Yeah, I think I remember voting for her. This seems so sudden.

Fired from Seattle. Mother died. Found a job in Detroit. She died. Left behind young daughter and husband. Pity was no doubt the last thing she wanted. She was a tone-deaf battleaxe here in Seattle. Made a mess of things and alienated the community. Plus there was the Potter scandal. Slunk off to Charlston and never showed her face here again, beyond apparently getting a Letter of Recommendation from The Borgs at The Alliance for Education.

The whole Goodloe-Johnson tenure in Seattle was supremely sad. But her ending was still tragic. RIP.

She was a big crook who stole from children.

Small correction. The Board did not fire Dr. Goodloe-Johnson in response to a financial scandal. The financial scandal was simply the last straw. The Board fired her because they had lost their trust in her due to a series of deceptions and misrepresentations. The financial scandal was a politically convenient tipping point, but it was not the reason for her dismissal.

Yu people screw things the way you want; she was not a crook and the bottom line is she was just too direct for those unaccustom to making decisions w/o everone's blessing. I do agree she could be icy, but she was doing her job and made the mistake others under her were doing theirs.

Good riddance. Maybe there is a God, after all.

@5 Bullshit. We did not disagree with her style. We disagreed with her Billionaire-Boys-Club water-carrying substance.

@6 Wait, YOU don't like a union-busting conservative? Why's that?

Hmm, I see the hem of that Klan robe behind your closet door.

Dominic, I think your heroic portrayal here is misplaced. Condolences to her family, but let's not rewrite history. Her tenure in Seattle was wracked with churn, scandal and damage to many children, teachers and schools of Seattle Public Schools.

She lost the confidence of teachers and parents because she oversaw many negligent, destructive and costly policies while she was here, from senseless and costly school closures (which had to be undone and we're still suffering from) to illegal actions towards teachers and failing to disclose she was on the board of directors of the MAP test vendor (NWEA) when the district purchased the MAP test in a no-bid contract (an ethics breach for which the state auditor later cited her). Pottergate was just the last straw.

See: The True Legacy of Seattle’s Fired (Broad Academy) Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com…

It is true that from the day she was fired, the District has been busy reversing every decision she made. It will take years to undo the damage she caused.

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson said all of the right things. She may even have believed them (on some level). She made wonderful plans. Unfortunately she was horrible at implementation. Not one thing she did was done right.

I suspect that her poor implementations were a direct result of her inability to win any buy-in from the folks on the front line. She couldn't get people to willingly follow her lead. I think her inability to win support for her plans was rooted in her complete lack of interest in winning support for her plans. She didn't care if she had buy-in or not. That was a mistake.

Regarding the Silas Potter scandal, she said - unapologetically - that she couldn't be expected to know what someone three steps down from her on the org chart was doing. School principals, I will remind you, were three steps down from her on the org chart. The really ugly truth about the RSBDP wasn't the fake invoicing, it was the capricious way the program's budget was determined. Potter named a sum and it was funded, without any effort to justify the amount.