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.

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Episode Transcript

David Hyde (00:00):
Music.

(00:10):
Hello and welcome to the latestedition of Seattle. Nice. I'm
David Hyde here with politicalconsultant Sandeep Kaushik.

Sandeep Kaushik (00:17):
Hey, David.

David Hyde (00:18):
How's it going?
Sandeep and a special guesttoday, Eric is out this week.
Robert Cruickshank, the parentof three children in Seattle
Public Schools and president ofWashington's paramount duty and
education funding advocacygroup. Hi, Robert Cruickshank,

Robert Cruickshank (00:33):
Hey, David.
Hey Sandeep, thanks for havingme on this week.

Sandeep Kaushik (00:35):
Yeah. Thanks for coming on, Robert.

David Hyde (00:37):
As you might have guessed by that intro to Robert,
we're gonna be talking aboutsomething completely different
for this podcast. This podcast,which is Seattle Public Schools,
education, and what Sandeep hasbeen calling the shit show,
actually, at Seattle PublicSchools. So I just to set this
up right the district is facing,it's like $100 billion plus

(00:57):
deficit talking about closing. Iguess the latest I read was for
public schools to start to tryand fill that gap. Part of the
problem here is that thedistricts faced a drop in
enrollment over the last fiveyears. Fewer students means less
money coming in from the state.
You know, whose paramount dutyas Robert, is going to be

(01:19):
telling us is funding education,and the district's been spending
more as a result of a 2022contract in part that gave
teachers a 14% pay raise overthree years. But let's break
this down, like starting, Iguess, with the latest about
school closures. What's thedistrict talk talking about? I

(01:39):
mean, this is what's really beenin the news, and how are parents
responding to that Robert?

Robert Cruickshank (01:45):
yeah, so back in September, the district
shocked almost everybody, exceptthose of us who have been
watching fairly closely, byexplaining that they are going
to close 21 or 17 schools. Theyput out two lists, and on those
lists in September included allof the k8 schools, all of the
option schools, most of thealternative schools in the
district. And this, this is whatgot parents riled up and paying

(02:09):
attention, though, even thosewho had not been paying really
close attention to what'shappening in Seattle Public
Schools, that it got the generalpublic outraged, got state
legislators outraged. CityCouncil members were outraged.
And a few weeks later, thesuperintendent came back and
said, Okay, we've heard you.
We're only going to close fiveschools as an initial set with
words he used in the next schoolyear, 2025, 26 and yesterday, he

(02:31):
came out and said, Actually,we're just going to close four
next year. Those will be NorthBeach in the Northeast
neighborhood, Sacajawea in theNortheast Seattle, Maple Leaf
neighborhood, Stevens, which isnear Capitol Hill, and Santa slo
which is in the Delridge part ofWest Seattle. But those are four
schools that they are slating toclose next year. Both the

(02:53):
Superintendent and the BoardPresident have said they still
very much want to close more andthey're planning to come back
with a plan in June for longterm fiscal stability. They say
that is highly likely to includemore closures in coming years.
And this is, I think, shown aspotlight for a lot of parents
on a wider set of problems andconcerns that are at the

(03:13):
district a budget deficit, whichhas led to cuts in large class
sizes and other things that wecan get into. But it has
generally led most of the peoplein the city to think that
there's a big crisis at ourpublic schools. And I would
certainly agree.

David Hyde (03:28):
Before we go to Sandeep. I mean, they're facing
$100 million plus budgetdeficit. They've closed schools
and then reopened them in thepast. So you know, what's the
big deal? I mean, it sucks ifyour kid goes to North Beach
elementary or whatever, butlike, why shouldn't they be
closing schools to solve thatproblem?

Robert Cruickshank (03:46):
Well, there are a couple reasons. First, it
doesn't actually save very muchmoney. Closing four schools will
save them maybe $5 millionthey're still going to have
nearly 90 million to cut. Sothat's a drop in the bucket. It
causes enormous disruption, notjust at the four that close, but
at the other four schools thatreceive those students are going
to have a huge influx of newkids and disrupt everything

(04:08):
else. But the big thing thatwe've seen is that around the
country, different schooldistricts have attempted to
handle either low studentoutcomes or budget problems by
closing a whole swath ofschools. Chicago being the most
notorious example, when theyclosed 50 schools in 2013 and
the evidence there is reallyclear that this does real damage

(04:28):
to student learning and studentoutcomes. It does real damage to
student well being, and itrarely ever produces real
savings. I mean, you have somuch costs of actually making
the transition happen, you haveto 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 thinkthe big thing that we're seeing
is that this is a maybe a dropin the bucket in a larger

(04:51):
deficit, but it's also, I thinkthe bigger thing parents are
flagging is that this breakstrust. You have trust that you
can send your kid to. The localpublic school, it's going to be
there for you. But when thedistrict came out and said,
We're going to close 20 schools,and now they're starting with
four, it's clear that there's alarger effort to close a huge
number of schools in the city,and that makes people concerned

(05:15):
that the public schools will notbe there for their kid. And I
think that's the existentialissue that's being flagged here.

David Hyde (05:20):
Sandeep, your kids are done with Seattle Public
Schools. What do you care?

