Kathleen Smith

Introduce Yourself

Why do you want to serve as a Seattle Public School Board Director?

I want to serve on the school board to help provide much needed transparency, so we can rebuild trust through authentic community engagement and real understanding of what’s going on in our budget.

As a data scientist, I can facilitate deeper inquiry into complex data sets, so we can ensure decisions are made with real data and equity in mind.

As the parent of two children entering SPS, I am running to represent families who are ready for a public school system that represents the needs of an increasingly diverse, but expensive city.

I am running to serve on the school board because our public institutions are under attack and we need a progressive leader who has the privilege to do what’s right.

Board Skills
What skills or perspectives do you bring that are currently missing or underrepresented on the
school board?

As a data scientist with a PhD in mathematics, I bring the valuable skill set of being able to communicate complex issues and data. My background would ensure school board decisions are informed by meaningful evidence rather than arbitrary metrics. It also guides me to ask hard hitting questions to get to the bottom of what is not working about our district, so we can actually hold the Superintendent accountable.

We need solutions that don’t only make students feel safer, but actually make students safer. My background in information security brings expertise in evaluating the tradeoffs and effectiveness of potential security measures.

With my current job building agentic AI systems at Microsoft, I bring a critical perspective as SPS navigates rapid technological changes, allowing me to advocate for responsible, student-centered innovation. As a parent of two students who will attend SPS, I also bring the perspective of someone committed to the future of Seattle Public Schools.

Top Challenge
What is SPS’s biggest challenge, and what specific action would you take to help solve it?

The biggest challenge facing SPS is lost trust with our Seattle families. We must provide authentic community engagement opportunities and transparency in how decisions are made. As a school board director I will act to make public discourse about our public schools more accessible, engaging, and digital, reaching more families through sustained engagement.

In the coming term, the school board will hire a new Superintendent. This brings an opportunity for responsive new district leadership, but the school board must hold both the Superintendent and central staff accountable.

If we are to rebuild trust it will not only take better communication, but also real results based on real data. As a school board director, I will analyze a forensic audit of existing spending and provide much needed clarity on how to address our budget deficit. We must avoid short term cuts that cause long term harm, like the recent closure plan.

Community Partnership and Board Operations
What will you do to improve relationships with the community, specifically with parents and
educators?

As someone both from a family of educators and a parent, I provide a unique perspective and experience that will help bridge the gap between the backbone of our education system, our educators, and our most trusted partners in the work of educating our youth, the parents.

The school board and district need better avenues to not only communicate with families, but to listen to parents and educators. Unfortunately, there isn’t any policy that can force people to listen, but board directors must commit to openly receiving input. What we can do is put policies or governance framework in place to establish a more accessible system of board meetings, schedules, issues, and discourse.

Finally, relationships within the community are essential. I would seek ways to work with and empower
existing organizations and student groups. Giving students, families, and educators the tools and
opportunities they need to better connect with each other will contribute to robust school communities.

School Closures
Did you support or oppose the recent school closure proposals? Do you think that school
closures/consolidations should be considered in the coming 5 years?

I do not support the recent short-minded closure proposals because the data shows they would have a high cost to students for little expected benefit. Closures hurt students, and must be a last resort. Closures are the product of an increasingly unaffordable city and we have an opportunity to work together with city and state officials to ensure we fulfill our paramount duty of fully funding our schools. Our district's 5 year plan should focus on building enrollment alongside housing and population growth. We should not be closing schools, we should be investing in them, as we have buildings in troubling conditions and students experiencing constant change.

Over the next 5 years, we need progressive revenue, not austerity closures. As one of the wealthiest cities in America, we deserve better.

Socioeconomic Equity
What policies or budget actions would you support that would reduce socioeconomic and racial
disparities among Seattle Public Schools students?

Economic and racial disparities for SPS students are exacerbated in Trump’s America, with privatization, the criminalization of immigrants, and the on-going fight to end the school to prison pipeline. We must safeguard our public schools by fixing our state’s upside down tax code and make Seattle an affordable city for working class people.

Our budget must undergo a deep analysis with a vision for equity that avoids harmful changes to the schools our most vulnerable families rely on. Further cuts to necessary services like special education are a lose-lose proposition, both hurting students and costing our district in the long run. Finally, we can address racial disparities by fulfilling our promise to students who have long called for Ethnic Studies, Restorative Justice, and decriminalized schools.

We can’t set lofty goals without clear measurements for analyzing implementation overseen by the district, otherwise we are just blind leaders.

Academic Rigor and Highly Capable Services

What should SPS do to improve academic rigor? Do you believe SPS should provide advanced learning opportunities such as Walk to Math and Highly Capable Services? How do you envision delivering Highly Capable Services within SPS?

We should be providing rigorous learning opportunities to all students in our public schools. Differentiated learning opportunities in the classroom should be a priority of our district, as they have a clear benefit to student learning, but we must not put undue burden on educators or reduce options for families. Given the variety of ways different students can learn and excel, we should provide access to different learning settings as much as the district’s budget allows.

