{"id":22056,"date":"2018-04-05T08:03:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T14:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22056"},"modified":"2018-04-05T10:23:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T16:23:02","slug":"montanas-juneau-will-lead-seattle-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/04\/montanas-juneau-will-lead-seattle-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana’s Juneau will lead Seattle Public Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Juneau\"<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Denise Juneau will begin work as Seattle\u2019s superintendent of schools in June.<\/p><\/div>\n

Denise Juneau, for two terms Montana\u2019s superintendent of public instruction, will be the next superintendent of Seattle Public Schools.<\/p>\n

School board members there voted unanimously Wednesday night to negotiate a contract with Juneau, who will be the city\u2019s first Native American school superintendent.<\/p>\n

An enrolled member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, Juneau was Montana\u2019s state superintendent from 2008 to 2016. In 2016, she was the Democratic nominee for Montana\u2019s sole\u00a0seat in the U.S. House, losing to then-incumbent Rep. Ryan Zinke.<\/p>\n

At the end of her final term as state superintendent, she moved to Missoula, where she expressed an interest in the presidency of the University of Montana but was not selected as a finalist.<\/p>\n

In Seattle, Juneau was one of three finalists out of 63 applicants. She interviewed with the school board (in closed session) and the public (in an open forum) last week.<\/p>\n

At that forum, Juneau talked about her experience in creating a more inclusive environment for all families and a more successful education experience for all students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never met a parent \u2014 never \u2014 that did not want a better life for their child,\u201d Juneau said at the public forum, which was posted online by Seattle Public Schools. \u201cAnd that always comes through education.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so I am a big believer in making sure that people are at the table, that communities have a voice. I\u2019ve always said that we don\u2019t need a higher wall, we need a longer table. We need to find the people who don\u2019t feel included to be sitting at that table, and then really listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cWe are talking about a public education system, and so we need to listen to the public,\u201d Juneau said.<\/p>\n

School board members deliberated in a closed session on Wednesday, then met in public to cast their votes for Juneau.<\/p>\n

Board vice president Rick Burke spoke briefly before the vote, explaining his thoughts: \u201cThe work that we do is based on trust, and what I heard from so many people is that Ms. Juneau was already coming with a high level of trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard a lot of broad support from across the city \u2026 and then a personal passion\u201d for education and for students, said Burke, who was impressed by not only Montana\u2019s Graduation Matters initiative but also by Juneau\u2019s ability to recount specific data showing the success of that program.<\/p>\n

The initiative has helped to increase graduation rates for all Montana high school students by 5 percent, and for Native American students by 8 percent. The statewide program grew out of Missoula\u2019s successful Graduation Matters campaign.<\/p>\n

Juneau will be the third Seattle school superintendent in six years when she reports for work in June. The current superintendent was not offered a new contract.<\/p>\n

The other two finalists were superintendents of school districts in Michigan and Colorado.<\/p>\n

The board will vote on Juneau\u2019s contract at its April 25 meeting. She is expected to make about $300,000 a year.<\/p>\n

In introducing herself to Seattle parents, teachers and administrators, Juneau credited her parents and grandparents \u2013 who worked in public schools \u2013 in teaching her that education is the \u201cgreat equalizer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview last year with Missoula Current, Juneau said she was open to a wide variety of new opportunities, should they be available.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time a door of opportunity opens, you have to make a choice whether to walk through that door,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been able to do a lot of things and walk through those doors of opportunity, and it has led to things I would never have imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her tenure as Montana\u2019s superintendent of public instruction, Juneau managed an agency that claimed a $1 billion budget with 180 employees. She worked with every school across the state, including 140,000 students and 12,000 teachers.<\/p>\n

Seattle Public Schools is a district of 53,000 students.<\/p>\n

Sherry Devlin is a longtime Missoula journalist who writes\u00a0occasional stories for\u00a0Missoula Current<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0where this story originally appeared.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denise Juneau, for two terms Montana\u2019s superintendent of public instruction, will be the next superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. School board members there voted unanimously Wednesday night to negotiate a contract with Juneau, who will be the city\u2019s first Native American school superintendent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":22057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[1869,6884],"class_list":["post-22056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-denise-juneau","tag-seattle-public-schools","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22061,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22056\/revisions\/22061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}