Sandeep Kaushik (05:23):
Yeah, right. My son just graduated from Lincoln
and start, you know, in thesummer, and started in the fall.
So but I had two kids that wentthrough the Seattle Public
Schools. My daughter graduatedfrom Ballard a couple of years
ago, but going through thatexperience as a parent myself,
over the last few years, I'vebeen growing increasingly
alarmed at what I was seeinghappening in terms of the

(05:47):
leadership of the Seattle PublicSchools. And there are, as we
teed up at the beginning ofthis, there are multiple
problems facing facing thedistrict. I think, to be fair to
the district, a significant partof the budget deficit we can get
into this, you know, maybe isn'ttheir fault or their
responsibility. There's a state,you know, component here too.

(06:08):
But nonetheless, I've seen aseries of really bat shit
leadership decision, I think, Ithink, you know,
counterproductive, selfdestructive leadership decisions
coming out of the Seattleschools in recent years,
culminating in the schoolclosure, stuff that looks to me
like they're driven the schooldistrict into crisis. And are,

(06:30):
you know, driving our schoolsinto the ground?

David Hyde (06:32):
Okay, what's just one of them? And then let's hear
Robert respond to that, what'sone of those? And this is a
technical term, right? Bat shit,leadership decisions?

Sandeep Kaushik (06:43):
Absolutely, that is a technical term. I
think so. One that really got myattention early on was when the
previous superintendent,Superintendent Juneau, described
the city's Gifted and Talentedprogram, the school's Gifted and
Talented program as quote,unquote, educational apartheid,
and basically called for itselimination back then. This was

(07:05):
a number of years ago. The onlyreason it didn't, they didn't
get rid of it back then wasbecause there was a group of of
parents of color who had beenput on a task force to kind of
look at, you know, how do wedeal with equity issues, and how
do we kind of kind of improveopportunities for for black and
brown children in the districtwho objected to clothing they

(07:27):
were like, we didn't want toclose this program. We just want
to figure out ways to get moreblack and brown kids to get the
benefit of those sorts of goodand talented programs. But
nonetheless, so it didn't happenimmediately, but nonetheless,
they've sort of pushed forwardand gotten rid of it. And I do
think that's been a significantunder acknowledged factor in the
enrollment declines at theSeattle school district. You

(07:48):
know that happened largelyduring COVID and we're sort of
masked by that, and which isalso, of course, leading to the
cascading budget deficit. And wejust seem to be in a race to the
bottom here. And we can talkabout why getting rid of a
gifted and talent program, whatthe justification? For it is,
and why I think it's a idioticjustification and
counterproductive. But that'ssomething that immediately

(08:09):
caught my attention when itstarted happening.

Robert Cruickshank (08:11):
I think that that's part of the challenge
that SPS is facing. Is, youknow, most parents don't have
their kids in the highly capableprogram, most parents aren't
looking to put their kids there.
Some do. But there is a largerquestion that the attempt to
close that program raises, whichis, does the district care about
the academic achievement oftheir kids? Does the district
want to provide different typesof education to the kids? And

(08:33):
this is something I hear fromparents, which is that they want
to know that the district willtreat their kid as a individual
child, and not as a widget thatis like everyone else. And there
does seem to be a push towards aone size fits all educational
model. And this is the thingthat I hear from parents that
raises concerns. So when thedistrict last month in
September, proposed eliminatingall the options schools which

(08:56):
have some sort of differentcurriculum and different
approaches that raise a lot offlags to parents that the
district does want a one sizefits all thing. So option
schools in Seattle have beenaround for at least 50 years,
and these are schools like tops,Nova, Licton Springs, Thornton
Creek, Hazel Wolf suddenlystarted as like alternative
program number one was a namegiven to one of these in the

(09:18):
early 70s. And this is, youknow, coming out of the 60s and
70s, and people wantedalternative curriculum, a little
bit of hippie, little bit ofsocial justice. We want to do
things a little differently, andthat resonated with people. And
what the district found in the70s and 80s, it was the Boeing
bust and people fleeing the cityfor suburbs, was that this helps
improve enrollment. Thisprovides a different set of

(09:41):
options. I'll give you just aquick 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 toget your fifth grader into one
of these k8 option schools,because he might have a better
experience there. Oh, but theymight close. Was it? And she
just shook her head. So there'sa recognition that the having

(10:02):
different options out there fordifferent kids helps, because
again, not all children are thesame, and these programs have
been around for 50 years, butthere has been a push from
district leadership to try tohomogenize the offerings that
they're putting out there, and Ithink that that alarms families
pretty fundamentally, even ifyou're not looking to ever get
your kid in a highly capableprogram.

David Hyde (10:24):
Let me, let me rewind a little bit here,
because we're talking aboutenrollment declines. I remember
reading about this in 2022 Asianfamilies, especially fleeing the
district. This was also duringCOVID. There's a lot going on.
It's kind of hard to figure thatstuff out. So what did both of

(10:44):
you think about these enrollmentdeclines? 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 (10:51):
Yeah, we don't know for sure. The state
legislature essentially orderedthe district to conduct an
enrollment study and gave themmoney to do an enrollment study
to try to answer this. But thereare a few things we do know for
sure, most of the declinehappened in 2020 and 2021 since
2022 enrollment has been prettyflat. In fact, as Danny West
neat found and wrote about thisweek, as well as Albert Wong,

(11:12):
another parent who's active,enrollment has started to grow
at Seattle Public Schools veryslowly, but it is starting to
pick up, especially preschooland kindergarten. So we, while
we don't know for sure preciselywhy enrollment has declined, we
can hear from parents who haveleft, and I know some parents
who have left, that is a mix ofthings. Some people got priced
out. Some people wanted theirkids back in person before the

(11:36):
district opened up in person,and some people were alarmed at
Elimination of differentofferings for their kids.
Hopefully that study sheds fulllight on it, but to me, the big
takeaway right now is that SPSSenrollment is starting to pick
back up. So why would you closea bunch of schools and take away
a bunch of programs when youmight wind up knee capping that

(11:56):
enrollment growth, which shouldbe welcomed.

