May 29, 2026 • 32 mins
In this episode, League of Education Voters CEO Arik Korman interviews Ben Shuldiner, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. Ben discusses what drives him, how he measures success for his priorities, what his strategy is for closing longstanding opportunity gaps, how he is implementing student and family engagement, what worked and what didn't work in his personal education journey, and how he would change Washington state's education system if he were in charge and there were no budgetary constraints.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm Merik Corman, CEO of League of Education Voters and
the parent of a high school junior of the global
majority in the public school system who is accessing special
education services. I advocate because of my son, so that
every Washington student can get what they need, when they
need it, and how they need it. In this podcast,
we interview students, policymakers, partners, and thought leaders to spotlight
(00:23):
education policies, research and practices so that together we can
create learning environments where every Washington student feels safe, supported,
and a positive sense of belonging so that they can
achieve academically and access the life they choose. Benjamin ben
Schuldener is the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. He most
(00:43):
recently served as superintendent of the Lansing School District in
Michigan from twenty twenty one through January twenty twenty six.
During his tenure in Lansing, Ben led the district through
a period of measurable academic, operational, and financial improvement. Under
his leadership, that the district achieved significant gains in graduation
rates thirty one percent and attendance fifteen percent, and realized
(01:07):
a net increase in student enrollment for the first time
in decades. He also strengthened the district's fiscal position by
increasing the fund balance by more than forty million dollars
and establishing a new investment fund to generate ongoing revenue.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Prior to his role.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
In Lansing, Ben held several prominent system and policy level
leadership roles. He served as a Dean's Fellow and Distinguished
Lecturer in Education Leadership at Hunter College City University of
New York, where he directed all school and district leadership programs.
In twenty fifteen, he was appointed to the New York
City Board of Education, the largest school system in the nation,
(01:46):
serving more than one million students. In twenty sixteen and
twenty seventeen, Ben was elected president of the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development, the nation's largest professional education organization,
represents more than one hundred and twenty five thousand education
leaders and practitioners across one hundred and thirty eight countries
(02:07):
and fifty two affiliate organizations. Earlier in his career, Ben
served as the founding principal of the High School for
Public Service in Brooklyn, New York. Under his leadership, the
school was named one of the top fifty high schools
in New York City by the Daily News and received
a bronze medal from US News and World Report. Ben
has also consulted nationally and internationally to support school systems
(02:31):
in strengthening leadership and improving student outcomes, including partnerships with
the BI Norwegian Business School in Norway and education systems
in Bangalore and Coimbatore, India. Ben comes from a family
of educators and education leaders. He holds a bachelor's degree
in history and science from Harvard College, where he graduated
magna cum lauda, and Master of Science.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
In education from Baruq College.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Ben looks forward to partnering with students, families, staff and
community members to make Seattle Public Schools the nation's single
best urban school system.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Then what is your why? What drives you to this work? Sure?
And now thank you for such a very nice introduction.
I don't know if I deserve all of that, but
my why It might sound trite, but if there is
a meaning to life, and I don't know if there is,
but if there is, I'd like to believe that it's
to help as many people as you can on this
brief time you have on this planet, and I can't
think of a better way to help people than through education. Ironically,
(03:29):
my name actually means school, servant shual dinner. Shual means
school and dinner means servant or worker. And I come
from a long line of educators. My mom was an
English teacher. My dad taught junior high school math for
a little bit before he went into public housing. My
grandmother ran a nursery school in the Bronx for twenty years.
My grandfather ran an education rehabilitation center. I think education
(03:51):
is amazing, and again, if the purpose of life is
to help people, then I can't think of a better
way to do it than education. Now, I was a
classroom teacher. I loved being a classroom teacher. Then I
was a high school principal. I loved doing that and
what I saw was in the classroom, you know, I
had about one hundred and twenty five students every year.
(04:12):
I could really help support them and have them grow.
But then when I was a principal, I could help
a whole school grow. And then I ended up becoming
a professor where I helped to train superintendents and principles
for New York and I really felt like I was
helping to give back on a larger scale. But then
I think I always said the all dom job is
to be a superintendent, to be a systems leader where
(04:34):
you could help thousands, tens of thousands of children get
the support they need, get the education they need to
have a great educational career. That's great.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And now, I mean, you've been here for ninety days,
So what are your priorities for cl public schools?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And how will you measure success? Sure, so I have
been here for you know, three months and six days,
but you know who's counting. But what I see is
a city that cares deeply about education. I've talked to
so many parents, I mean literally thousands of parents and
thousands of children. I visited almost all one hundred and
six schools I'm at. I think ninety eight. We will
(05:08):
get to one hundred and six next week. And what
I see overwhelmingly is people teachers, the educators, and families,
the community, the students. They want a great education and
they want to help and they want to support. And
what I've seen is a district that maybe doesn't have
the systems and structures to get that to happen. I
(05:29):
think the talent is there, the people are there, the
desires there, but you know, there's just structural things that
have occurred over time that some way or stopping that
from happening. And so what I see some of my
job is is to listen to the community and then
actually act. You know, A good example is I created
I passed these superintendents procedure around cell phones. Now that
(05:53):
should have been done years ago. But you know what
do I hear parents say, Ben, we need cell phone.
Even students are like Ben, lady's cel phone roles. And
I said, great, So now we need to act right.
And so that's kind of what I'm seeing across the
district is people want what's best for kids. They want
to do well, but there's some decisions that either have
been avoided or have been made that make some sort
(06:16):
of roadblocks. And so that's what a lot of I'm
doing this first ninety days is listening, learning, and then
trying to act as best as I can with being
informed by everybody to do what's best for kids. And
how will you know when it's actually impacting. Well, you know,
we look at the data, right, you know, because I
visit schools every day. I mean even today walking around,
I saw a lot less cell phones, you know, and
(06:37):
maybe it's because I was there and I agree the
superintendent adjustment. I'll tell you two weeks ago, I was
still the superintendent and I saw more phones. And then,
you know, we're going to look at things like attendants.
We'll look at things at test scores, but we're also
going to look at survey data about how children are feeling.
We're going to talk to parents. But you know, the
good news about education is there's a lot of data
that you can look at that does indicate and you know,
(06:58):
if anybody was so with their lives that they listen
to my presentation about my goals a couple of weeks ago,
you know, one of the things that I'm really focusing
on is attendance and enrollment. And the reason for that
is daily attendance is a great barometer on do children
want to show up or do families are there able
(07:18):
to get their kids to school. That's really important. Now
the older the kid gets, the more it's their decision.
And if we see attendance rates in high schools that
are low, well what are we doing right? And then
the other big data point is enrollment we're at around
forty eight thousand and change. I'd like us to get
to fifty two to five in the next five years.
And the reason for that is in Seattle, there's a
(07:40):
lot of families that are choosing not to send their
students to SPS, and we want to make sure that
they have every reason and every rationale to send them.
