School Board Meeting Date: March 2, 2016 part 1

It is now 416. So I'm calling our meeting to order.

I want to welcome everyone who's here today.

This is March the 2nd, one of our regular meetings.

So Ms. Foddy, can you please do a roll call please?

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Peters.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

If everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which we stand, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now I'm going to, it's our recognition and I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Nyland who will now present the recognition of outstanding staff.

All right, actually I'm going to invite our executive directors to the podium and they're going to do the recognitions.

We have recognized semi-officially many of these individuals in our comments before.

But we haven't actually invited them to come to the board meeting so that the board could actually see them in person and hear a little bit more about the background for the recognition that the individual staff members have received.

So we're delighted to have a lot of great staff in Seattle and these individuals have been recognized across our region across our state and across our country.

So I'll start with Kim.

Good evening.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kim Whitworth.

I'm the executive director of schools and I serve the northeast region of Seattle.

The first staff member that we're going to recognize is Ms. Helen Jung who is the principal at Olympic Hills Elementary.

Helen has received the American Association of School Administrators Scholarship Award that's given to acknowledge someone who provides exemplary leadership on behalf of students in public education.

We have some very strong evidence for Helen receiving this award.

Olympic Hills this past year was celebrated for having the highest growth of any elementary school in the state.

And Olympic Hills has great staff members.

That's without a doubt.

But I don't believe they could have done this work without Helen's leadership.

And there are several things that Helen does to do this.

She is a master teacher and learner.

She takes this stance alongside of her staff and she's very specific about what she wants the group to achieve.

She has systems in place that allows this work to happen.

It's all done with students in mind first.

More importantly, she has the moral imperative to do this work.

She believes that every student can be successful if the adults are doing the right thing.

And she's very clear about what the right thing is, sets high expectations for everybody, and then supports them to get there.

And just to end on a note, she's super smart and has a wicked sense of humor.

So this is a well-deserved award.

So I also have the second award, Jennifer Heller.

So Jennifer is an art teacher at Eckstein Middle School and she won the Middle School Art Educator of the Year Award.

One of the things that her principal said was that in order to ensure each and every student is successful, we need to know what it is that they're good at and what they want to be doing and so that we're matching their interests and this is something that Jennifer does very well.

She is a superb instructor first and foremost and guides each student to be successful.

She also takes the time to get to know students and then structures her class so that not only are students learning about art, they're being able to express themselves and really tailor what they're doing.

One of the things that I appreciate about Helen is, I'm sorry Jennifer, is that we made a change a few years ago saying all children will be successful.

We're serving all of our students to each and every student and I think Jennifer really exemplifies that philosophy that it's each and every student individually.

Do you want to go next?

So we don't have to dance.

I'm going to go ahead and do my third one, which is for Christina Benita, who is a teacher at Hazel Wolf K8.

So Debbie Nelson is one of our principals who's been given the Foster Award last year and is held in high esteem by her colleagues and staff here.

What Debbie will tell you is the work that she's done at Hazel Wolf would not have happened without Christine Bonita.

Christine is sincerely, truly in so many ways her right hand.

She is a partner.

She helped create the program.

She was hired for her knowledge of environmental science but more importantly because she was an innovative thinker.

She's a leader among teacher colleagues providing guidance, support and professional development.

Debbie will tell you that Christine is a consummate team player and partner and without this work it couldn't have happened and so we really appreciate Christine's work at Hazel Wolf.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sarah Pritchett.

I am the Executive Director for the Central Region of Seattle.

I have the honor tonight of talking about Jennifer Lundgren, who is an art teacher at Montlake Elementary School.

She is the Elementary Teacher, Art Educator of the Year.

She is a phenomenal art teacher.

I've had the opportunity to be in her class a number of times and she makes you want to do art.

She makes you want to stay there.

The energy in the classroom is amazing.

The work that she does with the students at Montlake is Second to none, she finds something for every single student to be able to do well.

Principal Melissa Gray said that she's absolutely amazing.

She has a way of making all kids feel successful whether they are naturals at art or not.

She makes our school beautiful.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to Montlake Elementary you will see the amazing artwork that she does.

She brings an energy and a spirit to the building again that is phenomenal and I appreciate the fact that she is here and she is working in a school that my daughter also attended and she again is just an outstanding art teacher and I am so happy for her

Good evening everyone.

I am the Executive Director of Schools for the Southeast region.

I have four awards to give out tonight.

The first one is for Marcia Ventura.

Marsha is the 2015 Patsy Collins Award winner for Excellence in Education, Environment and Community.

At Maple Elementary School, Marsha strives to connect her fifth grade students to their community and environment.

Since the Duwamish River runs right through their neighborhood in which their students live and play, she developed a comprehensive teaching plan around the interaction between humans and the environment.

I was recently in her classroom.

I can say I've not seen kids so excited to be learning about social studies and history and things like that.

It's just great to see the kids raising their hands, looking at the maps and being so engaged.

So congratulations to Marsha.

The second award I'm happy to announce is for Ms. Karin Andrews, the principal of Interagency Academy.

She is the recipient of the 2015 Crosscut Courage Award for Public Service.

Karin was honored at Benaroya Hall at the annual Courage Awards breakfast this past October.

Karin leads the interagency staff in their inspiring work with Seattle's most impacted and marginalized students.

And though the staff continues to grieve the tragic loss of 11 of their students last year to violence, They are working together to move forward to address retaliatory violence and to address the trauma needs of all of their students.

Here is something that one of her teachers says about her.

Karin leads by example.

There is nothing that she won't do.

You watch her passion and her commitment to the kids and it inspires you.

It is definitely her in front but she will be the first to tell you I am right here next to you.

We all stand beside her.

Congratulations to Karin.

Alright, the next award is for Ms. Mia Williams, the principal of Aki Kurose Middle School.

In January, Mia Williams was participating in the panel discussion at the White House, in the White House, in Washington DC.

Mia was invited by the Johns Hopkins University Everyone Graduate Center to share her experience and expertise using early warning systems at Aki, student success mentors, and enhanced student support systems to reduce chronic absenteeism.

