Seattle Hall Pass S2 E4 - Student Outcomes Focused Governance, in Seattle

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[00:00:00] AJ Crabill: If children leave without the knowledge and skills necessary to live a meaningful life of choice and opportunity for themselves and their loved ones, then we have failed them. 

[00:00:22] Robert Cruickshank: The board seems to be isolating themselves from public feedback. And not creating situations where the board doesn't control the conversation.

[00:00:36] Liza Rankin: That's something that people who are used to having their voice way more don't like, are uncomfortable with about this, is because Student Outcomes Focused Governance... The model isn't “don't listen to community,” but the model is “represent the entire community.”

[00:01:01] Dawson Nichols: Hi, this is Dawson. Welcome to Hall Pass. 

This episode is a deep dive into the governance model used by the Seattle School Board. We feel it is really important for people to understand this model because this is what shapes the work of the school board. It gives direction to them on how they should come to the vision and values for the district, how they should interact with the community, how they should interact with the staff, how they should come to those really important decisions that will affect this school district for years to come. Decisions like closing a great number of schools all at the same time. 

So we wanted to look at this model to see how the board was meant to come to these decisions and also to see how we can be a part of this process going forward.

I conducted these interviews two and a half months ago, at the beginning of July. And for various reasons we did not release this episode then. But we feel a new urgency to do so now because of the situation that the school district is in. 

I wanted to get a big overview of what this governance model is. It is called Student Outcomes Focused Governance. It was created by the Council of Great City Schools, and one major proponent of this model is AJ Crabill. He gives instruction to boards around the country on this model. He is the one who, in fact, taught our school board about this model. And he continues to work with our board to help them shape their work and give direction to them going forward. 

So I interviewed AJ about just generally what is Student Outcomes Focused Governance and how it is meant to work. 

How it's meant to work and how it actually works are sometimes different things. So how do the wheels hit the road here in Seattle? For that, I wanted somebody who was involved with that. So I reached out to all of the school board members and our current school board president, Liza Rankin, agreed to talk to me about how this model is being used here in Seattle.

Now, the model does have some critics, and how it's being implemented here in Seattle has critics as well. For that, I talked to Robert Cruickshank, who has been involved in promoting public education for a very long time. He's also been involved in Washington State politics. He's a writer. You may have read some of his things in The Stranger. He gives, I think, a very articulate critique of Student Outcomes Focused Governance and then some criticism of how it's playing out here in Seattle. 

So those are the three people that I interviewed for this episode and those are the ones that you are going to be hearing from. For those of you who are listening to this, be aware that I conduct these interviews on Zoom, so there is a video version of this episode as well, and we will put the link to that episode in the show notes.

Now, I, again, wanted to start with the broadest possible lens, so I asked AJ Crabill to explain to me Student Outcomes Focused Governance. What is it meant to do? 

[00:04:09] AJ Crabill: The basic idea is that school systems exist to improve student outcomes. That there are things that we want our students to know and be able to do so they can live a choice-filled life. So they can live a life of liberation rather than subjugation, where their aspirations, their desires, their intellect, their capacity, their potential as individuals can be fully made manifest. 

For that to be real, there are certain things they have to know and be able to do. And the job of school systems in this country is to make sure that children have those knowledge and skills so that they can pursue a choice-filled life.

It's important that not only morally, but also nationally, that that promise be made available to all of our students. Not just some of them based on access to wealth, resources, and opportunity, but that all of our students have similar opportunities to really pursue a life of meaning for themselves.

And the challenge is that neither of those are necessarily always the case. We can't simply take for granted that school systems will automatically provide children with the knowledge and skills necessary to live a choice-filled life. And we can't automatically take for granted that school systems will do that on an equitable basis.

And so the task of representing the vision and values of the community, it falls to the school board to really be the entity that ensures that those things are happening in the school system in a way that aligns with the community's vision and community's values. 

