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Posts published in “Day: May 31, 2012”

Is Seattle losing it?

May 31, 2012

Danny Westneat's Seattle Times column today ended with this: "This is the mood of the city. Joggers are packing heat. Moms of toddlers are contemplating arming up or heading out of town. It's insane, yes. We are losing it. Can you blame us?"

Well, yes.

That's not to dismiss the tragic events of the last week. A week ago: A man shot at the Northwest Folklife Festival. Shortly after: Four drive-by shooting incidents in South Seattle. Wednesday: Four killed in a cafe in the University District, a woman shot to death in another neighborhood - by, it turns out, the same man, who then shot himself.

Westneat's column reflects the attitude of a lot of Seattlites, to either arm up (he writes about a jogger visibly carrying a firearm) or get out of Dodge. (You can imagine how local TV news has been dealing with this - scaring the bejeebers out of everybody.)

Some blame the police. Some blame the Department of Justice, which has been leaning on the police over civil rights issues. There's a lot of blame being spread around elsewhere, too.

Consider it this way:

The meshing of these events into a short span is a fluke of timing. Nothing has changed. Seattle, in large part, is a safe large city, a fact true two weeks ago and true today.

The shootings reflect two trends contributing to violence especially in larger cities: gangs and mental illness. Both are challenging for police to deal with, but better approaches do seem to be coming along. (Seattle might cast a glance southward to Portland, for example, which is working on some innovative approaches in dealing with potentially hazardous mental illness cases.)

There's nothing really new here. The mass of bullets is just, simply, drawing our attention to what's already there: Problems that will take hard, slogging work to resolve. Seattle will probably figure that out before long.

Backgrounding Rudy Crew

May 31, 2012
crew
Rudy Crew

Oregon has never had a chief education officer; newly-hired Rudy Crew will be the first. He may have a big effect on Oregon education - certainly, that's the hope - and while a number of the policy points inherent in overhauling the state's education system are already in place, many will have to be devised on the fly. Crew will the guy in charge, more than anyone else, of doing that.

The immediate news reports have noted that he's been a major figure in national education circles: Head of public schools in New York and Miami, executive director of the University of Washington's Institute for K-12 Leadership, and an academic more rcently. His tenure at these spots has been described as "contentious," and there's some acknowledgement that he has both fans and detractors, but we haven't been given much sense of what that translates to. Being controversial could be a good thing or bad, depending on how you assess it. Governor John Kitzhaber and other Oregonians clearly, as the Oregonian pointed out, want someone who will shake things up. They seem likely to get that with Crew.

But what sort of shakeup?

Here are two paragraphs from the (heavily footnoted) Wikipedia entry on him:

Crew’s leadership in Miami was reflected in recognition as a finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize for three consecutive years (2006–08),[4] and in School Improvement Zone being named a Top 50 Innovation by Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Institute,[5] 12 high schools being named among the best by Newsweek,[6] Crew was named the 2008 National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), topping the 50 state winners.[7] His initiatives have led the District to be viewed nationally as a model of success,[8] with the secondary-school reform program being credited with Miami’s graduation-rate boost.[9]

Crew has also garnered controversy. At a June 2008 school board meeting, Crew said the district had overspent millions of dollars during the past two years because it had hired more teachers than budgeted, lost state funding, and encountered rising costs.[10] School Board member Renier Diaz De La Portilla called for Crew's ouster, criticizing the way he has managed the schools' budget.[11][12] Ana Rivas Logan, another board member, called Crew "insubordinate."[11] At an August 4, 2008 school board meeting, the item to terminate Crew's contract failed. Despite Crew's strong support from business and community leaders,[13] the School Board bought out his contract at its September 10, 2008 meeting.

Is there a way to characterize what sorts of change Crew might want to push toward? (more…)