Endemic Nepotism, Corruption & Dishonesty in Seattle Public Schools: Ben Shuldiner Must Confront Family’s Unchecked Reign
New superintendent should appoint external investigator to probe abuse, graft, mismanagement and nepotism running rampant in state’s largest district
Editor’s Note: We published this story months ago but given the recent resurfacing of Patu-Jackson related criminality (occurring as usual either in —or adjacent to — the SPS cinematic universe) including J425’s exclusive report that FBI investigators questioned Rainier Beach principal Annie Patu about connections to Jackson Drug Trafficking Org activity. On one level, the connection is obvious: blood. The Jackson DTO was operated out of Patu’s sister’s house, where three generations of Principal Patu’s in-laws, siblings, nieces and nephews ran a multi-state fentanyl and weapons ring responsible for at least four deaths in WA. Not our business? Maybe if the Jackson DTO didn’t thoroughly overlap with SPS. Patu allowed her sister Marty — now facing 168 to 210 months in federal prison to oversee STUDENT SAFETY at Rainier Beach High School. And the FBI questioned Patu about a payment she made to an indicted drug mule transporting 60,000 fent pills. Patu said she simply forwarded money from her sister to a woman she’d never met (the trafficker).
Does this sound normal to you? Is this what senior administrators at high profile high schools typically do? The payment is complicated by the fact that Patu told the FBI that she was aware of gang ties and a grow operation connected to her sister and her nephew Marquis, who now faces life in prison. Patu let Marquis use her home as a mail drop even though he didn’t live there and she knew about his gang affiliations and previous legal issues (convicted in a drive by shooting, etc). So making electronic payments for drug traffickers to drug mules moving their product is one thing. Patu says she just did what her sister asked. Patu hasn’t been charged or accused of wrongdoing. The feds told the court that her proximity to the Jackson DTO was concerning and at least made her a witness in the sprawling case. And it’s a deadly serious case. Five of Patu’s close family members, (two of them who served on the RBHS design committee and one of whom who oversaw student safety at RBHS) face federal sentence ranges that look like baseball slugging percentages. Marty Jackson is looking at 220 months. Mandel up to 400. Marquis? Forget about it they just wrote down a capital L.This is far from the first time that Patu-Jackson politics have interceded on SPS business. At the same time that Marty Jackson was serving her last pre-indictment days as a violence interrupter on RBHS campus, her brother Saul Patu was coaching at soon-to-be scandal ridden Roosevelt High School. J425 broke the story of Sam Adams and Patu improperly recruiting 18 prominent football players from area schools before promptly instructing them how to lie to athletic administrators, how to fraudulently apply for homeless student benefits they weren’t entitled to and what to say if asked questions about their residency (McKinney-Vento!). That’s not all, of course. Saul Patu had convinced then principal Tami Brewer (a straight-from-central-casting, middle aged, highly educated authentic caucasian Seattle Karen, operating right here in the Karenocracy!) I mean, this white lady said her mission statement was “saving Black and Brown boys”. Saul must’ve looked at her like a meal. He easily convinced her that he needed $160,000 in soul-source grant funding from the RHS endowment for the purpose of operating a “Kennel Club”. Oh and he’d need a classroom to appropriate as well. What for, you ask? Well, to kennel the Black and Brown boys away from the regular students, so they wouldn’t have to be bothered with “grade checks” or “attendance” or “school”. Yes, I’m telling you that the white progressive Karen paid Saul $160,000 to kennel Black and Brown athletes away from their peers, and release them when it was time to practice. Almost none of them graduated. Does this sound right to you? Anyway. J425 broke that story wide open, the 2024 season was forfeited and Adams, Patu and principal Brewer um no longer work there. So all of this is to say that almost every controversy involving this family includes mind-numbing hypocrisy, graft, and a trademark level of “rules-are-for-thee” arrogance that is just not a great addition to the district culture. (See Bethea, Mike and the transfer of Stokes, Tyran for more of the same type of attitudes on display). You can check out our recent stories on the Jackson DTO sentencing and RBHS principal Annie Patu’s FBI interview front page at www.the journal425.com or inset below - kev)
Culture of Corruption and Nepotism Pervades SPS
(Published originally in March 2026, updated July 8, 2026)
SEATTLE — A January 28, 2026 Seattle Public Schools (SPS) memo (full memo included at bottom of post) written by SPS athletics accountability czar Ted Howard, addressed to SPS board members, cites a $2.6 million budget shortfall as the reason why parents must foot the bill for student athletics going forward. Howard’s memo lays out a “pay-to-play” policy proposal that calls for families to pay up to $250 per student, per sport.1
A deeper look into the district’s “pay-to-play” architecture reveals a systemic culture that’s more like “you pay-we-stay”—where well-connected “grifters” and family dynasties are rewarded with taxpayer-funded parachutes — while students and parents are increasingly left with both the penalties, and the tab. A J425 Exclusive.