And so student outcomes focused approach to governing is just a way of thinking about how do we as a school board effectively listen for the vision and values of the community and then systematize the community's vision and values in such a way that we increase the likelihood that they're honored? Such that, at the end of all things, children have the knowledge and skills necessary to live a choice-filled life, and that opportunity is equally distributed across all of our students, not disproportionately for some and not others.

One of the challenges that a lot of school systems face is that there are students who are already receiving that promise, and there are students who are not — students, we often say, who are furthest from educational justice. That is the responsibility of the board, to ensure that that promise of public education is distributed to all of our students, not just some of them.

And so there needs to be — that won't automatically happen — there needs to be a framework for ensuring that those things are happening. And this is one framework for that. 

[00:06:51] Liza Rankin: Basically we have built upon decades of haphazard leadership, I will say. If you look back at the Seattle school board and the superintendent for the last 50, you know, 30 to 50 years, we've only had one superintendent stick around for longer than four years.

And he oversaw a huge financial scandal. And then we've had very few school board directors that do more than one term. 

[00:07:24] Dawson Nichols: So was that one of the impetuses? Is that even a word? I don't know. For adopting this model was that, okay, we are going to be rotating on and off the board as well.

And what we want is some consistency, so that the following board members will have a structure within which they can be effective in their position. 

[00:07:45] Liza Rankin:  Yes, absolutely. 

[00:07:47] Dawson Nichols: So this is a tool, though, that can be used with any school board? 

[00:07:52] AJ Crabill: Certainly. It's specifically designed for school boards, as opposed to all the other types of boards that exist out there. 

The school system exists to improve student outcomes. That's why the school system exists: to create the context for liberation and choice and opportunity for the children of our community. That's why the school system exists. 

The board exists in pursuit of that – to represent the vision and values of the community. That is why the board exists, is that the community deserves to have its voice at the table. It’s the community's children, the community's resources, the community's schools. And so the community's voice has to be dominant at the table of determining what are the things that we're going to prioritize in the school system.

And the community's priorities take two forms. The vision of the community – what we want our students to know and be able to do. And the values of the community – what are the non-negotiables that have to be honored on the path to accomplishing the vision. 

And we refer to the board listening to the community and codifying the vision as setting goals. And the board listening to the community and codifying the values as setting guardrails. 

[00:08:59] Dawson Nichols: Goals and guardrails are meant to be created through interactions between the board and the public, and so they should be made public. 

Those of you who are watching on YouTube can see our board's most recent goals and guardrails on screen right now. Feel free to pause and read through those. You will notice that the three goals all sunset in June of 2024, which was some time ago. We should be getting new goals and guardrails sometime soon, presumably as a result of interactions between the board and the public. 

[00:09:36] AJ Crabill: And so the board listens to the community, sets the priorities, and then monitors progress for those priorities. And then works with the staff to align the district's resources to those priorities. And then goes back out and has an obligation to be regularly reporting back to the community around, “given that these are our collective community priorities, here is how we as a school system are doing it.” 

So there's this constant two-way dialogue that has to be happening on the front end to get clarity about what the vision and values are, because the board can't do that. It actually has to go out and conduct the listening. It has to engage in this two-way process of really understanding what is the community's vision and values. It has to write it down and make it plain, the goals and guardrails. And then it has to utilize the goals and guardrails to discern, “are we actually growing?”

So, for example, for Seattle, one of the values that it heard from the community that it's codified is a value around engagement with the community. And it has this expectation that district initiatives can't go forth without engaging students of color furthest from educational justice and their families, including those who have a preferred language other than English and who require accommodations for disability.

So, the fact that that is one of the guardrails that the board adopts tells me that as they've been listening to the community, that one of the things that they heard was that this is a really important value, and so it has to be honored. It's a non-negotiable because this is a high-priority area between these values.

[00:11:18] Dawson Nichols: AJ explained that this focus on goals and guardrails was meant to capture the vision and values of the community and make them operational in the conduct of the district. But goals and guardrails are also meant to focus the energies of the school board itself so that they spend less time on the conduct of the adults in the district, which many school boards tend to do, and more time on measuring whether or not the skills and knowledge of the students of the district are actually improving.

