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Todd White - Mercer Island School Board Candidate Position 5
166 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of the Mercer Matters podcast Ben interviews Mercer Island School District School Board Candidate Todd White who is running for Position 5 in the November 2023 election.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mercer Matters & Todd White
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Mercer Matters podcast. My name is Ben Sharp, and my goal is to have a discussion with each of the candidates who are running for Mercer Island School Board in the fall of 2023. I have reached out to each candidate and offered to have a discussion with them, but if for some reason you don't see a candidate listed as an episode in the podcast, it is because they have declined to be interviewed. So without further ado, let's jump right into this episode.
Todd White's Background & Motivation
00:00:38
Speaker
Hi, today I'm joined by Todd White, who is running for position five of the Mercer Island School Board. Todd, thanks for joining the Mercer Matters podcast here. I'd like to get started. I just want to get started by thanking you for taking the time to throw your hat in the ring and run for this position. It's a lot of work and a ton of effort to put together candidacy. So I just want to start off and say thank you.
00:01:06
Speaker
And maybe right off the top, I'll just give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background and why you've decided to run for the Mercyland School Board. Well, great, Ben. Hey, thank you for putting this together. And I'm just happy to participate. And it's been a really rewarding journey to be a school board candidate. And so yeah, let me share a little bit about our family, why I'm running for school board.
00:01:34
Speaker
and why I think I can make a difference. So first off, our family moved to the island in 2015. Our kids were two years old and six months old. So they've grown up here on the island. We live near Mercerdale Park. And so this has been their home from the very beginning. And we feel so blessed to be here on the island. What a wonderful community it is.
00:01:59
Speaker
And we have a fantastic school district that has a reputation of delivering high quality education to our students. And so I am interested in being on the school board because I want to ensure that our district remains one of the best in the state. And I think that we have many, many wonderful programs and attributes associated with our school district. At the same time, we face some significant challenges and opportunities here
00:02:29
Speaker
that I believe requires experienced leadership. So those are in part the reasons I'm running for school board. A little bit about myself, I was born in Columbus, Ohio, grew up there.
Professional Experience & Leadership
00:02:41
Speaker
My parents are both retired school teachers. My mother has a PhD in psychology, was an elementary school psychologist. So, you know, teaching and teachers is part of my DNA.
00:02:52
Speaker
My parents were born in abject poverty in the hills of West Virginia and made their way to Columbus, Ohio, where they went on to achieve graduate degrees. About myself, I joined the Navy out of college to become a pilot, which was my childhood dream. Very blessed to have that career. And I've served as a professional pilot, experimental test pilot for the last 30 years, both with the Navy and with Boeing, where I currently work as an experimental test pilot.
00:03:20
Speaker
I have over two decades of executive and senior management leadership experience managing small, medium, and large teams. Most recently at Boeing, which I will caveat by saying they're not endorsing me as a candidate, but I worked as an executive at Boeing over the last several years managing a hundred million dollar operating budget annually and a team of about 500 people pilots in every time zone and hemisphere on the planet.
00:03:45
Speaker
which is about the same size as a school district in terms of their budget and their team size.
Challenges in Financial Sustainability
00:03:51
Speaker
And so why I'm running for school board more specifically is that, as I mentioned, many, many wonderful attributes of this district. However, we do face some significant headwinds these days when it comes to our financial sustainability, some of the policies, programs we have in place I think need careful attention
00:04:15
Speaker
And most recently, the board has put forth, and Fred Rundell, our superintendent, have put forth some proposals that on the order of about several hundred million dollars of renovation to our school buildings, possibly closing Island Park Elementary School. And I believe strongly that at this time, those efforts should be put on pause
00:04:43
Speaker
I have experience managing budgets at that scale, and for a variety of reasons, I think we should wait until next year to take up these issues and earn us to make careful decisions about them. So again, I have young kids in the district, as many of the families do, and I just want to ensure that all the children that are in the district and will enter the district have the same academic opportunities
00:05:09
Speaker
of those that have graduated from the district then. So thanks for hosting this.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I'll turn it back over to you for more questions or feedback. Yeah, no, great. Thank you. And you've hit, you know, some of the hot button issues that are facing the community and things on my mind that I wanted to ask you about. And so we'll get there in a second. I think, yeah, no pun intended to take it back to 30,000 feet. What what is the what's the primer? Like, what is the job of a school board member? Do you mind just just kind of giving us a high level of what it is that a school board member does and what your responsibilities are?