And we know that if the enrollment goes up, it's
because parents are then going to be choosing us. And
that says to me, we're doing a better job because
families are choosing to send their children to us than
somewhere else. Now, of course, we're going to want to
(08:01):
get more students to be proficient in English and is
math and graduate. But I think it's important that a
superintendent holds of themselves accountable to things like enrollment because
that's a good indication on how the community feels about
the school district.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, are you thinking about different programming that might perhaps
attract some students and families who are going to independent school?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Absolutely? I mean you know what I hear over and over.
You know, at first, people are like, oh, Ben, you
know the reason why families aren't sending their kids. It's
the housing prices, and I said, I don't think that's right,
you know, And then of course we look at the data. No,
the people are staying in their house, it's just they're
choosing to go to private school where they're even sending
them to other public school districts outside of Seattle. And
so yeah, what we have found from our families over
(08:44):
and over again is they want their kids to have
access to a multiplicity of programming, especially programming that allows
the kid to work at the level that the kids
want to work at, that they're able to work at.
For many years, this district has sort of like held
student back, which is really unfortunate. I think we have
to increase a lot of our special programming, I mean
(09:05):
everything from art and music and sports, but also do
language programming, extra curricular activities, allowing students to go up
in grades to do more kind of intensive work. And
we also, on the flip side, need to make sure
that the students that are not doing well are getting
the supports they need. Because again it's not a child issue, right,
Our children are awesome. The issue is what are we
(09:26):
as a district doing to support those kids? And what
I hear from parents over and over I want to
send my kid to SPS, but my experience is X
or I don't think about this day, or you don't
have this program. So we in the district have to
say we love you families, we care about your kids,
we want to give you the education you want, so
you actually choose us rather than go somewhere else. Yeah,
(09:50):
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And you've got a couple of schools that are doing
some really amazing things like I think about Cleveland Stem
and I think about Lincoln. And when you pair something
like project based learning and then you have the supports
like a full inclusion that Lincoln does, that school is
bursting at the rafters because everybody wants to send their
a student there.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's right. And one of the things that actually we've
done this year, which I'm really proud of, is this
district said that they were a district of choice, but
they really weren't. They were kind of putting their thumb
on the scale of like trying to balance things out
and saying, oh, well, there's not really room, but there
really is room, but maybe not now, and it's like, noh,
forget it. If we have physical seats in a building
(10:28):
and a family wants to send their kid there. Let's
get their kid there. And what we saw is so
many more kids who wanted to go to a school
have now been able to go in and families are
telling us. If it wasn't for this, I would have
left the district. But you know what, you had the spot.
I wanted my kid there. You said sure, and now
we're going to be there. And that's wonderful, right And
so yeah, you nine Cleveland and Lincoln, But so many
(10:51):
of our schools, I mean, Rainier Beach has an IB
program that's really good. You know, We've got the dual
language programs. I was just at John Stanford School today.
I mean, kids were speaking Japanese. It was so cool.
We have so many of those things. And I think
that's the other thing we need to do about enrollment
is some of our families don't even know what we offer.
You know, we have this amazing program called Middle College
(11:13):
where a child can go starting in ninth grade and
by the end of their twelfth grade they can graduate
with an AA and that's actually on the campus of
North Seattle. But not a lot of families know about
that because we haven't done a good enough job letting
people know about that.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So yeah, yeah, it seems like a narrative issue. How
do we talk about the value of public education and
tell the success stories because there's all kinds of news
about things that's right, but we need to find about
things that are that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And you know, to that point is there's a lot
we need to do better, no question about it. There's
a ton of things that we need to change. But
we also have incredible schools. And you know, I've just
finished eight community meetings where we met with over a
thousand families and we asked them three simple questions, what's
going well, what's not going well, and what are some
tangible things to change? And overwhelmingly, what people said that
(12:02):
was going well was the education in their child was
getting in their school. It was amazing. They're like, we
love our teachers, we love our principal. What that says
to us is there's so many families that are happy,
But the narrative is such where it's like, oh, there's yeah,
out of fifty thousand kids, yeah we had one problem today.
You're right, but that's pretty good, you know, And so
I think we do have a narrative issue, but we
(12:24):
also have a relationship and trust issue is that families
don't necessarily trust us. They don't necessarily have relationships with us.
They might have it with an individual teacher or an
individual school, but not a district. So what we see
is a lot of families come to elementary school with us,
and then they leave for middle school. Yeah, because there's
a fear of oh the middle schools, or they heard
something and maybe what they heard was something from five
(12:44):
years ago, but it still impacted them. And then what's interesting,
because we were talking about like Lincoln and Cleveland, yeah,
is then we also see families come back for high
school and what can we do to get them to
understand their own the schools or SPS and so if
you like our elementary to like our high schools, you know.
And so I was looking at numbers the other day
West Seattle's incoming ninth grade high school program. Twenty percent
(13:06):
are not SPS students. Okay, now they probably were SPS
students in elementary school, but they're coming from other programs.
So I think we just have to say to famili's love,
we've got amazing programs. We're going to make it easier
for you to get into those programs. We're going to
support you in those programs, and we're going to increase
the number of programs so that things that you want
you will be able to get. Yeah. No, that makes
(13:27):
a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
We agree that not everything is completely perfect. And one
of the things that has been an issue over time
with Seattle and many other districts is the gaps the
opportunity gas for certain student populations. I think about students
who come from a background of poverty, students with disabilities,
students who are multi lingual learners, students who identify as bipoc.
(13:48):
So what is the strategy for closing some of these
long standing gaps in Seattle? Sure?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
No, and I really appreciate you highlighting that. You know,
the first thing we have to do is we have
to say it. So the presentation of Justescaped to the board,
I talked about the goals that I want to hold
myself to and the district too, And so what we
talked about was, yeah, we should make sure that third
grade reading and eighth grade math, but we also have
to look at different populations and how we're serving them.
And what's overwhelmingly true is that if you look at
(14:15):
the district in aggregate, we're doing really well. So we
have really high proficiency rates in English and math really
throughout the third through eighth grade where you're taking those sbas.
But then when you break it down, we're actually really
underserving a ton of case So free and reduce lunch.
Are proficiency rates for those students much much much lower.
(14:38):
Our proficiency rates for black students Latino students much much
much lower than they are for whites. And again, this
is not a kid problem. All of our kids are awesome,
All of our kids can do it. It might be
an issue of what we're expecting of our children. We
see a lot of remediation rather than acceleration. I was
just at a school and the principle was lovely and
(14:58):
he said, you know, talking about this and I said, well,
you know, what are you doing for the acceleration? How
are you moving the whole school? He said, you know,
last year we just said, if you wanted to move up,
we're gonna let you. So rather than be gatekeepers, we
wanted to give you the opportunity. And what happened, More
than half of the school flipped from remediation to acceleration.
(15:19):
And what were the outcomes? More kids passed. It was great, right,
And so I think you're absolutely right that we need
to highlight where those discrepancies are. But then we have
to invest in those places to move those students. But
the real key also is tell the truth and hold
people accountable, because what I don't want to hear as well,
(15:39):
you know those kids are oh those issues. Look, I
was a high school principal of a school that was
one hundred percent students of color, ninety something percent free
and reduced lunch, and we had a ninety graduation rate. Wow,
those kids were going to the best colleges in the
country because we believed in them, We supported them. We
(16:00):
an atmosphere where everybody believe. You know, one example I
gave this morning actually is sometimes it's just about language.