A January 28 memo from the Office of Accountability pitches athletic fees as a necessity for “fiscal sustainability.” Ironically, the document’s author, former Garfield Principal and Assistant Superintendent and current accountability administrator Theodore (Ted) Howard, has himself presided over several chapters of athletic administration defined by staggering ethical lapses, multimillion-dollar abuse settlements, and a sprawling web of nepotism that funnels public resources into private family “fiefdoms.”
The policy proposal was likely presented to the SPS board at a January 28 closed-to-the-public special meeting.
What Does the Memo Say?
This administrative memo (included as a downloadable PDF at the bottom of this post) outlines a proposal for Seattle Public Schools to reinstate “pay-to-play” participation fees to address budget constraints while sustaining its extensive K-12 athletics program.
The document argues that sports are essential for whole child development, citing data that links athletic participation to higher GPAs and better attendance compared to non-athletes. To balance financial needs with fairness, the district suggests a tiered fee structure with multi-sport discounts and a commitment to equity waivers for low-income families.
Ultimately, the text frames athletics as a vital tool for teaching life readiness skills, such as resilience and collaboration, which prepare students to solve future societal problems.
The recent history of Seattle Public Schools athletics reveals a different story.
This exclusive lays out an aggregation of recently-reported scandals that depict a landscape of waste, fraud and abuse: Issues that must be subjected to the sunlight of transparency… and the restorative powers of justice, before families are asked to foot the bill for mistakes that the district has failed to address.
True sustainability doesn’t start with parent fees—it starts with cleaning house and adopting a commitment to integrity and honesty. Before asking parents to “pay-to-play”, the district must at least take initial steps in cleaning up their own sordid history of pay-to-play, corruption, nepotism and dishonesty rampant in the SPS athletics system.
Wait for It: Ted Howard’s Brother-in-Law…. Given $200k Tax-Payer Funded Golden Parachute… After Pay-to-Play Athletic Scandal at Sugiyama High
The credibility of the district’s request for more parent capital is somewhat undermined by the history of its leadership. Case in point: a specific high-profile case of pay-to-play in athletics, where the money runs the opposite direction from the plan laid out in the memo.
Accordingly, the Alan Sugiyama High School / Great Futures Prep pay-to-play scandal is the first of five recent episodes of athletic corruption that we’ll walk you through in this J425 exclusive.
The Scheme: A Private, $22k-per-year Basketball Prep School INSIDE a Public High
Let’s widen out for a moment.
Accountability czar Ted Howard oversees athletics on the SPS org chart.
He’s also the author of the Pay to Play policy memo on which this story is based, a proposal in which SPS parents pay around $250 per student, per sport for participation in athletics.
According to Ted Howard’s ethics disclosure, his brother-in-law is Joe Powell.
As in, Joe Powell, former Principal at Sugiyama high school. The administrator who oversaw the Great Futures Prep pay-to-play scheme at Sugiyama high school, and was rewarded with a $200k golden parachute for this episode of fraud and likely criminality.
Per KUOW’s initial exclusive, Powell and a well-connected Nike street agent/travel team figure schemed up the idea for a basketball skill-mill inside of the public high school, where prospects from across the world could pay for acceptance and tutelage from Rainier Valley’s storied basketball culture.
KUOW broke the story of how Powell, as principal of Alan T. Sugiyama High School, installed Nike agent Dom Brooks to run a school-within-a-school basketball prep program at the district’s Rainier Valley alternative high school.
Together, Powell and Brooks oversaw “Great Futures Prep”—described in marketing material as an elite basketball program that bascially functioned as a private, $22,000-a-year “pay-for-play” scheme within a public school, promising athletic coaching, skill development, visibility and college scholarships. For these services, marketed quite literally to basketball players around the world, Powell and Brooks managed to charge parents tens of thousands of dollars to send their kids to free public school. Until wrongdoing was reported by a counselor (who basically lost her career for it) all of this was occurring without the district’s (or accountability czar/brother-in-law Ted Howard’s) knowledge.
Prospects from as far as New Zealand and Senegal were recruited and reportedly instructed to enroll as “homeless” under the McKinney-Vento Act, in order to classify as homeless and skirt WIAA eligibility regulations and pesky rules like grade and attendance requirements.