She's also recognized for her work around My Brother's Keeper, Johns Hopkins University is also recognizing Mia for her dedication and powerful leadership that she provides not just for Aki Kurose, but also for the schools in the region, especially the elementary schools that feed to Aki.

So congratulations to Mia.

And then the last award that I'm going to give out tonight is for Ms. Sandra Scott, the principal of Hawthorne Elementary School.

Hawthorne Elementary under the leadership of Sandra has been chosen to receive the prestigious Johns Hopkins University National Network of Partnership Schools Award.

This is the first time any individual school in Seattle has won that award.

Every year the National Network of Partnership Schools recognizes districts and schools that demonstrate excellence and continuous progress in applying research-based approaches To implement goal oriented programs of school, family and community partnerships and if you have ever spent any time at Hawthorne Elementary or talked to any of the parents in the school you would see the impact of her leadership around community engagement, parent involvement.

So congratulations to Sandra.

Good afternoon John Haffaker I am the Executive Director for the Northwest Region.

Didi Fauntleroy and I started working together about three years ago and when she took over the reins.

Didi over there stand up Didi.

She said that.

And while she was a rookie at that time to being a principal, clearly her work has been recognized not just at John Stanford International where she's at but throughout our region and now nationally.

Dee Dee in January was one of 20 principals nationwide who was asked to come back and meet with the Secretary of Education John King Jr. to talk about the new ESSA policy that was going into place.

So we are recognizing Dee Dee tonight for that and giving her a big round of applause.

Good evening Shawna Heath executive director of curriculum and instruction.

Tonight I have the privilege and honor of recognizing Lori Dunn.

She was recently named the Shape Channing Man outstanding physical education administrator of the year.

Lori has been in Seattle Public Schools for more years than I can count and she's been the manager of PE for that time.

She's been honored with this top award for physical education administrators.

The Society of Health and Physical Educators SHAPE is the nation's largest membership organization of health and physical education professionals.

Lori was announced as the Channing Mann Outstanding Physical Education Administrator of the Year.

Lori was given this award and I can say this with complete confidence because of her unfailing commitment and her tireless efforts to ensure all academic assurances are met for every single student in Seattle Public Schools.

So Lori will you stand up so we can give you a round of applause.

All right I'd like to invite all of our recipients to come forward and I'd invite the board to come down front so that we can congratulate them and do a photo.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I don't know.

They always do this.

They always make a huge...

Well, if we can get them to condense and get the board up on the second step, what do you think?

In the back?

Thank you.

All right thank you for coming tonight so that we could recognize each of you for your good work in the schools.

Appreciate it very very much.

This is classified employee month and have a proclamation that I'll read in a minute.

We have 2600 of our I don't know how many employees we have a lot of our employees are classified employees and we certainly can't do the work without them in terms of our operations work safety maintenance property transportation nutrition and a whole lot more.

Proclamation reads that the school board believes in and supports the education of our youth and recognizes classified employees as a backbone of our public education system.

School board values the classified employees, their work with students, educators, parents, volunteers, business partners and community members.

The board recognizes that classified employees support the smooth operation of offices, safety and maintenance of buildings and property, safe transportation, healthy nutrition and direct instruction of students.

School board understands that our community depends on and trusts our classified employees to serve students Believes that all classified employees with their diverse talents and true dedication nurture our students throughout their school years.

School board encourages all members of our community to join in this observance recognizing the dedication and hard work of our classified employees.

Again we thank our great colleagues and educators and support staff for the good work that they do throughout the district.

Couple of other recognitions.

Phyllis Campano, Vice President of SEA, has been honored with the UW Women's Center Women of Courage Award.

She was recognized Saturday night at a University of Washington fundraiser event and certainly joined in recognizing her work.

And just today we got an email just a few hours ago from OSPI saying that Cleveland had been named as a STEM lighthouse school.

They announced that Cleveland was one of six, five schools and one district.

That would be new STEM awardees.

They received $20,000 and that helps them with their work and that gives them the opportunity to mentor other schools across the state.

So congratulations to Cleveland.

A couple of current issue items, first and foremost our successful levy passage, 72% yes vote for our operations levy and for our BTA levy so can't say enough for our community, for their support, for Our schools first levy campaign committee, we can't campaign as a school district but we obviously need the money and that represents about 25% of our operating funds for everything that we do in schools every day and then the BTA portion pays for remodeling our older schools and helping add some much needed new classroom seats.

In my role as superintendent I've participated in I'm sure I could count them but a lot of them we used to have to do them every year and everywhere else that I've worked that's meant well over a hundred meetings for me personally and I certainly contributed a small part to the levy campaign kind of before and after working hours.

To do my part but it's just such a gift to have a dedicated community organization many of them having served for many many many campaigns to do that great work.

I would mention that SEA was far and away the hugest, not said a word, our biggest campaign contributor and was there early, was there late, made phone calls and contributed to the outcome.

Some budget updates.

We continue to be in what I call for budget and in many other areas in the radical middle.

So in the past few years we have seen some increase in school funding from the legislature as they paid for things like transportation and materials, things that we were already paying for and that they Just finally got around to paying for it.

Those were green dollars in that we had already made the commitments and they came through with the money and so we had a little bit of new money.

The commitments that they are filling now are class size commitments and those come with strings attached.

So we get added staff but we have to buy added staff.

So we are going to see quite a bit of additional staff at the primary level but No real additional money anywhere else.

We are fortunate in that we have more levy money but virtually all of that goes for the salary agreements that we've made with our employees and trying to keep competitive wages when the state has been unable to meet those salary requirements over several years during the recession.

So what we'll see in schools is we'll see more teachers at the primary level and as we've talked about before the good news is we get more teachers.

The bad news is we need more classrooms and so as we know we're scrambling to find those.

We are setting aside a little bit more funding for either counselors or social workers.

I think that's a net of about seven FTE across the district.

LAP funds previously have paid help pay for all day kindergarten that was not covered under the state's commitment to all day kindergarten.

So the state's now covering the all day kindergarten that frees up LAP dollars.