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great fundamental question that I get asked. And so my perspective on that is a school board director, which is a title, is an executive function, which is given the responsibility for creating a vision for the district. Where do we want to be in future time, a year, three, five years from now, in terms of our educational delivery system, okay, to our children?
00:06:13
Speaker
What does the district look like in the future? And that is the foundational role of a director on the school board. And there are five members, so we need a consensus of at least three to create that vision for the district. And there are many, many important, complicated and challenging issues associated with the future of our district and our education for our children. But the director creates that vision. That is an executive function enabled by the citizens of Mercer Island who elect those directors.
00:06:42
Speaker
They then hand off that vision to the superintendent, Dr. Fred Rundle, who I have a good working level relationship with and respect him. And he and his staff then execute on the details of the vision of the board and report back on their performance. So the board creates the vision, they provide that to the superintendent, and then they evaluate the performance of the superintendent and their staff in terms of executing on that vision. And a director on the school board,
00:07:12
Speaker
My opinion is very similar to being an executive director in the private sector, which I have done for decades. And so, as an executive in the private sector, I create a vision, I have teams, I have a budget. At any one time, I can report to five different vice presidents who are all giving me feedback, air quotes, on a daily basis, okay? So, there are a lot of overlaps. They're a little bit different in terms of accountability. As an executive in the private sector, I'm held accountable every minute of every day that I'm performing in that role.
00:07:42
Speaker
School board director is a little different. There's an election every four years, but you still get feedback from the community on a daily basis. And so hopefully that helps to answer your question of what is the role of the school board director.
Critical Issues: Financial Stability & Education Quality
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's great. And I appreciate you illustrating some of the differences, too, because that was going to be one of my follow ups. Obviously, at least I'm familiar with what a director does in the corporate world, but less so in the public sector here. So I appreciate you highlighting those differences.
00:08:13
Speaker
So in your introduction, you talked about a couple of the issues, but I was hoping to kind of focus in on what you see as the top two or three most pressing issues facing the school district presently as we look out during your term over the next four years. What do you see as sort of the big issues that you'd be focusing on? Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, great question, Ben. So I'll answer that question in two parts. Foundationally, within any organization, with any mission, you know, with the private sector, the school district, having a sustainable financial budget and executing on that budget is is foundationally the most critical aspect of being successful in your mission. And so I look at the budget. I have a background in executive finance and I look at the budget of the district. I look at how it's being formulated and executed.
00:09:08
Speaker
And then what I see through my lens is a degradation and erosion of the quality of educational services being delivered to our students. And so we have to have a sound, stable, predictable budget in order to deliver these services. So in terms of services, we look at what is the quality of the education? What are the programs that are being delivered to our students? How do they manifest themselves into the actual schools themselves?
00:09:36
Speaker
And so as a parent with two kids at West Mercer Elementary School, I've seen firsthand how our budgetary challenges have manifest into an erosion of the quality of education. Todd, can you give a couple of examples? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just getting ready to jump on that. Thank you. One of the examples I'll point to is a program mandated by the state called Inclusive Learning. And it's a very important program. And I've talked to many, many families about this program.
00:10:04
Speaker
And really what it embodies is taking kids with special education needs to call special ed. And previously they were in a classroom by themselves, you know, being provided the resources that they need to thrive and be successful. But the state directed that those students join the larger classroom of general education students and combine everyone together. So that concept is directed by the state. It has merit.
