My primary committee is Public Safety and Education.
In the public safety arena, a singular focus for the Council this year will be to consider confirmation of the Mayor’s Chief of Police appointment. Just a few weeks ago, we laid out our policy goals and priorities for this appointment and confirmation.
Other public safety priorities include developing a continuum of responses to reduce street disorder. Later this week we will announce a series of policy recommendations concerning this issue as it affects our downtown and neighborhood business districts.
Councilmember Rasmussen and I have asked the City Auditor to examine how the City responds to graffiti and litter in comparison to the best practices of other cities.
But I want to spend my remaining time on education, an issue that is directly related to public safety and our future as a city.
In June, many of our children in the Seattle Public Schools will proudly walk onto a stage at Memorial Stadium, the Seattle Center Exhibit Hall or other venues to receive their high school graduation diploma. There will be a lot of celebrating as parents and friends cheer them on.
But, a little more than one-third of the kids who should be high school seniors this year won’t be on a stage celebrating. That’s because only 63% of our public school students graduate on time.
Do you know what this means?
It means that these sons and daughters of our good city will likely never reach their full potential. It means we will pay — and pay for it big time — with higher crime rates, more costs for police and criminal justice and fewer workers prepared for positions that increasingly require technical skills. Inadequately educated citizens will also mean fewer people engaged in the civic life of our city.
This staggering graduation failure rate has been a reality for decades. It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s time we take bold steps to change it.
The Council has spent the last year building stronger relationships with the school board and school district leaders. Over the past six months we have added highly experienced members to our Families and Education Levy Oversight Committee. All members of the oversight committee value public education, want to close the academic achievement gap and end the failure-to-graduate disaster we are living with.
In the next few weeks, the Council will establish a structured process and timeline for renewal of the Families and Education Levy which is a critical component to improving public school performance. We will do this almost a year earlier than previous Levy renewal cycles because we want to use this year to thoroughly examine and learn from other cities that are trying to reform public education.
We will bring national experts in education reform to Seattle to stimulate public dialogue. We will work toward establishing more community schools that strengthen neighborhoods. We will examine more closely what Geoffrey Canada has put in place and accomplished at the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York, what’s happening in Cincinnati with their STRIVE effort and why our own New School in Rainier Beach is so wonderfully successful.
We will review these reform efforts with a “cradle-to-college” orientation. Education must begin well before kindergarten, indeed from birth. Our technology and information age also requires us to prepare our children to obtain a college education — if that is what they want. In all cases, our kids must be prepared to successfully attain the post-secondary skills they need to become independent, productive members of our community.
The Council’s work on public education and in preparing for next year’s Levy renewal will also be influenced by what we learn from the Mayor’s Youth and Families Initiative
which will gather the opinions and perspectives of residents from throughout the city in a series of town hall meetings, culminating with a Youth Congress this spring.
We all know that the Council does not govern the Seattle School District. But the success of our public schools is crucial to the success of our city — we will fall, or rise together. We are inextricably linked. And that’s why the Council will partner closely with the Mayor, the Office for Education, the Levy Oversight Committee, and with public school and education leaders to build a plan for meaningful change.
Education and public safety — two critical, closely related areas of major activity for the Council this year.