Constitution mandates.

David Hyde: 35:47

Well, in most states, it's, it's meant to be the paramount duty, not just, not just Washington. I remember, that was when I was first started reporting in New York state. That's the first thing our lawmaker gave me a civic quiz. What's the paramount duty of state government? I was like, I don't know. It's like, education. So, I mean, it wasn't always, but it became so is Seattle spending less per pupil compared to other comparable cities? Is Washington spending less per pupil compared to other comparable states?

Robert Cruickshank: 36:16

Yes

David Hyde: 36:17

where we're seeing a gap in performance, where we see that money pay off

Robert Cruickshank: 36:21

We are. I mean, we spend, you know, depending on the year you're looking at, this decade, anywhere between 15 and 18,000 per student in Washington State. You look at you mentioned New York, those New York New Jersey are spending around 20,000 per student. Massachusetts, we've talked about Boston a few times, spends around $25,000 per student. So New England spends quite a lot more per student on public education, whereas Washington just doesn't. And you know, I've talked to parents who come from other states. There's one parent at that meeting in Edmonds on Wednesday who said, I'm from Utah, and I came from Utah, where we have really underfunded schools. And I thought, finally, I'm in a blue state on the West Coast, my kids are going to have great schools with tons of resources, and she was shocked to find that we didn't have that.

David Hyde: 37:07

Should the district have approved the last contract knowing that it was going to lead to this budget deficit in school closures, 14% increase over three years for teachers. Sounds good to me. I mean, it seems like our teachers definitely deserve it. The cost of living has gone up. I did some reporting on that. At the time, there was teachers had a real case for that. I know, Robert, you're gonna say yes, but I mean, didn't that inevitably lead to this under the circumstances?

Robert Cruickshank: 37:35

No, this is a great example of what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls austerity mindset and how we need to get out of that. And she talked about that austerity thinking versus abundance thinking. She talked about that after coming home from a town hall in the Bronx about education, and talked about these very similar issues, you know, SPS, if you don't approve a contract that pays teachers well in a very high cost of living city, you lose teachers. There was one day, I think it was 2021 where they had to cancel classes the day after Veterans Day because too many teachers had called out sick. They didn't have enough teachers to cover the class. So if you don't give teachers a good contract, you will have a teacher shortage, and then the good teachers you do have will just leave for other districts because they're not getting paid well.

David Hyde: 38:21

Is that evidence based? I mean, in other words, like in Boston, are teachers making a lot more than teachers in Seattle, for example, or comparable expensive cities. That's what I'm getting at

Robert Cruickshank: 38:33

I haven't looked at the numbers, but they get paid decently in the New England states, if you go to the Sun Belt, states that are governed by Republicans, they don't. Texas has huge problems with teacher retention, especially even in the blue cities like Austin, Dallas or Houston.

Sandeep Kaushik: 38:47

And to bring it back to the teacher contract, because I've been trying to figure out what I think about about the teacher contract. And so last night, I moderated a panel discussion with three former school board members at folio, and Robert was there and made some comments, but vivid song, right? Who was recently on the school board was one of the panelists. And I think she made a really, really, I think, important point that relates to the school contract. What she said, what she points out, is that Seattle's deficit nearly$100 million deficit that the school district is facing right now, the vast majority of that deficit is rooted in the cost of special education, um, that there's been a really significant underfunding of Special Education coming out of Olympia, and that districts are having to, at the local level, make up for the cost of that education. But this also ties in the contract, because I was talking with vivid and after the after the panel was was over, and the problem with the contract was less about the teacher pay increases, which I agree with. I think you know that Robert saying these things are important in terms of of recruiting and retaining good teachers and having a strong and stable educational system, but there are also lots of mandates built into that contract related to staffing for special ed stuff in the Seattle schools. And frankly, that increased staffing is what's been driving a lot of the cost deficit, because it's not being compensated from Olympia, and yet, when you look at the results in the classroom for special ed, it's not going well, right? So those mandates have not worked to deliver the kind of results we want to make sure that kids who have special needs are actually getting the best possible education. You can provide them,

David Hyde: 40:41

But, cutting, cutting those positions, how's that going to help? I mean, talk to teachers about it.

Sandeep Kaushik: 40:47

Well, I think there are, I think there are different. And I'm not an expert on this, but, but, but, but talking to Vivian and other folks who are, who were, who were talking after the panel, there are other approaches to special ed, special education, and they're also to Robert's point, there needs to be a bigger push in Olympia, you know, Olympia, to get more funding for this. But there are other approaches to special ed that might be less costly and not involve the kind of staffing mandates of assistance in classrooms and stuff like that, but would produce better results, and that's something we ought to be looking at. Minimum

Robert Cruickshank: 41:23

staffing ratios are pretty common demand of unions, and a state that is governed, as David mentioned by Democrats, who have strong majorities in Olympia, should be able to provide the funding so that, you know there's minimum staffing so that special education is properly delivered and covered. I think there is a desire at the district level to just jam this all on teachers and tell teachers, you have so many mandates and you're going to have to cover it. You have to cover it all in a class of 40 kids. That doesn't work, and that's that's a bad education that your kids get, because your kid's not going to get the individualized attention that they would get in a class of 20 kids.

David Hyde: 42:00

You both broadly agree and it just seems like it's a fact that underfunding is is one of the problems, from the state level right now. But I, as I understand it, there's also some disagreement here over root causes, and let's go to Sandeep for that, since he's the sort of Hellion on this issue.

