The Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors is modifying a governance approach focused almost entirely on student outcome metrics and instead restoring committees designed to strengthen policy review, financial oversight, and operational transparency.
Board members say changing how it operated within Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG), the board governance model it began implementing in 2021, toward a more traditional standing committee structure gives them more agency and better allows them to do the job they were elected to do. The decision came after a board retreat.
Not a repeal, but a reframe
The SOFG model was designed to keep board members focused on student achievement rather than the day-to-day operations of the district. Under this approach, the board sets clear goals for outcomes such as reading levels, graduation rates, or college readiness and regularly reviews data showing whether those goals are being met and charges the superintendent and district staff with determining how those goals are achieved. The model keeps the board centered on whether students are learning. However, critics argue it can reduce the board’s ability to examine district decisions in depth.
The Seattle Public Schools board’s recent decision to restore standing committees changes how that oversight happens. Committees on finance, policy, and operations allow smaller groups of directors to review budgets, policies, and operational issues before they come to the full board for a vote. In practical terms, the move gives board members more opportunity to study district decisions closely while still keeping student outcomes as a central goal.
“Committees are a really great way to delegate board work into a smaller group that can dig into details that then come to the full board,” said Liza Rankin, District 1 director, during the Feb. 11 board meeting. “It can just increase our capacity to work.”
Committees reinstated
Members voted unanimously at that meeting to amend its governance policy and restore a committee system that had largely been eliminated under the SOFG model. to amend its governance policy and restore a committee system. The board has not formally repealed Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG). Instead, it has modified how it operates within that framework.
The change creates three standing committees — Finance & Audit, Policy, and Operations — that will allow smaller groups of board members to examine budgets, district policies, and operational decisions more closely and report their findings back to the full board before items come to the board for a full vote.
Committees were a standard part of Seattle school board operations for years, but in October 2022, as the district shifted to SOFG, the board suspended all standing committees except the legally required audit committee and later made that change permanent in 2023.
Board directors say the committee structure offers them a greater understanding of district concerns, thus improving their ability to provide informed oversight.
A united board
Board directors expressed wide support for the change:
“We do need standing committees—kind of an evergreen structure—so we have the ability to do long-term planning,” District 5 Director Vivian Song said. “We need a place to be doing the regular board work.”
District 4 Director Joe Mizrahi also supported the return to standing committees but stressed that he hopes committees don’t become an encumbrance as they have in the past:
“I think that there is genuine good faith on everyone’s part in feeling like we can do our work better if we have some committees, but also wanting to honor the fear of not going back to committees that weren’t working,” Mizrahi said in February. “It’s finding that right balance between having standing committees and having ones that work, and I think that everyone who was working on this [return to committees] trying to get to that.”
According to an article this week in The Seattle Times, Seattle Schools Superintendent Ben Shuldiner supports the change, expressing appreciation for the SOFG framework’s goal of focusing the board on outcomes but wariness regarding the ways in which the model limited board member access to information needed to make decisions for the district.