00:10:31
Speaker
it has the potential to be a very successful program. However, going back to my point about budgetary constraints, my experience with my kids and talking to families in the district is that this program has not been sufficiently resourced within our district. And unfortunately, the state put forth, I think it was 30, $40,000 initially, which was clearly not enough money to implement this successfully. So what we have is a situation where the program is implemented
00:11:02
Speaker
Unfortunately, our teachers have not been properly resourced or trained. There's no additional para support in the classroom. And unfortunately, this program has really not been successful and has caused a lot of strain, frustration, concern within the community. We've had events at West Mercer that have been very concerning.
00:11:23
Speaker
about children behavior. And so I think, to my opinion, it's a lack of policy. It's a lack of resourcing for a critical program like inclusive learning. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. And I've personally learned quite a bit over the last year about inclusive learning. And it wasn't a term that I had heard prior to personally getting involved. And so I appreciate you highlighting that.
00:11:51
Speaker
What specifically, you mentioned some budget impacting the ability for the school district to execute effectively on this inclusive learning vision. Do you feel like it's purely a matter of resources and budget? And I guess if elected, what would you do to change that?
Concerns Over Enrollment Decline
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, so great question. I think it's
00:12:12
Speaker
I think it's in part due to resourcing and budget. And the reason I say that is I've studied our district finances in detail. As I mentioned previously, I have experience managing a budget of about $100 million a year. So I understand how these are put together and executed. I met with the director of finance, Matt Sullivan, earlier this year to talk about budget and the plans for the future.
00:12:36
Speaker
Unfortunately, we are exhibiting budgetary strains, and I'll give you a couple of highlights. Number one, our reserve fund, which should be around 10% of our operating budget, should be around $10 million in reserves. Think of your bank account having a rainy day fund is down around $2 million. It's been rapidly depleted over the last several years. Coupled into that are declining enrollment,
00:13:01
Speaker
There are well over a thousand families or students who have been withdrawn from the district for a variety of reasons, which my assessment have not been a significant enough priority for the district, for the board, for Fred, to fully characterize why these students have left the district. And certainly COVID was a part of that remote learning, but there are also families who have left because they're frustrated.
00:13:24
Speaker
with policies and outcomes within the district. So those are some of the aspects of our budgetary constraints. And my priority number one, if elected, be to number one, stop the momentum around
00:13:39
Speaker
refurbishing the schools, shutting down Island Park. It's way too early to make a decision on that right now. We need much more analysis and community input on refurbishing our schools. Certainly at some point in the future, yeah, Wes Mercer was built in the 50s. Should it be revitalized? Absolutely. But to talk about shutting down Island Park today is premature, in my opinion.
00:14:01
Speaker
Secondly, with a budget of this scale, there are opportunities for efficiencies. And I look to our mayor, Salim Nees, who's one of my key endorsers. When he showed up at city council, they were facing financial challenges. He and others rolled up their sleeves, dug into details, and turns out they were able to balance the budget. And so I would bring a similar approach to the school district. I know how to manage these types of funds and staff.
00:14:26
Speaker
and priorities. And so those are my number one priorities day one if I'm elected. That's awesome. Thank you. So I'm curious, you know, one of the things I want to talk about is to get your perspective on enrollment. And you talked about that and how that's impacting the budget. You know, Fred has talked, Fred Reynolds talked about that quite a bit in his recent messages and in the school board meetings. Can you kind of give me a view of how you see the enrollment issue?
00:14:56
Speaker
over the last, say, 10 years, sort of high level. And then, again, what are some of the drivers, you mentioned some of them in your previous comments about COVID and people leaving the district and things, but what is the enrollment situation in your view and what are some of the things driving it? Yeah, great question, Ben. So the way I would characterize that is, you know, think about family business. Let's say your family owns, you know, a market, you know, in the community, a small grocery store.