Sandeep Kaushik (11:58):
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 thesehuge enrollment declines, right?
They, they very, not verypublicly, because they didn't

(12:19):
talk about it. But they, theyvery conspicuously, like, you
know, chose not to like, sort oflike, hey, let's ask. Let's do
exit interviews. Let's askparents, why are they taking
their kids out of the publicschools? What's going on?

Robert Cruickshank (12:34):
I mean, there's very much an attitude
of, you know, if you don't likeit, you can go private,

Sandeep Kaushik (12:38):
yeah. And in fact, this will get to a sort of
the deeper points about what Ithink is wrong here with the
thinking of SBS leadership. ButI actually think there is an
attitude among some of theleading members of the school
board that, hey, if the kind ofmore affluent, you know,
disproportionately White orAsian families and kids depart

(13:00):
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 andbrown children you know, who are
now going to be better servedyou know, of you and your fancy
schmancy programs and gifted andtalented stuff, you know, take
that to private schoolmotherfucker and you know, and,

(13:21):
and we'll focus on the kids thatmatter, right? I think that is.

David Hyde (13:25):
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 (13:32):
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 youactually look at studies of
public schools and what worksand what doesn't, socio economic
diversity in public schools is akey variable for better student

(13:54):
performance. So what the studiesshow is that when you have you
know, white flight or affluentflight from public school
districts, right? When theschools become kind of
resegregated, essentially, andand the places where it's only
the kind of poor and minoritykids who are left, those kids
don't do better. It isn't likethere's, oh, we're well

(14:17):
resourced now for these kids,those schools, those kids, do
worse, everyone loses, rightwhen we have that kind of
bifurcation that happens ineducation, where, where there's
a private system for those whocan afford it, and the and the
kids who are left behind, youknow, have to do this sort of

(14:37):
one size fits all. Model, thedata couldn't be clearer that
that is a bad outcome. It leadsto bad results for everybody,
right? And so this notion drivesme insane. It makes me really
pissed off, because I thinkthey're doing a huge disservice
to the kids that that some ofthese school board members, I
think very rightfully want tohelp and lift up by adopting

Robert Cruickshank (14:59):
Yes, yeah.
And I'm happy to come at thisthese sorts of attitudes.
from the left wing perspective.

David Hyde (15:03):
Right. Erica's not here. This is why you're people
should realize that Robert is along time kind of progressive
activist, oh yeah,transportation and other issues.
He's not just an educationadvocate.

Robert Cruickshank (15:13):
I come this from the left. And, you know, I
believe in Medicare for all. Ibelieve in universal health
care. I believe everyone shouldbe able to get shocking their
health care. You know the wayyou get it in Canada or the UK,
and we have that for publiceducation right now. We have
education for all anyone cansend their kids to the public

(15:33):
system, whether you're rich orpoor, whatever your background
is, and the idea is that you'regoing to get your need met
there, just as we on the leftwant that for healthcare, and we
believe this is an inherentlygood thing. You want everyone in
that system, because that's howeveryone thrives. We're all
pulling together, working in theright direction. And who pays
for it? Well, that's where wehave progressive taxation,

(15:54):
right? Yeah, some wealthy childcan go to a public school.
That's great. We love that, andtheir parents are going to pay
more for it. If you talk topeople in the UK or Canada and
talk about bringing in privatehealthcare options, they're dead
set against it, because theybelieve that erodes the public
system. Same thing witheducation, when you tell
parents, oh, just go private.
Pay for it privately, you'reeroding the public system. You

(16:15):
see that you start introducingthings like means testing and
all sorts of things when youdon't have universality, when
everyone is not in and pullingtogether, public goods and
public programs fall apart. Soyou can make that argument from
the left. You can also makethese similar argument that you
know, if you want people to beeducated the way Seattle wants
them educated, not the way thatmoms for Liberty wants them

(16:38):
educated, you got to have peoplein the public system learn the
values we want them to learn.
You, if you say to people, goprivate, you know, then you're
have a civic problem on yourhands, too.

Sandeep Kaushik (16:50):
Yeah, just to, just to add on to that, because
I, I think this is an argumentthat should be made from the
left. In fact, part of whatpisses me off is I'm hearing
people, ostensibly on the left,making a kind of opposite
argument, and that drives mecrazy, right? But 10 years ago,
I did the, I did the campaignfor the pilot for the Seattle,
you know, high quality preschoolprogram, right? Which is a,

(17:11):
which is a, a really successfulprogram to create a public
preschool, subsidized or freefor lower income kids in the
city of Seattle to help sort ofaddress what we find from the
research is that by the timekids get to kindergarten, some
kids are already behind, right?
Some kids have had all thebenefits of a two parent
household, and, you know,they've gone to preschool and

(17:35):
have gotten all this sort of prepublic school educational
development, and a lot of poorand minority kids don't have
that and sort of start out fromthe get go with two strikes
against them educationally. Sothat's what the purpose of that,
that that public preschoolprogram was to help create the
situation entering the publicschools that would actually

(17:58):
address the persistentopportunity and achievement gap
that we've seen in the Seattleschools. And great program,
super successful. But as pullingthat program together, they
researched what was happening inother other cities that were
doing similar programs, andBoston was a classic example.
They had a very successfulprogram that they'd set up, and
what they had found is it wasn'tsuccessful at the beginning,

(18:21):
because it was limited primarilyto poor kids, right? And once
they opened it up and made thosethose preschool classrooms,
socio economically diverse, whatthey found was it helped all of
the kids at every income leveldid better in those preschool
classrooms. And the same thingis shown in public education.