Sandeep Kaushik: 42:23

Well, I agree with Robert that there's a there's a there's a funding problem, and part of the significant part, even of the of the city's budget deficit, the answer to that is found, ought to be found in Olympia, right? Whether it's increasing taxes or or or changing how we divide up the existing pie. That's all true. That said, I do think a lot of the problems that the Seattle school district are facing right now are very much due to the current leadership of the district right and I think the fundamental problem there is not neoliberal austerity, as as, as Robert points out, but to put it bluntly, there's almost a kind of desire to re segregate Seattle schools coming from certain people who have a, I think, a very misconceived notion of equity. So what I'm seeing is kind of wokey run amok, right into some kind of weird ideological cul de sac that is leading people to blind themselves to the consequences of the leadership decisions that they're making, which is leading to disenrollment and loss of funding and the loss of options and choices for families. And that's rooted in, as I said this debate we're having about what equity actually is, if you have this notion of, you know, the shortcut to equity is to just, you know, reduce standards and lower choices for everybody, and voila, like, if everybody's performing at the same level, like, you haven't helped anybody, but you've achieved that. You know, that kind of mindset is a race to the bottom, it seems to me. And I see, I think we've seen that in the decision making consistently from the cabal of folks that are leading the Seattle Public Schools. And so I think when you add that layer that onto the fiscal problems, you know, you get this, you know, what was the technical term, seriously fucked up situation,

Robert Cruickshank: 44:23

Yeah, I mean, and I don't disagree with you at the end there, I think that what this district leadership has produced is very much that race to the bottom, where I disagree is, I don't think this is woke or run amok. I think this is equity being used as a shield and a sword to justify what is really kind of center right wing project, you know. And at a board meeting earlier this month in October, I saw an Asian American person. I saw a black teacher. I saw Native American community leaders, all, one after the other, get up and say, this district is not doing equity. What you are doing is not equitable. This is not how equity works. And I think that's that's a real point to me, in favor of the argument this is just people on the board who want to close schools for its own sake, who believe that, you know, we need to just slash and burn everything because it's better than going to Olympia to get money out of the rich and using this stuff as a justification, using equitable language, which they know that people in Seattle buy into as a justification for it. If you had someone come along and say, you know, I think we need to close schools because it's more efficient. I think we need to reopen the teacher contract, maybe not pay them as well. I think we need to have all of our education standardized and focused on test scores. You think that person. Was like George W Bush, but if you wrap it in equity language, all of a sudden you sound like a Seattleite. And I think that's what's going on here

Sandeep Kaushik: 45:51

and I think there's some real truth to that. And to be really clear, I'm not attacking the concept of I think equity is an important consideration and something that we should be center. But look at the signature. You know, policy agenda of the Seattle school district and school board in the last five years or so has been a a focus on the performance of black boys, right, of young black men in the schools. It's not gone well, right? If anything, the performance is worse now than when they made this a sort of signature feature of what and why is that? In part, because they're fucking misdiagnosing the problem, like we know what works. If we want to help those kids, we need to get programs set up with intensive tutoring and individualized attention, and the kind of things where that has been piloted in some schools around the city and that have produced really stellar results to help address that, that that opportunity gap that we've been talking about earlier, but instead, we have a bunch of performative bullshit about, like, you know, adding, you know, woke math or ethnic studies classes and stuff, and maybe some of that stuff is fine, but it's not the solution to the problem, right? Or a new anti racism policy. You know that last school board led by Chandra Hampson ended up in this bizarre place where they're closing schools and not paying any attention to reopening them because they're having a huge internal fight over, you know, not even a fight, but over who gets credit for the anti racism policy? So some of that stuff just drives me back.

David Hyde: 47:27

This is the progressive left losing sight of kind of material conditions is sort of what you're saying. You're both Marxists.. I love it.

Sandeep Kaushik: 47:38

I'm getting back to class, yeah? Like, like I had been off, you know, I went to grad school and did all that that, you know, and I used to think, like, you know, the mark Marxist has lost the plot. But compared to the identitarians, I'm like, Man, I'm a marxist.

David Hyde: 47:54

Being something of a materialist used to be a precondition of of calling yourself even a liberal. Corporate consultants being brought in to talk about equity, while at the same time management is laying people off or threatening to lay people off or bullying workers into submission, seems to be, you know, one of the the that seems kind of the things we're we're seeing right now, not just in Seattle Public Schools, but like throughout capitalist America, right? I mean, without this is not a Marxist criticism, per se, but like that is that's it's happening, and you're both saying that's one of the things that appears to be happening now in Seattle Public Schools. Robert, are you agreeing with Sandeep about that? Or where do you where do you still disagree?

Robert Cruickshank: 48:33

I still believe that what has really happened here is that you have a group of leaders at the district who are pushing what is really kind of a corporate friendly agenda, and are wrapping it in equity language. And who knows how they got there? Each individual pushing this had maybe has their own origin story, their own villain origin story, but they're all now at a place where this isn't really about equity run amuck. It's they just know how to sell it to people. They know how to sell it in Seattle. They know that, you know the way you sell it in Texas isn't going to fly.

David Hyde: 49:07

Yeah, that's a great last sentence. Robert, I really loved having you sit in this. This is, this is a good conversation, less rancor than usual, which was a pleasure for me.

Robert Cruickshank: 49:18

Well, this is one of the, this is one of the few issues where Sandeep is not wrong.

David Hyde: 49:22

There you go, yeah, that's a great place to end it. He's Robert crookshank, Robert, thank you so much for joining us.

Sandeep Kaushik: 49:28

Oh, thank you for having me on He's Sandeep Kaushik. Deep. sadeep, not wrong on one issue,. There you go yeah, yeah.

David Hyde: 49:35

I'm David Hyde. Our editor is Quinn Waller, and thanks everybody so much for listening. You