1. Name as it will appear on the ballot
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First Name |
Middle Initial or Nick Name |
Last Name |
2. Office sought (include office, jurisdiction, position/district number):
3. Are you the incumbent? Yes No
4. How long have you resided in this district/city?
5. How long have you resided in King County?
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21 years |
6. Is the office sought partisan or nonpartisan? Partisan Nonpartisan
CAMPAIGN CONTACTS
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Campaign Name: |
Stuebing for Schools |
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1. Beginning with the most recent position, please list public offices which you have held. Include positions on appointive Boards or Commissions.
Public Office |
Elective or Appointive? |
Dates Held |
Leadership Role (if any) |
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2. If you ran for public office but were not elected, please list those races below:
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Office Title |
Year of Run |
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Seattle School Director, Dist. 2
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In this section, we are seeking responses that reflect the four ratings criteria: involvement, effectiveness, character, and knowledge. These are defined as follows:
1. In a page or less, why are you running for this office? (Note: the interview committee will be given a copy of this statement before your interview; at the beginning of your interview you will have the opportunity to expand on this statement in any way you wish.)
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Seattle Public Schools currently only graduates 50% of our students. This is unacceptable.
I believe that our graduation crisis is affecting the very character of Seattle. The epidemic of people leaving school early is not only affecting personal economies, it is affecting the regional economy as well. We are seeing loss of the middle class throughout the Puget Sound Region. Additionally, we are seeing a pinch in our social services budgets and also an increase in spending on law and justice. The common causal factor is the systems failure to retain and educate many more than half of the students.
I am particularly saddened to hear our city council candidates asked, time and again, if we need a bigger police force. The answer is always “yes”. The King County budget for social services has lost about 8% in just the last 4 years. The money went to our police force, the courts and the prison. We don’t talk about it. But professors at Harvard, urban planners and educators from across the country all do talk about it. They call it our “school to prison pipeline”. Referring, in part, to Seattle, Angela Y. Davis said that in some neighborhoods, kids have, “a far greater chance of going to prison than getting a better education.”
We aren’t going to make our city stronger by consolidating schools. We will are only creating conditions that will lead to more students dropping out. Big schools are anonymous places. We will make Seattle healthier by graduating many more students with meaningful diplomas.
I don’t just have a vision, I have a plan. Six years in the making, the plan is based on the proven successes of other school districts nationwide. The plan centers on three relationships: family, community and the teacher / student connection.
For a living, I build organizations. Currently, I am the Executive Director of Take Back Your Time, which is a major Canadian and U.S. initiative to fight overwork and time poverty. We have 10,000 members and growing!
The question of our time is: How do we preserve the character and quality of life for the citizens of Seattle? The answer is: That we graduate many more students with meaningful diplomas. |
2. Describe your most important personal characteristics or traits as they relate to the office you seek.
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1. Listen, Learn, Suggest, Connect -- Boardroom Success: Leadership begins with listening. Every member of a committee has established values that they will not compromise. By delineating those values early and then looking for commonality in what success looks like, I find that most committee work can be dispatched expediently and graciously.
2. Doggedly Determined to Find Best Fit Options: The Seattle School Board is notorious for its isolation. Consultation with other school districts, as well as local and state government has historically been minimal. This has led the schools to be sluggish and not at all creative or comprehensive when searching for solutions. Time, money and energy should be saved by recognizing that others are working on solutions to the same problems. The Girl Scout reminder that I live by is to “Look wider still.”
3. Standing Tall: I surprise people. I am not imposing, physically. I laugh often and loudly. I have a quick smile and a slow temper. However, I left home at sixteen and because of that, I am far scrappier and more resilient than folks initially assess. I commit only after I am sure of the logic, practicality and viability of my decisions. Of course, occasionally, I am dead wrong and find no shame in owning and righting my mistakes.
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3. Please describe in sufficient detail, one to three accomplishments or contributions of which you are most proud. These examples should illustrate effective skills and capabilities you think apply to the office you are seeking. These accomplishments may have occurred at any time in your personal, professional, or public life.