00:15:25
Speaker
And you have customers. And over the last several years, you've watched your sales decline continuously over the years. As a small business owner, you would be keenly interested in understanding why customers are not coming into your store. You would expect that the owner of that business will make it a top priority to fully characterize, take surveys, interviews, collect data, to understand why that's happening. And unfortunately,
00:15:54
Speaker
We have not done that as a district. And so I look back in March when I attended the school board meeting when the Davis Consulting Group, which is a demographer, which is a company that collects data and analyzes demographics, enrollment, and they had their charts. They talked about decline enrollment, which I take their charts on face value. It showed a decline in enrollment. However, I was underwhelmed.
00:16:19
Speaker
by the data and the statistical rigor. So I have a graduate degree in aeronautical engineering. I understand math at a pretty high level. I did not see, it was not readily apparent to me, how they calculated and came to these data conclusions. There was verbal conversations around declining birth rates. Again, verbal, but not integrated into the data. There were verbal conversations around the challenging aspect of our real estate market here. I understand that.
00:16:48
Speaker
but not in the data. And just on my street alone, there's been five families who moved in for last year and a half who have small kids. So people continue to move to the island. It's a challenging real estate market, it's very expensive, I understand that. But again, only verbal conversations at that board meeting. Thirdly, Fred talked about having open office hours to talk to families who are thinking about leaving the district. I compliment Fred for doing that, but my question is,
00:17:15
Speaker
Why is this happening so late in the game? We've lost so many kids over so many years. And so only recently have we heard some more specific interest in articulating the root cause of why families have left the district. I've talked to families who've pulled their kids out because they're frustrated with policy and outcomes within the district. My family has experienced some churn at West Mercer.
00:17:45
Speaker
And so I think we need to fully characterize that. I think each board meeting should kick off with a report from the superintendent to the board of a proactive program of attracting and retaining families within the district. How is that program moving forward? What are the results? What are the projections?
00:18:06
Speaker
foundationally, the kids, the kids are number one. If they're leaving the district, that's a big problem. And thus far, I haven't seen an aggressive movement toward fully understanding. So clearly one of the biggest challenges facing the district and what you're proposing is let's make it prior to number one in the board meetings and report and gather data to understand and characterize the issue. So so to your knowledge, there's been no survey or
00:18:36
Speaker
information gathering effort about why people are leaving. Well, my understanding again from talking to families who have left the district is there are exit interviews that that take place or should be taking place of families who have left the district. And why that data has not been transparently shared I think needs to be understood.
00:19:00
Speaker
And so I believe the data is there. The question is, why are we not publicly talking about it? OK. Nice, we got it.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it only makes sense to try to figure out and understand, you know, at the board level, at the leadership level, I think why, you know, why, why this is occurring. I mean, there's a lot of anecdotal stories and we all know people who've, you know, pulled their kids out. But, you know, yeah, I think getting wide, wide data only makes sense. So following up on the enrollment issue, if elected, you're a leader, one of one of five that's going to be helping set the vision.
00:19:38
Speaker
I understand that first we need to understand why people are leaving. But what are some ideas that you have? What can we do as a school district, as a board to win back the students who've left the district? Or is it possible? Good question. I think it is possible to bring families and students back into the district. I think that as we just have talked about, the first step is what problem are we trying to solve?
00:20:05
Speaker
we have to understand that fundamentally and address the problem we're trying to solve. And certainly being realistic, there's a spectrum of reasons why families have left the district. Again, COVID, remote work, things like that have impacted it. But my understanding and looking at some of the data is our district has about a two times greater decline in student enrollment than other districts within the state of Washington.
00:20:33
Speaker
And so I just fundamentally believe it has to be an aggressive pursuit of the board, of the superintendent, to gather that data, to analyze it, be very, very transparent in recognizing that we can't address every single concern, probably, realistically. We can't change everything that caused folks to leave. But I think step one is making it a priority, being transparent, engaging the community, talking to those families who have left or considered
00:21:02
Speaker
of considered leaving.
