Eric Feeny - D2

[00:00:10] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. This is our 2025 Seattle School Board candidate series ahead of the August 5 primary.  Each conversation is short and focused. We start with a lightning round, then ask the same two minute questions to each candidate. 

 We know the candidates are doing lots of forums and interviews. At Rainy Day Recess, we decided to focus on the how of the school board. How do these candidates think about the role of the school board in leadership and governance, and what is the real impact they believe the school board can have on Seattle Public Schools?

Today we're releasing all of the interviews with District 2 candidates, which is roughly NW Seattle. Later this week, we'll release the interviews with D4 and D5 school board candidates. And we'll cover D7 after the primary, since there's no primary race in that district.

Transcripts are at rainydayrecess.org 

This is our interview with Eric Feeny. Be sure to listen to our interviews with Kathleen Smith and Sarah Clark as well, which are also in your feed. We'll give a quick preview of those interviews at the end of this episode. 

Hello everybody. I'm Christie Robertson,

[00:01:07] Colin Meyer: And I'm Colin Meyer, helping out with today's interview.

[00:01:11] Christie Robertson: And today we're here with Eric Feeny. So thanks Eric for running for School board and welcome to Rainy Day Recess. 

[00:01:18] Eric Feeny: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:19] Christie Robertson: We are going to start with the lightning round. This section is meant to help listeners get to know you quickly. Ao we'll ask a mix of quick-answer and yes/no questions, but keep your answers very brief. 

So let's start. What are your name and pronouns?

[00:01:34] Eric Feeny: My name is Eric Feeny and my pronouns are he/him.

[00:01:38] Christie Robertson: And how do you describe, “what you do”?

[00:01:41] Eric Feeny: For my day job, I'm in business development in the software industry, mainly focusing on agreements and processes for large partnerships. In the last 10 years, I've specifically been in the commercial smart building space.

[00:01:53] Christie Robertson: What director district are you running for and what neighborhoods does it encompass?

[00:01:57] Eric Feeny: District 2, and that's from Fremont on the south end, up to Greenwood on the north end, and then it's east and west of Green Lake itself.

[00:02:05] Colin Meyer: Okay. Next we'll do some background questions. Answer yes or no where possible, and add a short explanation if something needs context. 

Have you attended a school board meeting?

[00:02:18] Eric Feeny: Yes.

[00:02:19] Colin Meyer: Okay. Have you testified at a board meeting?

[00:02:23] Eric Feeny: Yes.

[00:02:24] Colin Meyer: Okay. And have you testified in the state legislature?

[00:02:29] Eric Feeny: Not yet.

[00:02:31] Colin Meyer: Okay. And where did you go to school as a child?

[00:02:34] Eric Feeny: I moved around a bunch, but elementary, like K-4, I was Cherry Crest Elementary over in Bellevue. I moved down to California, where I went to Woodside Elementary for 4-8. And then I went to high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

[00:02:48] Christie Robertson: Do you have or have you had kids in Seattle Public schools?

[00:02:52] Eric Feeny: Yeah, I've got two kids who just completed fourth and sixth grade at Cascadia and Jane Adams.

[00:02:59] Christie Robertson: And do you have any kids attending outside of Seattle Public Schools?

[00:03:02] Eric Feeny: No.

[00:03:04] Christie Robertson: Have you ever worked in education?

[00:03:06] Eric Feeny: No.

[00:03:08] Christie Robertson: Have you been in a union?

[00:03:10] Eric Feeny: No.

[00:03:12] Christie Robertson: Have you been on a board?

[00:03:14] Eric Feeny: Yes.

[00:03:15] Christie Robertson: And have you ever worked with a large budget?

[00:03:18] Eric Feeny: Not of this particular magnitude.

[00:03:20] Colin Meyer: Who is an educational leader you admire?

[00:03:24] Eric Feeny: I will say uh, one that sort of covers a broad segment of the education space is Saul Khan from Khan Academy. As it relates to the way I think about things, this notion of trying to have creative solutions to long-running problems, and reimagining some of the things that we have taken for granted for 200 years, based on the arbitrary British system from small rural areas. That we've now find ourselves in a much larger, more complicated space. So I like people who are trying to reimagine things.

[00:04:03] Colin Meyer: Okay. Who is a school board director you are looking forward to working with? 

[00:04:11] Eric Feeny: We're getting a healthy amount of turnover here., but based on the folks who are staying behind, I think Gina Topp will probably be supportive of the types of things that I'm hoping to champion.

[00:04:26] Colin Meyer: What's one education policy you strongly support?

[00:04:31] Eric Feeny: I'm a fan of recent efforts to ensure special education needs are met and that discipline is done fairly and constructively. I think this is the beauty of the public education system, that it must endeavor to prepare all of our students for productive lives and teaching us how to work together and be part of the big picture.

[00:04:53] Colin Meyer: Okay. Do you see the school board role more as a trustee with duty to the institution or as an elected representative role accountable to voters? 

