By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
The Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction recently entered into a binding agreement to assist the Tukwila School District to avoid insolvency. The district, with 2,700 students, is reportedly facing a $4.5 million budget shortfall, after facing a budget deficit last year.
According to officials, the agreement will allow the district to borrow money in order to meet its financial obligations while also cutting costs.
Like many other districts across the state, Tukwila is facing declining enrollment, which leads to a decline in funding from the state. In addition, increases in personnel costs and the cost of other goods and services are putting a financial strain on the district. However, the problems within the Tukwila School District are deeper than that and, according to sources, stem from conflicts of interests and direction that have been impacting the district for some time.
Over the past decade, the Tukwila School District has sat on an unstable three-legged stool and has experienced an array of conflicts that have put the district in dire straits. A three-tier assessment of the issues Tukwila is facing has taken a toll on both the district board members, its superintendents, principals, school staff, students, and parents.
“This isn’t unique to Tukwila,” says Ricardo Frazer, a former Tukwila School Board Member. “I think it’s the whole education system. Some systems just deal with conflict better than others and some districts can’t deal with it at all and I think Tukwila had issues that couldn’t be dealt with. And then you have the superintendent who serves the board who is trying to please the board yet has the whole district to manage. Sometimes the board got in the way.”
The Tukwila School District, according to experts, is facing three major challenges. One, acquiring people to sit on the school board of directors. Two, racial tensions within the school community, and three, accountability for student achievement.
Tukwila School District Board of Directors is made up of five elected members of the community, who are responsible for the oversight and governance of the district’s operations. At this moment, the district has one vacant seat on the board (District 2), but recently had two vacancies, which sometimes made it hard to conduct business.
Manning the board. Tukwila has found itself besieged by inaction to find individuals willing to sit on the school board for a variety of reasons. Whether it was due to a lack of time, no longer caring about the district because their children were no longer of school age, or a myriad of other reasons, Tukwila has struggled to have a full school board.
According to Rita Green, the NAACP’s Education Chair for Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, one has to have the time to commit to being a member and most regular working citizens find it difficult to manage both work and volunteer to serve on the school board.
“The [school] board requires hours of time for no pay,” says Green. “So, they are really designed for wealthy White folks, so they can continue to control and set policies. But most people go to work every day and do not have jobs that will allow them to be off of work to attend board meetings during the day. So typically, what you find on the board are retired people, people that own their own business, and people that work for companies that have individual and specific ulterior motives for being on the board.”
“If you ask me, I think it’s instability,” says Rev. Terrence Proctor, Pastor of the Church By The Side of the Road in Tukwila, and a newly elected Tukwila School Board member. “But then you have to deal with why? Is it because they’re not paying. If one actually has a heart for it, a heart like John Stanford where you really want to do what’s right, and have the courage to do what is right, but your district isn’t willing to do it, how much of that is disheartening. So those are the things I want to get to the bottom of.”
In addition, Tukwila is also facing issues of race and allegations of a racially insensitive environment that is impacting both enrollment and employment. According to those closely involved, several administrators of color have left the district due to racial tension against both them and students. With some Black teachers and administrators in the school district claiming that they have faced discrimination in the midst of working to better the atmosphere surrounding the achievement of students, staff, and the overall academic potential of the schools in the district.
“The teachers’ union was unapathetic, unreachable, would not even communicate with the NAACP to try and make things better [when we were trying to address allegations of] teachers harassing the few Black teachers that were there at the time,” says Green. “We saw a lot of Black teachers come into the school district, but they didn’t stay because there was no support for them. There were a lot of issues at Foster High School, [where they] had to get rid of that principal and things started to turn and get a little better. There were issues with the board when I had huge meetings with the city council and the school board to address some of the racist policies that they were setting and allowing to happen.”
Frazer agrees to an extent but makes the point that it’s not necessarily about individuals as much as it is about the institutionalization of discrimination that diminishes Tukwila’s possibilities. “In my opinion, there has been a history of racism, although racism is not really the term for it because racism is such a loaded term,” says Frazer. “What I can say is there is a history of Black and Brown people who were on staff in the district as administrators in the district who have faced a lot of discriminatory issues. Why that is given the fact that the district is so diverse, escapes me.”
“We talk about institutional racism, we talk about institutional discrimination, we talk about institutional memory, and rather than single out individuals I want to say it’s institutional,” Frazer continues. “It’s very difficult to change institutional mindsets.”
As the third leg wobbles, who’s responsible for student achievement? The district, the staff, the student, the parents? Proctor believes there is a combination of lack of resources due to decline in the median household income of the area, incompetence in leadership, and lack of accountability. “The incompetence was tolerated because it was comfortable,” says Proctor. “You cannot get where you want to go maintaining the status quo of incompetence. Tukwila has to raise the bar, make courageous decisions and put their money where their mouth is. Because the truth of the matter is the change that needs to be made some of it is expensive.”
“The problem is the median income in the area has gone down and they don’t have the resources to do it,” Proctor continued. “But you know what, you don’t need all the money to do better at what you are doing. I think the bar needs to be raised, they need courageous leadership to navigate the ship towards what is right. The district lacks the fortitude to say, ‘this is what’s right, this is wrong and hold people accountable.’”
Over the past few years, Tukwila has seen a significant drop in enrollment, had three different superintendents and several different principals at schools throughout the district. Yet, with all the dysfunction and instability, leaders like Green, Proctor, and Frazer believe things can be turned around for the betterment of the population and its student body.
“Things were improving,” says Green, who claims that the district was not properly communicating with families about a number of issues like possibly having lead in some pipes. “So, then I kind of stopped being involved with Tukwila, then they brought in Flip Hernden. From there I would receive complaints of White teachers mishandling Black kids. There were a lot of issues for such a small district.”
“With the right leaders and cooperation, it should be seamless and fluid but it’s not because of the people at the helm,” said Green. “There was some improvement, because we were there and really fighting and dealing with things, 2017-2019 things were improving, but it is still not perfect by any means.”
The Medium did attempt to contact newly appointed Tukwila Public Schools Superintendent Concie Pedroza but was not able to get a response from her prior to press time. However, district officials are hopeful that Pedroza, who previously served in the Seattle School District, can help move the district in the right direction.
