balanced and ready.
All right.
SPS-TV, are you ready?
For our interpreters, are you ready?
Wonderful.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Bev Redmond, Chief of Staff for Seattle Public Schools.
Thank you for being here for our press conference regarding the next superintendent for Seattle Public Schools.
Before we begin, as we start off any of our sessions, I would like to begin with a land acknowledgement.
we would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.
The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe is our treaty tribe in Seattle and King County.
The Suquamish Indian Tribe is our treaty tribe up to the Elliott Bay boundaries.
Seattle Public Schools shares a government-to-government relationship with both tribes.
Again, welcome to our press conference for Seattle Public Schools.
We are also streaming live on YouTube and we are coming from our auditorium here in our board offices.
We are entering a new day at Seattle Public Schools guided by strong leadership and a clear sense of purpose.
Our work remains committed to listening, learning and leading together so that all students can access high-quality education that they deserve.
We continue to strengthen our financial and operational systems to ensure long-term fiscal stability in support of student outcomes.
and a big part of that is the ability to move forward and tonight you heard from our board as they voted unanimously to approve Ben Schuldner as the selected finalist, the next superintendent for Seattle Public Schools.
He comes to us as superintendent of the Lansing School District in Michigan and as I said a little bit earlier to some members of our media that were here, my great pride is his sense of accomplishment, his value for trust and transparency, and his ability to turn things around.
With that, we are going to enter into the press conference tonight.
You're going to hear from our board president, Gina Topp.
Then we will move over to our incoming superintendent, Ben Schuldner.
But flanked behind me is a symbol of support and I'm very proud of these individuals for coming together tonight.
You see our current interim superintendent, Fred Podesta, is here.
We also have our board members who are here.
And we also have some special guests standing with us in solidarity.
Brian Vance, president of the Principals Association of Seattle.
Rainy Swan, Executive Director of PASS, and Gerard Monteo Thompson, President of the Seattle Education Association.
We're very proud of their presence tonight and their willingness to be here with us.
So let's get started.
We're going to be in this space for a few minutes.
We've already done the stand-up portion.
We did a pivot.
We've done the stand-up portion with media already, but we want to make sure that we honored our commitment to come to you exactly at 5.30 and not leave anyone out.
With that, President Topp.
Thank you so much, Chief Redmond.
I appreciate it.
Good evening and thank you all for being here.
Today is an important day for Seattle.
This moment reflects months of listening, learning, and working alongside our community as we searched for our next superintendent.
From the start, we ask the people who know our schools best, our students, our families, our educators, our community partners, what we need in a leader.
And you told us, we need a leader who puts students first, someone who leads with equity, someone who will strengthen our financial foundation, someone who will communicate clearly and openly, and someone who brings experience but is creative and innovative in their thinking.
That guidance helped our search, and today we are moving forward with a leader who reflects those values.
Ben Schuldner brings experience, a teacher, a principal, a professor, a school board member of the largest school system in the United States, may I add, and superintendent.
He builds trust, he solves problems, and he delivers results for students.
and you don't just need to take my word for it, the results speak for themselves.
In Crown Heights, he stepped into a building where the graduation rate was 23%.
He co-founded a high school there, the High School for Public Service, and the graduation rose to 98%, never dipping below 95% for the decade he was a principal there.
In Lansing, Michigan, where he currently serves as superintendent, he inherited a 62% graduation rate, and in three years it grew to 88%.
Lansing was known as one of the lowest growth districts for reading in the state, but in 2022 through 2024, under Ben's leadership, Lansing has the highest growth rate for reading in the state now.
and after decades of decline, the district grew enrollment for the first time in more than 30 years.
We go financially, Lansing was on the brink of insolvency when Ben arrived.
Sound familiar?
Four years later, the district had quadrupled its fund balance and rebuilt long-term stability.
SBS is facing similar issues and Bren brings the experience needed to get the results we need for our students.
This afternoon, the board voted to enter contract negotiations with Ben, and we expect he will begin in early 2026, and we will support a thoughtful transition for our students and staff.
I want to thank everyone who helped with this process, our students, our families, educators, community, our union partners, and I also want to offer my appreciation to Interim Superintendent Fred Podesta.
Fred stepped in.
Yes, thank you.
