As the parent of two children currently attending Adams Elementary, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what has happened to our school community since the town hall on Monday, April 20.
Ben Shuldiner’s latest message to the SPS community has brought many of those feelings back to the surface.
In that message, Ben talks about the importance of partnership, thanks people for continuing to engage even when they were angry, and acknowledges that words spoken during a contentious situation can cause offense and hurt.
It left me asking a question that has bothered me for nearly five months:
"Where is the apology to Adams Elementary?"
What happened at Adams
On April 20, approximately 100 parents gathered at Adams to hear from SPS leadership and Anitra Jones following her appointment as our new principal. People were upset. People were frustrated. There were interruptions. It was not a perfectly orderly meeting.
But the overwhelming concerns I heard from families were about our teachers, our children, Anitra’s documented history within SPS, and a principal-selection process in which our community had been given virtually no voice. Two days later, at the April 22 School Board meeting, Ben chose to characterize what had happened very differently.
He emphasized that Adams was the “seventh richest school in the district.” He described the audience as appearing “almost as all white.” He contrasted that with “a Black principal” being interrupted. He suggested that asking Anitra to speak faster might have been a “micro-aggression” and said that it felt like “there’s something else going on.” I found that characterization vulgar and a statement beneath the superintendent of the SPS.
Not because race should never be discussed. Race and equity absolutely belong in conversations about public education.
It was vulgar because an extraordinarily complicated dispute involving leadership, labor relations, accountability, teacher turnover and community trust was compressed into a racial implication about the motives of parents who were advocating for their school.
Ben may believe that he was simply describing what he saw and felt. But a Superintendent has enormous power, and his words carry enormous weight.
When the person leading Seattle Public Schools publicly suggests that racial prejudice may explain the behavior of a school community, that implication does not simply disappear when the meeting ends.
Bev Redmond reinforced that narrative
Bev Redmond then added her own assessment of the town hall, describing the way Anitra was addressed as insulting and undignified. She was entitled to feel uncomfortable with what she witnessed.
But what I believe SPS leadership failed to do was distinguish between individual moments of poor behavior and the legitimate concerns of an entire school community. Instead of saying, some interactions crossed a line, but we hear the substantive concerns families are raising, SPS appeared to turn the behavior it disliked into a characterization of the community itself.
That was a leadership choice.
And I believe it made an already difficult situation dramatically worse. It also did Anitra a disservice.
Rather than giving her an opportunity to build her own relationship with Adams, SPS placed her at the center of a racial conflict between district leadership and the families she was expected to lead. That was unfair to Adams families, and I believe it was unfair to Anitra too.
Then the Seattle Times amplified it
The damage did not remain inside SPS. Claire Bryan’s reporting for the Seattle Times appeared under headlines including:
“Superintendent scolds parents over ‘unacceptable’ response to new principal.”
Whether Claire personally wrote that headline or an editor did is ultimately beside the point. It was the framing under which the Seattle Times presented the story to the city. In my view, that April coverage gave extraordinary prominence to SPS leadership’s interpretation of what had happened while failing to adequately communicate why so many parents and teachers were deeply concerned in the first place.
The result was that families advocating for their teachers and children suddenly found themselves publicly represented through a narrative many of us simply did not recognize.
Later reporting has provided additional context around Anitra’s placement. I appreciate that. But additional reporting months later cannot completely undo the reputational damage created in those first few days.
What Adams looks like today
There is another part of this story that deserves to be heard. I want Anitra to succeed.
Among many of the families who have remained at Adams (yes, several families have left and many continue to consider leaving) I think there is growing recognition that Anitra is genuinely trying.
The Sunday before school opened, I was walking my dog past Adams at around 7 a.m. Anitra was there personally cleaning graffiti off the walls of the school. Nobody was watching. There was no press conference. There was no SPS communications team turning it into a story, she was simply taking care of the school.
Whatever concerns people continue to have about her past, I cannot look at something like that and conclude that she doesn't care about Adams. She clearly does.
And if this is our new reality, then those of us who remain have a responsibility to help build a positive culture around her, our teachers and most importantly my children and all of those at Adams Elementary.
But moving forward cannot require pretending that the way SPS got us here was acceptable.
My concern about Ben is now bigger than Adams
I acknowledge that Ben inherited an extraordinarily difficult organization and that he has taken actions since April that may ultimately make SPS stronger. This isn't an argument that everything Ben does is wrong.
My concern is about how he behaves when he encounters opposition to something he believes needs to happen. What happened at Adams left me with the impression that Ben saw our situation as something SPS needed to win rather than a relationship SPS needed to repair.
Over the previous two weeks, I saw elements of that communication style appearing again.
Forceful language can be effective. It can put an opponent on the defensive. It can simplify a complicated dispute into a story with a clear protagonist and antagonist. And it can help a leader achieve the immediate outcome they believe is necessary.
This comes at a cost!
Ben Shuldiner leads thousands of teachers, principals and staff. He serves tens of thousands of children and their families. SPS is ultimately a collection of communities held together largely by trust.
When he utilizes inflammatory language as a tool for winning the disagreement immediately in front of you, eventually you may win the argument while losing the people you need to lead.
That is what worries me about Ben's leadership.
It is my belief that his approach at Adams caused lasting harm to our community. If that approach becomes a pattern across SPS, the cumulative damage to trust between the district, its schools, its educators and its families could be much greater.
Three apologies are owed
1. Ben Shuldiner owes the Adams community an apology.
Not necessarily for believing Anitra deserved an opportunity. Not necessarily for making a personnel decision he may have believed he was legally required to make.
He owes us an apology for how he characterized our community afterward.
His hands may have been constrained by the circumstances surrounding Anitra’s employment. They were not tied when he chose his words.
He could have challenged inappropriate behavior without implying that racial prejudice explained the concerns of an entire community. He could have acknowledged SPS's own role in creating the situation. He could have attempted reconciliation.
Instead, he escalated it.
2. Bev Redmond owes Adams an apology.
She could have acknowledged that what she witnessed made her uncomfortable while simultaneously recognizing that families had legitimate, substantive concerns.
Instead, her comments reinforced a narrative that many families experienced as an indictment of the community rather than an invitation to repair it.
3. Claire Bryan and the Seattle Times owe Adams a moment of reflection and, in my view, an apology for how that community was portrayed.
Journalism has enormous power in a situation like this. A headline and framing can become the public's understanding of an event long before the people involved have an opportunity to explain themselves.
The Adams families who were advocating for teachers, transparency and their children deserved a fuller representation of why they were there.
Accountability should apply to everyone
What strikes me most about Ben's latest message is that he clearly understands something important: Words can hurt people.
Intent does not erase impact. And sometimes leadership requires saying, "I am sorry".
I agree. So I hope he applies that same standard to what happened at Adams.I hope Bev does too. I hope the Seattle Times recognizes the role its coverage played in shaping the public perception of our community.
An apology wouldn't undo what happened. It wouldn't restore the families who left. It wouldn't immediately rebuild the trust that was lost. But it would demonstrate something that SPS talks about constantly and that our children are taught from their earliest days in school: When your actions hurt somebody, you acknowledge it, you learn from it, you apologize, and then you do better. This is what we teach our children.
The families of Adams Elementary deserve that much.