(18:41):
You know, elementary schooleducation as well. That
socioeconomic diversity, thatinterplay of people of different
races and circumstances andchildren of different is good
for all of those kids, right?

David Hyde (18:56):
Isn't that an argument then, Sandeep though,
against having gifted andtalented programs like you know,
wouldn't it's not. Yeah, maybeunderperforming kids do a little
bit better to have mainstreamingwhat, I don't know what you call
it, but like everybody in thesame classroom.

Sandeep Kaushik (19:10):
I think if you're Liza Rankin and you're
the school board president, thatis, I think, the thing, or Evan
Briggs, or some of the folks onthe on the school board right
now, I think that is what theythink they're saying, not just
the Gifted and Talented program,but Robert was talking about the
option schools. These schoolsare disproportionately white,
right? And they'redisproportionately parents, you

(19:31):
know, families coming from moreaffluent circumstances, right?
So those are programs that aretaking resources away from the
kids that we want to help.
That's the thinking. But no, Idon't think that's the right way
to think about it. I do thinkthere's a lot more we should be
doing to make sure that theseprograms, whether they're the
option schools are gifted andtalented, language immersion,
what have you is more, you know,socio economically and racially

(19:56):
and. Diverse, right? And thereare things we can do to bring
more black and brown childreninto programs like like HCC,
right? So that, so that gets abenefit, right? Now, you know,
there are barriers for poorkids, and you know they're fair.
There may be language barriers,cultural barriers, right? That,
that that keep them fromapplying and getting their kids

(20:20):
into these programs, so weshould be doing the hard work of
identifying those kids andgetting them into the programs,
along with the more affluentparents who are getting their
own kids in, right, so thateverybody benefits, right?

Robert Cruickshank (20:36):
I think that's right. And I think this
is where, again, you if, if aprogressive or a Seattleite is
listening to this and doesn'treally have kids in the system
yet and doesn't understandeducation. You can continue to
make the analogy to healthcarewhen we want universal
healthcare, Medicare for all.
We're not saying people only geta hospital visit and a yearly
wellness check. We're saying youget to go see a specialist. You

(20:57):
get to go have whatever needyou're bringing to the table met
through the public system. Samething with education. There are
highly capable children who livein Southeast Seattle, who are
black, who are brown, who areimmigrants. This is not limited
to affluence, but if you areaffluent, it is easier to get
that identified presented. Youhave an easier way to work the

(21:19):
system. So the district has twooptions here. One is to reflect
that and address that, and doactual inclusion, do actual
equity work, which is to figureout how you get kids from these
lower income communities intothese programs, because they
need them too, while alsoproviding the information, the
resource they need for their

David Hyde (21:39):
And you know, if you are progressive and you're
neighborhood schoo.
listening to this, and don'thave kids in the system, and
say, I don't really care aboutschool 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 aboutyou don't care about equity at
all, if you don't care aboutwhat's being talked about today.

(22:00):
I mean, seriously, like, it'samazing in this town, how much
people care about the next mayorand talk about equity and don't
pay any attention to the publicschool system. Which Where do
you think fucking equityhappens? Yeah, so much. So
depressing.

Robert Cruickshank (22:14):
We talk about a school to prison
pipeline for a reason. You know

David Hyde (22:17):
It is just so depressing. People who tell me
they don't care about schoolboard elections or schools,
you're not ethical. You're notethical, if that's your
attitude,

Robert Cruickshank (22:26):
well, people are going to start paying
attention. You know, this, thiswhole thing about closing
schools has got people'sattention. Finally, thank God.

David Hyde (22:34):
Well, mostly parents, though, frankly, like,
if you don't have kids in theschools, what? Yeah. And, you
know, look, listen to thesenumbers in 2022, around three
quarters of Washington eighthgraders were not proficient in
math. You know, these are notpeople who are going to be like,
jumping up and getting jobs atMicrosoft and Amazon when they
graduate. Three quarters ofWashington students. I don't
know what those numbers are forSeattle Public Schools, but I

(22:55):
wanted to kind of turn it to thekind of question about
performance, because you're kindof hinting at that. But you
know, of course, a lot of thishas to do with COVID and blah,
blah, blah, but help meunderstand kind of where we are
in terms of performance inSeattle Public Schools, and how
much attention that's gettingfrom this school district and
the school board

Robert Cruickshank (23:14):
Seattle Public Schools. They got a
presentation this week at theboard meeting, which shows that
among peer districts, when youcompare big city districts to
big city districts to big citydistricts, Seattle to like
Cleveland, Portland, SanFrancisco, Seattle does better,
generally speaking, in terms of,like, student performance on
tests. Seattle, you talk to mostparents, they think their
schools are pretty good. Theythink they're getting a decent

(23:35):
education, but there's a bigdivide. There's a gap, you know,
people call it the opportunitygap. People call it the equity
gap, whatever you want to callit. It's students of color,
especially low income students.
And in fact, it is the thingthat the consultants told the
district on Wednesday of thisweek, that it's really income
more than race that drives thedivides where students are
falling behind. They tend to belower income. And this is not