Facility Upgrades & Community Communication
00:21:03
Speaker
And once we've done that, apply appropriate policies and resourcing toward those concerns to bring back some of those families to attract new families, retain families within the district. Again, it's all about the kids. And if the families aren't buying what we're selling, we need to fundamentally understand that. Perfect. Thank you. All right.
00:21:25
Speaker
Shifting gears a little bit to another hot button issue, which you talked about as being one of your priorities, which is to sort of stop momentum of some of the facility upgrades and bond discussions and closing schools and stuff. But let's tunnel in a little bit on that for a second, because I think some of the announcements sort of caught the community off guard. I think it's a fair characterization. There's been quite a bit of attention
00:21:53
Speaker
lately on communicating, which I think is great. But can you just sort of summarize for people who may not have been sort of tuning into this issue or just heard a little bit about it? From your perspective, what's going on with the facilities of the district? So brief history from your perspective, and then again, maybe you can elaborate on sort of your position and what you do moving forward if elected.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, great question, Ben. Certainly one of the most important issues facing the district today to give a little history. There's been a planning committee in existence for several many years. And the mission of that committee, and it's comprised of community members, former school board members, current school board members, and the mission is to look at our facilities.
00:22:46
Speaker
and develop some options for the community in terms of revitalizing the infrastructure of our schools. And so that activity has been going along for several years. However, it ramped up significantly in the spring of this year and I attended or watched the meetings on video.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I learned a lot about what's currently being proposed. And these proposals have merit. What we're talking about is revitalizing some of the schools. For example, Wes Mercer, where my kids attend, was built in the 50s. Should there be an effort to revitalize some of that infrastructure within that school? Certainly. Is it falling down? Is it just such a degraded state that it's not usable? No, of course not.
00:23:30
Speaker
It's a decent school, but it could use some revitalizing and certainly some of the other schools as well. Include the middle school and high school, so that's the high level concept. Where I have concerns are number one, the magnitude of the proposals range from about $100 million to $400 million. If you added the school budget annual budget was about $80 million. We're talking about almost a half a billion dollars. Of significantly impactful financial decisions which have to be made by the board.
00:23:59
Speaker
And so earlier this year, that planning activity started to increase. And I attended those meetings and the Architectural Planning Group, MALEM, I have a lot of respect for and the people who are part of this process. I give them a lot of credit for putting in the hours and developing these detailed plans. They're pretty complicated. I watched them and attended these meetings. And I got to be honest, at times, I was struggling to keep up with all the different
00:24:27
Speaker
pieces on the chessboard as it were. So here's where I get concerned is the last meeting was I think in June right before summer break. There were some folks that attended. I was there and then when we came back for school here in the fall, there was a I guess a big announcement around the intent and that caught a lot of the community members off guard. I was at the last couple of school board meetings where community members provided feedback to the board.
00:24:56
Speaker
Regrettably, one board member was really probably maybe had a bad day, but provided what I thought was an unprofessional characterization of the concerns of the members of the community around these projects. And more specifically, for reasons that's not apparent to me, Island Park Elementary has been identified as a school that would likely be closed or turned into a swing school and eventually closed.
00:25:22
Speaker
I've looked at the data. I've managed budgets on a scale similar to this. I cannot find a compelling business case of why we would shut down on the park. I don't see it. The community doesn't see it. There are many, many frustrated parents who were informed of this and feel like communication was not timely and transparent.
00:25:45
Speaker
And so I believe we should suspend these activities. Great work has been done. Let's get the new board members on board. Get the board members on board. Let's get the new board elected and then let's take this up next year.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for characterizing that. I think from a layman's perspective, we look at, we just built recently Northwood, invested a lot in that new school. Correct. Obviously, no one could have foreseen the impacts of COVID and such. But now we've got a fairly steepening decline in enrollment. And so now, clearly, as a community, that puts us in a tricky situation. I'm kind of curious.
