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A Season for Change

This time last year, Karen Reed-Matthee, Seattle Woman’s editor and my business partner, went to Walla Walla with her husband, Imbert Matthee, to write about Washington’s wine country for our September 2008 issue. You never know where traveling or writing will take you, and in her case the travel assignment sent her life in a new direction.

On their weekend excursion, they met interesting people who had left big-city life to start innovative restaurants and wineries. They bicycled over country roads and were captivated by the landscape. They were drawn to the small towns. They bought a house in Waitsburg.

Most of us don’t have the jobs or personalities to be so spontaneous, but as the director of Clear Path International (www.cpi.org), a vital nonprofit that aids land mine victims in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and Afghanistan, Imbert can live just about anywhere that has good Internet access. And Karen, who suffers tremendously from allergies triggered by our damp Seattle weather, was open to change.

This month they are moving into that new house, and so, dear readers, you’re left with me as the new editor of Seattle Woman. Karen will continue to advise us as our editor-at-large and, hopefully, to write more award-winning articles for the magazine after she’s settled.

I don’t think you’ll notice much of a change. Because of my extreme type-A personality and Karen’s wonderfully collaborative spirit, I’ve always been closely involved with the content of Seattle Woman even though my main responsibilities as publisher have been running the business. I will certainly miss Karen’s active role in the magazine (and her editor’s notes!), but I’m excited for the opportunity to be in charge of the fun part of magazine publishing: the editorial.

This issue is a good one with which to mark such a change, since change is the dominant theme in all of the stories you’ll find here. In our profile, you’ll meet the women who are implementing Seattle Schools’ new strategic plan which, among other things, calls for an entirely new way of assigning students to schools. This is a hot topic for parents who are concerned they’ll be separated from the schools they’ve always assumed their children would attend, and I imagine there will be very lively discussions after the boundary lines are made public.

I personally applaud the school board and the district for working to strengthen neighborhood schools with this new approach. But I also hold out the hope that they’ll reconsider drawing lines around high schools. The current emphasis on choice has led to impressive programs designed to draw kids to schools that fit their interests. On my block, kids have gone to Ballard (for bio tech), Ingraham (for its International Baccalaureate), Garfield (for APP), Seattle Center School (for the arts) and Roosevelt (for music & drama). I admit that geography played in these kids’ favor, while for others it has been an insurmountable barrier to getting into popular schools. (Proximity to a school has been one of the factors used in determining who goes where.)

But whatever happens this fall in the dynamic process of changing how things are done in the Seattle School District, Karen Rathe’s introduction to Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and her colleagues will help us remember that these women at the vanguard of change are talented and caring individuals dedicated to building better schools and educating more successful students all across the city.

Have a good September!

Marianne Scholl
Publisher and Editor

©September 2009, Caliope Publishing Company