LAP dollars were able to target to students who are not reading by third grade.

So this is kind of a donut hole for us.

And that title one dollars go to schools that have the highest concentrations of needy students.

And what that means is that we have some schools that have a large enrollment but a small percentage of I'm not saying that right.

They might have like 30 percent Title I eligible students but then they wouldn't qualify for Title I funds because they don't meet the threshold.

So the LAP dollars allow us to give some funds directly to the students that have those needs even though they're in schools that don't qualify for Title I. We are seeing a challenge in the southeast for our high school enrollments.

We continue to try to balance Garfield, Cleveland, Rainier Beach and Franklin but the overall enrollment is decreasing in that part of the city, increasing elsewhere in the city and so that's causing a challenge for us.

And then because of the way that we got the state funding, the state funding as I said comes with strings attached.

So I think the...

The advertising was 17 to 1 and the legislators did figure that out that 17 to 1 doesn't mean 17 in a classroom because you have to have planning time for the teachers.

So they converted that to 20 to 1 and they said okay we'll give you the teachers and we expect you to have 20 students in every classroom.

So that's going to drive us crazy over the next few weeks and into the fall and that means that if you happen to get 35 kindergarten students that probably works out fine.

You have two teachers and you're less than 20 in both of those.

If you go to 45 kindergartens then if we don't add the additional teacher the state will say we didn't meet the requirement.

So we're trying to figure out what that means.

We're fortunate in that we have more staffing than most of our neighbors and we're trying to figure out how to comply with the legislative requirements.

So you'll probably start hearing about that some from schools in that it means a lot of multi graded classrooms in order to meet that legislative requirement.

Mayor's summit is underway they've got An advisory team put together, Director Patu and I had the opportunity to be at the meeting this week.

Chris Carter from Mercer, Phyllis Campano from SEA, Kristin Bailey-Fogarty from Eckstein and Karen Andrews from Interagency are on the advisory team.

And they said once a month but then they talked about having meetings more frequently.

So it sounds like a lot of meetings over the next few weeks and months with an ending date scheduled for July, middle to end of July.

They are having focus groups coming up.

I think maybe about 20 of those scattered out through the month of March.

Many of those will be in our schools.

And then there's a summit on the 30th of April that will call people together from throughout the community.

So it was described as focusing primarily on the opportunity gap and So a good group of people and should be exciting work over the next few months.

SMART goal 2 is closing the opportunity gap.

School board held a work session on that recently.

I would report that on Saturday here we launched some additional schools who are setting up race equity teams, racial equity teams.

That was part of our partnership agreement with SEA.

Director Blanford was here to give a keynote with regard to critical race theory.

Thank you very much.

Helen Young, who we just recognized, was here to talk about closing the opportunity gap at her school, Olympic Hills.

And a lot of other good work was undertaken and I think we had, well I know we had, we had more than 100% attendance.

So schools sent more people than the ones that we had officially invited.

So there's interest in the work and energy and enthusiasm for the work.

Same goal closing the opportunity gap South Shore held a huge event for national African American parent involvement day and had 200 African American men there to greet students that day and it was just incredible to see the students eyes light up.

One little guy said first grader said I don't know what's happening but I sure like it.

So that was an awesome event, a lot of good community organization, a lot of phone calls.

Thank you to Director Patu and Director Blandford for being there.

And Director Harris.

All right, that's right, you were there at the event for the classroom walkthrough.

So thank you, yes.

Smart goal three is special education.

We continue on a three to five year transition toward a district wide continuum approach, access model.

So there's quite a few additional schools being added to the access model.

with quite a few additional teachers and instructional assistants being brought on.

I guess over time the SM1234 will be phased out, still here for a while and SM3 is being renamed around social emotional services.

OSPI continues to be in our schools as part of our, it's a memorandum of understanding currently.

Last year it was under the federal watch which we're no longer on.

But they've been going region by region to see if we're doing the things that we promised to do under the compliance work from last year and the schools have been doing a good job of implementing those changes and preparing for the visits and so far we've received a million dollars back from the three million dollars that was withheld from us earlier.

Smart goal number four is early hiring.

Again the board held a work study session on that recently and HR is in the process of trying to do 215 early hires particularly in areas like special education and dual language where we find ourselves short, unable to make all of those hires at the start of the school year.

So trying to get ahead of that and fill those positions early.

And then we had a meet and greet activity in this room about a week ago for principal candidates and it was well organized and well received.

Maybe half of those who were here were people who are vice principals, assistant principals in the district and looking for opportunities to become principals.

And then we had people from across our region, across the Northwest, across the West Coast, across the country from Chicago, North Carolina, a variety of other places.

So it was an opportunity for them to hear about what we do to support principals.

A three year mentorship for new principals who come to us and that's helped reduce the turnover in our principal core and then they also had an opportunity to meet and greet a lot of the district staff and then we had a lot of principal volunteers come and do short little ten minute interviews with the candidates and give them some feedback.

We did identify some people that we had screened out on the basis of paper that actually after meeting them and talking with them a little bit realized wow they've got some things that didn't come through as clearly on the paper as they might have so we now have 92 People principal candidates in our pool available as we fill interview for and fill the remaining openings that we have for the coming year.

EEU part of the resolution of the EEU work was a telephone call understanding between EEU, OSPI and the district.

It was that we could come up with a memorandum of understanding an interagency agreement with the University of Washington for that program and we have OSPI's commitment to do that and we're in the process of working through the paperwork and waiting for OSPI's review of the draft copies of that agreement.

We also had OSPI here this last week for the consolidated program review.

They come every year.

Some years are a full year and other years are a partial year where they look at some of our programs.

So they were here to look at a dozen of our federal and state programs and then went out and visited schools to find out whether what we told them is what really happens in the buildings.

And so one of our big items from last year was identification of ELL students.

We had been giving ELL students an opportunity to either opt out of ELL services or attend a school that was not their neighborhood school and that's not appropriate.

So last year we created 25 new ELL programs not quite the right word because they were schools that had maybe five to 10 ELL students.