So what we would say to students, we wouldn't say,
are you going to college? We'd say what college are
you going to? And they immediately change them mind, Oh,
I guess I'm going to college. Now. Look, we could
argue is going to college or trades whatever, But just
the idea of saying to a kid, which one are
(16:21):
you going to? Says you believe in me enough, you're
going to create a structure where you're expecting me to
go to college. So now I'm going to start to think, well,
what college am I going to go to? Megan, I
want to go here or here? And so we as
a district need to say all of our kids really
can learn, and what are we doing when they're not? So,
you know, like the phrase that I've used quite often
(16:42):
is the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Right, if we have low expectations of kids, well they're
going to meet those low expectations. That we have high
expectations of kids, and we create the systems and structures
for those high expectations, you're going to do great. You know,
in Lansing we got a lot of credit for raising
the graduation rate by points, which is like unheard of.
But the number that I'm even more proud of is
that we raised our AP pass rate by over six
(17:07):
hundred and thirty percent quotes. Yeah, and it's because we
believe that our kids could do AP work. Previously, it
was like, oh, well, you know, the grad rates so
low and no, no, no, no. If you believe, if you
set up the structures, the kids really can do it.
So how do you shift mindset? Of it. It's because
I was saying, like in.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
New York, it probably did that in order to turn
things are out in.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
This goal absolutely, you know, and and everywhere of gun
New York, Michigan, or India. It really is about starting
from a conversation with the faculty with the principles, saying, look,
what do you think the goals should be? What do
you think the expectations to be? Oh, because nobody goes
into education because they hate children, you know, like's there's
(17:50):
not enough money in the world to like you know, so,
so people really care about kids, but sometimes they get
burned out, sometimes they get jaded. Sometimes they've been in
a system that doesn't listen to them or doesn't them.
So you just start by saying, okay, well, what do
you think the goal should be? What do you need?
Right when I go to schools, every visit starts with
the same guiding question. The first visit is how can
the district help you help the children? And so once
(18:12):
we start having those conversations, we start to say, okay, well,
if we get this to you, what do you think
the goals are going to be? Okay, So when you
don't hate it, what's going on is it support? Is
it maybe a mindset, Maybe it's a deficit thinking like
maybe and then we got to go in and support.
But the truth is, it all ends up with what
are the facts? What are the truth? And if things
(18:34):
aren't moving, what are we trying to do to get there?
And if people aren't believing that we can do it, well,
you know, maybe they can go work in Kirkland, you know,
like you know, so we you know, we just but
we have to hold the line. We truly have to
believe that our children can do it. And what I've
seen in my twenty five plus years in administration is
(18:54):
once you have a vision, have a mission, have a direction,
have support and trust and like communication, it's amazing how
quickly things can change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Well, student supports is certainly a big part of this.
If you're going to have high expectations, you need high supports.
Mental health has been a thing, especially since the pandemic.
What are your plans to support student mental health?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Sure? Well, I mean I will say that Seattle actually
has an incredible amount of supports already. I walk into
schools and I see classrooms of ten kids and three
adults and it's not mandated like there are so many
adults in these schools, there's so many people working with
the children. I think the question really is is are
(19:38):
we doing the right things about support that our kids need.
Are we just kind of saying, well, here you have
this extra person. What's the expectation of the person. Is
it always going to be push out and pull in?
Is it what's best for the kids? Are we actually
talking to the families seeing what they need. So you know,
for me, what I see is it's not a lack
of people, and it's not even a lack of re
(20:00):
I mean, no joke. I've walked into classrooms and I'm like,
it's a room full of unicycles, Like where did all
these things come from? We're like, you know, Salmon Hatcheria's
or I mean, every classroom I've gone into is vibrant
and beautiful. Now, yes, some of our buildings are old
and they need new windows, don't get me wrong. But
the stuff is there, the people are there. The question
is what are we doing that's right by kids. I'll
(20:24):
give you a good example, and you talked a little
bit about special ad In Seattle, we have these four designations.
We have this stick called Resource Extended resource focus and
the step we made that up. We made that up. Yeah,
there's no such thing as distinct or focus or right. Yeah.
And so the problem is, I'm not sure that we're
doing right by our kids with the system we already have.
(20:46):
I think we have the adults, and we certainly have
the kids, but we have to have a really thoughtful
discussion about how are we actually supporting the individual chial
based on their need, not based on a prescription that
we kind of created and said this is the best thing.
I mean, I'll say I was in a room once
where it was one kid into adults. Yeah, I asked
(21:06):
the principal, what's going on here? Well, the first teacher
is like a kind of a resource room teacher, and
the second teacher is an mL teacher. Okay, so you
really think you need two adults in a room with
one kid. The kid can only listen to one person
at a time. Maybe that other person could go work
with some other children. And the Prince will said, oh, yeah,
(21:28):
that's a good idea. I said, good. You know, so
I just need you to think, don't just take the
schedule that was given you because it was just a
scheduling thing. And so rather than do that, we have
to look detailed say wow, maybe it's better for us
to use the resources this way or that way. And
I think you'll see a pretty dramatic change pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So you talked earlier about engaging families and communities. What
does that look like if you're going to authentically engage
families and communities students so that their input can be
incorporated into what you want to do around your.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I mean, it looks like a lot of things, right.
So you know, we had these eight engagements and we
went to each of the seven board districts and then
we had one online and we literally had over a
thousand people. It was awesome, and you create a place
where they feel comfortable speaking. And we of course gave
surveys because we want to know what people thought. And
overwhelmingly people said, wow, my voice was heard, Like you know,
(22:23):
I actually got the share and nobody nobody told me no, right,
And I mean the directions to the staff that were
leading it in me was don't get defensive, get voice
out there. Let's see, that's one way. The other way
is to just be present. I mean I go to
community meetings all of the time. I go to PTA's
I talk to folks, and then also to respond to
my emails, right, I mean I get now hundreds of
(22:43):
emails from families because they know all respond And then
in terms of students, when I got here, one of
the first things we created was a student superintendent roundtable.
So once a month I actually meet with students in
a kind of structured way that they get to really
be part of decisions that they helped me through things
and we idate together. And for next year, we actually
just put out a call for high school students to
(23:05):
be part of it. We had over one hundred applications
and this is kids who want to spend Saturday with me,
So like that's pretty impressive, right. So it's about trying
to be in as many different places as possible and
then also recognizing the organizations that already exist. So like
I have a standing meeting with the city wide PTSA,
so now I know that I'm always going to be
with them. Once a month, I'll get to hear from
(23:27):
them because their job is to hear from So there's
a lot of those structures, right, and it with a
lot of people on a consistent cadence so that my
voice is heard I hear their voice and we work together.