Fred stepped in at a pivotal moment and he has led with calm, stability, humility and an unwavering commitment to our students and staff.
Fred, thank you.
So, we are entering a new chapter.
We have real work ahead and real opportunity.
It's exciting in front of us.
Seattle students are brilliant, creative and resilient.
They deserve a school system that meets their potential.
We look forward to having Ben join us to lead us in this work and we are ready to move forward together.
So I am so proud to introduce Ben Schuldner as the next superintendent of Seattle Public Schools.
Ben.
It is an honor and privilege to sit here today in front of all of you and sitting in front of these incredible educators behind me.
What I see today is an entire community that cares deeply about children.
deeply about educators and deeply about an entire city of Seattle.
I look forward to meeting each and every one of you.
I look forward to doing the work but most importantly what I want to say is I know Seattle can be even more amazing than it is today.
The people care deeply about this place.
The school district cares deeply about its children.
But we do know that there is work ahead.
There are conversations that have to be happened.
And what I care about and what I want people to know is that I am here first and foremost to build that trust, to build that relationship so that we can get the work done.
Our children deserve nothing but the best.
I've said it earlier today and I want to say it again.
Our goal should be nothing more than to make sure that Seattle is the single greatest urban school district in America.
That's what our children deserve, that's what our educators deserve, and that's what this community deserves.
I'm not going to sit here for much longer.
I would never make my labor partners have to stand for this long or my wonderful bosses that are sitting here.
But, you know, what I want the community to hear today on this first of what I hope to be years of us working together is that we're going to put children first, we're going to make decisions that are right by them, and we're going to try to keep out all the other noise.
Because the truth is, when we make our decisions about children, those decisions become very clear.
I've been a superintendent for five years in Lansing.
You heard when I got there, there were some concerns, there were some issues, and by being thoughtful, by bringing people together so that we collectively make decisions, that we collectively understand things, in just five years we've been able to move mountains.
I know we can do that in Seattle.
I know there's brilliance.
I know that our children are incredible.
I know our educators are incredible.
I know our community cares.
You just had to vote something like 78% of the people voted for money to schools.
That's incredible.
What that says to me is this city is ready.
It's ready for new leadership, new change, and really an ability to make sure that this is the single greatest urban school district in America.
I look forward to that.
I look forward to doing it with you, not to you.
I look forward to doing it side by side as we're all pulling in the same direction for our children.
So with that, I want to thank everybody for being here and I cannot wait to start this work.
Thank you.
I would like permission from Ben and also from Gina to allow our friends who are standing behind us to have a seat and rest your legs while we move into the question and answer period.
We are going to be in the space for about 10-ish, 15-ish minutes or so.
I want to make sure that we get any questions from our media that we haven't already had.
So with that, if you would certainly lift your hand let us know who you are representing and i will call on you for your question any questions that's why we did it earlier had a good run yes hi sammy i'll just ask again why seattle this is going to be a much bigger school district
Sure.
Well, it's a great question.
I mean, first of all, why Seattle?
Seattle's awesome.
I mean, what a great city.
I have family here.
I have a lot of friends here.
I think that this is just a vibrant, wonderful place.
I can't wait to live here for many, many years and raise my family here.
You know, Seattle also allows, I think, a conversation around the kind of work that we need to do for our children, where other districts maybe are a little bit hesitant for that.
But in terms of size, I mean, it's true that Lansing is about 10,000, 11,000 kids.
But, you know, I also sat on the school board of New York City, which is a million children and 1,700 schools.
So I think that really what matters wherever you work, if you put children first and foremost, you're going to be able to make an incredible difference.
What I look forward to doing, though, is opening up the doors.
Yes, 50,000 students might actually sound large, but it really isn't.
What you're able to do is you can go into the community, you can have the community come to this building.
There's a lot of chairs here.
You know, like we can really, really bring in a lot of voices.
So I actually think, you know, 50,000 is kind of a perfect size for a school district.
You've got enough people that you can have this kind of economies of scales and doing some really powerful things.
But it's also small enough that you can actually visit every school in a year.
You can actually get there.
You can meet with people.
I really look forward to it.
So I think Seattle is perfect.
I look forward to being here for a long, long time and really working together with this community to make things even more amazing than they are today.