(23:56):
something that should surpriseanybody. This is the story of
America under capitalism, right,that lower income people get
left behind. Now, Seattle likesto think of itself as a
progressive city, and one thingswe say we care about is social
justice and racial justice. Thatshould mean we're going to try
to figure out how to lift upeverybody, especially those
students, who aren't gettingtheir needs met. And I think
we're about to see a big debatein the city again. We've seen it

(24:18):
time and again the last 20years, 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 dowell on high stakes tests, or
whether we're trying to dosomething broader and more
comprehensive in terms ofeducating these kids. But you're
not going to get there if youtry to treat students as widgets
and give them a one size fitsall education, which is the
district really wants to begoing,

Sandeep Kaushik (24:42):
Yeah, and I think we're getting kind of
fundamentally to the heart ofthe debate that's happening,
right? That's finally startingto happen, the long overdue
debate, I think, because for along time, and we should get
into this too, I think part ofthe frustration with the
district that I have, and I knowRobert shares this, is that, um.
So they obscured all of theseproblems between behind a kind

(25:05):
of almost impenetrable wall ofbullshit spin and happy talk for
years. I mean, they've beencooking the school closure stuff
for several years, right, whilebasically publicly not
acknowledging that, right, andkind of saying, oh, everything's
great, and we're gonna havethese meetings and talk about
how we're gonna have wellresourced schools and stuff as

(25:25):
they're sort of teaming all thisstuff. So anyway, there hasn't
been the kind of openconversation and debate, like
we're or like we're having nowabout what's going on with our
schools and until very recently.
So that's one big, bigfrustration, but, but, but I
want to get to, get to, just tofinish the point I was making,
we're getting to the heart ofthe argument, which is we're
having a debate in the cityabout what equity is, right?
What do we mean when we say wewant equity right? You know,

(25:50):
whether it's in our schools orwherever, and it turns out there
are big differences in howpeople are conceiving of this
concept of equity when it comesto our schools that is leading,
I think the people running ithave a very wrong headed concept
of equity that is leading tovery bad places that is not
going to help black and brownkids.

David Hyde (26:13):
Let me, let me, let me, let me reframe it by asking
it this way. Then starting withRobert, which is, is the, is the
fundamental problem facingpublic schools? Is it a money
problem?

Robert Cruickshank (26:25):
Yes.

David Hyde (26:26):
We're seeing school closures. So from your
perspective, you're a you're aneducation at, you know, funding
advocacy person, that's yourjob. But like, is this
fundamentally a money problem?

Robert Cruickshank (26:36):
Absolutely, if you are telling someone that
they need to renovate theirhouse, 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 dothe renovation. If we're looking
at a Seattle Public Schoolsystem where we recognize that
some kids are doing well, butothers aren't, and we're saying
all right now we've got work todo, real work to do to lift up
those kids who haven't beengetting the education they

(26:59):
deserve, yet you're going tohave to do it with less money.
That's a problem. That's where,again, we come at this from a
progressive perspective. Webelieve that taxing wealthy
people and taxing big businessesto shower money on our schools
will help with this. Itabsolutely does. That's why the
Constitution of the State ofWashington says not only that,
it's the paramount duty of thelegislature to fund education.

(27:21):
They use the word ample saysample provision for public
education, and that was writtenin 1889 they know what the word
ample means. It's more than justbarely enough, it's substantial
amounts of resources, so thatall these schools have
everything they need to educatethe kids, and they aren't
scrimping and trying to scrapeby.

Sandeep Kaushik (27:41):
Robert is making this argument, right? And
Robert and I have talked aboutthis where, where Robert sees a
real problem, and in some of thebad thinking that's driving the
problems we're seeing in ourschools in Seattle, rooted in a
kind of concepts of Neo liberalausterity, right? And, and, and
that there, there's a lack offunding and, I think there is

(28:01):
some real truth to that. Andjust

David Hyde (28:05):
What is Neo liberal austerity?

Robert Cruickshank (28:07):
I mean, it's basically the idea that, you
know, there's not enough moneyto go around. So rather than
take it from the people who havethe money, the wealthy and the
big corporations, we just moveit around within the system.
Let's cut somewhere else and putthat money into the schools who
need it the most. And that is,to me, absurd and unnecessary,

Sandeep Kaushik (28:29):
Yeah And just, you know, I think there's
Robert's obviously been focusedin a lot of his advocacy work on
Olympia, right? And on oneducation funding coming out of
Olympia, and just for contextfor 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

(28:51):
the constitutional provision inWashington state that requires
the state to amply fundeducation. So the the court, I
think it was in, was it in 2012was it all the way back in 2012
the Washington State SupremeCourt found the state to be
violating the Constitution byunderfunding education,
essentially. And so there was aseries of downstream impacts of

(29:15):
the McCleary decision, and whatthe legislature came up with to
resolve this constitutionalviolation was that they said, we
are going to put more Olympiamoney, state money, into
education. But the flip side ofthat was that they somewhat
further restricted the abilityof local jurisdictions to raise
their own local levies andmoney, because there was a gap

(29:35):
between rich districts, youknow, raising more money, and
poor districts raising moremoney, right? So just to finish
the point here, that led to somevery good results for a while.
Right in 2019 we peaked at morethan 50% of the state budget,
slightly more than 50% of thestate budget going to education.
But in the subsequent fiveyears, that has now slipped down

(29:57):
to what 42 43% of. Percent ofthe state budget is going to
education. So I think Robert'spoint that there has been a
disinvestment in Olympia, or alack of prioritization in
Olympia, is a sound one, right?
I mean, and it's not justdistricts in Seattle that are
feeling this. We have districtsall around the state that are
facing budget shortfalls andbudget crises because they're,