From KUOW:
Principal Joe Powell told the investigator that he was unaware that students had falsely claimed homelessness, and was not involved in recruiting or enrolling teens for the program. However, the investigation found that Powell had his secretary give new Great Futures students McKinney-Vento questionnaires to fill out.
“We’ll be offering our young people another pathway,” said Joe Powell, principal of Sugiyama High School, in a promotional video for Great Futures Prep. “In today’s day and age, in order to complete high school, you have to have had some form of pathway that you committed to while you’re within school.”
KUOW reports that none of the recruits actually attended classes.
Further, the program didn’t just bypass athletic rules; as Dom Brooks grew bolder (forging documents and signatures, routing payments to the Boys and Girls Club, “expelling” students for non-payment of funds) the program likely broke federal and state law, according to a 2025 KUOW report.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW INSET.
How A Local Basketball Trainer Charged Kids $22K in Tuition to Attend (Free) Seattle Public School — and Got Away.
Forgery, impersonation, fraud. Abuse of homeless student programs. Six figure hush-money payouts. Local fraudsters feasting on schools and walking away scot-free. The Alan Sugiyama High School/Great Futures Prep scandal is the prototypical Seattle Public Schools scandal, complete with the unsatisfying conclusion.
The scheme collapsed when Moore and Brooks began pressuring a guidance counselor to stop players from graduations, so they could return for a fifth year. Ultimately, the counselor noticed that Brooks had been stealing her letterhead and email account in order to pose as her, certifying the enrollment of players and even soliciting funds.
When the scheme collapsed, the district accountability was non-existent. Instead of calling the police, the district delayed and obfuscated. Instead of tracking down the stolen taxpayuer funds, the district quietly paid off those involved to keep quiet. Instead of termination, the district handed Powell a “golden parachute,” allowing him to resign via a settlement that placed him on paid leave to collect a $199,000 salary plus benefits for eight months. The “tuition” stolen from parents was never recovered. And when KUOW asked the district whether they reported the crimes to police, the district pulled off this charade (per KUOW):
…a Seattle Public Schools spokesperson said that the district reported the findings to police last December, six months after the investigation concluded.
However, a Seattle Police Department spokesperson said the police report was made several days ago, at 9 p.m. on Sunday, as this story neared publication.
When police arrived at Seattle Public Schools headquarters, the district employee “stated he had not been part of any of the investigation and had simply been told by the district’s legal advisors to call Seattle Police to file a police report.”
Today, Ted Howard, the man who watched his brother-in-law profit from this pay-to-play grift… from an accountability perch in the district office… is the same man authoring the memo asking Seattle families for $2.6 million in funding.
More Family Business: the Patu-Jackson Dynasty
The Howard-Powell connection is only one thread in a larger tapestry of SPS nepotism and problematic stewardship of responsibilities and athletics.
Case in point, the Patu-Jackson family, headed by legendary retired board member Betty Patu, a group that has collectively exerted an iron grip on city and district South End interests for decades.
The family’s influence is literal: at least six family members served on the citizen design committee (of 20) for the $297 million Rainier Beach High School rebuild, successfully naming two buildings after themselves.
The family web includes Betty Patu (school board), Annie Patu (Rainier Beach Principal), Virginia Bethea (Patu) Rainier Beach external communications professional, Virginia’s husband Mike Bethea (Rainier Beach Head Basketball Coach), Betty’s son Saul Patu (former Roosevelt coach, fined in the Roosevelt matter), and Miracle Jackson-Patu (RBHS design committee member). Betty’s other son Paul Patu manages a prominent King County social non-profit, as did Betty’s daughter Marty Jackson, more on her momentarily.
The stakes of this familial reach turned dark in October 2024,
Continue past jump to read about the Patu-Jackson web of scandals running from Roosevelt to Rainier Beach to a Federal drug indictment featuring three generations of the family; the Garfield $16 million abuse settlement that occurred under Ted Howard’s watch, and the shocking abandonment of 18 students in a segregated Roosevelt “Kennel”, where the district stopped performing grade checks and athletes stopped attending class….all this plus the full 2026 pay-for-pay policy memo and a summary calling for an external investigation into fraud and mismanagement in athletics.
when Saul Patu was implicated in the state’s second largest recruiting scandal in history at Roosevelt High School.
At the same time, Marty Jackson and Miracle Patu-Jackson were named in a federal drug trafficking indictment.
At the time of her federal indictment on fentanyl and weapons distribution charges, Marty Jackson was a district-contracted safety specialist and “violence interrupter” trusted to protect the students of Rainier Beach High School — after the district chose to kick Seattle police off campus.