And then always being open and willing to go to
the community to go meet and really to listen. So
it looks like a lot of different things. And what's
been great is over these last three months, I think
(23:48):
the word has gotten now that I and the team
now are really accessible and are willing to listen, that
we're not just going to get defensive. We're going to
actually say, oh, you know what, you're right, we probably
do need to fix that, change that. And it's great
that the listening has been going on.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And the next thing, of course, is like how do
you actually incorporate what they're saying that's right and they
can see the action.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Great, And you know, I think the cell phone band
is a good example, right, I mean it's something that
people were talking about over and over again. It's like, great,
we're gonna do it, no problem. We heard a lot
about math enrichment. Well we did it, you know. Like,
so I think the more that we do those kinds
of things, the more the community is going to start
to trust us, you know, in the long run.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I always like to say that the work moves
at the speed of trust. That's true, and it takes time,
you know, it doesn't just put the switch and go
that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, I want to talk about you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Too, Okay, sure, So in your education journey, what are
some things that worked and what are some things that
didn't work?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So well? Sure? I mean, I think what has always
worked is being honest, being transparent, being thoughtful, listen much
more than you talk, and that has helped me in
New York and Michigan and certainly now here in Washington. Also,
being really clear about expectations, that's really and actually holding
(25:01):
people to account. What hasn't worked is being too soft. Honestly,
what hasn't worked is you know something's wrong, but you're like, oh,
I just want to know. You got to think about
the children. You've got to think about the children. And
sometimes because we want to be nice, we're not being
nice set because we're actually not making the decisions we
(25:25):
need to make. And you know, in my twenty five
years of leadership, I know there have been times where
I tried to be nice. I tried to oh no,
just no, always a mistake. You know, if the data
is there that you've listened, you've learned, you've figured it
out and you know what, the right decision is, make
the right decision for the children, not the right decision
(25:45):
for the adult. Sometimes even the right decision for the
adult is not necessarily the nice one, but it's the
right one, it's the correct one. So I think the
more that I can make sure that when we are
making decisions, people are together in that decision. They it's collective,
but that my job is to really make sure that
we're centering students and we're making sure that what is
(26:07):
right for the children, what is right for the schools,
rather than what might be right for one or the Now.
We have to take care of our staff, of course,
and we want to treat our faculty really well. But
the mistakes that I've made over my career have usually
been when I was reluctant to make the decision that
I knew I needed to make, but it didn't feel nice.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, you know, So my job, and I think people
have seen this in May these three months, is I'm
going to always try to say it like it is.
I'm going to be really transparent about it, and I'm
gonna be willing and I have to. And that's why,
you know, my first email to the community was. You know,
I basically promised three things. I'm always gonna put kids first,
I'm always going to try to show up, and I'm
going to make decisions you might not agree with, right,
(26:49):
but I will I will explain them, right because I'm
going to have to make some hard decisions, and we
are going to have to make some hard decisions. But
that's the right thing to do. And I know the
mistakes I've made is when I don't do that because
I'm trying to be nice.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, yeah, And we'll get to some big decisions in
the session here.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
If you had a.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Magic wand and you could wave it right, But what
was it like for you as a kid when you
were growing up? I mean, what was your experience going
to school in elementary school, high school, college?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I mean, you know, I like school. You know, I
still have some of my best friends from elementary school
and high school and college. And I did move from
New York to LA that was a big change. And
so I really appreciate that consistency matters for children and
trying to make sure that the school that you're in
supports you and loves you so you don't have to,
you know, leave. So when I was thirteen, we moved
(27:37):
from New York to LA and I was a big shift. Yeah,
But no, I mean I've always liked school. I mean
I like playing sports. I liked after school curriculum. I
did drama and plays and things like that. But no,
I always enjoyed school, and certainly in college. I really
appreciated going to college. It was a great time. I
mean four years away from my family. That was a
lot of fun, you know, and with friends. But also
(28:00):
the desire to always learn, the desire to always get better.
And you know, I'd like to believe that I'm still
a student. You know, I'm still trying to learn. But
you know, I struggled in some things in school. You know,
there's certain things I'm good at. There's some things that
were very hard for me in schools. And so you know,
I really appreciate that as for me because I can
see when kids need the support or when they're really flying.
(28:22):
Don't clip their wings, yeah, you know, let them go right.
And so, for instance, the last math class I took
was in eleventh grade because my high school didn't offer
me something afterwards, and I always felt like, well, maybe
I would have done more math in college. If the
school allowed me to do some things. I also knew
that I was there was things that I struggled with,
and I wish I had gotten some more support around that.
(28:44):
But you know, I went to this thirty two hundred
kid high school, very big, ye you know, very you know,
and so there wasn't a lot of individual and I
was doing well, right, so it wasn't they were like, oh,
you know, what's wrong with them? But what I see
and what I think our jobs as educators is to
make sure the individual child is supported as much as possible.
But yeah, when I like college, you know, grad school
(29:06):
was a little bit different. I was already working when
I was going to grad school on But no, I
mean I certainly enjoyed it. I went to some great
places and still, as I said, are still very close
to the kid that I went to school with. Yeah, no,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, if you had a magic wand sure and you
could make any changes in the state education system, sure,
like if you were not just looking at Seattle's orgon
at the whole state of Washington, sure, and budget was
not a constraint.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Oh I mean yeah, yeah, no, this is like a
big picture.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
If I in the Sky, Sure, what would it change?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You know, the first thing I would change is the budget, right,
so the fact that that's not an issue, but I
want to be really clear to the listeners is one
of the things that's really hard is the way that
school districts are funded in Washington are based on this
like regular model of school. There's no such thing as
a regular model of school. And so you know in
the budget presentation we gave to the community is because
(30:01):
we are structured differently, we are just in a structural deficit.
We do not get enough money to do the programs
we want to do, and that causes some consternation. So yes,
the magic one would be definitely can we fund us
based on the needs, not just this formula. But if
funding wasn't an issue, I mean, I would want to
have more programs for more kids, individualized education, whatever language
(30:26):
a kid wants to take, great, whatever math kid wants
to take, great, whatever science a kid wants to take.
And you know, having more supports for teachers, more professional
development for teachers. You know, love to see you know,
some of our buildings are pretty old, some of them
are beautiful and new. I would love to see kids
going to environments that everybody has a football field and
a soccer field, and a baseball field and a basketball court.
(30:49):
Everybody has a beautiful track and trees and grass, you know,
all those kinds of things. You know, there should be
guinea pigs in every school, you know, Like you know,
there's there's all sorts of fun stuff that like, I
think the kids deserve. But at the end of the day,
the three things that move the needle for children is
a high quality teacher in every classroom, tutoring and mentoring.