So it wasn't a full fledged program in the sense that we have in other schools but it was providing services to those students and parents that wanted to stay in their neighborhood school.

So we got both commendations and a finding with regard to ELL.

We're still not fully identifying all of the students that we need to but as the reviewers visited the schools they were impressed with our 25 new schools and the ownership that they saw in those schools for other language students and making them welcome and assisting them with their needs.

We did have an advanced learning privacy breach.

348 students' parents were sent letters that were not for their child.

Social security information was not compromised and we did catch the issue fairly early in the process.

But we did have the 348 that were sent out inappropriately.

And we've, yeah, we apologize for that.

We've self-reported it to the Department of Education.

We do have, continue to have these challenges.

So we just completed three days of budget reviews, listening to each department and their requests.

And I would say that we had about a dozen requests.

For technology assistance where different departments are keeping an Excel spreadsheet or data in some form of their own and trying to figure out how to merge that data with the district database.

We to some extent we're aware of those things those are the issues many of which were put on the BTA levy and we're now now that we have the BTA levy Approved we don't have the funding yet it'll be about a year before we get the funding but we'll be working through that list of priorities to begin working on those issues to make sure that we have better handshakes and better handoffs between what a department does and how we keep track of that information as a district system.

SEA held their walk-in which was part of a national event and a statewide event so many of our directors participated, thank you.

I was at Washington Middle School with actually SEA Vice President Phyllis Campano and browsing event, a lot of enthusiasm and good news coverage.

This week I guess last week I was at West Seattle High School and at Schmitz Park and West Seattle High School was doing amazing work in terms of shared lesson design.

So I probably won't get it quite right but they had a week's worth of activities where teachers had paired up with other teachers sharing their planning period.

They had done a lesson design together.

They sat down together and critiqued each other's lesson.

Then they went and visited each other's classroom and then they had an early release day where they got back together and talked about what they had seen in each other's classroom.

So great work around improving our teaching skills and making our practice public.

At Schmitz Park I actually yeah I did get to see the portable city that they have all over and visited a few classrooms but then went to the new school Genesee Hill that is scheduled for substantial completion in May and opening in September.

So great design and actually an amazing design given the site which is I don't know might be 40 or 50 feet elevation change from the one end of the site to the other.

And they have done a really nice job of preparing that site for students.

A few good news items and then I'll be done here.

Admissions and open enrollment, we often times hear it, feel it, sense it out here in the lobby as thousands of parents come through the lobby to enroll for next year and they've gone through a lot of revamping of their processes and I think everybody reports that the process has gone a lot better this year than it has in earlier years so the Noise level is down the wake time has been considerably better so a lot of good partnership between different departments and streamlining of that process.

Nathan Hale has a radio station and they recently renewed their license.

They recently received a grant of $100,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and they're number four in the Seattle market in public radio.

And for most of, I think it's close to 40 years that they've been in operation, they've had really one teacher, director, manager, whatever the right Term is that has done kind of everything, getting the funding figured out, getting the licensing figured out, working with the kids, developing the program and eventually We'll move on and retire here so the school and the program their advisory board is asking to not only have a teacher who supervises the students but to look at a director of development who can help them with the coordination of fundraising.

Cleveland Memorial Forest.

Many of our schools as I visit have done our high schools have done memorials to students that went off to fight in World War II and now subsequently in other wars since then.

So I saw The West Seattle plaque when I was there we have the Queen Anne plaque since Queen Anne is no longer school is here in this building and then Garfield planted I think cherry trees and rhododendrons in memory of the students who died during World War II.

Cleveland alumni Cleveland students at the time raised funds they raised three hundred dollars and then they wanted to figure out what they could do with three hundred dollars.

They were able to buy the Cleveland Forest 131 acres for $300.

So we should have had them invest for us.

Yes.

It's east of Lake Washington and has had a they call it a Liseum kind of an open framework facility on there actually that's been used quite a bit by the Garfield program.

Anyway they honor their fallen comrades students each year on Memorial Day and they came to see me because they're raising funds and working with us to put up better signage and to replace the covered area.

So yeah awesome story about our past.

And last night, I didn't get the pronunciation on this, you can tell me, Marcus.

Okay, was honored last night at Benaroya Hall, 30 years, great Work at Garfield with their symphonies and so last night was part of the Seattle symphonies youth educational community connections concert series and a great recognition.

So that brings me to the end of my comments.

The school board is in the process of shifting the time for public comment.

Looks like we would be pretty close tonight but some nights we've gone past the five o'clock time and that's a little difficult for the public to get here with traffic and work.

So we'll be moving the public comment time from 5 o'clock to 530 starting in April and that will also give us a little bit of time during the superintendent comments for reports on some of the items of interest.

Last item that I have is I would like to request that we remove all of the approval of the minutes from the agenda for tonight's action.

Thank you.

The Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Choir was scheduled to be here this evening and they had transportation issues so we will look to have their performance at a later date this year.

We do not have any student comments this evening.

We have now reached the business action items portion of the agenda.

I will now entertain a motion for the superintendent's request to remove the minutes from the January 27 work session from tonight's consent agenda.

So moved.

Ms. Phoebe roll call please.

We need a second.

I'm sorry.

I'll go ahead of myself.

Yes, she did make second.

Director Blanford?

Aye.

Director Burke?

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second that motion.

Do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda?

If none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has now passed.

Okay, we are now going into our public testimony and The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on issues related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended, please conclude your comments or your remarks.

I will call three names.

Chris Jenkins, Vicki Pinkham, Joanne Rose Sayers-Pinkham.

My name is Chris Jackins, box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the charter schools resolution, I would like to thank board members for bringing this issue forward.

I would also like to suggest some improvements to the resolution.

Number one, the resolution should note that some charter schools are corporations promoting private sector ideas and trying to get public funding by preying on the unmet hopes of some district families.

Number two, the resolution wrongly touts Seattle's so-called creative approach schools.

Number three, the resolution wrongly implies that current district option schools adequately meet educational needs.

In fact, the district wrongly refuses to reopen the African American Academy and Indian Heritage School.