00:26:32
Speaker
What is the operational savings for closing an elementary school, say Island Park? I mean, is that a significant savings, or do you know what impact does it have on the budget? Yeah. Great question. So at the last planning meeting back in June, that specific question was asked to Fred. And I have a lot of respect for Fred.
00:26:55
Speaker
He's so engaged in the community. I have a great working level relationship with him. I'm going to meet with him Tuesday next week to have a chat. His answer was back of the envelope calculation was about a million dollars a year, which to me, number one, is not my assessment statistically significant. I mean, a million dollars is important, but in terms of the overall budget. Also, I was a little surprised that it was back of the envelope.
00:27:24
Speaker
calculation at this stage of this process. Matt Sullivan, the Finance Director, was at that meeting. I would have hoped that Matt would have spoken directly to the opportunity for savings. But then later, what I've heard is that it's kind of in the wash. It's in the noise, whether or not they can really save money. They're not necessarily going to
00:27:45
Speaker
a reduced cost, if you turn this into a swing school or idol it, there really apparently is not much savings, if any, to doing so. And so the question becomes, why will we entertain this concept now when we have so many challenges financially? My input is, let's separate these two things. Let's get our budget fixed. Let's get our finances in order. Let's stabilize. Let's get our bond rating back up to where it used to be.
00:28:11
Speaker
And then once we've done that and we understand declining enrollment, now we're in a position to have a focused conversation about infrastructure within our schools.
Evaluating Financial Decisions & Celebrating Achievements
00:28:21
Speaker
Revitalization, that can be on the table. We need to separate these two activities. And so back in the napkin, million dollars a year, can you put that into perspective? What is the overall budget annually for the school district? Do you know?
00:28:35
Speaker
It's about $90 million. Yeah, I'm very familiar with it. So just over 1%. I've looked at the budget. Yeah. Less than 1%. Less than 1%. Less than 1%. OK. No, you're right. Just a little bit over more. Yeah, sorry. No problem. Yeah. Interesting. So listen, we spent a lot of time talking about the challenges that are faced, which I think is appropriate. But I kind of wanted to end.
00:29:01
Speaker
And on a more optimistic note, my last question for you, what's the biggest opportunity that we have as community for our kids that we're not taking advantage of? What are some things that we could do to improve the quality of education and give us your vision for what that looks like over the next four years?
00:29:27
Speaker
That's a fantastic question because all of these discussions should start and end with the students. And first of all, I personally am so grateful to be a member of this community. I have young kids in the district. We have a fantastic school district, which has a reputation of delivering outstanding quality of education to our students. When I go to the high school and interact with these students, I'm so impressed with their poise or demeanor.
00:29:52
Speaker
their confidence and I remark at that thinking about my time in high school and I wouldn't have been that poised or capable of these kids as I see them today. So we definitely need to celebrate what we have and build on that. I think that ensuring that our students are prepared to enter adulthood, poised, capable, respectful, mindful,
00:30:15
Speaker
and giving grace to those around them in their community is so important. And so ensuring that those behaviors are instilled and part of the culture of our school system is super important. They're already there, but we need to make sure that they stay there, making sure that we have the counselors and the emotional well-being support of our children is so important today in this environment that's very complicated as they enter into young adulthood.
00:30:44
Speaker
Screen time is a big challenge. I think we need a district wide policy on homework would be helpful. So a lot to celebrate then. But maintaining academic rigor.
00:30:56
Speaker
AP course availability is super important to me, and I think those should be our focus areas. Awesome. Well, thanks, Todd, very much for joining me and having this discussion. I'd just close out if people want to learn more about you and your candidacy, where can I go to get that information?
Conclusion & Candidacy Information
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, just Google Todd White, Mercer Island School Board, and it'll pop up, and they can check on my website. Perfect. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you very much. It was a great discussion. And again, I appreciate you running for this position, and I wish you best of luck.
00:31:25
Speaker
Hey, Ben, thanks for sponsoring this. I enjoy the engagement and I've enjoyed this journey. It's been a fantastic opportunity to engage with the community. So thank you for your time today.