(31:10):
So if you really ask, like what the real magic
want is, it's those three things. It's high quality future
in every classroom, tutoring and mentoring. And that's real. But
of course I would love the children to have access
to anything they want, anything the parents want. And that's
really the limitations, right, is that because a bunch of constraints,
we can't necessarily offer dual language everywhere, We can't offer
(31:31):
after school programs everywhere. I mean, I'd love to see
more after school programs, more before school programs. I mean,
there's tons of things, but if there's a real focus
and I speak about a lot high quality teacher in
every classroom, tutoring and mentoring. That's what we really are
going to focus on too.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Ben Schulderner is the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. Superintendent Schuldneur,
thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Thank you, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you'd like to learn more about League of Education
Voters or support our work, please visit our website Education
voters dot org
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm Merik Corman, CEO of League of Education Voters and
the parent of a high school junior of the global
majority in the public school system who is accessing special
education services. I advocate because of my son, so that
every Washington student can get what they need, when they
need it, and how they need it. In this podcast,
we interview students, policymakers, partners, and thought leaders to spotlight
(00:23):
education policies, research and practices so that together we can
create learning environments where every Washington student feels safe, supported,
and a positive sense of belonging so that they can
achieve academically and access the life they choose. Benjamin ben
Schuldener is the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. He most
(00:43):
recently served as superintendent of the Lansing School District in
Michigan from twenty twenty one through January twenty twenty six.
During his tenure in Lansing, Ben led the district through
a period of measurable academic, operational, and financial improvement. Under
his leadership, that the district achieved significant gains in graduation
rates thirty one percent and attendance fifteen percent, and realized
(01:07):
a net increase in student enrollment for the first time
in decades. He also strengthened the district's fiscal position by
increasing the fund balance by more than forty million dollars
and establishing a new investment fund to generate ongoing revenue.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Prior to his role.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
In Lansing, Ben held several prominent system and policy level
leadership roles. He served as a Dean's Fellow and Distinguished
Lecturer in Education Leadership at Hunter College City University of
New York, where he directed all school and district leadership programs.
In twenty fifteen, he was appointed to the New York
City Board of Education, the largest school system in the nation,
(01:46):
serving more than one million students. In twenty sixteen and
twenty seventeen, Ben was elected president of the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development, the nation's largest professional education organization,
represents more than one hundred and twenty five thousand education
leaders and practitioners across one hundred and thirty eight countries
(02:07):
and fifty two affiliate organizations. Earlier in his career, Ben
served as the founding principal of the High School for
Public Service in Brooklyn, New York. Under his leadership, the
school was named one of the top fifty high schools
in New York City by the Daily News and received
a bronze medal from US News and World Report. Ben
has also consulted nationally and internationally to support school systems
(02:31):
in strengthening leadership and improving student outcomes, including partnerships with
the BI Norwegian Business School in Norway and education systems
in Bangalore and Coimbatore, India. Ben comes from a family
of educators and education leaders. He holds a bachelor's degree
in history and science from Harvard College, where he graduated
magna cum lauda, and Master of Science.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
In education from Baruq College.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Ben looks forward to partnering with students, families, staff and
community members to make Seattle Public Schools the nation's single
best urban school system.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Then what is your why? What drives you to this work? Sure?
And now thank you for such a very nice introduction.
I don't know if I deserve all of that, but
my why It might sound trite, but if there is
a meaning to life, and I don't know if there is,
but if there is, I'd like to believe that it's
to help as many people as you can on this
brief time you have on this planet, and I can't
think of a better way to help people than through education. Ironically,
(03:29):
my name actually means school, servant shual dinner. Shual means
school and dinner means servant or worker. And I come
from a long line of educators. My mom was an
English teacher. My dad taught junior high school math for
a little bit before he went into public housing. My
grandmother ran a nursery school in the Bronx for twenty years.
My grandfather ran an education rehabilitation center. I think education
(03:51):
is amazing, and again, if the purpose of life is
to help people, then I can't think of a better
way to do it than education. Now, I was a
classroom teacher. I loved being a classroom teacher. Then I
was a high school principal. I loved doing that and
what I saw was in the classroom, you know, I
had about one hundred and twenty five students every year.
(04:12):
I could really help support them and have them grow.
But then when I was a principal, I could help
a whole school grow. And then I ended up becoming
a professor where I helped to train superintendents and principles
for New York and I really felt like I was
helping to give back on a larger scale. But then
I think I always said the all dom job is
to be a superintendent, to be a systems leader where
(04:34):
you could help thousands, tens of thousands of children get
the support they need, get the education they need to
have a great educational career. That's great.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And now, I mean, you've been here for ninety days,
So what are your priorities for cl public schools?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And how will you measure success? Sure, so I have
been here for you know, three months and six days,
but you know who's counting. But what I see is
a city that cares deeply about education. I've talked to
so many parents, I mean literally thousands of parents and
thousands of children. I visited almost all one hundred and
six schools I'm at. I think ninety eight. We will
(05:08):
get to one hundred and six next week. And what
I see overwhelmingly is people teachers, the educators, and families,
the community, the students. They want a great education and
they want to help and they want to support. And
what I've seen is a district that maybe doesn't have
the systems and structures to get that to happen. I
(05:29):
think the talent is there, the people are there, the
desires there, but you know, there's just structural things that
have occurred over time that some way or stopping that
from happening. And so what I see some of my
job is is to listen to the community and then
actually act. You know, A good example is I created
I passed these superintendents procedure around cell phones. Now that
(05:53):
should have been done years ago. But you know what
do I hear parents say, Ben, we need cell phone.
Even students are like Ben, lady's cel phone roles. And
I said, great, So now we need to act right.
And so that's kind of what I'm seeing across the
district is people want what's best for kids. They want
to do well, but there's some decisions that either have
been avoided or have been made that make some sort
(06:16):
of roadblocks. And so that's what a lot of I'm
doing this first ninety days is listening, learning, and then
trying to act as best as I can with being
informed by everybody to do what's best for kids. And
how will you know when it's actually impacting. Well, you know,
we look at the data, right, you know, because I
visit schools every day. I mean even today walking around,
I saw a lot less cell phones, you know, and
(06:37):
maybe it's because I was there and I agree the
superintendent adjustment. I'll tell you two weeks ago, I was
still the superintendent and I saw more phones. And then,
you know, we're going to look at things like attendants.
We'll look at things at test scores, but we're also
going to look at survey data about how children are feeling.
We're going to talk to parents. But you know, the
good news about education is there's a lot of data
that you can look at that does indicate and you know,
(06:58):
if anybody was so with their lives that they listen
to my presentation about my goals a couple of weeks ago,
you know, one of the things that I'm really focusing
on is attendance and enrollment. And the reason for that
is daily attendance is a great barometer on do children
want to show up or do families are there able
(07:18):
to get their kids to school. That's really important. Now
the older the kid gets, the more it's their decision.
And if we see attendance rates in high schools that
are low, well what are we doing right? And then
the other big data point is enrollment we're at around
forty eight thousand and change. I'd like us to get
to fifty two to five in the next five years.
And the reason for that is in Seattle, there's a
(07:40):
lot of families that are choosing not to send their
students to SPS, and we want to make sure that
they have every reason and every rationale to send them.
And we know that if the enrollment goes up, it's
because parents are then going to be choosing us. And
that says to me, we're doing a better job because
families are choosing to send their children to us than
somewhere else. Now, of course, we're going to want to
(08:01):
get more students to be proficient in English and is
math and graduate. But I think it's important that a
superintendent holds of themselves accountable to things like enrollment because
that's a good indication on how the community feels about
the school district.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, are you thinking about different programming that might perhaps
attract some students and families who are going to independent school?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Absolutely? I mean you know what I hear over and over.