On the settlement agreement with Local 609, the district has been required to publicly acknowledge unfair treatment of an employee.

Such public acknowledgements related to the teachers union seem more rare.

Why is that?

On construction, contracts for Franklin, Eckstein, John Muir, McGilvray, and Meaney.

Each of these items is incomplete, missing one or more attached documents.

Years ago, the district did not conduct its business this way.

On Loyal Heights, three points.

Number one, the district is proceeding to ask for city permits to remove 30% of the playground.

This is a mistake.

Number two, the city department of neighborhoods zoning departures advisory committee already recommended against the district's request to violate city code in this way.

Number three, please vote to reduce the size of the project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Vicki Pinkham and I'd like to talk about the resolution also about charter schools.

It implies that African American and Native American are, that you're working towards and you're embracing these two ethnic groups and that's not true.

The fact of the matter is that Indian heritage closed where it was producing 100% graduation rates.

African American academy closed and both races have dropped in their graduation rates since those two schools have closed.

So looking at this I would just like to say that this is incorrect and as board members as elected officials that I would like to remind you that you are working for those that elected you and not the school board.

And at that I would like to hand it over to my daughter.

My name is Joanne Sayers-Pinkham.

I am 11 years old and I am in fifth grade.

The resolution is not correct.

It states that the Seattle School District promotes equal outcomes for all students.

It says it will embrace the child and it will provide resources towards social emotional learning and continue educational placements for African and Native Americans.

However, Seattle Public Schools closed the African American and Indian Heritage Schools.

That showed 100% graduation rates for both groups that have fallen.

I no longer go to the Licton Springs because of the fear of running into a woman who attacked my mom and my family.

Licton Springs is the native focus school which would have helped me graduate.

This resolution is lying to the students of color as educated board members as elected board members You work with the parents of students but yet you are not listening to the students or anyone.

This resolution is not meant to include me.

You should not pass this resolution until you fix the problems of low graduated rates.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Eliza Jacobs, Melissa Westbrook, and Colin Johnson.

Hello my name is Lisa Jacobs.

I have been a 30 year resident of Southeast Seattle and I have two kids that went through the Seattle Public Schools system.

They are doing great now.

They had a chance at preschool and currently I work with the Seattle Education Association.

As you may recall SEA strongly supported and urged the board to approve the current three classrooms.

And we are asking you to approve their continuation and expand the proposed sites where there is space.

Educators are well aware of the serious equity issues in our school.

They see it every day.

And they recognize a high quality preschool education as a key effective tool in addressing the opportunity gap.

Fortunately the voters of Seattle agreed and the levy was overwhelmingly passed to promote access to high quality preschool education.

After it passed Seattle school educators, representatives from the district, representatives from the school board as well as parents and community were involved in an extensive process of developing what this should look like and what components were necessary for an effective program.

They basically came up with this huge thing which I am not going to go through now but After being at meetings and knowing how a lot of your concerns I urge you read it.

It talks about the staffing, the curriculum, the resources and you can see what a wonderful program it is.

So the levy has funded the three classrooms that exist now.

The predicted benefits are already visible.

You can see students engaged, staff collaborations, students have been given access to an opportunity they didn't have before.

The data shows that these classrooms are serving students and family who generally have less access to such a preschool education.

They will be more prepared for school, easier transition and if you visit the sites what you can see and what you can see from the video is how much these students and these parents appreciate this opportunity.

What impressed me in the video was a parent you normally didn't hear from before and I hope you listen to her and continue to provide that opportunity for her and her family.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I want to add my voice and support to the resolution against charter schools.

I believe that we need to fully fund our existing schools first.

To the pre-K issue, I have several points.

One, the issue of the 25% holdback, you were assured that there was grant money to pay for next year, but what about the year after that and after that?

I agree with Dr. Blandford about his lockbox idea that the city agrees there will always be grant money to pay for that 25 percent.

The city's Mizugiri told you that the whole bank money wasn't really based on outcomes but was like a classroom checklist.

Again, like the grant money, that may be true now but in the future there will be outcome based benchmarks.

What happens when you don't have the money for that and what happens If you don't meet those benchmarks.

As well, listening at the work session, it seems like special ed pre-K is getting short shrift.

The city and the district have to commit to find a way to serve all students and as Director Geary pointed out at the work session, the EEU model is a great one to follow.

Director Peters also brought up the issue of portables and the larger issue of space.

No K-5 student should be in a portable so that space can be used for pre-K.

As well, several directors voiced concern about opening pre-Ks only to take it back in a couple of years.

I served on the school board's closure and consolidation committee in 2006 and I can tell you it's a disaster to close something and reopen it and in reverse just as well.

Don't do this to communities.

And the city has space at their own community center so you are not stopping their expansion.

There's also no real data yet on how any of these pre-Ks are doing in or out of Seattle Public Schools.

Shouldn't you wait a year or two for that?

I'm going to channel the elder President Bush here.

It's your job to be prudent and about what programs come in, what programs get expanded.

Please consider the issues that I listed that I heard you talk about at the work session and be prudent in saying no for now to any expansion of the city's pre-K program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening my name is Collin Johnson, 4245 27th Avenue West, 98199. For the past six months I have had the amazing opportunity to grow and learn with 20 intelligent inquisitive pre-kindergarten students.

In our class we explore everything from the application of fine and gross motor skills to verbal and written language development to counting and number concepts as well as social and emotional skills.

Alongside these important developmental milestones we are also exposing students to the practices and cultural understandings present in our elementary school environments.

These concepts include things like how to move through the halls in a line, what volume our voices are in different areas of the school, how to share space and resources, how to problem solve with other students and teachers and many other ideas that incoming kindergarteners are all too often expected to know immediately.

Exposure to these core school concepts as well as the academic aspects is very important for those students who do not have access to childcare services.

Without the Seattle preschool program many of my students would enter their kindergarten classroom without any knowledge of the basic expectations and this lack of exposure puts them immediately at a huge disadvantage.

Providing Seattle's most diverse and at risk communities with preschool options will preemptively solve academic, social and emotional problems down the road.

