A plan to replace whiteboards at Seattle schools draws teacher ire

Frederica Merrell, an AP geometry and calculus teacher, loves her whiteboards and bulletin board.

Students solve calculus problems by hand on the whiteboards, and the bulletin board is plastered with student art, cards, notices, formulas and emergency phone numbers.

So Merrell, who teaches at Roosevelt High School, got alarmed when she thought the district was removing whiteboards and bulletin boards from classrooms and replacing them with digital ones. It was even more upsetting when she saw her colleague’s whiteboard in a dumpster, amid a black trash bag, empty water bottle and other debris.

“The whiteboards are what we use every single day,” said Merrell, who estimates she has about 16 feet of it in her classroom. “Not just math teachers, but all kinds of teachers. It’s very important. We do not want to have our whiteboards thrown away.”

The kerfuffle brewing at Roosevelt in recent days raises themes familiar in many workplaces: adaptations to new technology. Communications challenges between leadership and staff.

After Merrell complained last week, Seattle Public Schools sent staff from the capital projects and technology teams to Roosevelt on Friday. SPS is also now telling teachers that it’ll try to accommodate their requests to keep their boards if they’re in good condition.

SPS says it’s actually replacing the whiteboards at Roosevelt High School and TOPS K-8 with … whiteboards.

The newer ones will have a different surface, so they’ll work better with new short-throw projectors the district is putting in classrooms, according to Fred Podesta, SPS’ chief operations officer. They’ll function very much like traditional whiteboards. Teachers and students will still be able to write on them and clear them with dry erasers, he said.

The interactive and digital functions are from the projector, not the board, according to Tina Christiansen, a spokesperson for Seattle Public Schools’ capital projects and levies.

The new main whiteboards will be about 5 by 8 feet in size. Teachers who have more space in their classrooms may get up to two 5-by-4-foot boards, Christiansen said.

The white board replacement is a part of a multimillion-dollar project to upgrade audio visual equipment and security at 15 schools. Both were approved in the district’s 2022 levy.

The project includes new security cameras, alarm systems and features to restrict entry. It will also add accessible alarms — including digital screens — to alert students who are deaf and hard of hearing to emergencies. The district started the work at Roosevelt and TOPS because they have programs for students who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Merrell stresses she doesn’t have a problem with the accessibility improvements or the security upgrades. She objects to the district discarding expensive teaching tools that are still useful.

“Nobody asked us,” she said.

Teachers spend years curating the right classroom environment for their students, she said. She said cards from students, saved for years, will be removed and possibly damaged during construction.

“It’s depressing,” she said. “It’s like having someone come into your home and move all of your furniture when you’re not there.”

Podesta said the district had tried to give away the boards, but didn’t get any takers. Some were not in good condition. They’re large and quite heavy.

But if some teachers want to keep the white boards, the district will try to accommodate them, he said.

“There are just not that many places where a 4-by-20 (foot) whiteboard can fit,” he said.

SPS, for its part, said it could have done a better job communicating with the teachers. The school staff was briefed about the project when it was designed years ago. Teachers were also involved in discussions about the next generation of technology the district envisioned in classrooms, Podesta said.

Christiansen said staff met with the school’s principal in February and last month gave the principal materials to share with the staff. The project manager also met with Merrell and the school’s principal on April 25, she said.

“It’s a change, and people react to change differently,” he said. “Sometimes, even if there was communication ahead of time, you don’t know what it’s going to feel like until it actually happens.”

Merrell thought she’d get into trouble for asking questions publicly. But she said she’s glad she spoke up.

“They are learning,” she said of SPS. “I hope they can do better for the other buildings and still get them some of the digital stuff that people like, but also recognize that’s not the only way to teach.”

“School is about learning,” she said. “Not just about kids learning. It’s about all of us learning.”