Dr. Susan Enfield
On Feb. 28, Highline Public Schools in Burien announced that their new superintendent will be Dr. Susan Enfield, Seattle Public Schools’ current interim superintendent.
Enfield will start at Highline on July 1.
We believe this is a huge loss for Seattle Public Schools (SPS).
Enfield took over SPS after a financial scandal ousted Maria Goodloe-Johnson. For us, Enfield sticks out because she was the only one who ever personally reached out and asked if we wanted to interview her. Of course, in the past, we’ve had superintendents amicably agree to be interviewed when we asked, but none who have been as proactive as Enfield in reaching out to Seattle’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Her actions spoke volumes. After all, she could’ve spent her valuable time with bigger papers or local TV stations.
In our conversation with Enfield, we tackled, straight on, the issue of non-diverse staff hiring within SPS. We found her to be very sincere and frank. We believed that she really cared about properly educating kids. We want to say how much we appreciate her short tenure here.
Additionally, we also want to caution SPS against expending too many resources in securing another superintendent. The budget is very tight right now. It doesn’t seem wise to conduct a pricey national search for a candidate only to eventually end up settling on a local candidate — especially since national searches have not garnered great results in the past. We have a lot of great local candidates to pick from, actually. The idea of a national search — to get the best and brightest candidate possible — sounds good on paper. But it is not practical at this time. (end)