You know, at first, people are like, oh, Ben, you
know the reason why families aren't sending their kids. It's
the housing prices, and I said, I don't think that's right,
you know, And then of course we look at the data. No,
the people are staying in their house, it's just they're
choosing to go to private school where they're even sending
them to other public school districts outside of Seattle. And
so yeah, what we have found from our families over
(08:44):
and over again is they want their kids to have
access to a multiplicity of programming, especially programming that allows
the kid to work at the level that the kids
want to work at, that they're able to work at.
For many years, this district has sort of like held
student back, which is really unfortunate. I think we have
to increase a lot of our special programming, I mean
(09:05):
everything from art and music and sports, but also do
language programming, extra curricular activities, allowing students to go up
in grades to do more kind of intensive work. And
we also, on the flip side, need to make sure
that the students that are not doing well are getting
the supports they need. Because again it's not a child issue, right,
Our children are awesome. The issue is what are we
(09:26):
as a district doing to support those kids? And what
I hear from parents over and over I want to
send my kid to SPS, but my experience is X
or I don't think about this day, or you don't
have this program. So we in the district have to
say we love you families, we care about your kids,
we want to give you the education you want, so
you actually choose us rather than go somewhere else. Yeah,
(09:50):
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And you've got a couple of schools that are doing
some really amazing things like I think about Cleveland Stem
and I think about Lincoln. And when you pair something
like project based learning and then you have the supports
like a full inclusion that Lincoln does, that school is
bursting at the rafters because everybody wants to send their
a student there.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's right. And one of the things that actually we've
done this year, which I'm really proud of, is this
district said that they were a district of choice, but
they really weren't. They were kind of putting their thumb
on the scale of like trying to balance things out
and saying, oh, well, there's not really room, but there
really is room, but maybe not now, and it's like, noh,
forget it. If we have physical seats in a building
(10:28):
and a family wants to send their kid there. Let's
get their kid there. And what we saw is so
many more kids who wanted to go to a school
have now been able to go in and families are
telling us. If it wasn't for this, I would have
left the district. But you know what, you had the spot.
I wanted my kid there. You said sure, and now
we're going to be there. And that's wonderful, right And
so yeah, you nine Cleveland and Lincoln, But so many
(10:51):
of our schools, I mean, Rainier Beach has an IB
program that's really good. You know, We've got the dual
language programs. I was just at John Stanford School today.
I mean, kids were speaking Japanese. It was so cool.
We have so many of those things. And I think
that's the other thing we need to do about enrollment
is some of our families don't even know what we offer.
You know, we have this amazing program called Middle College
(11:13):
where a child can go starting in ninth grade and
by the end of their twelfth grade they can graduate
with an AA and that's actually on the campus of
North Seattle. But not a lot of families know about
that because we haven't done a good enough job letting
people know about that.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So yeah, yeah, it seems like a narrative issue. How
do we talk about the value of public education and
tell the success stories because there's all kinds of news
about things that's right, but we need to find about
things that are that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And you know, to that point is there's a lot
we need to do better, no question about it. There's
a ton of things that we need to change. But
we also have incredible schools. And you know, I've just
finished eight community meetings where we met with over a
thousand families and we asked them three simple questions, what's
going well, what's not going well, and what are some
tangible things to change? And overwhelmingly, what people said that
(12:02):
was going well was the education in their child was
getting in their school. It was amazing. They're like, we
love our teachers, we love our principal. What that says
to us is there's so many families that are happy,
But the narrative is such where it's like, oh, there's yeah,
out of fifty thousand kids, yeah we had one problem today.
You're right, but that's pretty good, you know, And so
I think we do have a narrative issue, but we
(12:24):
also have a relationship and trust issue is that families
don't necessarily trust us. They don't necessarily have relationships with us.
They might have it with an individual teacher or an
individual school, but not a district. So what we see
is a lot of families come to elementary school with us,
and then they leave for middle school. Yeah, because there's
a fear of oh the middle schools, or they heard
something and maybe what they heard was something from five
(12:44):
years ago, but it still impacted them. And then what's interesting,
because we were talking about like Lincoln and Cleveland, yeah,
is then we also see families come back for high
school and what can we do to get them to
understand their own the schools or SPS and so if
you like our elementary to like our high schools, you know.
And so I was looking at numbers the other day
West Seattle's incoming ninth grade high school program. Twenty percent
(13:06):
are not SPS students. Okay, now they probably were SPS
students in elementary school, but they're coming from other programs.
So I think we just have to say to famili's love,
we've got amazing programs. We're going to make it easier
for you to get into those programs. We're going to
support you in those programs, and we're going to increase
the number of programs so that things that you want
you will be able to get. Yeah. No, that makes
(13:27):
a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
We agree that not everything is completely perfect. And one
of the things that has been an issue over time
with Seattle and many other districts is the gaps the
opportunity gas for certain student populations. I think about students
who come from a background of poverty, students with disabilities,
students who are multi lingual learners, students who identify as bipoc.
(13:48):
So what is the strategy for closing some of these
long standing gaps in Seattle? Sure?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
No, and I really appreciate you highlighting that. You know,
the first thing we have to do is we have
to say it. So the presentation of Justescaped to the board,
I talked about the goals that I want to hold
myself to and the district too, And so what we
talked about was, yeah, we should make sure that third
grade reading and eighth grade math, but we also have
to look at different populations and how we're serving them.
And what's overwhelmingly true is that if you look at
(14:15):
the district in aggregate, we're doing really well. So we
have really high proficiency rates in English and math really
throughout the third through eighth grade where you're taking those sbas.
But then when you break it down, we're actually really
underserving a ton of case So free and reduce lunch.
Are proficiency rates for those students much much much lower.
(14:38):
Our proficiency rates for black students Latino students much much
much lower than they are for whites. And again, this
is not a kid problem. All of our kids are awesome,
All of our kids can do it. It might be
an issue of what we're expecting of our children. We
see a lot of remediation rather than acceleration. I was
just at a school and the principle was lovely and
(14:58):
he said, you know, talking about this and I said, well,
you know, what are you doing for the acceleration? How
are you moving the whole school? He said, you know,
last year we just said, if you wanted to move up,
we're gonna let you. So rather than be gatekeepers, we
wanted to give you the opportunity. And what happened, More
than half of the school flipped from remediation to acceleration.
(15:19):
And what were the outcomes? More kids passed. It was great, right,
And so I think you're absolutely right that we need
to highlight where those discrepancies are. But then we have
to invest in those places to move those students. But
the real key also is tell the truth and hold
people accountable, because what I don't want to hear as well,
(15:39):
you know those kids are oh those issues. Look, I
was a high school principal of a school that was
one hundred percent students of color, ninety something percent free
and reduced lunch, and we had a ninety graduation rate. Wow,
those kids were going to the best colleges in the
country because we believed in them, We supported them. We
(16:00):
an atmosphere where everybody believe. You know, one example I
gave this morning actually is sometimes it's just about language.