At the time she received the contract, Marty’s sister Annie Patu was principal at Rainier Beach, her sister was leading community outreach at Rainier Beach, and her brother in law Mike Bethea ran the basketball program in a gym bearing his name.
The name of the gym? Chosen by a community school renovation design advisory team panel of 25 or so citizens — at least six of whom were Patu/Jacksons.
It’s also worth noting that the design of Rainier Beach didn’t turn out great either.
Within a year of opening, the $297 million dollar campus has sunk significantly into the peat bog it was built on; and unmitigated methane gas poses a “non-zero” chance of a catastrophic explosion underneath the high school foundations.
Seattle’s Betrayal: The Family That Preached Youth Safety While Allegedly Fueling a Fentanyl Empire
In a third superseding indictment filed last December, prosecutors allege a multi-national drug and weapons ring was operated out of the family home—the same family home central to the district’s most prominent athletic programs.
Was principal Annie Patu or brother-in-law Mike Bethea aware that their relative Marty was running a multi-state fentanyl and weapons cartel out of her Kent home, an organization that included three generations of the family and all five Jackson-Patu members living at the home? Unknown – the district didn’t launch an investigation into the matter, they just quietly severed the “violence interrupter” and safe passages contract with Jackson’s SE Network Safety Net.
A Legacy of Failure: From Garfield to ‘The Kennel’
Assistant Superintendent Ted Howard’s promotion to “Accountability” chief is a grim irony given both the corruption that his brother in law presided over at Sugiyama high, and Howard’s own administrative tenure at Garfield High School.
During Howard’s time as a building administrator, one of the most distressing failures of student safety occurred.
It was also the single most costly failure in athletic and administrative oversight in district history. Administrators failed to flag the background of a security guard/volunteer coach and failed to supervise a head girls basketball coach. Together these two employees spent six years systematically sexually abusing a minor girls basketball player. A KUOW investigation showed that administrators with knowledge of hiring oversights and rumors of abuse failed to act on numerous occasions.
That negligence cost a girl her youth and it cost taxpayers a record-breaking $16 million settlement.
Apparently, Seattle Public Schools saw this track record as the makings of an accountability expert. Howard wasn’t disciplined; he was promoted. And while he was Assistant Superintendent, his brother in law’s aforementioned pay to play scandal occurred. Now, Howard’s office oversees the fallout of the Roosevelt High School scandal, serving as the WIAA’s single point of contact for all matters concerning athletic accountability.
Memo: SPS Athletics Has Positive Correlation to Academic Success. Roosevelt Scandal Shows Otherwise
Speaking of accountability, district leaders have failed to reign in a systemic culture of less than accurate paperwork. This problem appears again in Howard’s less-than-transparent memo, which claims athletics drive “academic success.”
Compare that to the bleak reality exposed by the Roosevelt investigation, where WIAA investigators found that Roosevelt administration recruited 18 established, highly-rated recruits, effectively luring them out of area high schools where all 18 were excelling in football and academically eligible to participate per state standards. STORY CONTINUES AFTER INSET.
First, They Were Taught to Lie and Cheat. Then They Were Kenneled
When the transfers arrived, they were taught how to lie on their registration in order to cheat state eligibility rules.
These players were tempted from their schools with empty promises of scholarships, and upon reaching Roosevelt, they were immediately instructed to lie on federal paperwork, declaring themselves homeless, in a well-worn SPS trick designed to circumvent WIAA eligibility rules by taking advantage of leniency shown to truly homeless students. When the school year started, these 18 “homeless” players were funneled (read: segregated) into a specialized district academic counseling initiative called “The Kennel”—basically a one-off academic intervention program/exclusive players-only on campus night club, run by Saul Patu, at a cost of $160,00 in sole source payments made to Patu by Roosevelt boosters. The boosters were told the program would support the academic success of “Black and Brown players”, and the sole source hand out was approved by former RHS principal Tami Brewer.
This charitable academic intervention did nothing but make Patu $160k richer — nearly all of the 18 involved athletes failed to graduate on time. Most barely even attended class2.
Teachers interviewed by a WIAA fact finder described “The Kennel” not as a classroom, but as a “private dining room” and “private hangout” for football players to watch game film. For students who already weren’t subject to grade checks — thanks to Patu and head coach Sam Adams registering the players as homeless, the results of this “academic” intervention were predictable: massive absenteeism and utter academic failure.
One “student” failed five of six classes while racking up 63 absences.
