Mike Hipple
Trish Millines Dziko of the Technology Access Foundation: no interest in jawing about the Man.
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Trish Millines Dziko stood in front of a crowded meeting at the John Stanford Center as the room went tensely quiet. It was Nov. 1 last year, and she had just helped present recommendations from a citizens' committee for solving the financial problems of the Seattle Public Schools. The crowd appeared energized by an upbeat presentation. And then Don Alexander, a septuagenarian African-American activist who attends most every School Board meeting, rancorous complaints at the ready, raised his hand.
"I don't see a whole lot of people who look like me," he said sardonically, looking around the room for effect. It was a typical moment for any public meeting regarding Seattle Public Schools, where accusations of racism are voiced loudly and often.
Dziko, who is African American, blinked and stayed silent for what seemed like a long time. "I want to answer that," she eventually said. "I work very hard every day to make sure that people like me get to stand up here and be out there." The committee had done a ton of outreach to encourage people of all races to come to the meeting, she said. "I don't know how else to get us to come."
"Wrong neighborhood," Alexander quipped quietly, seemingly referring to the meeting's SoDo location.
"Doesn't matter," Dziko shot back. "I'm not going to bow down and kiss anybody's feet who's not willing to work for themselves." If Alexander wanted more people in the room who looked like him, she said, she wanted him to work with her to make it happen.
The crowd burst into applause.
"I was impressed," says Andrew Kwatinetz, a white committee member who was in the room that night. "She met that challenge head-on." It marked a change, he notes, from most School Board meetings, where "people say things, and no one stands up to them."
Watching Dziko at that moment made one wonder: Could this woman move the district beyond the poisonous racial politics that so often seem to bog it down?
A year after that meeting, racial politics in the district have, if anything, gotten more heated as debate has raged over whether outgoing Superintendent Raj Manhas' plan to close schools disproportionately affects minorities.
Dziko, a former Microsoft manager who heads the Technology Access Foundation (TAF), a nonprofit that teaches computer skills to minority kids, has stepped up her visibility in recent months. She wants to expand her foundation's current after-school programs into five full-blown public high schools in minority neighborhoods around the state, focusing on math, technology, and science. They will receive regular state funds, but Dziko is also seeking additional private money—as much as $2.2 million a year for the first school she wants to start at Rainier Beach High School in 2008.
Her proposal is for an autonomous school within a school, or an academy, at Rainier Beach. Already given seed money by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the project, TAF would choose the principal and have input for teacher hiring and enrollment. Dziko's main criteria for students is that they live within a one- to three-mile radius, which she hopes will ensure a "majority minority" population so that high-achieving students of color "are not the only brown spots in a sea of white."
Her proposal is not exactly a novel idea. The Gates Foundation has poured private money into public schools nationwide and encouraged them to break into small, specialized academies—with mixed results. And millionaire philanthropist Stuart Sloan has partnered with the Seattle district to add resources to predominantly minority elementary schools, namely T.T. Minor and the New School. Sloan, who is white, has faced considerable distrust.
Dziko, however, is the first African American, at least locally, to offer a transformative plan backed up by millions of dollars. As such, she has the potential to be not only a philanthropist but a role model, one who might serve as a bridge between the African-American community and the district.
So far, she hasn't had much luck. Rainier Beach High has long struggled with poor, if rising, test scores and shrinking enrollment. Many parents, students, and staff maintain firm loyalty to it, however, and they regard Dziko's plan with suspicion.
"Why does this feel like a hostile takeover?" asks Makela Steward, an English and drama teacher at the school. At a community meeting earlier this month, Dziko faced Don Alexander again—and numerous others who were equally antagonistic, according to several people who were present. This time, not only didn't she win applause, but the Rainier Beach PTSA president led a walkout.
In front of that crowd, her race wasn't adding much to her credibility. "Just because she's black, or nonwhite, does not make her my peer," Alexander says, who refers to her as a "multimillionaire."
Dziko takes issue with the "multi" but says she is indeed a millionaire by virtue of her six years at Microsoft. She used her own money to start her foundation, now a $2 million-a-year operation that receives funding from a variety of sources.
"I haven't heard people say, 'Well, she's a sister,'" observes Sakara Remmu, an African-American parent who leads a group opposed to school closures and who attended the meeting at Rainier Beach. "A lot of people know she has money. But they're not really sure where she comes from or who she is."
