Join me at Next Week’s Superintendent Listening Session

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Since his hiring was announced, Superintendent Shuldiner has been vocal about his plans to engage the SPS community. To his credit, he has been doing so.

One pillar of this commitment to listening is his ongoing community engagement tour. He is hosting eight regional listening sessions: one in each of the seven regions from which board directors are elected, plus a final, virtual session. 

The engagement session for Sacajawea’s region—Region 1—is Thursday, March 26, 6:30pm-7:30pm, one week from today (this is unfortunately the same time as Sacajawea’s Athletic Skills Night). I would love to see our Sacajawea community well represented at the community meeting.

Join me if you’d like to ensure that your own voice, and that of our community, is heard! The meeting is at James Baldwin Elementary, just past the Northgate Target. I can drive anyone who needs a ride (just email me at advocacy@sacpta.org). If we fill up all the seats in my van, I’ll buy milkshakes for everyone on the way home. 😉

An RSVP is not necessary, but you can respond to help with planning. 

Read on to find out:

Why should I attend?

Many participants in the community meeting echoed my own observation that the meeting had a similar format and feel to the disastrous “Well-Resourced Schools” meetings of 2024. The 2024 series was a transparent attempt to manufacture consent for school closures. 

I believe the 2026 listening series is being hosted in good faith. With a new superintendent, and four new board members, the district has a chance for a reset. It makes sense for Shuldiner to be listening widely and often at this moment of transition.

Here are some reasons why I think it’s worth attending our Region 1 meeting:

  • Share your opinions. If you have thoughts about the three questions driving the meeting, you should get those thoughts into the world! We have limited opportunities as a community to share our thoughts in low-stakes environments like this. 

  • Reinforce the idea that community engagement is valued. Nearly everyone at Sac has at some point bemoaned a lack of community engagement from SPS. How tragic would it be if the district finally put effort into such engagement, only for us to not show up? It will be hard to make the case for future engagement if we don’t take the opportunities currently on offer.

  • Show the new superintendent and the district how the Sac community shows up for SPS broadly. We are more credible as a community seeking change when we demonstrate that our desire for a better SPS extends beyond our desire for a better Sacajawea. I know many of us are already active in district-level work, and many more of us have opinions whose impact extends beyond Sac. Let’s show up with that!

  • Meet the new superintendent. Shuldiner stuck around after the first meeting for short, informal discussions with community members. It’s a chance to share a quick personal story if you like, or just to get a sense of how he operates.

  • Connect with like-minded folks. When I attended the first meeting in this series, a woman in my small group had similar concerns to mine, so we got to talking afterward. She introduced me to her like-minded friend. Now, my network of education advocates includes two more friendly faces. Maybe you’ll meet your next activist buddy, or reconnect with a neighbor, or just take comfort in hearing from someone experiencing similar things to you!

What should I expect at the community meeting?

I attended the first engagement session, back in late February, to get a feel for what to expect. The full meeting was an hour, spent mostly in small groups of 5-10 people discussing three guiding questions.

Each table had a member of central district staff present to take notes to be summarized and combined afterward. During the last 10-15 minutes of the meeting, Superintendent Shuldiner offered a community speaker from each table the chance to share out highlights of their discussions with himself and the full audience.

The three guiding questions were:

  • What’s working well?

  • What isn’t working well?

  • What do you think SPS should do differently?

Themes that I noticed emerge from the share-outs in the session I attended:

  • Increased transparency and clearer communication. Some folks phrased this as not wanting surprises from the district; others said they wanted to understand how decisions are made, and to hear the reasoning behind them.

  • Requests for specific elements of a well-rounded academic program. There were requests for increased arts funding and library funding; a call for foreign language at every middle school; a plea for evidence-based curricula, especially in reading; and one group expressing their hope for covered playgrounds.

  • Calls to stop closing schools. One person speaking out against closures pointed to Seattle being the “richest city around.” Others cited the protection of small, neighborhood schools, especially elementaries. Several speakers paired their desire for the end of closures with requests to execute closures with more clarity, accountability, and transparency about the reasons and benefits, if future closures must occur.

  • One group called for the return of homework to elementary schools, a request that received a spontaneous, boisterous round of applause from the full room!

As a final reminder: the meeting is Thursday, March 26, 6:30pm-7:30pm, at James Baldwin Elementary. I hope to see you there, and please let me know if you want a ride (and maybe a milkshake)! I’m at advocacy@sacpta.org.