Another recorded 173 absences in a single semester.
Tyran Stokes is Just the Latest in a Series of Non-District Players Taking the Place of Local Kids on SPS Teams
For SPS students and parents watching along as Rainier Beach basketball cruised to a 3A title, led by a star player who lived in California until November 13, the new “pay-to-play” model must feel especially bitter, compared to the red carpet treatment the district rolled out for the out of state and likely ineligible five-star recruit.
Through another batch of less-than-honest athletic paperwork, Tyran Stokes, a top-tier California prospect with a history of disciplinary issues, was granted immediate mid-semester eligibility at Rainier Beach High School, where he went on to star on a state championship team coached by Mike Bethea. After winning the 3A title last week, Stokes posted the above photo to his Instagram, sitting apart from the team with the trophy, a pile of greasy cash laying prominently on the ground.
While the district lied by omission on Stokes’ registration paperwork in order to accommodate a new national schedule that Bethea just so happened to be working on as Stokes appeared in Seattle (Bethea said he had no knowledge of Stoke’s impending transfer before he showed up the day before the season), local students who followed the WIAA transfer protocol – Achilles Reyna, for instance – are forced to sit out 40% of their season due to rigid transfer protocols. Obviously, it’s much easier just to NOT follow the rules, a behavior that SPS athletic leadership has modeled again and again. STORY CONTINUES BELOW INSET.
Forfeits for Rainier Beach? Ineligibility for Tyran Stokes? More Penalties for Seattle Public Schools?
Yesterday’s J425 report detailed how Seattle Public Schools secured Tyran Stokes’ athletic eligibility by providing false and/or incomplete information and omitting a history of disciplinary incidents in California that led up to Stokes leaving Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, CA for Rainier Beach, 1100 miles north.
In Summary
While Seattle Public Schools is undoubtedly suffering from a lack of revenue; consider the sums of money wasted or misdirected by SPS leadership in the scandals of the recent years. The district is only paying $500,000 out of pocket in the Garfield settlement, but what of the legal costs for that six-year-case? What of the future civil litigation likely to follow after the former Garfield girls coach pled guilty to sexual misconduct with a student? What of the fines and legal fees related to the admissions that multiple Garfield administrators failed to act on information relating to the abuse of the girl?
What about the fact that at least seven SPS coaches and administrators were fined as much as $2,500 each for responsibility in the Roosevelt matter? How much did the district spend on legal representation during the six month WIAA investigation (that the district took pains not to cooperate with, according to the WIAA investigator). How many athletic fee waivers could be funded by the $160,000 in tax free charitable money handed out to Saul Patu, for the service of segregating recruits in what amounted to a social club, where almost all of the involved players stopped attending class regularly and many failed to graduate on time?
Then, there’s the Sugiyama pay to play. Before asking district taxpayers to shell out hundreds and even thousands of dollars for their kid to play sports, shouldn’t the district at least chase down that $22,000-a-year in fraudulent tuition collected by the Great Futures Prep management? Shouldn’t the district show enough respect for their tax base to report the crime to authorities, and actually assist the authorities in locating the funds and wrongdoing? And what of the six-figure golden parachutes, the reward given to those overseeing the bilking of tax payers? How can SPS shell out taxpayer cash to reward administrators who actively bilked students and parents and – at the same time – look to parents, shrug, and say “ya gotta pay if you wanna play?”
Takeaway: Board Should Appoint an External Investigator to Probe Corruption and Nepotism in SPS
In summary, it’s incumbent on district administration to first confront the crises of integrity plaguing SPS athletics before extending an open palm to the district tax base.
Before Ted Howard asks a single working-class parent to write a check for their child’s right to play, (might want to call in some extra resources when the ask is made of Sugiyama parents), the district must account for the aforementioned hundreds of thousands or even millions squandered on legal payments, sole source handouts (“The Kennel”), six figure golden parachutes (the Powell settlement), and the untold legal fees protecting a culture of nepotism.
True sustainability doesn’t start with parent fees—it starts with cleaning house and adopting a commitment to integrity and honesty. Before asking parents to “pay-to-play”, the district must at least take initial steps in cleaning up their own sordid history of pay-to-play, corruption, nepotism and dishonesty rampant in the SPS athletics system.
If you’re thinking this sounds like a good idea for a memo, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s an even better topic for an unscoped external investigation: the board should appoint an external fact-finder to get to the bottom of the aforementioned scandals, identify the sum total of lost, misplaced and wasted funds and root out any and all instances of continued corruption and lack of fiscal, academic and athletic stewardship present in the Seattle Public Schools system.