So what we would say to students, we wouldn't say,
are you going to college? We'd say what college are
you going to? And they immediately change them mind, Oh,
I guess I'm going to college. Now. Look, we could
argue is going to college or trades whatever, But just
the idea of saying to a kid, which one are
(16:21):
you going to? Says you believe in me enough, you're
going to create a structure where you're expecting me to
go to college. So now I'm going to start to think, well,
what college am I going to go to? Megan, I
want to go here or here? And so we as
a district need to say all of our kids really
can learn, and what are we doing when they're not? So,
you know, like the phrase that I've used quite often
(16:42):
is the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Right, if we have low expectations of kids, well they're
going to meet those low expectations. That we have high
expectations of kids, and we create the systems and structures
for those high expectations, you're going to do great. You know,
in Lansing we got a lot of credit for raising
the graduation rate by points, which is like unheard of.
But the number that I'm even more proud of is
that we raised our AP pass rate by over six
(17:07):
hundred and thirty percent quotes. Yeah, and it's because we
believe that our kids could do AP work. Previously, it
was like, oh, well, you know, the grad rates so
low and no, no, no, no. If you believe, if you
set up the structures, the kids really can do it.
So how do you shift mindset? Of it. It's because
I was saying, like in.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
New York, it probably did that in order to turn
things are out in.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
This goal absolutely, you know, and and everywhere of gun
New York, Michigan, or India. It really is about starting
from a conversation with the faculty with the principles, saying, look,
what do you think the goals should be? What do
you think the expectations to be? Oh, because nobody goes
into education because they hate children, you know, like's there's
(17:50):
not enough money in the world to like you know, so,
so people really care about kids, but sometimes they get
burned out, sometimes they get jaded. Sometimes they've been in
a system that doesn't listen to them or doesn't them.
So you just start by saying, okay, well, what do
you think the goal should be? What do you need?
Right when I go to schools, every visit starts with
the same guiding question. The first visit is how can
the district help you help the children? And so once
(18:12):
we start having those conversations, we start to say, okay, well,
if we get this to you, what do you think
the goals are going to be? Okay, So when you
don't hate it, what's going on is it support? Is
it maybe a mindset, Maybe it's a deficit thinking like
maybe and then we got to go in and support.
But the truth is, it all ends up with what
are the facts? What are the truth? And if things
(18:34):
aren't moving, what are we trying to do to get there?
And if people aren't believing that we can do it, well,
you know, maybe they can go work in Kirkland, you know,
like you know, so we you know, we just but
we have to hold the line. We truly have to
believe that our children can do it. And what I've
seen in my twenty five plus years in administration is
(18:54):
once you have a vision, have a mission, have a direction,
have support and trust and like communication, it's amazing how
quickly things can change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Well, student supports is certainly a big part of this.
If you're going to have high expectations, you need high supports.
Mental health has been a thing, especially since the pandemic.
What are your plans to support student mental health?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Sure? Well, I mean I will say that Seattle actually
has an incredible amount of supports already. I walk into
schools and I see classrooms of ten kids and three
adults and it's not mandated like there are so many
adults in these schools, there's so many people working with
the children. I think the question really is is are
(19:38):
we doing the right things about support that our kids need.
Are we just kind of saying, well, here you have
this extra person. What's the expectation of the person. Is
it always going to be push out and pull in?
Is it what's best for the kids? Are we actually
talking to the families seeing what they need. So you know,
for me, what I see is it's not a lack
of people, and it's not even a lack of re
(20:00):
I mean, no joke. I've walked into classrooms and I'm like,
it's a room full of unicycles, Like where did all
these things come from? We're like, you know, Salmon Hatcheria's
or I mean, every classroom I've gone into is vibrant
and beautiful. Now, yes, some of our buildings are old
and they need new windows, don't get me wrong. But
the stuff is there, the people are there. The question
is what are we doing that's right by kids. I'll
(20:24):
give you a good example, and you talked a little
bit about special ad In Seattle, we have these four designations.
We have this stick called Resource Extended resource focus and
the step we made that up. We made that up. Yeah,
there's no such thing as distinct or focus or right. Yeah.
And so the problem is, I'm not sure that we're
doing right by our kids with the system we already have.
(20:46):
I think we have the adults, and we certainly have
the kids, but we have to have a really thoughtful
discussion about how are we actually supporting the individual chial
based on their need, not based on a prescription that
we kind of created and said this is the best thing.
I mean, I'll say I was in a room once
where it was one kid into adults. Yeah, I asked
(21:06):
the principal, what's going on here? Well, the first teacher
is like a kind of a resource room teacher, and
the second teacher is an mL teacher. Okay, so you
really think you need two adults in a room with
one kid. The kid can only listen to one person
at a time. Maybe that other person could go work
with some other children. And the Prince will said, oh, yeah,
(21:28):
that's a good idea. I said, good. You know, so
I just need you to think, don't just take the
schedule that was given you because it was just a
scheduling thing. And so rather than do that, we have
to look detailed say wow, maybe it's better for us
to use the resources this way or that way. And
I think you'll see a pretty dramatic change pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So you talked earlier about engaging families and communities. What
does that look like if you're going to authentically engage
families and communities students so that their input can be
incorporated into what you want to do around your.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I mean, it looks like a lot of things, right.
So you know, we had these eight engagements and we
went to each of the seven board districts and then
we had one online and we literally had over a
thousand people. It was awesome, and you create a place
where they feel comfortable speaking. And we of course gave
surveys because we want to know what people thought. And
overwhelmingly people said, wow, my voice was heard, Like you know,
(22:23):
I actually got the share and nobody nobody told me no, right,
And I mean the directions to the staff that were
leading it in me was don't get defensive, get voice
out there. Let's see, that's one way. The other way
is to just be present. I mean I go to
community meetings all of the time. I go to PTA's
I talk to folks, and then also to respond to
my emails, right, I mean I get now hundreds of
(22:43):
emails from families because they know all respond And then
in terms of students, when I got here, one of
the first things we created was a student superintendent roundtable.
So once a month I actually meet with students in
a kind of structured way that they get to really
be part of decisions that they helped me through things
and we idate together. And for next year, we actually
just put out a call for high school students to
(23:05):
be part of it. We had over one hundred applications
and this is kids who want to spend Saturday with me,
So like that's pretty impressive, right. So it's about trying
to be in as many different places as possible and
then also recognizing the organizations that already exist. So like
I have a standing meeting with the city wide PTSA,
so now I know that I'm always going to be
with them. Once a month, I'll get to hear from
(23:27):
them because their job is to hear from So there's
a lot of those structures, right, and it with a
lot of people on a consistent cadence so that my
voice is heard I hear their voice and we work together.