[00:11:56] AJ Crabill: The moment we take our eyes off the ball of: “are children actually learning?”, what we're saying is adults’ opinions about adult effort are more important to us than whether or not we are preparing children for liberation. That we're okay with preparing them for bondage because adult opinions are important.

And we're saying, no, that's not actually why school systems exist, that you actually have to have a balance of the two, that we have to look at what are the adults doing, and we have to look at, is it having the effect that we intend for children. 

[00:12:27] Dawson Nichols: And you even go so far as to measure the amount of time that any given board meeting is devoting to one side or the other.

[00:12:36] AJ Crabill: We would say half and half, spend half of your time on adult inputs and half of your time on student outcomes. Right. Right. 

[00:12:41] Dawson Nichols: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:12:41] Liza Rankin: Our most important responsibilities as a board are to be representatives of the community, to hire and evaluate the superintendent, to adopt the budget. And so if we're not talking about if the superintendent is managing the district in a way that's improving outcomes for children, and if we're not talking about if our budget is aligned to meeting the needs of children, what are we doing? 

[00:13:08] AJ Crabill: Yeah, and because you have 24 hours a day, I have 24 hours a day, we all just have 24 hours a day. The moment I start spending more time looking at our children learning, it is often at the cost of time spent looking at: what are adults doing? And so what you wind up with is a balance of looking at both. And we think that that balance is important. So much so that we would say only looking at the adult inputs, which is what most boards do, actually is a critical source of failure for school boards. And that they're actually not providing oversight in the one area that is most important for the district to provide oversight, which is: are we actually educating children? Are we actually causing improvements? 

[00:13:58] Dawson Nichols: Okay, I need to make one wonky explanation here. Student Outcomes Focused Governance deals with two different kinds of constituents in a school district: owners and customers. 

Anyone who lives within the boundaries of a school district is an owner of that school district because they pay taxes and those taxes go to fund the district. As an owner, if you have an issue or something that you would like to say to the district, the proper channel is the school board, because they are the governance board, and they are your voice on the street to the district. 

Anyone who has children in schools is also a customer of that school district because the district is providing services to that child and to that family. If you have an issue as a customer, the proper place to go is to the people who work for that district because they are the ones who provide the services. So those are employees of the district. They are not the school board. So, if you have an issue, if your child is having difficulties, if you don't like the curriculum, if there's an issue with the facilities, you go to the teacher, to the school, to the principal. That is the proper channel for that. 

And by separating those two, the school board is protected from getting into the minutiae that would distract them from learning. What Student Outcomes Focused Governance sees as their proper role. 

[00:15:25] Liza Rankin: But when you have board directors doing customer issues, it actually increases inequity because it means that you only get your customer issues solved if you can find a personal connection with the board director. It also takes the obligation away from the school district and staff to solve these problems that are actually their job.

[00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: You don't want to micromanage, right? The board should not be involved in the minutiae of every little decision that happens. That's ineffective. But there's something to be said about too little management. If there is not enough management coming from the board who are the representatives of the people then you see all sorts of problems develop. 

This is where financial problems come into play. This is where issues at schools, with how schools are being run and how students are being treated get ignored and grow worse. And these are things that we have now seen happen. Seattle Public Schools has a serious financial problem, as do many schools in the state, thanks primarily to state underfunding.

But then, you know, how is it being managed here at the district level? So there’s a major financial problem. At recent board meetings here in 2024, you've heard school communities all over the city show up and tell story after story about concerns about the way principals are not responding to serious concerns about how students are being treated.

And what this suggests to me is that there is a need for board members who can step up and step in and help provide direction. Not necessarily to micromanage the solutions, but to provide some sort of management and oversight to ensure that problems are being proactively addressed. And when you look at the board and you watch what they produce, watch what they say, and see these meetings, you recognize very quickly that that is not happening at all.

[00:17:13] Liza Rankin: The school board should be, and as we have just done a session on, focused on representing the vision and values of the community as a whole. Not just parents. Parents are included in that, but the community as a whole. 