(30:19):
they're, they're

Robert Cruickshank (30:24):
and I to on that point, on Wednesday night,
there was an enormous Town Hallup in Edmonds. Three different
school districts got together.
There were nearly 1000 peoplepacked into the gym of Edmonds
Woodway High School to talkabout what they called the
education funding crisis. Andthey had eight state legislators
there to hear from the publicabout how bad things have
gotten, talking about enormousclass sizes. Same thing we're

(30:45):
seeing here in Seattle, wherestudents in some middle and high
school classes are seeingclasses of over 40 kids per
teacher, where they're having tolay 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 theexacerbation of a district

(31:06):
leadership, both in thesuperintendent's office and the
majority of the board that areresponding to this in all the
wrong ways. Going down what Iwould say is a fairly Neo
liberal path of we're going tomake cuts, and we're going to
try to, you know, just focus ona couple people the expense of
everybody else, and call itgood, not realizing that's going

(31:26):
to crash the entire system.

David Hyde (31:28):
Robert, I mean, Democrats have a trifecta in
Olympia. I can't remember howclose to or exceeding a super
majority we are right now. Butyou know, this isn't a
Republican neoliberal austerityproblem. So, I mean, are you
saying they should cut otherprogressive good things, or, you
know, like, you know, where'sthat money going to come from?

Robert Cruickshank (31:49):
I mean, the money comes from the pockets of
Washington's wealthiest peopleand wealthiest corporations. You
know, again, the Seattle Timeshad a poll this week that showed
66% of people think we need toput $3 billion more a year into
our public schools, and 65% ofvoters said, take it by taxing
the rich. That's consistent.
That's not a new finding we'veseen over the last several

(32:11):
years.

David Hyde (32:12):
But is it? Is it an allocation problem? In other
words, Sandeep saying it's only42 or 43% of the budget. Should
it be over 50% if that's thecase, no matter how big the
budget is it's going to befunding education at the expense
of other things which are alwaysgoing to be underfunded, like
untreated mental health. Youknow, just go down the list.

Robert Cruickshank (32:31):
I think the argument I have is that you need
to fund all those things becauseall those things affect
education. Mental health affectseducation. Health care affects
education. Housing affectseducation. If a child or their
family isn't housed, isn't beingfed, isn't getting other needs
met that will show up in theirperformance in the classroom. So
back during the McClearydiscussion about how the

(32:51):
legislature was going to solveit, Republicans had a mantra of
fund education first they wantedto take it out of other
priorities. And our argumentwas, No, that's a problem,
because that's going to hurtstudents too. You got to bring
new money to the table. So we'renot, you know, pitting everybody
against each other. That's theprogressive answer. The
progressive solution here is,there's a lot of money in the

(33:12):
state. Washington has a veryhigh GDP we're one of the
highest GDPs anywhere in thecountry. There's a lot of money
in these big corporations andwealthy billionaires that can be
brought to bear on thissituation.

Sandeep Kaushik (33:24):
And one thing that we should note that has
been a positive development inrecent years in Olympia is that,
you know, this was a 10 yearproject right of progressives in
Olympia to pass a capital gainstax, which they finally
successfully did. And I forget21 or 22 right? And dedicated
that money to education andearly learning funding and

(33:47):
school construction funding,essentially. And it's raising an
enormous, you know, significantamount of money, right? It was
$900 million in its first yearfrom a very small number of
extremely wealthy people thatgoes into the education, so
that's a big win now that now Iand just a note here, I'm

(34:08):
directly involved in this fight,but there's an initiative on the
ballot right now to repeal thatcapital gains tax, right? And
I'm on the no side of that,trying to stop it. I'm
optimistic that we will defeatthis effort to repeal the
capital gains tax, but therehave been some efforts in
Olympia right, to try to go gofarther in terms of progressive
taxation. That capital gains taxwas a big win, you know, a kind

(34:31):
of signature win forprogressives in Olympia in in
recent years. But I think,Robert, you're saying they're
just more that needs to happenthere. I'm my point is, I don't
know about how much moretaxation we need out of Olympia.
Those are political battles, butI do know, whatever the funding
pie is, I don't think educationis getting enough. You know, I

(34:52):
think the 2019, levels ofprioritizing education ought to
be the standard in a. To be agoing forward, even if that does
lead to some cut somewhere else,right? That's what our
Constitution mandates.

David Hyde (35:05):
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 firststarted reporting in New York
state. That's the first thingour lawmaker gave me a civic
quiz. What's the paramount dutyof state government? I was like,
I don't know. It's like,education. So, I mean, it wasn't
always, but it became so isSeattle spending less per pupil

(35:29):
compared to other comparablecities? Is Washington spending
less per pupil compared to othercomparable states?

Robert Cruickshank (35:34):
Yes

David Hyde (35:35):
where we're seeing a gap in performance, where we see
that money pay off

Robert Cruickshank (35:39):
We are. I mean, we spend, you know,
depending on the year you'relooking at, this decade,
anywhere between 15 and 18,000per student in Washington State.
You look at you mentioned NewYork, those New York New Jersey
are spending around 20,000 perstudent. Massachusetts, we've
talked about Boston a few times,spends around $25,000 per
student. So New England spendsquite a lot more per student on

(36:04):
public education, whereasWashington just doesn't. And you
know, I've talked to parents whocome from other states. There's
one parent at that meeting inEdmonds on Wednesday who said,
I'm from Utah, and I came fromUtah, where we have really
underfunded schools. And Ithought, finally, I'm in a blue
state on the West Coast, my kidsare going to have great schools
with tons of resources, and shewas shocked to find that we

(36:24):
didn't have that.