Yeah, I mean look the first thing a superintendent has to realize is the brilliance is in the community.
You know it's it's not the great man theory of leadership.
What you've got to believe in is that you work together collectively with folks and then you make sure that everybody's pulling together and if it takes time to make sure that everybody actually believes in something or agrees to something that's what it does and what happens is you know in the first year it's a lot of thinking and a lot of ideating a lot of working and a lot of relationship building and trust building and then by the second year you start to really see things go and by third and fourth year you're just hitting the ground running because everybody's on the same page and so what we've been able to do in Lansing is really get the entire community to buy into the work that we're doing and now you see the results.
Why I believe you can do it in Seattle is because I know that people in Seattle care deeply about public education and I think just as long as you're making sure that people feel like they can come to the table, that their voices are heard, that you actually listen to them, you don't just give lip service to it, the brilliance of the collective is so much stronger than the individual.
And then when you have everybody in the communities on the same page, then great things happen.
If everybody's being disparate and they're not feeling like their voice is heard, that's when you get things.
The other big thing that I do see here is I think that there's a silofication of the large district.
And I think one of the things that an outsider can do is to be really thoughtful about bringing more people together, breaking down those walls, having cross-collaboration.
And that's one of the things we did in Lansing too.
And so I'm really just excited that you have the talent, the people are brilliant, the kids are brilliant, the families care deeply.
It's just about creating the right systems and structures that allow their kind of brilliance to emanate and actually do some work and get things done.
All right.
Are there any additional questions?
I do believe we have some of our student journalists here.
I want to make sure that we have honored you if you have any questions.
I will loan mine out.
Raphael with the Garfield Messenger.
Students have been getting a lot of classes, electives cut just because we are in a structural fiscal deficit and an $87 million deficit for the next year.
How do you plan on tackling not just next year but in the future and ensuring that students have access to well-resourced schools and lots of classes and enjoy taking the classes that they want to take?
No, it's a great question.
I mean, again, when you create a school district or you think about a school district, you want to put the kids front and center.
So if the decision is, you know, you're not allowing kids to take certain programs because you have some other program that has nothing to do with kids, well, maybe you have to address that, right?
And so I think the first thing that I would want to do is meet with everybody, talk about what's the situation.
Now, you talk about a structural fiscal deficit, about $87 million.
You know, I think the issue is that we have to be more transparent about what our actual budget is.
You know, we have to really open up the books, talk to people.
I mean, there are community members that have their own blogs and websites about our budget.
Like, maybe we should invite them to the table and talk to them.
You know, like, there's a lot of folks that really care deeply about what we're doing, but what I can tell you in Lansing, it was very similar.
They had huge structural deficits, and really by just putting people together, and I know this sounds simple, but it really isn't, is you can figure out that there might be a lot of inefficiencies, a lot of redundancies.
When you have a large system, let's take the Seattle Public Schools system, you have multiple departments, multiple silos, and what ends up happening is if they're not talking to each other, one department might have the exact same position as another department.
well I don't certainly want to get rid of any human being anybody that wants to work for the school district and is doing great that's terrific but maybe we find that position to be more focused for students or more in the schools or things like that right so you know I appreciate the question I think again if you put kids front and center and you start making decisions based on that you'd be amazed how easy it is to start to re-engineer a district to do that.
So there's also something that you'll probably hear me talk a lot about is school-based budgeting.
And what that really allows for is the principal and the school leadership teams, teachers, et cetera, to start to make decisions on how money is spent, one of the mistakes that large and small districts do is that too many decisions are being dictated by on high rather than actually letting the schools decide what they think is best with the voice of teachers and students and families.
So, you know, I look forward to really engaging in a deep, thoughtful conversation about the budget.
I do think that there is a lot of efficiencies to be gained without lessening the support for students.
I actually think there's a way to support the students even further.
But, you know, It's day one.
I'm not gonna say I know all the answers.
What I do say is I have the experience to do it, and I also know that the way to do it is by bringing more and more people to the table, sharing the data, and say, hey, what do we think is right for kids?
And, heaven forbid, actually asking kids and students what they think is best for them as well.
Thank you.
Yes.
Hand raised.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Ryan with the Seattle Times.
Could you tell us a little bit more about your plans for your first, say, 100 days in the position?
What does that look like for you?
Sure.
