Seattle school district: A culture of fear? District Limits Employee Communications with the School Board

Amy Rolph & Scott Gutierrez:

A fear of retaliation and an official policy that keeps Seattle Public Schools employees from directly raising concerns with the school board are at least partly to blame for a scandal involving $1.8 million in misused public funds, auditors and investigators say.

The scandal unfolding at the school district is calling into question why Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the seven members of the school board weren't alerted earlier to concerns about Silas Potter, who ran the Regional Small Business Development Program.

Those concerns aren't new -- at least, not to a handful of employees in the school district. But when those concerns were voiced over the last several years, they never made it up to the school board.

At Seattle Public Schools, when employees do speak up, they have to navigate an obstacle course of bureaucracy before gaining the ears of board members.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 3, 2011 2:47 AM
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