This foresight is very important in making realistic advances in closing the achievement gap and is an enormous service to the communities that need it most.

Alongside their students I have seen the families of the Van Esselt preschool classroom become an integral part of the larger school community.

Beginning elementary school is a new scary experience not just for the students but also for many of these families.

The opportunity to gain confidence and a familiarity with the public school system at an earlier stage has been an important resource that may not have otherwise existed without the Seattle preschool program.

Families are able to access resources provided by the district to best serve their student and this extra assistance places these families in a much better situation to foster a healthy learning environment in their homes.

The parents and guardians in our classroom have also reached out to become involved in Van Acel Elementary's organizations such as the PTA.

This increasing involvement provides a sense of ownership that encourages families to invest time and resources back in their community.

I urge you to continue the support of the Seattle Preschool program because as an educator involved in this environment on a day to day basis I have seen many of my students, I have seen how many of my students and families have been impacted so far.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jonathan Knapp, Erin Okuda, Sandra Rollins.

Board Directors, President Battu, Superintendent Island, I am Jonathan Knapp the President of the Seattle Education Association, the voice of Seattle's public school educators and I am here tonight to urge you to find the political courage to reject the political negativism and reapprove For 2016-17 school year the three current Seattle Public School preschool programs at Bailey Gatzert, Van Asseld Elementary, the original Van Asseld building and also to improve the creation of four new classrooms for 2016-17 at Arbor Heights, Boren School, Highland Park and Thornton Creek.

I'm also here tonight to tell you how disheartening it has been in recent days and this is as an educator, I'm an educator, sitting down to listen to the board work sessions and the level of discussion about these decisions.

Instead of lauding the incredible work of SPS employees and SEA members in getting these classrooms up and running on a nearly impossibly tight timeline, I heard criticism about why one of these classrooms wasn't fully enrolled in the first couple of weeks.

Instead of rejoicing in the clear feedback from families and educators about the success of current classrooms and the excitement about proposed classrooms I heard endless digging for some bauble or difficulty to use in an argument against the moving ahead into the next phase.

And instead of seeing these classrooms as an opportunity to advance our crying need to make progress on opportunity gaps between white and minority students, I heard narrow technical arguments about this study and that study and whether or not it's good to open a classroom.

If we can't guarantee it will be open in five or ten years.

Board directors, you are at risk of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Your voting constituents approved the city proposal to create this program with a better than 70 percent vote.

Why do you not see that as a mandate to move ahead?

Our superintendent has argued that making progress on closing the opportunity gap is going to be the standard by which our school system and our service as educators is going to be judged.

Why do you not want to partner with the city to get the resources to help close those gaps?

All across our country people are crying out for a need to address equity in our communities.

This is an equity issue for the poorest families in Seattle.

How can you even consider taking a pass on such obvious steps forward?

Educators take on a can do attitude every day with students in their classrooms.

Can't you do this simple thing for Seattle's four year olds?

Please do not delay in approving these classrooms.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Erin Okuno and I am the Executive Director of the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition.

We are a coalition of over 60 community-based organizations, schools, parents and community members, many of them coming from communities of color and families of color.

Our coalition uses a racial equity lens in our work and in our conversations.

Our coalition prioritizes high quality early learning as a key strategy to close the opportunity gaps for children of color.

Research has proven quality early learning programs make a difference.

Children start school ready to learn and launch their school careers more prepared and on an equal footing.

We need to think of education as one seamless experience, not as silos of experiences.

We are asking you to support the three existing preschool classrooms at Bailey Gassert, Van Asselt and Original Van Asselt and expand the program to several new schools.

Van Asselt and Original Van Asselt are in Southeast Seattle and serve high needs communities.

Van Asselt school has a 43 percent 43% rate of English language learners and 83% rate of free and reduced lunch.

Down the street from the school is Hope Place, a transitional housing shelter and the school is within walking distance of New Holly, a public housing community with many immigrants and refugees and a proud and diverse Beacon Hill community.

High quality early learning is needed and it makes a difference.

We urge you to vote yes and to visit the school so that you can see for yourself what a difference it really makes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sandra Rollins, Mary Griffin and David Posner.

Hello.

Good to be before you again.

My name is Sandra Rollins and I'm a teacher at Van Asselt Elementary School, a kindergarten teacher.

And I came before you guys before about imploring you guys to please let us have our preschool.

Thank you for allowing us to have it.

However, as we stated, we would do our parts to make sure that we are in compliance and we adhere to what we said we were going to do.

We're expecting for you guys to do it and also we're asking for us not to have to come back every year to do this if possible.

Now I was concerned too about the late start and oh my gosh we're on strike.

We got a new preschool trying to get here to open but you know what we overcame and also so did our parents because when we started we did have a few students.

But now we're at capacity.

As a matter of fact, our building is only halfway occupied which isn't acceptable when we've got the ability to have more but neither here nor there.

We're doing what we're supposed to be doing and we're reaching out and we're making good decisions as far as making sure that our children are ready to make sure that we are making a positive impact on this achievement gap.

But I'm varying from my speech, but whichever, let me keep going.

But we want our parents to continue to have the opportunity.

They've overcome the adversities of no transportation, of no after school care.

They bring their children every day to our preschool.

Does that mean, oh 30 seconds, okay.

And so, anyhow, in my classroom, I have seven children that have no experience in preschool.

Out of those seven, four of them have social, emotional and academic delays.

Now, I'm projecting that if we've got 20 kids and out of four kindergarten classrooms, I'm hoping they only have two or three because parents have the right to have their kids in preschool.

But if it is available and our parents are saying they want to bring their kids, let us give them that opportunity to do so please.

Oh hush.

Okay and so the other thing is that remember we support feed, we support which is family engagement action team, parent classes, getting school ready.

All these things do not have common core curriculum goals and state requirements that are required for them to be successful but we do it because it makes good business sense.

It makes good common sense.

We need to make those good sense Decisions by allowing the preschools to continue and not have to do this every year.

We have a big harvest.

Harvesters are few.

Please wrap up your comments please.

Okay.