David Hyde (36:25):
Should the district have approved the last contract
knowing that it was going tolead to this budget deficit in
school closures, 14% increaseover three years for teachers.
Sounds good to me. I mean, itseems like our teachers
definitely deserve it. The costof living has gone up. I did
some reporting on that. At thetime, there was teachers had a

(36:45):
real case for that. I know,Robert, you're gonna say yes,
but I mean, didn't thatinevitably lead to this under
the circumstances?

Robert Cruickshank (36:53):
No, this is a great example of what
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez callsausterity mindset and how we
need to get out of that. And shetalked about that austerity
thinking versus abundancethinking. She talked about that
after coming home from a townhall in the Bronx about
education, and talked aboutthese very similar issues, you

(37:13):
know, SPS, if you don't approvea contract that pays teachers
well in a very high cost ofliving city, you lose teachers.
There was one day, I think itwas 2021 where they had to
cancel classes the day afterVeterans Day because too many
teachers had called out sick.
They didn't have enough teachersto cover the class. So if you
don't give teachers a goodcontract, you will have a
teacher shortage, and then thegood teachers you do have will

(37:35):
just leave for other districtsbecause they're not getting paid
well.

David Hyde (37:39):
Is that evidence based? I mean, in other words,
like in Boston, are teachersmaking a lot more than teachers
in Seattle, for example, orcomparable expensive cities.
That's what I'm getting at

Robert Cruickshank (37:51):
I haven't looked at the numbers, but they
get paid decently in the NewEngland states, if you go to the
Sun Belt, states that aregoverned by Republicans, they
don't. Texas has huge problemswith teacher retention,
especially even in the bluecities like Austin, Dallas or
Houston.

Sandeep Kaushik (38:05):
And to bring it back to the teacher contract,
because I've been trying tofigure out what I think about
about the teacher contract. Andso last night, I moderated a
panel discussion with threeformer school board members at
folio, and Robert was there andmade some comments, but vivid
song, right? Who was recently onthe school board was one of the
panelists. And I think she madea really, really, I think,
important point that relates tothe school contract. What she

(38:29):
said, what she points out, isthat Seattle's deficit nearly
$100 million deficit that theschool district is facing right
now, the vast majority of thatdeficit is rooted in the cost of
special education, um, thatthere's been a really
significant underfunding ofSpecial Education coming out of

(38:50):
Olympia, and that districts arehaving to, at the local level,
make up for the cost of thateducation. But this also ties in
the contract, because I wastalking with vivid and after the
after the panel was was over,and the problem with the
contract was less about theteacher pay increases, which I
agree with. I think you knowthat Robert saying these things

(39:12):
are important in terms of ofrecruiting and retaining good
teachers and having a strong andstable educational system, but
there are also lots of mandatesbuilt into that contract related
to staffing for special ed stuffin the Seattle schools. And

(39:33):
frankly, that increased staffingis what's been driving a lot of
the cost deficit, because it'snot being compensated from
Olympia, and yet, when you lookat the results in the classroom
for special ed, it's not goingwell, right? So those mandates
have not worked to deliver thekind of results we want to make

(39:53):
sure that kids who have specialneeds are actually getting the
best possible education. You canprovide them,

David Hyde (40:00):
But, cutting, cutting those positions, how's
that going to help? I mean, talkto teachers about it.

Sandeep Kaushik (40:05):
Well, I think there are, I think there are
different. And I'm not an experton this, but, but, but, but
talking to Vivian and otherfolks 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 abigger push in Olympia, you
know, Olympia, to get morefunding for this. But there are

(40:27):
other approaches to special edthat might be less costly and
not involve the kind of staffingmandates of assistance in
classrooms and stuff like that,but would produce better
results, and that's something weought to be looking at. Minimum

Robert Cruickshank (40:41):
staffing ratios are pretty common demand
of unions, and a state that isgoverned, as David mentioned by
Democrats, who have strongmajorities in Olympia, should be
able to provide the funding sothat, you know there's minimum
staffing so that specialeducation is properly delivered
and covered. I think there is adesire at the district level to

(41:02):
just jam this all on teachersand tell teachers, you have so
many mandates and you're goingto have to cover it. You have to
cover it all in a class of 40kids. That doesn't work, and
that's that's a bad educationthat your kids get, because your
kid's not going to get theindividualized attention that
they would get in a class of 20kids.

David Hyde (41:18):
You both broadly agree and it just seems like
it's a fact that underfunding isis one of the problems, from the
state level right now. But I, asI understand it, there's also
some disagreement here over rootcauses, and let's go to Sandeep
for that, since he's the sort ofHellion on this issue.