[00:17:33] Dawson Nichols: When and how does the oversight happen? I mean, if I've got a problem with the curriculum that's being instituted at my school, I know that as a customer, and in the SOFG model, that's what I am at this point. I go to my school and talk to them about that. 

[00:17:52] Liza Rankin: You're also an owner. 

[00:17:55] Dawson Nichols: And as an owner, I would have to come to the board. 

[00:17:58] Liza Rankin: Correct. If you have an issue with the way something's being done at your school, your first stop is going to be the teacher or the principal. 

[00:18:06] Dawson Nichols: Definitely. Yeah. 

[00:18:07] Liza Rankin: Right. That's now, that's five years ago.

And honestly, most families shouldn't ever have to even care about the school board, especially in a school district with 100-plus schools. I don't want to govern a district that is functioning in a way that families and kids have their needs met at their school.

[00:18:35] Dawson Nichols: So, again, to push back a little bit: If my problem is that my child is not getting enough outdoor time. And that's important to me as a family principle, you know, for educational reasons. I go to my school, but what they're going to tell me is, “well, we have a model that requires that we meet students outcomes that are academic and we need our test scores to be higher. We've made these changes so that we can accommodate these other requirements that the district is putting on us.” At some point, I need to go. outside of the school or above the school to address those concerns, correct? 

[00:19:14] Liza Rankin: Sure. Yeah. And I would also say that if somebody thinks that improving student outcomes means that kids don't go outside, that's a huge problem because actually there is a huge, you know, outcomes as positive outcomes. Those could be anything. We could even measure outcomes. An outcome could be: how much time kids are spending outside? Like it could... well, that's not really an outcome, but…

[00:19:43] Dawson Nichols: Yeah, I asked AJ this too. Just so you know. 

[00:19:46] Liza Rankin: And vitamin D levels could be a measurement, you know. So, like, how you define student outcomes is based on the goals that you set. And the goals that you set could be academic, they could be any number of things. 

[00:19:59] Dawson Nichols: So getting back to the other concern that people have about the measurements that are used to assess whether or not student outcomes are improving. So what would count as a student outcome?

[00:20:12] AJ Crabill: Anything that is a measure of what students know and are able to do. 

[00:20:16] Dawson Nichols: So, again, I guess I want to press on this a little bit. What are measurable student outcomes that would qualify? It sounds like we're talking about academic grades. 

[00:20:26] AJ Crabill: That's an example, but it's anything that students know and are able to do.

[00:20:30] Dawson Nichols: Can you give me examples outside of testing like that? 

[00:20:35] AJ Crabill: What is something that you would want a child to know or be able to do? 

And you’ve asked that same question like five times, you know, “can you give me an example?” And part of the reason I'm reluctant to provide an example is because it's actually not about what I say the vision should be. It's about what the community says the vision should be. 

[00:20:54] Robert Cruickshank: Most people would agree that any government has to have things that they are measuring and tracking. And that's normal and sensible. And I think it's fine for test scores to be a part of that. But I think we've seen over the last 20 years what happens when there's too much focus on testing.

After Congress passed George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind, there was a strong sense in the 2000s that everything in education had become way too focused on test scores. In fact, it was Seattle educators like Jesse Hagopian and others who led a national push against this. That, you know, students are, in Jesse's words, in the words of his book, more than a score. That you need to be looking holistically at the needs of a child. 

Unfortunately, when you look at Student Outcomes Focused Governance and what the outcomes they are tracking is, it's almost entirely test scores. And it doesn't look at any of the other factors that impact student well-being. And when you aren't, when you're just looking solely at test scores, you're going to not fully understand how a student is doing and learning.

It's also not that hard to juice your test scores to go up. You can do any number of interventions that will provide a temporary boost in a student’s test score. But that doesn't necessarily mean the student has retained what they learned. It doesn't mean that their well-being has been improved. It doesn't mean that they're more likely to graduate. It doesn't mean they're more likely to go to a good college or find a good career in the trades, whatever it is you want them to do. 