Thankfully, the board asked me to create an entire 100-day plan.
So look, first and foremost, as any new leader From inside or outside, you've got to spend time in the community.
You've got to go out and listen.
You've got to learn.
But you also have to probably make some decisions.
But you've got to make those decisions collectively.
So my hope is in those first 100 days, and I'm going to try, I'm going to say this promise, I believe, I think, that in those first 100 days I can visit every school.
I think that, you know, in Lansing I go to a school every day unless, you know, something crazy is happening and so I think the first thing we've got to do is get out there, listen, learn and start to get the community, be it teachers and parents and students, to start to think critically about what decisions have to be made.
What you don't want is to come in like, you know, and start making decisions that are ill-informed.
But I will say that I don't want there to be decision paralysis either.
Our children deserve leadership.
They deserve actual action.
And I think sometimes, and this is true with all large bureaucracies, is organizations are built to perpetuate themselves.
And unless you actually are willing to kind of break that down, you're not gonna be able to make good progress.
But look, those first 100 days, it's not only learning the district, but it's listening to the district so that we can actually make some really good, thoughtful decisions quickly and better for children.
Yes, thank you.
All right.
Seeing no other hands, I would like to thank each and every one of you for, oh, I'm sorry, did you have another, Seattle Times?
Yeah.
Sorry, I just wanted to let others ask questions too.
Okay.
Fair enough.
The teacher in me says, are there any other questions by any other?
We'll go to the second question for the same person.
All right.
Well, thank you.
You've mentioned a little bit about the need for community engagement and connecting with parents, students, teachers.
Could you tell us a little bit more about how specifically you aim to do that?
You mentioned visits.
Tell us a little bit more.
Absolutely.
So, you know, one of the things I'd like to emulate what we did in Lansing was, you know, we have monthly family student superintendent roundtables.
So in a district this size with 50,000 kids, you know, I would like to and the board knows this, I'd like to go into every one of the board districts, you know, and hold a town hall.
That way people can feel like they're in their own community.
I wouldn't want to force them to go, you know, anywhere else.
And so, you know, my hope is to really cast the widest net possible, saying, we're coming to you.
We want to honor your space and your understanding.
And so I'd like to, within the first 100 days, if not even the first 50 days, try to have with the board, with myself, with senior leadership, one of the great things that's so powerful about the family superintendent roundtables we do, it's not just me.
It's most of senior staff.
Because the truth is, at the end of the day, you know who parents really want to talk to?
They want to talk to whoever has the ear of the principal.
They want to know what's actually happening in their school.
And so, you know, the superintendent might know something, but you do have real good leadership here, and I think getting everybody into the community, listening to the parents, and getting honest feedback about what's going on.
of the United States.
I just got here, you know, we got to figure out all of this together.
But, you know, certainly my promise to the community is to make sure that we're in the districts and allowing for their voices to be heard, but also in a productive problem-solving way, not just, you know, in a kind of venting.
Now, look, people get the vent.
God bless, right?
I have no problem with that.
And they deserve every right to vent.
But then the next question is, okay, great.
What are we going to do to help solve that?
Quickly, you talked about your 100-day plan.
Once you make that, will that be public?
That's a great question.
When you're applying for a job and you're asked to do something, you do it.
But I think that what I will certainly do, and I'd ask the board and senior leadership, is I think that was done individually.
I think the right thing to do is to do it collectively.
And so I certainly will roll out plans, it might not be 100 day plans, but plans on where we're going as a district and what you can expect from us.
And so I think a thoughtful leader is always going to be willing to share the direction because the only way we get there is together, right?
You know, the old adage, you want to go somewhere fast, run alone.
If you want to go somewhere far, run together.
So I think that there's a way that we can do that.
So thank you.
Alright, I'm going to lean into the mic and ask.
Seattle Times, is there another question?
Cool.
Alright, wonderful.
I'm not putting anyone on the spot.
I want to make sure that everyone is taken care of.
We'll be right here for a few more minutes.
However, I certainly want to thank everyone for staying this evening for our press conference.
On behalf of the school board, on behalf of the leadership of President Topp, our soon-to-be incoming superintendent, Ben Shildner, and on behalf of the single greatest urban school district in America, Seattle Public Schools, have a great night.
Thank you.