The News Tribune (Lite) - Milligan misses a shot to speak

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Section: Kits Merryman

Milligan misses a shot to speak – and to listen

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Tacoma Public Schools’ Superintendent Charlie Milligan’s opportunity to meet with Eastside Neighborhood Advisory Council fell right into one of the district’s top five goals for the year.

Goal 4, “School/Family/Community & Communication,” calls for supporting students through “open communication with parents, students, colleagues and community partners.”

You don’t get more active, engaged community partners than ENACT members and the people they represent. In mid-April, Milligan agreed to come to their Monday meeting for some of that communication. The previous Thursday, he begged off.

He had a child care problem, he told board member Becky Fontaine.

The people on the ENACT board understand the difficulties of balancing community responsibility and parenting. But they do not buy a “child care problem” as an excuse for cancelling an important meeting four days in advance.

Given four days, they would hire a baby sitter, arrange for the kids to spend the evening with friends or relatives or simply bring them along to read, do homework or raid the snack table in the back of the room.

They were glad School Board member Kurt Miller was in the audience. They respect the administration substitute they got – Miguel Villahermosa, director of middle school education. He’s worked in East Side schools and knows the area as well as anyone.

That’s the problem.

This meeting was not just a chance for a school administrator to speak.

It was a chance for Milligan to learn. It was a chance for him to answer broad questions about operations and policies and specific questions about planning and problems.

Moya Joubert would have told him that, though enrollment may be dropping districtwide, the East Side’s having a family home building boom. She would have asked how the district is tracking new development in the wide open spaces along McKinley and Portland avenues.

Becky Fontaine wanted to know when citizens would be invited to discuss the design of the merged Gault and McIlvaigh middle schools on the 27-acre McIlvaigh campus.

Though the consolidation has been put on hold, Villahermosa said it looks as though the new school at McIlvaigh will be modeled on the Angelo Giaudrone Middle School plan. Fontaine would have pressed Milligan on where the citizen input came into the process. How would the Giaudrone design, which serves almost 700 kids now, work for the almost 1,000 students enrolled at Gault and McIlvaigh?

Catherine Ushka-Hall wanted to know if the McIlvaigh construction project will follow Salishan’s lead in using local labor. She would have asked, “Will you seek to utilize local contractors? Will this project have an apprenticeship component in the contract? If not, why?”

Kimberlie Lelli would have represented her neighborhood’s concern about the sale of the vacated Rogers Elementary School to Crossing Community Services for its outreach ministry to the homeless. Crossing Church has since said it will not use the building for that, but neighbors are leery of the promise and livid at the sale.

“I would have asked Charles D. Milligan, if he had come to our meeting last night, his version of the Rogers School/Crossings sale,” Lelli said. “I’d like to know why neighbors were not notified of the pending sale. I’d like to know if any red flags went up in his mind regarding the buyer, considering the type of business they’re in and how it could affect the neighborhood.”

At the meeting, Roxanne Murphy asked if the administration and board learned from the closure of Rogers in 2002 and its sale this year.

“Oh yeah,” School Board member Miller replied from the audience.

The district, he said, will work with the city administration on marketing surplus property and getting citizens involved early in the process.

Still, Murphy and Lelli would have preferred to hear that from Milligan. I would have liked to have heard from him, too, but he didn’t return my call.

They wish he’d found a sitter, and come to meet the board.

It was a chance for Milligan to make progress on the district’s Goal 4.

He chose not to take it.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com