So one of the real concerns about Student Outcomes Focused Governance is a singular focus on certain outcomes, mostly test scores, at the exclusion and expense of everything else. I don't think that's how you're going to get a healthy school district, and I don't think that's how you're going to get well-rounded, well-educated students. 

[00:22:40] Liza Rankin: We need something to measure. We need something to know if things are effective or not. What we have available to us right now is SBAC is already required by the state. So that's not a new thing. It makes sense to use that as an available measure until we have something better. 

So what gets measured? I mean, it's completely, it could be anything. It could be anything. What we have in the structure right now is like, there's already state-required tests. So that's a place to start.

[00:23:14] Robert Cruickshank: What has happened is the way the system is structured is the idea is that — and you'll hear Crabill will say this — is that boards need to focus solely on these questions of student outcomes and that everything else is extraneous. And the philosophy here is that if you push everything else aside, including responding to public concerns, the board will be singularly focused on this one piece.

Well, it turns out that things that impact student learning are broad. There are any number of factors that go into this. And when members of the public come to the board, whether they're going to a board member in person, on the playground, or calling them up on the phone, or sending an email, or speaking at a public meeting, they're raising a concern, often, about something that's happening in their school that is getting in the way of students learning.

And so ultimately, if you're going to try to improve student outcomes, which I think everyone agrees we should do, you have to be responsive to the concerns that are being raised because they are all connected. 

[00:24:17] Dawson Nichols: I'm reminded of going to the fish store to purchase some fish for my children. And I was asking how to keep the fish healthy. And the guy at the aquarium store said, that's not your job. Your job is to keep a healthy aquarium. The fish know what to do. They'll do what they do. 

[00:24:35] Liza Rankin: Interesting. 

[00:24:36] Dawson Nichols: Yeah, I thought that that was a lovely metaphor. 

[00:24:40] Liza Rankin: That actually is part of Student Outcomes Focused Governance philosophy is creating conditions for student success. What are the conditions needed for students to be successful. And how do we as a board encourage and cultivate those conditions. 

[00:24:59] Dawson Nichols: Yeah. But there are no measurements possible in a Student Outcomes Focused Governance model that would be having to do with the environment. We want to have outcomes that have to do with the individual student, correct? 

[00:25:15] Liza Rankin: Well, we want to have actual outcomes. I mean, the environment wouldn't be an outcome for students. The environment would be... So you have to figure out how to... you know, what outcomes you want.

[00:25:31] Robert Cruickshank: And I think that it is problematic to prescribe in advance what a board member ought to be doing, what they ought to not be doing, in terms of responding to the public and policies they pursue. One person's pet project is another person's urgent and important matter. 

If the board member is worried about the color of the water fountain or the carpeting in a classroom, okay, we can all agree it's probably a little frivolous. But often what happens is board members come in with an important concern that's been raised on by parents, such as the length of lunch and recess times that students are getting, the curriculum that they're receiving, whether math courses should be taught online or in person, where the bell times are. This has been a big issue over the last seven, eight years in Seattle. And there's all sorts of research to suggest these are pretty important issues. And under Student Outcomes Focused Governance, this is all seen as frivolous and should be pushed to the side. 

And I think that's problematic for two reasons. One is that all of these issues — whether it's bell times, or curriculum or lunch and recess times — all have a direct impact on student learning. 

But also, this is a democracy, and it is up to we, the people, to decide what we think our board members ought to be working on. And if we believe that a board member ought to be working on something that we've told them is important, but they've told us they're going to work on, they should be able to do it.

Ultimately, the board is, under state law, accountable to the electorate for the effective operations of the schools. And that is what should drive this. I think AJ Crabill and others can have their own ideas about what a board should do, and that's fine, that's reasonable, we can talk about that. But the state law is very, very clear here that they are answerable to us. And therefore, what that means is, we have the right to tell the board what we want them to work on and what we don't. 

[00:27:31] AJ Crabill: So, governance just looks different from the superintendent's job, the principal's job, and the teacher's job. Because it's not the same. 