Our HCC and jumpstart programs should continue to serve students in SPS. We must also honor the call to make HCC more equitable and accessible to all students. Students should have extracurriculars provided in partnership with our City’s Parks Department, Department of Education and Early Learning, as well as community organizations.

Special Education and English Language Learners

How will you improve the delivery of special education services to students in SPS? How will you improve the delivery of education to English language learners?

I will improve delivery of SPED services by reducing our expensive reliance on sending students to private institutions. We can only improve the delivery of special education services through long term investments in the workforce to provide these necessary services, and statewide advocacy. We need to provide special education services instead of spending public education funds on private programs.

I will improve the delivery of education to our multi-lingual students by investing in career pathways for IAs and paraprofessionals. We must retain bilingual educators and those that represent the communities they serve by ensuring we pay thriving wages to our lowest paid staff. We must also protect the programs that serve multi-lingual students, as these programs provide an irreplaceable service to many families.

Finally, we need to ensure classroom teachers have support professionals that are well trained and compensated. Every classroom needs a team of educators to address student needs.

Enrollment Decline

More than 20% of Seattle children are enrolled in private school (second-highest in the country). Do you believe SPS should try to attract and enroll more families? If so, what would you do to achieve that goal? What degree of enrollment choice should be allowed?

We need to attract more families to Seattle Public Schools and provide options for them to enroll in that best suit their needs. Enrollment choice is important and families should not be blocked from their school of choice if there is space available. My goal for SPS is to match students with the best learning environment for each person, and bolster the local schools so families have appealing local choices.

Currently, the district is caught in a partial implementation of 90s-era market competition between schools. While the district uses enrollment to assess which schools are most successful and determine funding, families are not given free reign to choose schools and schools are given little autonomy to adapt. Thus, schools that perform poorly drive families to seek option schools, further exasperating funding issues. We need to turn this situation around, and invest in local schools, rather than blocking access via opaque waitlist policies.

School Diversity

Should SPS offer a variety of schools with different building sizes, curriculum formats (e.g., STEM, DLI, expeditionary) and grade bands (e.g., K-8)? Why or why not?

Students learn in a variety ways, so we must have different options that serve students’ differing needs. SPS should offer a variety of schools, but the more crucial question is how much variety best serves Seattle students? For example, K-8 schools have clear benefits, but also tend to have higher costs per pupil. The forensic audit should give more data on how per pupil costs compare across different school models in our district, allowing us to make data-driven decisions on allocation of limited funds. We must optimize diversity of options, local accessibility, and cost.

Schools across the country provide more specialized learning opportunities and cuts to these programs have drawn families away from public schools. SPS option schools fared above average in the recent enrollment decline, further showing the benefits of school choice. However, most SPS students attend neighborhood schools, so we must invest in providing a consistently world-class education throughout the district.

Budget & Efficiency

Beyond advocating for more state funding, what specific steps should SPS take to improve its operational efficiency and fiscal health?

We cannot keep making short term cuts with long term costs. We need a clear understanding of what is wrong before we can fix the problems in our district. You can’t fix what you can’t measure, and we will need to fund our schools in order to fix them. We need a forensic audit of district spending in order to understand where we can cut spending to better steward our resources, and where we must continue funding to stave off deeper financial issues.

As a school board director, I would work to fully staff programs internally, avoiding the cost of outsourcing to private institutions; assess building maintenance and construction needs, with a goal of maximizing the utility of real estate already owned by the district; and invest in programs to attract families and increase enrollment in conjunction with population growth and housing development plans. We need to have long term strategies to address enrollment decline, a problem that is intertwined with the affordability of our city.

Student Safety
What should SPS do to improve physical safety for students at school and in getting to and from
school?

We need to fight against Project 2025’s push to exacerbate the school to prison pipeline. I come from a cryptanalysis and information security background, and now work in AI at Microsoft. While digital and physical safety are separate issues, the concept of security theater is something that informs my perspective on an unfortunately contentious issue.

Security theater is the concept of security measures that make people feel safe without actually making them safer. The data clearly shows that we need preventative measures. Gun control laws, mental health resources, community-led violence intervention programs, and diversion from incarceration are the best strategies for ensuring our schools are safe.

Finally, we need accountable relationships with the police department and good faith efforts to invest in robust modern safety measures like key card access doors. SPD needs to build trust and improve the safety of surrounding neighborhoods.

Role of the School Board (SOFG) Since 2021 the board has followed a way of operating called Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG) that has been the subject of recent media questioning. Do you believe SOFG has been a successful model for the board to date and do you support continuing to implement it?

SOFG has not been successful in its implementation. While it was put in place as a good faith effort to increase equity, it has only exacerbated underlying problems with communication and transparency in the district.

The board does need an on-going governance framework, but SOFG isn’t doing its intended job. I would not support the continuation of its failed implementation, but seek to find a governance framework that will increase transparency and community engagement, while also allowing the board to do their job of holding the Superintendent accountable.