I'm a harvester and I'm going to keep on harvesting until I can't harvest no more.

I hope you guys are on board with us.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mary Griffin.

I am the parent of a student with disabilities.

I am not against a preschool for low-income families, but I am not in favor of expanding a system which tracks some students into a program with three times as many hours and other students with disabilities into a program with a third of the hours.

It is an apartheid.

Wyeth Jesse met with Cecilia McCormick and myself in November and at that time to discuss the possibility of a coordinated effort between the current segregated programs at Old Van Assault.

As you may know, there is one city preschool there and four half-day special education programs.

Under current plans, I hear they want to make another special education preschool program there.

At the time of the meeting, Wyeth indicated he had training in the EEU program which uses a blended model of instruction and he indicated willingness to approach the city regarding this natural opportunity.

I have heard nothing about this since.

The district continues to operate with a least restrictive environment that does not meet its state target.

Particularly in the three to four preschool, the district is well below its state goals as well as state averages.

I'm going to show you a visual aid of how the preschools in Seattle currently have not met their targets for social emotional growth or other goals that the preschools are supposed to meet.

Those little red boxes mean no.

And I'll be happy to send this to you later.

These are positive social emotional skills, acquisition and use of language, and use of appropriate behavior to meet their needs.

The district for the first one was at 63%, the target was 83%, and the average for the state is 89.9%, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and I'm running out of time.

What I want to suggest to you is to push if you want to approve this effort to put as much energy into making an inclusive environment which would benefit both groups of preschool students and to work with the city on that effort if you decide to go ahead with us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello my name is David Posner I am a retired Seattle school teacher and also currently a substitute with the Seattle Public Schools and I am here today to talk to you about the occurrence of withholding of recess and other instructional activities from withholding students from participation in those activities due to discipline.

Instructional activity by state definition includes basically every moment that a student is in school except for meal time.

So recess, field trips, participation in specialist classes, going to camps like Islandwood, those are all considered instructional activity.

The possibility that a student may be denied participation in those instructional activities should not be dependent upon the school the child attends, the teacher they have within that school, or the color of their skin.

But currently with no district wide policy, the exclusion of students from these activities varies widely from school to school.

State code requires that all school districts collect data on disciplinary actions and record this data, these data actions, these disciplinary actions within statewide data systems.

However, because these disciplinary actions are for the most part not documented, no one knows what's really going on.

There's no way to actually know and the district is in fact out of compliance with that portion of the state code.

It also makes it impossible to accurately assess the frequency with which this is happening to our students but I can report as a substitute that this practice disproportionately impacts students of color.

There's no question of that.

I substitute in high poverty and low poverty schools.

It doesn't even happen at some schools and it happens frequently at other schools.

See I'm running out of time again.

So I would like to urge the board as I have before to direct Superintendent Nyland to instruct his senior staff to speak with principals and address this issue.

I would like to encourage the district as well to work with the Seattle Education Association to come up with a plan together to support teachers in other means of dealing with students' behavior.

Restorative justice has been talked about, trauma-based informed education has been talked about, but I don't see any action in those areas.

So until that happens, this disproportionality and this inequality will continue and it really needs to stop.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Kurt Bicham, Demyer, Sasha Demersian, Nicole Lorley, Flatterbow.

Go.

I'm Kurt Beecher Dammeyer.

I'm a father of three, a long-time youth coach, and owner of a family of food businesses under the name Sugar Mountain, which includes the Pike Place icon, Beecher's Handmade Cheese.

I'm also the founder and primary funder of our Beecher's Pure Food Kids Foundation.

The primary product of our foundation is a two and a half hour learning standards aligned nutrition education curriculum that we provide free to more than 20,000 fourth and fifth grade students each year in the Puget Sound area and in New York City.

Since our founding in 2006, in the Seattle School District alone, we have spent approximately $400,000 providing 662 workshops, free to schools, turning 16,085 students and their teachers into food detectives equipped with the skills they need to figure out what's really in their food and how to avoid highly processed junk foods and drinks.

Today we are close to reaching 100% of Seattle Public Schools students with this program.

Kids spend most of their waking life in schools, and like it or not, our schools are the most important role models in our students' lives.

The most valuable product our schools can produce is healthy eaters.

I'm here to congratulate the school board for adopting a robust wellness policy and to ask the board to ensure that the policy is put into action with specific requirements for nutrition education at every grade level.

But that's just the start.

We need to teach kids not just about nutrition, but how to cook for themselves.

Home Ec, now called Family and Consumer Sciences, when offered, is an elective, not a required course at many Seattle schools.

In fact, it's often the first to be on the chopping block for lack of funding.

This is backwards.

We need to elevate the teaching of life skills to the same level we give math and science.

I'm also asking that the district ensure every teacher and coach receive food and cooking education so they can be healthy role models for students.

We're proud of the programs we've provided to schools here.

Please wrap up your comments.

They are just the first steps in the long journey that needs to be taken.

We are asking the district to move forward in implementing comprehensive food education requirements so schools can be the launch pad for students to live long and happy lives.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, I am Sasha Demersian and I want to start this by asking if you remember having unstructured time as a child because I do.

These days for many families they need to actually schedule down time.

They need to schedule that unscheduled time so the brain and body can do what it wants and needs.

In this time the brain and body aren't told what to learn and do, they seek out what to learn and do.

And play is the time when kids learn about who they are and how they are with others.

It is how they learn conflict resolution and compromise.

It is vital.

But I am not here to talk to you about parenting.

I am here to talk to you about the school day.

Because I am seeing the same thing happening during the school day.

And the school system needs to, much like I do at home, protect this vital playtime.

It is not the nothing time in between the something time.

To quote from the AAP recess policy statement, a growing trend toward reallocating time in school to accentuate the more academic subjects has put this important facet of a child's school day at risk.

Recess serves as a necessary break from the rigors of concentrated academic challenges in the classroom, but equally important is the fact that safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional and physical benefits.

That may not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it.

Recess is unique from and a compliment to PE and not a substitute for it.

The AAP believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child's development and as such should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.