[00:05:06] Eric Feeny: In my opinion, the role of a board member is to provide accountability and strategic guidance for the operations. But to the shareholders. And I think if they're doing their job correctly, also to the customers and employees. So in our case, not being corporate, our shareholders are the voters and taxpayers and our customers are the children.

And I am running to push for excellence. That's what I think you're supposed to do, is help make sure that your organization is successful. And I want SPS to be revered, not contextually excused. "Oh, this is why we're struggling." I don't want that to be the conversation anymore.

[00:05:41] Colin Meyer: What's one thing you'd change about the school board immediately?

[00:05:46] Eric Feeny: One easy thing to change is that I will personally track (with permission) anybody who cares enough to get involved – people who come testify, who show up. I'll stick around afterwards, or change the timing schedule so we can have more time to interact with the people who are there telling us what's going on.

And I will help them become part of an action group with a passionate leader. Or they could be that leader. And then connect them with the district personnel who are actually working on the problems. No more of this "thanks for your testimony. Have a nice day" model. And this should reduce an information disconnect between administration and the front line, and it should yield better informed and more inclusive decisions.

[00:06:25] Christie Robertson: Last lightning round question. What's one lightning round question you would add for other candidates?

If you had to tell voters what's something that's unique about who you are and how you approach the world and problems, what would you say?

And what's your answer to that question?

[00:06:45] Eric Feeny: I'm a multidisciplinary person, and I think that my superpower is pattern recognition and efficiency. I'm always finding better ways to load the dishwasher, better phrasing to reach out to customers, and better ways to take in information. Things like that.

[00:07:03] Christie Robertson: Great. Okay, so, now we are going to move on to the main interview questions. These focus on institutional change and the role of the school board. You'll have two minutes to answer each one, but don't feel like you have to use all the time. 

[00:07:17] Eric Feeny: Great. 

[00:07:18] Christie Robertson: So, ready to start?

[00:07:19] Eric Feeny: Sure.

[00:07:20] Christie Robertson: All right.

[00:07:23] Colin Meyer: First question, what does a school board director actually do?

[00:07:28] Eric Feeny: Yeah, so there's a lot of data review, because your job is to provide oversight. So you're reviewing deliverables that the executives bring to you and requesting certain information so that you can provide that oversight. 

Ultimately you're responsible for making sure you've got the right superintendent in the job to be making progress on the priorities for our district and the community. And sometimes that's a hard thing to do. 

And you can also provide, through your questions and interactions, guidance and sort of communication about what you're hearing from your constituents, and bringing that into the light. And helping to productively tease it into something that is satisfactory to meet the needs. So yeah, kind of a two part market. You've got your executives and you've got your voters.

[00:08:24] Christie Robertson: And what should the school board focus on most when it comes to finding the next superintendent?

[00:08:29] Eric Feeny: Yeah. So I think that given our current situation, we need somebody who is going to create some cultural improvements and some organizational improvements. And those are both hard to do because it's high friction, and you're dealing with a big bureaucratic entity. 

As some of my constituents say they think some heads need to roll. And that's probably true. I mean, healthy turnover is good always, but especially when things are not going as well as you'd like them to. And it's not necessarily a matter of that the person you're getting rid of isn't a good person, but that you just might need somebody who's more appropriate for the current challenges. 

So I would want somebody who's really focused on sort of concrete changes to bring about excellence, and encourage excellence, in a diverse district. As well as somebody who could help clean up the organizational bureaucracy.

[00:09:25] Colin Meyer: What do you think is the right balance between centralized control versus school-based decision making?

[00:09:33] Eric Feeny: Yeah, this is a good question. I think that over the last many years we've lost a little bit of track of what the right mindset is for central administration. I think that what good management does is empower and help the people who are in the front lines to actually be successful and be happy and productive in their jobs.

And I think that we've found ourselves in a cycle of policing and almost creating kind of like standards, right? "Oh, we're the standards body." And that's part of it. That's good. In particular, a central resource should be able to provide guidance so that every single school isn't having to reinvent the wheel.

But it shouldn't be handcuffs. In many cases the composition of these schools, the age of the students in these schools, and the needs of the communities and the specific student body is not uniform. And I think we've erred on the side of becoming too monolithic and too prescriptive in a way that more often... not more often than not, but more often than it should, the district can feel like an anchor rather than like a resource that's helping you out. Like, you want, as a school, when you're a principal and the staff, you want it to feel like your district is "Oh, thank God they have this. That really made my job easier." Not, "Oh, I have to do this thing for the district that's totally irrelevant to my student population."

[00:10:56] Christie Robertson: What should the school board do if the district isn't meeting its goals for students?

[00:11:03] Eric Feeny: Yeah, no, I think that's when you just have to roll up your sleeves and do the work, right? 

I think that the first step... and I don't wanna make it sound like, "oh, we need to investigate and conduct a huge study." That's, that's more bureaucratic than I'm suggesting.

