Attn: John Stanford...Letter to the Editor

Stanford Should Practice What he Preaches
The Beacon Hill News/The South District Journal, January 22, 1997) (Letter to the Editor)

To the editor:

The Beacon Hill News and The South District Journal recently criticized Seattle schools Superintendent John Stanford’s penchant for tossing raw ideas out to a confused, nervous public (“School district needs to stick with plans,” Nov. 27, 1996), then printed a letter to the editor from Stanford (Jan. 8, 1997).

Here’s a teacher’s 2-cents’ worth on Stanford’s letter:

My praise for Stanford’s observations matches my horror at his failure to put them into practice.

“We are showing an unprecedented willingness to subject our proposals to the diverse views that characterize our community,”Stanford boasted. Oh, really? I don’t recall being asked how I felt about my contract being replaced by a “trust agreement,” a drastically shortened version of the teachers’ union contract that currently is being considered, and it is my understanding that the decision to embrace advertising was made virtually without community input.

More recently, Stanford warned principals — excuse me, “CEOs” — not to speak out against a “student-weighted formula” which would determine the amount of funding received by each school.

Stanford demands loyalty from his troops, but is he loyal to us? His war against bureaucrats was celebrated in the appropriately entitled article “To Whom Do Our Schools Belong?” which appeared in Forbes (Sept. 23, 1996). The author presented Seattle teachers as an example of bureaucracy rather than victims of it, noting that the average Seattle teacher received a 22-percent pay raise, a figure that seems questionable, between 1991 and 1995.

The district’s official spokesperson doesn’t know where the author got some of his ideas and statistics and thinks Stanford probably wrote a letter setting the record straight.

Curiously, the author says he received data from the district and never heard any objections from Stanford.

It is treasonous for Stanford to exploit Seattle’s already over-exploited teachers in collaborating with as crass a magazine as Forbes — hardly an example of the “educated citizenry and well-informed media” he spoke of in his letter — whether to advance his political ambitions or merely stoke his ego.

Stanford also said, “The media is with us constantly...” I’m glad to hear the Seattle school board has unofficially declared a moratorium on kicking education reporters out of their meetings, which are no longer held (illegally) in private.

In Stanford’s defense, I chastise citizens who criticize him for tossing out ideas like hand grenades, in my opinion one of his strongest points. Any idea that escapes our central bureaucracy before it has been officially enacted deserves the highest praise.

I also credit Stanford with jolting us out of our inertia, contributing some great ideas and pumping up the morale of people who haven’t applied his invitation to “take a closer look” at the central bureaucracy.

But the “democratic, open society” Stanford mentioned in his letter is but a fantasy in public schools under the subjugation of a totalitarian power structure that communicates through propaganda organs.

Clearly, we need to give parents and teachers a greater say in our children’s education and downsize administrators and civic “leaders” who typically export their kids to private schools and may not even live in the community they profess to serve. Again, Stanford agrees with me, if only on paper: At the 1996 Democratic convention, he invoked the proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Let’s replace Stanford’s “reform” with genuine reform, the kind that encourages open communication and values truth.

Whose path will we choose for our children?

David Blomstrom  

Dearborn Park Elementary School