Sandeep Kaushik (41:41):
Well, I agree with Robert that there's a
there's a there's a fundingproblem, and part of the
significant part, even of the ofthe city's budget deficit, the
answer to that is found, oughtto be found in Olympia, right?
Whether it's increasing taxes oror or changing how we divide up
the existing pie. That's alltrue. That said, I do think a

(42:06):
lot of the problems that theSeattle school district are
facing right now are very muchdue to the current leadership of
the district right and I thinkthe fundamental problem there is
not neoliberal austerity, as as,as Robert points out, but to put
it bluntly, there's almost akind of desire to re segregate

(42:27):
Seattle schools coming fromcertain people who have a, I
think, a very misconceivednotion of equity. So what I'm
seeing is kind of wokey runamok, right into some kind of
weird ideological cul de sacthat is leading people to blind
themselves to the consequencesof the leadership decisions that
they're making, which is leadingto disenrollment and loss of

(42:50):
funding and the loss of optionsand choices for families. And
that's rooted in, as I said thisdebate we're having about what
equity actually is, if you havethis notion of, you know, the
shortcut to equity is to just,you know, reduce standards and

(43:11):
lower choices for everybody, andvoila, like, if everybody's
performing at the same level,like, you haven't helped
anybody, but you've achievedthat. 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 thedecision making consistently
from the cabal of folks that areleading the Seattle Public
Schools. And so I think when youadd that layer that onto the

(43:33):
fiscal problems, you know, youget this, you know, what was the
technical term, seriously fuckedup situation,

Robert Cruickshank (43:42):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't disagree with
you at the end there, I thinkthat what this district
leadership has produced is verymuch that race to the bottom,
where I disagree is, I don'tthink this is woke or run amok.
I think this is equity beingused as a shield and a sword to
justify what is really kind ofcenter right wing project, you

(44:03):
know. And at a board meetingearlier this month in October, I
saw an Asian American person. Isaw a black teacher. I saw
Native American communityleaders, all, one after the
other, get up and say, thisdistrict is not doing equity.
What you are doing is notequitable. This is not how
equity works. And I think that'sthat's a real point to me, in

(44:24):
favor of the argument this isjust people on the board who
want to close schools for itsown sake, who believe that, you
know, we need to just slash andburn everything because it's
better than going to Olympia toget money out of the rich and
using this stuff as ajustification, using equitable
language, which they know thatpeople in Seattle buy into as a

(44:46):
justification for it. If you hadsomeone come along and say, you
know, I think we need to closeschools because it's more
efficient. I think we need toreopen the teacher contract,
maybe not pay them as well. Ithink we need to have all of our
education standardized andfocused on test scores. You
think that person. Was likeGeorge W Bush, but if you wrap
it in equity language, all of asudden you sound like a
Seattleite. And I think that'swhat's going on here

Sandeep Kaushik (45:09):
and I think there's some real truth to that.
And to be really clear, I'm notattacking the concept of I think
equity is an importantconsideration and something that
we should be center. But look atthe signature. You know, policy
agenda of the Seattle schooldistrict and school board in the
last five years or so has been aa focus on the performance of

(45:34):
black boys, right, of youngblack men in the schools. It's
not gone well, right? Ifanything, the performance is
worse now than when they madethis a sort of signature feature
of what and why is that? Inpart, because they're fucking
misdiagnosing the problem, likewe know what works. If we want

(45:54):
to help those kids, we need toget programs set up with
intensive tutoring andindividualized attention, and
the kind of things where thathas been piloted in some schools
around the city and that haveproduced really stellar results
to help address that, that thatopportunity gap that we've been
talking about earlier, butinstead, we have a bunch of

(46:15):
performative bullshit about,like, you know, adding, you
know, woke math or ethnicstudies classes and stuff, and
maybe some of that stuff isfine, but it's not the solution
to the problem, right? Or a newanti racism policy. You know
that last school board led byChandra Hampson ended up in this
bizarre place where they'reclosing schools and not paying
any attention to reopening thembecause they're having a huge

(46:37):
internal fight over, you know,not even a fight, but over who
gets credit for the anti racismpolicy? So some of that stuff
just drives me back.

David Hyde (46:45):
This is the progressive left losing sight of
kind of material conditions issort of what you're saying.
You're both Marxists.. I loveit.

Sandeep Kaushik (46:56):
I'm getting back to class, yeah? Like, like
I had been off, you know, I wentto grad school and did all that
that, you know, and I used tothink, like, you know, the mark
Marxist has lost the plot. Butcompared to the identitarians,
I'm like, Man, I'm a marxist.

David Hyde (47:12):
Being something of a materialist used to be a
precondition of of callingyourself even a liberal.
Corporate consultants beingbrought in to talk about equity,
while at the same timemanagement is laying people off
or threatening to lay people offor bullying workers into
submission, seems to be, youknow, one of the the that seems

(47:32):
kind of the things we're we'reseeing right now, not just in
Seattle Public Schools, but likethroughout capitalist America,
right? I mean, without this isnot a Marxist criticism, per se,
but like that is that's it'shappening, and you're both
saying that's one of the thingsthat appears to be happening now
in Seattle Public Schools.
Robert, are you agreeing withSandeep about that? Or where do
you where do you still disagree?

Robert Cruickshank (47:51):
I still believe that what has really
happened here is that you have agroup of leaders at the district
who are pushing what is reallykind of a corporate friendly
agenda, and are wrapping it inequity language. And who knows
how they got there? Eachindividual pushing this had
maybe has their own originstory, their own villain origin

(48:12):
story, but they're all now at aplace where this isn't really
about equity run amuck. It'sthey just know how to sell it to
people. They know how to sell itin Seattle. They know that, you
know the way you sell it inTexas isn't going to fly.

David Hyde (48:25):
Yeah, that's a great last sentence. Robert, I really
loved having you sit in this.
This is, this is a goodconversation, less rancor than
usual, which was a pleasure forme.

Robert Cruickshank (48:36):
Well, this is one of the, this is one of
the few issues where Sandeep isnot wrong.

David Hyde (48:40):
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 (48:46):
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 (48:53):
I'm David Hyde. Our editor is Quinn Waller, and
thanks everybody so much forlistening. You