So I would like to get more local. Okay. So when we're saying we're not meeting it for our students, how are we doing in a given school? Like, I want to have a more effective roll up at the local level. So what are the needs and priorities and challenges of each school? And what are we doing to empower and support and turn around the things they're struggling with? And where are things going well in the district, in such a way that it's relevant and that they care about it at that school. And how can we help bring those things to them, right?

So it's a mindset of being locally focused and responsive to what's actually going on, rather than trying to be too monolithic about it. I think that's our, one of our big themes here in SPS.

[00:12:03] Colin Meyer: What should the board do when the district isn't meeting community expectations?

[00:12:10] Eric Feeny: [laughs] Yes, well, that's been one of my personal frustrations is our inability to learn how to communicate with our people. We have been doing some cool things in terms of providing websites with some more information and better resources. And that's good. But the reality is that a lot of our constituents are not just sitting there reading all our emails and perusing our website. And we need to learn that talking at our community and coming last minute with proposals that we could have anticipated easily would be contentious is probably not the right way to do it. Trying to run out the clock to... 

It almost feels like there's a sentiment that people are gonna complain no matter what. So if we reduce the window in which they have to complain, at least we don't have to deal with their complaining very long. And that's feels pretty toxic and I think that we should push for a culture of getting ahead of that. And being more proactive and just delivering information that people want to hear because we're delivering wins and not bad news, right?

It sounds, as I'm saying it, a little vague and wishy-washy, but the general sentiment is, we have to get away from that avoidance, that conflict avoidance, and get into engaging the community proactively, so that people feel like, “oh yeah, the person who's the super parent in my school says that they're really excited about what's going on and therefore I don't even worry about it. I don't even read the newsletter 'cause I'm feeling so good about everything.”

[00:13:38] Christie Robertson: Awesome. I'm gonna add another question just 'cause I'm realizing that that's not necessarily a great wrap up question. And it'll just be, I think, I'll just ask: what's something that you want voters to take away from your approach to being a school board director?

[00:13:55] Eric Feeny: Yeah. I would like to remind voters that you don't need every person on the board to look like a 25 year education policy veteran. You want a board to have a bunch of different skill sets. Typically, you're gonna have somebody who's good at finance and legal work, and you're gonna have somebody who's good at business strategy and you're gonna have somebody who's got a lot of connections. 

And my role, as I view it, as one of the board members, if you should give me the honor, is to be somebody who is very insistent and pragmatic on concrete outcomes that will start making things better. You want your kids to be getting challenged in school and growing. I wanna bring back the autonomy for schools to do advanced classwork, walk to math if that's what feels right for your school and your community. 

And I want to reimagine Homework 2.0. We followed a study that said that there was a new way to read, and it turned out that was a bunk study. And going back to phonics actually was the way to go. I feel like we have deprioritized homework because in some cases it was done not inclusively. I think there are ways to reimagine it that is low-burden on teachers, high value-add for students, and not required to participate in the day-to-day classwork. So if you can't get to it because of challenges or it's just not necessary 'cause you're already ahead, it shouldn't be a burden. 

So there are concrete things like that across academic excellence, across agility in the district, across responsiveness to the community. And actually hearing what's really going on and fixing problems that you guys bring to our attention.

And then the macro funding situation. There are things we can do to make better use of our resources while we’re ______. And there's coalition building we can do to work with our rural counterparts to tip the scale back toward balanced. 

We were not properly taking care of our rural counterparts in the past. And then we fixed it. But now it's drifted back outta balance. And now we're not taking care of cities. There are concrete things that can be done to push along some of our key levers that are making our district not be a culture of excellence. And that's what I wanna champion for you guys.

[00:16:01] Christie Robertson: Great. Thank you so much for being here today, Eric Feeny. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us and with Seattle voters, and good luck with your campaign.

[00:16:12] Eric Feeny: Thanks. I really appreciate you guys putting in the good work like this.

[00:16:17] Christie Robertson: Transcripts and show notes are at rainydayrecess.org. 

Be sure to listen to our other D2 candidates, Sarah Clark:

[00:16:27] Sarah Clark: I am really seeking to collaborate. I grew up playing sports and like being on teams and, going to camps. And it really shaped the way that I lead. I feel like I'm only as good as the people that I'm working with. And that the more people that are at the table, the better the ideas. 

[00:16:53] Christie Robertson: and Kathleen Smith 

[00:16:54] Kathleen Smith: I'm not a policy wonk, and I'm looking forward to being a partner to my colleagues on the board with more policy experience while providing a missing perspective with my data analysis and data science skills. I want to be known for being able to talk to everyone and I am constantly looking for different perspectives to help challenge my understanding on issues. So I want to be known for being able to listen and problem solve.

[00:17:22] Christie Robertson: Ballots will be mailed Friday, July 18th, and the primary election is Tuesday, August 5. As always, stay curious, stay cozy, and thanks for listening to Rainy Day Recess.