The staff's job is to implement the vision and values of the community. The board's job is to represent the vision and values of the community. 

I think some common misconceptions there is that people think, “Well, I am the community, so you should do the thing I say.” Actually, you as one person are not the community. Like Dawson, you seem like a great person, but you are not the community. The board has to go listen to everybody. They have to listen to you, certainly, but they have to go listen to as many voices across the community to have as representative listening to the communities as they can possibly manage, and then synthesize all that. 

There are too many people in Seattle for everybody in Seattle to all agree on three goals and three guardrails. There's too many people for that. And so the board is always in this position of listening to all the voices and trying to figure out how we harmonize that as much as possible. But that's the job. It's not to listen to the vision and values of a few influential individuals. It's to listen to the visions and values of everyone.

So I think that's a common misconception. Like, well, I went and told them that I wanted this. So, well, but it's not to listen to YOUR vision of values. It's to listen to the vision values of the community. 

[00:28:54] Dawson Nichols: If I could try and steelman the other side of this in a situation like that, I think that what somebody who is an advocate of Student Outcomes Focused Governance would say is, you want to address individual issues as locally as possible.

And so if you're having a difficult time with a teacher, you go to the teacher first, and then you go to the principal, and then you go up that ladder there. But it is a ladder that goes through district personnel, not through the board. Because your problem is the problem of a customer, not the problem of an owner of the district. 

And the board is there to represent our values as owners of this district and to direct the district and the superintendent as to how to navigate the district toward honoring those values. For more individual problems, you need to talk to somebody who is customer-facing, so to speak.

[00:29:59] Robert Cruickshank: Sure, but that is a misunderstanding of how American government should work and has worked. If I have a problem with a pothole on my street not getting filled and I've, you know, called up SDOT numerous times and they still have not filled the pothole, I can go to my city councilman. If I'm having a problem with my grandparent not getting their social security check on time, I can go to my member of Congress.

If there's a systematic problem with the police committing brutality in my own community or against members of my community, I can go to the city council and say, you need to step in. That's how government works, and it's written in our First Amendment that we have the right to petition our government.

And I think that's a right that people don't always recognize exists. When you think of the First Amendment, you're thinking freedom of speech, and it is a form of speech. But it's also a sense that for government to operate effectively in a democracy, the people have to be able to go to their government and say, “this is a problem, you need to address it.”

And that's what you can do with the city council, the state legislature, the congress. A school board is equivalent to that. And one of the things that concerns me about Student Outcomes Focused Governance is it instead treats the board as a non profit board of directors or a corporate board of directors, which has a much more removed role. That's the wrong analogy. They're more like a city council, a state legislature, or a congress. 

Obviously, you should not have to go to a board first when you have an issue. But if you've tried all the channels, you've talked to a teacher, you've talked to a principal, you've gone to district administration and still not getting any response, that is something you absolutely should be able to flag to a board member.

It is their job to ensure that something is done. They shouldn't have to do it themselves, it's not their role. But as people who are responsible to the public for the effective operations of the schools, it is their job. The board's job to ensure that if a problem arises, it gets handled. 

[00:31:58] Dawson Nichols: Can I ask - I know you would like to address this  - the perception that there has been a rollback in terms of communications between the board and the community, which I think you take great umbrage at.

[00:32:13] Liza Rankin: I do take great umbrage at, because again, as a community member, and then as a board director during COVID, there was no formal board engagement and process. There was none. Individual board members would, and I used to do this too, would host kind of area coffees, come meet me at the library, come whatever. But that was, those were individual board directors hearing from self-selecting...

You know, and I used to go to those too as a community member. Same people at all of them. And it was fun and interesting. I'm not saying that there wasn't any value to them. But that wasn't board engagement. There wasn't... there wasn't a agreed upon set of “Here are decisions that the board is going to be making.” “Here's what we want to know as your representatives,” you know, how to, “what we should consider when we're making these decisions,” you know, whatever the case may be. That didn't happen. It was much more at the customer level. It was much more at the, you know, “I'm coming to the board director because I had some issue that I couldn't get solved and I don't know how else to talk to.”