And then always being open and willing to go to
the community to go meet and really to listen. So
it looks like a lot of different things. And what's
been great is over these last three months, I think
(23:48):
the word has gotten now that I and the team
now are really accessible and are willing to listen, that
we're not just going to get defensive. We're going to
actually say, oh, you know what, you're right, we probably
do need to fix that, change that. And it's great
that the listening has been going on.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And the next thing, of course, is like how do
you actually incorporate what they're saying that's right and they
can see the action.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Great, And you know, I think the cell phone band
is a good example, right, I mean it's something that
people were talking about over and over again. It's like, great,
we're gonna do it, no problem. We heard a lot
about math enrichment. Well we did it, you know. Like,
so I think the more that we do those kinds
of things, the more the community is going to start
to trust us, you know, in the long run.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I always like to say that the work moves
at the speed of trust. That's true, and it takes time,
you know, it doesn't just put the switch and go
that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, I want to talk about you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Too, Okay, sure, So in your education journey, what are
some things that worked and what are some things that
didn't work?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So well? Sure? I mean, I think what has always
worked is being honest, being transparent, being thoughtful, listen much
more than you talk, and that has helped me in
New York and Michigan and certainly now here in Washington. Also,
being really clear about expectations, that's really and actually holding
(25:01):
people to account. What hasn't worked is being too soft. Honestly,
what hasn't worked is you know something's wrong, but you're like, oh,
I just want to know. You got to think about
the children. You've got to think about the children. And
sometimes because we want to be nice, we're not being
nice set because we're actually not making the decisions we
(25:25):
need to make. And you know, in my twenty five
years of leadership, I know there have been times where
I tried to be nice. I tried to oh no,
just no, always a mistake. You know, if the data
is there that you've listened, you've learned, you've figured it
out and you know what, the right decision is, make
the right decision for the children, not the right decision
(25:45):
for the adult. Sometimes even the right decision for the
adult is not necessarily the nice one, but it's the
right one, it's the correct one. So I think the
more that I can make sure that when we are
making decisions, people are together in that decision. They it's collective,
but that my job is to really make sure that
we're centering students and we're making sure that what is
(26:07):
right for the children, what is right for the schools,
rather than what might be right for one or the Now.
We have to take care of our staff, of course,
and we want to treat our faculty really well. But
the mistakes that I've made over my career have usually
been when I was reluctant to make the decision that
I knew I needed to make, but it didn't feel nice.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, you know, So my job, and I think people
have seen this in May these three months, is I'm
going to always try to say it like it is.
I'm going to be really transparent about it, and I'm
gonna be willing and I have to. And that's why,
you know, my first email to the community was. You know,
I basically promised three things. I'm always gonna put kids first,
I'm always going to try to show up, and I'm
going to make decisions you might not agree with, right,
(26:49):
but I will I will explain them, right because I'm
going to have to make some hard decisions, and we
are going to have to make some hard decisions. But
that's the right thing to do. And I know the
mistakes I've made is when I don't do that because
I'm trying to be nice.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, yeah, And we'll get to some big decisions in
the session here.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
If you had a.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Magic wand and you could wave it right, But what
was it like for you as a kid when you
were growing up? I mean, what was your experience going
to school in elementary school, high school, college?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I mean, you know, I like school. You know, I
still have some of my best friends from elementary school
and high school and college. And I did move from
New York to LA that was a big change. And
so I really appreciate that consistency matters for children and
trying to make sure that the school that you're in
supports you and loves you so you don't have to,
you know, leave. So when I was thirteen, we moved
(27:37):
from New York to LA and I was a big shift. Yeah,
But no, I mean I've always liked school. I mean
I like playing sports. I liked after school curriculum. I
did drama and plays and things like that. But no,
I always enjoyed school, and certainly in college. I really
appreciated going to college. It was a great time. I
mean four years away from my family. That was a
lot of fun, you know, and with friends. But also
(28:00):
the desire to always learn, the desire to always get better.
And you know, I'd like to believe that I'm still
a student. You know, I'm still trying to learn. But
you know, I struggled in some things in school. You know,
there's certain things I'm good at. There's some things that
were very hard for me in schools. And so you know,
I really appreciate that as for me because I can
see when kids need the support or when they're really flying.
(28:22):
Don't clip their wings, yeah, you know, let them go right.
And so, for instance, the last math class I took
was in eleventh grade because my high school didn't offer
me something afterwards, and I always felt like, well, maybe
I would have done more math in college. If the
school allowed me to do some things. I also knew
that I was there was things that I struggled with,
and I wish I had gotten some more support around that.
(28:44):
But you know, I went to this thirty two hundred
kid high school, very big, ye you know, very you know,
and so there wasn't a lot of individual and I
was doing well, right, so it wasn't they were like, oh,
you know, what's wrong with them? But what I see
and what I think our jobs as educators is to
make sure the individual child is supported as much as possible.
But yeah, when I like college, you know, grad school
(29:06):
was a little bit different. I was already working when
I was going to grad school on But no, I
mean I certainly enjoyed it. I went to some great
places and still, as I said, are still very close
to the kid that I went to school with. Yeah, no,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, if you had a magic wand sure and you
could make any changes in the state education system, sure,
like if you were not just looking at Seattle's orgon
at the whole state of Washington, sure, and budget was
not a constraint.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Oh I mean yeah, yeah, no, this is like a
big picture.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
If I in the Sky, Sure, what would it change?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You know, the first thing I would change is the budget, right,
so the fact that that's not an issue, but I
want to be really clear to the listeners is one
of the things that's really hard is the way that
school districts are funded in Washington are based on this
like regular model of school. There's no such thing as
a regular model of school. And so you know in
the budget presentation we gave to the community is because
(30:01):
we are structured differently, we are just in a structural deficit.
We do not get enough money to do the programs
we want to do, and that causes some consternation. So yes,
the magic one would be definitely can we fund us
based on the needs, not just this formula. But if
funding wasn't an issue, I mean, I would want to
have more programs for more kids, individualized education, whatever language
(30:26):
a kid wants to take, great, whatever math kid wants
to take, great, whatever science a kid wants to take.
And you know, having more supports for teachers, more professional
development for teachers. You know, love to see you know,
some of our buildings are pretty old, some of them
are beautiful and new. I would love to see kids
going to environments that everybody has a football field and
a soccer field, and a baseball field and a basketball court.
(30:49):
Everybody has a beautiful track and trees and grass, you know,
all those kinds of things. You know, there should be
guinea pigs in every school, you know, Like you know,
there's there's all sorts of fun stuff that like, I
think the kids deserve. But at the end of the day,
the three things that move the needle for children is
a high quality teacher in every classroom, tutoring and mentoring.
(31:10):
So if you really ask, like what the real magic
want is, it's those three things. It's high quality future
in every classroom, tutoring and mentoring. And that's real. But
of course I would love the children to have access
to anything they want, anything the parents want. And that's
really the limitations, right, is that because a bunch of constraints,
we can't necessarily offer dual language everywhere, We can't offer
(31:31):
after school programs everywhere. I mean, I'd love to see
more after school programs, more before school programs. I mean,
there's tons of things, but if there's a real focus
and I speak about a lot high quality teacher in
every classroom, tutoring and mentoring. That's what we really are
going to focus on too.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Ben Schulderner is the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. Superintendent Schuldneur,
thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Thank you, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you'd like to learn more about League of Education
Voters or support our work, please visit our website Education
voters dot org
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com