Federal Way Public Schools officials introduced the top three superintendent finalists to the public this week to give them an opportunity to answer questions and engage in the community.
The finalists — current Interim Superintendent Sally McLean, Assistant Superintendent for the Renton School District Tammy Campbell and chief accountability officer for the Highline Public Schools Alan Spicciati — answered questions ranging from, “What would you do in your first 90 days as superintendent” to, “How will you create a culture of competent administrators” as the immigration population grows all over the world.
Consultant Ray and Associates was the search firm who contracted with the school district to find qualified applicants.
About 50 people attended the Wednesday meeting.
Here are some of the responses the candidates gave:
Tammy Campbell
First 90 days as superintendent: “’You can’t speak to be understood unless you first seek to understand,’” she quoted an unknown speaker.
The first thing Campbell will do is be out in schools, listening and learning. But before she does, she will pull together a transition team who can give insight.
“And then I will talk to staff to ask what’s working, meet with different community groups, reach out to community voices that aren’t typically a part of district,” she said.
She will reach out to local officials and community groups to get a sense of current partnerships, and then talk to students about what works and doesn’t work for them.
“After doing all of that, I would then collect that information and share it out to our internal and external stakeholders and school board,” she said.
Highest budget priority for new funds available: “Ultimately, you’ve got to have funds in the classroom, closest to where the students are,” she said. “That’s a fundamental principal I believe.”
Creating a culture of competent administrators in a growing immigrant population: Campbell said she has experience of working in school districts with diversity — specifically the Renton school district with more than 100 languages spoken and Spokane where there’s a significant refugee population. She worked to ensure staff understood what it took to reach and teach each student.
“We built our own cultural competency to make sure we had a welcoming and engaging approach to our families,” she said.
How to help the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) youth who have the highest rate of suicide: “The first thing I’d want to do is meet with them to hear what they can tell me about their experiences,” she said.
Campbell said she’s an advocate of all schools to be a “home game” not an “away game.”
“Let them teach us how to teach them,” she said.
Thoughts on leadership style and problem solving: “I’m a team builder because I believe there’s no such thing as one person who can fix a system,” she said. Campbell said she believes it’s about teams coming together to be focused on what they want to accomplish.
Ways to improve the district’s image: “Teach the children well and they’ll go home and tell their parents and neighbors. Touch them, inspire them. We often go to very sophisticated things but when you teach students well and they’re learning and they’re successful, that’s the best commercial you can do for a district because that’s what parents want. They want every possible opportunity.”
Background: Campbell is the daughter of a single mother who stressed the importance of education. As she was on her way to become a doctor, her life took a turn where she would eventually realize her “sheroes and heroes” of the world were educators.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Minot State University in South Dakota, she graduated from Eastern Washington University with a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction.
She went on to obtain her doctoral degree in educational leadership. She held positions at the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, Washington State University, Spokane Public Schools and Central Valley School District.
Alan Spicciati
Fitting in to the school district: Spicciati describes it as very “serendipitous” having spent 20 years in Highline Public Schools while living with his family here in Federal Way.
“I feel like I would have a real leg up on the relationships,” he said, noting his familiarity with the Road Map Project that brings together south King County school districts for the common goal of high graduation rates.
“I have a passion for the kids,” he said. “The kids I work with every day on the baseball field, my son [and his] friends and I want to see them do well and I’ve had this progression of experiences that I feel pretty confident I could do a really good job.”
Budget priorities: After describing a very painful time of cutbacks during the recession, Spicciati said it’s still important to look to the far future. He said children in kindergarten now will be working until 2060-2070.
“The world of technology is going crazy,” he said. “We have some good end roads, I know as a parent that I’d like to see that enhanced.”
Spicciati, a former music teacher, mentioned the importance of maybe expanding the strings program his son participates in at Thomas Jefferson High School as well as expanding the arts.
STEM versus arts education: “We’ve started to talk about STEM in Highline more and more,” he said.
Spicciati thinks its a disservice if district officials and educators only think of the technical side and not the creative side.
“One of the biggest things I’ve learned in the last five years is we talk about equity as a reading and math issue and we talk about achievement and opportunity gaps as really important, but it blew my mind that we have an access gap and, depending where you live, the arts offerings [differ in access].”
Spicciati said Federal Way has done a better job of making sure there’s Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge offerings but “we have those kind of gaps.”
“It’s really important that wherever our kids live, whatever school they go to, that they have access …,” he said. “What if we had the world’s next great scientist or artist?”
Create a culture of competent administrators in a growing immigrant population: Spicciati believes it’s “all of our jobs.”