And so, what actually needs to happen is the district itself needs to get much more involved. The district, under the direction of the superintendent, needs to be focused on solving customer issues, in engaging with families and staff about implementation of different things. You know, if a new thing’s going to be be rolled out, talking to the people who will be impacted about how that may or may not work, what ideas they have, et cetera, et cetera. That should be happening a lot more with staff at the central level and at the building level. 

And so what we just did for the next strategic plan is we're responsible as a board for setting the goals. And then we say to the superintendent, “here are the goals, as representative of our community. Here's what we expect.” And then the superintendent is tasked with developing the strategic plan that he believes will achieve those things. 

And so what we just did was launch a listening campaign. We had an online survey that was open to anybody, same 5 questions. We had 5 questions that we asked that had to do with vision and values. So we had an online survey that was open to anybody. 

We had 2 in person public meetings of that were noticed as meetings of the board, one in the north, and one in the south, that were open to anybody. But the presumption was it was gonna be mostly SPS families. And it was. But it was open to anybody.

And then one online that was open to anybody. 

And then we invited various community groups to do engagement with us on these same questions. And did those in pairs, or sometimes threes, mostly pairs, and asked the same five questions and collected answers. And we're in the process now of inputting those all into something, and then we're going to take the data received from the survey and the in-person public meetings and the engagements and look for highest frequency themes.

[00:36:02] Dawson Nichols: I do want to ask just kind of directly, do you feel like you're doing enough engagement and enough outreach in the process right now? 

[00:36:11] Liza Rankin: I mean, I've just spent the last six weeks basically going from one engagement to another. So I feel like we've done a ton. 

[00:36:24] AJ Crabill: The challenge that I think a lot of people struggle with with this work is that governing is just different from management. Is that people I think are accustomed to what is the job of the teacher, the job of the principal, the job of the superintendent. And I think people can identify with those, because they follow the normal hierarchy of employee, manager, employee, manager that a lot of us have experienced. 

But governance is something else. The job of the board is to represent the vision of the values of the community and then to codify the vision and values and make it plainly available so that the, the district staff can then go, you know, implement the vision and values of the community.

But I think most of us have an innate understanding of what the implementation side of this looks like, but don't always have an innate sense of what the representation side of this looks like. And so governance just looks different from the superintendent's job, the principal's job, and the teacher's job, because it's not the same.

[00:37:29] Robert Cruickshank: But the way Student Outcomes Focused Governance is being implemented here in is you see the steady ratcheting in the direction of isolating the district leadership and the board away from the public. And we saw just last week the board deciding they're only gonna have one board meeting a month where they discuss policy and where the public is giving feedback on things on the public agenda.

They usually do two a month and then they had committee meetings which were happening every other week where the public could show up. Now the board has said they'll have some other community engagement process aside from the required monthly meeting, required by the legislature, but it's unclear what that is. And more importantly, it's very clear to me that they are trying to isolate themselves from public feedback as much as possible.

I think that's a huge problem. It is their job to hear from the public, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's just the public talking at them. You still gotta hear what the public has to say. You're an elected official, you took on that job. And part of the thing that comes with the job is the public is going to tell you, because they have the right to petition their government, what they want to tell you.

We have tons of smart, experienced people in every corner of this city who care deeply about their public schools, and that should be seen as a resource. 

[00:38:47] Dawson Nichols: I would love to reiterate something you said earlier, too. I'll put it in my own words, but  - you can do all of these things and be polite and respectful. Remember that these people are all trying to do the right thing. And you might disagree with them. That's okay. But they’re...

[00:39:03] AJ Crabill: You certainly, certainly would... I think most humans will respond better that. I may just be wired differently. I'm perfectly okay with people, expressing their passion in passionate ways. That doesn't hinder me from listening to the vision of values that they're sharing. Even if the way they're sharing it, some people, I wouldn't, but some people might consider it, you know, disrespectful or something like that. 

