One reader says lack of leadership from Seattle’s Schools Chief is hurting families.Reader District Watcher responds to Schools Chief Maria Goodloe-Johnson Heads into Board Evaluation on the Heels of Scathing Surveys.”A paid survey by the district’s business cheerleaders, with questions far more leading than the 2nd anonymous survey, is hardly to be trusted.”This is about far more than the superintendent’s persona. The superintendent is a great planner. But she is a subpar implementer and operations leader. The state has just announced significant continuing financial messes within central administration. Staff just missed a deadline to fund Native American programs that is costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Special education program overhauls have been all talk, no substance, harming the most fragile kids in the district.””She has torn down successful programs in the name of standardization without a subsequent rise in test scores for the cohorts she is trying to help succeed. Her principal churn has alienated school communities.”Coherent plans for replicating and rolling out successful academic programs are noticeably absent.”Most of her executive hires downtown, including the CIO, CFO, and special ed director have done little to end the ‘us vs. those outside the walls of HQ’ culture that has hampered the district for years.”Her IT staff runs as a silo, a drag both on efficient operations downtown as well as completely absent in providing classrooms with 21st century learning tools.”Her communications staff lacks internal political capital as well as the skillset to properly engage with the community. She has done nothing to restructure the department and replace the ineffective personnel, whose top priority is repeatedly shown to be mainly to create good pr for her administration and defend her actions instead of engaging with the community.”It is unlikely that she will handle the upcoming teacher’s union negotiations with finesse as even board members note that her own communication skills are abysmal.”Her budgeting process is opaque to the community and to board members alike.”In summary, any poll or story that tries to spin the problems with the district as simply a group of whiny parents who are not happy with their own child’s fate in the system underestimates the community’s ability to see through the superintendent’s stultifying powerpoint presentations. We are watching and we know the substantial failings of the district all too well. And, yes, these failings ultimately hurt our families.”