“I don’t think we used to feel that way and a lot of well intentioned folks wanted to do the right thing and wanted someone with that expertise,” he said, adding that Highline Public Schools has 23 percent of students as English-language learners. “This is a big part of who we are as a school district.”
He said when he thinks back on what got him engaged in school — the arts — he notes that English-language learners are half as likely to take art.
“I want to be careful we don’t work from a deficit model, that we work from a strength based model and make sure we don’t constantly try to remediate “the lack of reading skill” because that will “come in time and a lot of that comes through content.”
Background: Spicciati has been a resident of Federal Way for about 20 years and is a parent to two kids in Federal Way Public Schools who went through Meredith Hill Elementary. One is a sixth grader at Kilo Middle School and the other is a ninth grader at Thomas Jefferson High School.
Spicciati coaches and is the president of the Federal Way National Little League. He trained as a musician and taught music at the high school and elementary level. For five years, he was a Highline High School assistant principal and an elementary school principal. For the past 12 years he’s been a member of the superintendent’s cabinet in Highline Public Schools.
For three years, he was the executive director of secondary schools. Three years ago, he was the interim superintendent in Highline school district for one full school year.
Spicciati is a graduate of the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, with a double major in music education and performance. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Washington’s Danforth Educational Leadership Program, and his doctor of education at Seattle Pacific University.
Sally McLean
First 90 days as superintendent: Since she’s had 12 months to familiarize herself with the school district as Interim Superintendent, McLean said she’s the “only candidate you’re seeing today that knows Federal Way, understands the huge operational side of this district, has connections with this community and can keep that part of the house, so to speak, running smoothly so we can spend all of our time and energy focusing on what I call the three legged stool.”
Highest budget priority for new funds available: McLean said when the court decision was first passed, the McCleary decision, three guiding principals were created to use for addressing new funds as they came back into the district. Those three guiding principals included:
1. Providing relief to taxpayers, which can be seen in the last two years in the general fund.
“We’ve eliminated all fees for general fund activities — musical instrument rentals, participating in athletics, being involved in Career and Technical Education programs. We also eliminated fees as we shifted to all day kindergarten.
2. “We talked about moving toward market midpoint. The Washington state Legislature has not provided wage increase to employees for six years and so as we saw some funds go through, we felt like it was appropriate to share funds with employees who had been working more or less for six years without a raise.”
3. Maintain affordable and sustainable practices. “We still have some very inequitable funding mechanisms that exist in the K-12 funding system even with McCleary that have negatively impacted this community since 1977,” McLean said.
But in terms of the district’s actual budget priorities, McLean said she’s been having conversations with principals and administrators and many principals and our teachers are struggling to address the social/emotional needs of our students.
“I don’t know what the right answer is and there may be an array of answers for us that could involve community partners such as Sound Mental Health of Valley Cities, it could involve additional psychologists or social workers in our schools but when I surveyed the documents from the principals and department head, that’s a fairly consistent thing that we’re hearing this year as well as last year,” she said.
Creating a culture of competent administrators in a growing immigrant population:
“I think our youth are far ahead of where the adults are in the school district community in terms of being culturally competent,” McLean said. “Every time I have an opportunity to work with our high school students, whether it’s through Advancing Leadership Youth, Advancing Leadership 2.0, students who attend the Minority Student Achievement Network or students who are serving on various district committees, the grading advisory committee and the work that students are serving to define what it means to be a global citizen, our students are collaborating together and working together. They’re culturally competent. It’s the adults in this system that are far behind.”
McLean said there’s training available but working on race and culture competency is something the district has been “deliberate about.” Most recently, her team is working to define what it means to have educational equity so “we can help move this district in the right direction.”
Helping the LGBTQ youth who have the highest rate of suicide: McLean wasn’t aware that the gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender youth were at the highest risk for suicide.
“I don’t know that I have an answer to that question at this point in time,” she said, adding that it was a great question and it was something to think about.
Thoughts on leadership style and problem solving: McLean believes she’s a fixer and most of her work at the district centers around problem solving.
“I’m only interested in being a superintendent here in Federal Way Public Schools because I’m committed to the work we’re doing here,” she said. “I’m not trying to do anything other than maintain the reputation that I have, being trustworthy and honest and willing to share the good news with the bad news.”
Background: McLean has worked in public education in the state of Washington for almost 30 years. Over the last 14 of those have been in Federal Way.
Until she was appointed interim superintendent last May, she served the district as an assistant superintendent and had the ability to do a wide variety of activities, ranging from boundary changes, levy proposals and implementing a student information system. She is a a new grandmother of a 13-month-old. McLean received degrees in decision sciences (statistical analysis) and human resource management from the University of Oregon. She also attended the Harvard Institute of Educational Leadership.