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I am most proud of the organizations that I have built and the way I have navigated through the tough decisions.
A. Weathering 75% Budget Cut: I was hired to build a GIS Department for Mason County Public Works. Politics in Shelton, Washington can be a bit dicey. Government watchdogs wondered if the expenditure was wise. The resulting pressure led to a 75% reduction in my budget. Fortunately, I had been working closely with my Steering Committee. On the Committee were elected officials, appointed department heads and a County Commissioner. (The County Administrator eventually chaired the Committee.) The Committee had already defined and understood the strategic plan. Using the plan as a guide I was able hold to my values and preserve the jobs of all of my staff, bring the project entirely in-house, put off expenditures on new equipment and re-negotiate the timelines for deliverables. The following year my budget was restored.
B. Disconnect between Board and Membership -- AAUW: I encountered a situation where the State Board of my women's organization was promoting a public policy agenda that I knew to be out of sync with the majority of the membership, and I was the Public Policy Chair for State issues! You could say, contradictory. I tried several approaches. Direct dialogue was unwelcome. I tried sending out an electronic survey, some people took the survey several times. Finally, I waited until State Convention and held a workshop. It was fortunate that the workshop was well attended. Instead of discussing the exact wording of the public policy priorities, we discussed what our values were and what success looked like. In the main session, we reviewed the shared goals with the body and passed the public policy priorities in 20 minutes. At previous conventions, the priorities often overflowed their timeslots and the discussion was contentious.
C. Building on success -- Take Back Your Time: I am the second Executive Director of Take Back Your Time. The group has been wildly successful in the past five years -- and nobody really knows how. Successes include over 900 pieces in print including the New York Times, Forbes, Utne Reader, Christian Science Monitor and more. We have been featured on Oprah, on Danish and Slovenian television. Tavis Smiley mentioned us recently. John de Graaf has produced popular documentaries supporting our cause, including the recently released Motherhood Manifesto. We have a handbook that is used in colleges as a textbook.
There is no organizational structure, that you would recognize. The Board is very large, acts independently, and is scattered across the US and Canada. To call everyone on the phone takes 3 weeks.
We have a complex audience and more than one message.
I was invited to take something that was thriving, put a foundation under it, and not mess up the organic success that we were already experiencing. This is one of the biggest challenges of my life!
The first thing that I saw was energy lost in discussions over which message should be more prominently promoted. This was unwinnable, because the national experts in one field were trying to persuade national experts in another field that their life work was the most important. The only winning situation was to continue to allow an array of complimentary messages to flow.
Instead of grouping everyone by topic, I designed a model that re-grouped everyone by audience. Those that were better at promoting public policy are now focused on helping getting the several messages out to our legislators. Those that are better at disseminating information through the grassroots will be retooling the same messages for mass consumption. We have six audiences. The model is starting to flow.
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4. Please list or describe your current and past activities in the community in which you have acquired skills that relate to the office you seek. Include your role in the activity and the year(s) in which you were involved. Involvement consists of many areas such as family, neighborhood, community, employment, or public life.
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A. Green Lake School Age Child Care Center (GLAC). Founding Board President, 1985-87. (I was 24 when I started the project.) The program still uses roughly the same annual fundraising scheme that I mapped out 20 years ago. This was my first major leadership role. I learned a lot about concensus building.
B. Wallingford United Methodist Church Food Bank and The Tilth. Coordinator, 1990-91. It was my pleasure to operate the only known food bank where a person did not have to have proof of address to be served. Since we were small and probably under the radar, we could be creative. Sunday schoolers stenciled artwork onto grocery sacks. We stocked the non-perishables on shelves and let a person shop the groceries that they preferred. I was very proud to form a relationship with The Tilth. Together, during the growing season, we were about to offer fresh, organic veggies at the our little food bank. I learned that dignity is precious. I also learned that everyone likes to make a contribution, as best as they can.