And so I'm reluctant to add the piece that you added only because I wouldn't want a parent to censor themselves to try to make sure that they optimize for being heard by their elected representatives.

I would rather, as a coach, better train the representative to hear the vision and values, even when it's being shared in a way that you find disrespectful and distasteful. I would rather a parent cuss me out about his concern for the wellbeing of his children and challenging me, than to reflect and say, “I don't know how to say this in a way that sounds kind and so I won't say it at all.” Like I'd rather hear it the wrong way than not hear it at all.

And so if people can be collegial with each other, I think that's fabulous. I, however, I would rather hear voices from people regardless of how it shows up than run the risk of people kind of self censoring. 

And so much of my work with board members is around - listen for the vision of values that are behind what people are saying. And don't get caught up or take it personally, how they might be saying it. Because I've had people tell me powerful, powerful things in deeply hurtful ways. And when I was able to take my emotional needs out of it and really listen to what they were saying, it's like, “That's exactly what I needed to hear for children.” 

And so I hold elected officials to a higher standard. I want the community to do exactly what you said. I think that would be ideal. But I would rather them have their voice heard and not do anything that you described and put my chips down on better training elected officials to hear the vision and values in people's voice. Even when they don't like the way that voice is being used. 

[00:41:32] Dawson Nichols: For a person who's a parent or just a community member who's concerned, who wants their voice to be heard, who wants to take part in the process, um, what should they look toward doing? Yeah. I'll leave it there. 

[00:41:49] AJ Crabill: Yeah. So it's obviously, if you have children, you know, parents are going to do whatever we can to meet the needs of our children. And that's exactly what parents should be doing. We want them to do everything in their power to make sure that children's needs are met. And sometimes that will mean advocating to teachers in ways that teachers may find uncomfortable, advocating to principals in ways that principals may find uncomfortable, or advocating to board members the way the board members may find it uncomfortable. And I don't care about the discomfort. I care about parents being heard. And so that is their job is to advocate on the part of the children. And so that's what I expect every parent to do. 

[00:42:30] Dawson Nichols: Well, I think that's a great place to end it.

I really, really appreciate you sharing your deep knowledge and your time. I'm hoping that it will be helpful for the people who listen and watch. So thanks. 

[00:42:41] AJ Crabill: Well, and I would just say, thank you. I appreciate you reaching out. I'm happy to have this dialogue with anybody, anytime, anywhere. And my schedule is a little bit messy, but, you know, if we can make the time, these are important conversations that ideally better position folks to to help contribute to how do we improve student outcomes for all of our children, but for my passion, particularly for our children furthest from educational justice.

So I feel like, you know, your reaching out has helped facilitate that. So thank you for having me. 

[00:43:13] Dawson Nichols: I think that I can say thank you at this point and just tell you how much I appreciate, um, your willingness to take part in this conversation and to share your ideas with us. Hopefully it will... 

[00:43:24] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I appreciate you putting this together and hosting it and making it possible. 

[00:43:27] Dawson Nichols: Yeah. 

[00:43:28] Liza Rankin: It's a time to stand together and just invest all that we can into being honest with ourselves and each other about what is and isn't working and working together to make it better. 

[00:43:39] Dawson Nichols: Well, yeah, hopefully we can all, you know, start oring in the same direction and make the system as best as it possibly can be for every individual child. That'd be great. 

Yeah. Hey, yeah, I mean, I appreciate your time.

[00:43:50] Liza Rankin: Yeah, I mean, I really believe that if we focus on kids, if we just like focus on kids, it gets easy. 

[00:44:00] Dawson Nichols: Oh, it doesn't get easy. 

[00:44:02] Liza Rankin: It doesn't get easy, but it's like, well, what's best for kids right now? Yeah. It gets clearer. I guess it gets clearer.

[00:44:18] Dawson Nichols: Thanks for listening to this Hall Pass podcast or watching the video cast. The opinions expressed by the interviewees in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Hall Pass. Thanks again for listening.