Engaging Seattle's youth and families

MAYOR Mike McGinn's Town Hall meetings on youth and families offer a promising launchpad for city-led efforts to quell youth violence and boost academic achievement.

Hundreds of citizens have attended the series of community forums, confirmation the mayor has tapped into deep public angst about issues from youth violence to school quality and safety.

Racial and neighborhood disparities are a focus of the discussions around education quality. For example, 78 percent of white students met the state math standard, while just 39 percent of Latino students and 29 percent of African Americans did. At Nathan Hale High School in the North end, 6 percent of students are repeating the ninth grade; at Rainier Beach in the South End that rate is 29 percent.

Seattle Public Schools has sought to address public concerns but a layer of distrust often overshadowed efforts.

McGinn's efforts are smartly steeped in the cache of past successful city-led efforts. The three co-chairs of the Youth & Families Initiative all have strong credibility on these issues: former Mayor Norm Rice, Bob Watt, a former deputy mayor and early-learning advocate and Estela Ortega, executive director of the Latino civil-rights organization, El Centro De La Raza.

Rice led the first citywide effort on education which resulted in the Families and Education levy, a seven-year measure funding early-childhood education programs, family-support workers and student-health services.

The mayor's efforts set a necessary framework for the upcoming discussions about the current $117 million levy, which is up for renewal in 2011. The city conducts annual and midyear assessments of how levy dollars are being spent and their impact on school achievement and posts the results on its Web site.

Looking forward, city officials must consider how levy spending can help reduce social ills that negatively impact academic achievement. For example, 40 percent of public-school students are on free and reduced lunch and 63 percent of them have not met state math standards. There is a 33 percentage point gap in math achievement between low-income and more well-off students.

The ongoing forums so successfully engaging citizens should influence policy and spending. This all ought to be a collaboration that strengthens the city's partnership with Seattle schools.