C. 43rd Legislative District Democratic Organization: Chair, 2006. The six-way race for the State House could have imploded the 43rd.. Three contenders were closely affiliated with the organization. I ran for and was elected Chair because I knew I could hold the organization together during the strain. I invested over 2000 hours. We did a lot of outreach to the 6000 people who had attended the 2004 Presidential Caucuses who had not heard much from us since. The result of the outreach was a 37% increase in membership. We saw an increase in participation: in the Spring 25 turned out for the caucuses and in the fall 225 turned out to vote in the endorsements. Additionally, because the campaigns monopolized the familiar volunteers, we fielded 270 primarily new volunteers. I learned that sometimes your best work is not always apparent to the beneficiaries. For me it is the fun of a hard job done well that is most important thing.
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VISION: The qualified School Director has a solid, palpable vision for what success will look like in the school system. It must be definite. It must be measurable. The Director must first and foremost find agreement with the other Directors on the Board. A lone Director has no authority.
STRUCTURE: Together, the Directors must provide the substantive structure. The Directors hire the Superintendent and provides that person with clear expectations and every opportunity to succeed. The structure includes a budget which models the values reflected in the mission and vision of the schools. The Directors set down the guiding rules as policy. Finally, the Board ensures that the facilities and equipment provided are adequate.
ACCOUNTABILITY: Directors monitor -- they do not manage. A Director must define incremental success so that it can be measured. This is as true when you are assessing student achievement or overseeing the expenditures on a capital project. A Director must understand data: where it came from, how it was produced, what assumptions have been made and what is not included in the information.
ADVOCACY: A stellar Director is a presence in the community, in Olympia, in the State and National Director's Association and in local government. Above all, the Director believes in the forward direction that the Board is taking the schools.
Which is most important? None are most important.
What is missing from Seattle Public Schools, and has been for a very long time, is vision. We have witnessed reaction without pause for contemplation. Until the Board grapples with and succeeds in defining one metric by which to measure success, it will continue to be tossed in a tempest of unpredictable realities.
I believe that one metric is to graduate many more students with meaningful diplomas. What is many? What is meaningful? I have my personal convictions, however, this is for the Directors to decide together. |
EDUCATION BACKGROUND SUMMARY
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report is distributed to voters in print and/or on our website. It includes a summary of the candidate’s education. Please summarize your education in 120 characters (letters, punctuation, and space all combined). The League will delete material that exceeds the space limit by beginning with the last entry. Suggested order is (degree) (subject) (school) (year, if desired).
Note: If this question is left blank the League will not include education information in your candidate profile.
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Bachelors of Science, Geological Sciences, University of Washington Associates of Arts, North Seattle Community College, with honors |
FOR PUBLICATION IN CANDIDATE EVALUATION REPORT
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report also includes a summary of each candidate’s civic involvement. Please summarize your civic involvement in the space below. We will make every attempt to include the information in the Candidate Evaluation Report as submitted. Due to space restrictions in the Report, your response is limited to 500 characters (letters, punctuation, and spaces all combined). It is important that you list your involvement beginning with the most important and ending with the least important. If you exceed the length of response permitted, or if the League should find it necessary to shorten responses for publication purposes, deletions will be made beginning with the last item listed.
Note: This information will appear verbatim on the League’s Candidate Evaluation Report. If this question is left blank, the Municipal League will not include information on your civic involvement in the Report.
Check here if you would like the Municipal League to copy the first 500 characters from Question 4 to paste into this section.
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Finished!
If at all possible, send your response to the Municipal League electronically as an attachment, or insert it into an e-mail message (cec@munileague.org). Mail and fax numbers are listed below. If the League has not contacted you to schedule an interview, please call the League office at your earliest convenience.
Don’t forget to send the following to the Municipal League: a resume, a photo, campaign literature, and, if you are an incumbent, constituent newsletters and other materials. Please use the check-off list on the cover sheet of this packet to indicate which items you have sent.
Candidate Evaluation Coordinator: Jason Thibedeau
Seattle, WA 98104-1614 Fax: (425) 671-0506 Website: www.munileague.org