Furthermore, the period allotted to recess decreases as the child ages and is less abundant among children of lower socioeconomic status and in the urban setting.

Please ensure that all kids have this protected recess time at school by implementing a recess policy and procedure.

And schools also need to be both held accountable and supported by their executive directors and superintendent in following board policies so that these policies are followed at all schools, not just those with deep PTA pockets.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Nicole Fladebo and I am a public health dietitian and I am also a SPS parent.

My son attends Lafayette Elementary as a kindergartener but today I am here as I am concerned that district wide SPS is not meeting current lunch policy which is to provide 20 minutes of seated time to eat lunch.

We have two major data points for you that support this concern.

The first is 2015 SPS instructional data which shows that only four out of how many elementary schools in the district actually provide enough time to follow this policy.

The second is you may recall last year at about this time the UW Nutritional Sciences program went into SPS elementary schools and actually timed lunches and found that the average was about 13 minutes.

So this disproportionately impacts students who are participating in the school lunch program as I am sure you can imagine they are standing in line and for 20,000 students in this district The school lunch program is a hunger prevention program.

So you are essentially not allowing the kids who need the food the most enough time to eat it.

So research shows us that students with shorter lunch times consume less food and less nutrients than students with longer lunches and when kids don't have adequate nutrition there are direct negative impacts on academic achievement, behavior and overall school performance.

Short lunches also result in lots more food waste.

Current research indicates that best practice is to have a minimum of 25 minutes of seated time in order to significantly improve dietary intake and reduce food waste.

So my ask today is that you enforce the current policy that you have to provide our students with the full 20 minutes and as you begin plans for upcoming years I challenge you to meet the best practices and provide 25 to 30 minute lunches scheduled after recess.

Thank you.

Thank you.

James Fagler, Robert Stern and Laura Kramer.

James Fagler, Robert Stern, Laura Kramer.

Hello.

Good evening.

My name is Laura Raymer.

There's a lot of things I would like to talk to you about tonight, but I only have a limited time to talk.

So I'm going to pick on, I'm going to talk about two things.

One, I'm very unsure about this enrollment plan.

I don't know where I am at with breath.

I'm not getting a clear answer from the school, what I need to do with my son.

My son is supposed to be in preschool through your school, and I thought he was automatically enrolled, but I'm getting Letters and people telling me I have to enroll them.

I don't know what to do from there.

I'm kind of hoping maybe after this someone can maybe get back to me on that.

The second thing I would like to talk about is one of my signs here.

I was very frustrated when I went to because my son is supposed to be entering kindergarten this year.

I was very displeased that I didn't get any information about the school.

I had to go find my information myself.

I mean and I know the top is the only school that has the kindergarten to eighth grade program for deaf heart of hearing children.

I also have found out that the teacher of the deaf was not planning to be there so that's why I wrote to all of you saying I expect someone to be there.

Then I was frustrated when I get there the teacher couldn't answer any question because I had to wait to talk to the director of the deaf heart of hearing program.

That was a waste of my time and my husband's time.

My husband worked.

It's not like he could go during the daytime to see the classroom.

Yes, I have gone during the daytime, but I'm not going to bother the teachers while they're teaching and ask them questions about the program.

So please, I'm asking you to change your mind.

I think the school needs to change their mindset how they approach that special education and deaf-hearted hearing program.

You need to be integrated.

The other thing that really bugs me I want my son to be involved with school life and when I went to the school and the principal talked about the deaf hard of hearing program, great.

But when I asked her a simple question about how are deaf kids involved in the program, she couldn't answer that question.

The deaf hard of hearing program has been there for years.

She could be able to give me an answer saying, oh we have interpreter, we have this and that.

That shows me that the program is not integrated, it is separated and that's very sad to me.

Thank you.

I'm speaking tonight as president of the special education PTSA.

You've heard from me about the inequities between the developmental preschools for students with disabilities versus the city preschools.

My concerns apply equally to those grant funded preschools including Head Start that are intended to serve our most needy young children.

OSPI continues to investigate the separate and unequal structure that resides in our district with respect to these preschools.

I know of others who are more than happy to approach the DOE Office of Civil Rights for a more timely remedy to this problem.

I have seen this body ask staff for the numbers of children with disabilities in the existing three city pre-Ks.

Six weeks later there are still no firm numbers or commitments from staff to provide equitable access to these much lauded enriched environments to our neediest children.

On the contrary, what I heard at the Pre-K work session last week is that things will proceed business as usual.

Staff's assertions that there are conversations with the city are not actions.

Bailey Gatsher principal offered up at the work session that he had one pre-K student who was identified as needing services.

When asked how that child was later served so he could access the benefits of six and a half hours of preschool, breakfast and lunch and nursing support the principal admitted that as is often the case the child Not his words but he was counseled out and moved to a presumably more distant less enriched shorter day developmental pre-K.

In other words business as usual because that student would not be served there.

I noted the presence of principals from the schools proposed for new city preschools at the work session.

I found this very aggravating because my public records search revealed a general reluctance and forgive me I am going to run over a little bit.

General reluctance on the part of the building admins toward the presence of dev pre-Ks in their buildings, I quote, principals concerns that preschool students impact schools without generating any BEA or counting toward additional admin support.

They go on.

$24,000 is added to the building discretionary budget during budget arena.

In fact it seems like a bribe or to appease principals to have pre-Ks in their buildings.

Do not approve any expansion of a discriminatory non-inclusive system please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Michael Giancola and Ewan McCartney.

Hello my name is Michael Giancola I live at 8314 Jones Avenue NW.

I'm here today to request information about the BEX IV project to modernize and increase the size of Loyal Heights Elementary.

First I want to thank the board for hosting the departures or as I see them the zoning violations meeting last fall.

The takeaway from these meetings was very valuable and enlightening for the general public.

I understand the school board was made aware in November That the Department of Neighborhoods, the DAWN committee voted against all departures.

After hearing some of the public debate first hand I agree completely with the DAWN decision.

I am here today because I have heard nothing from the school board about this project since the departures meeting last fall.

I request the school board provide an update on the mitigation of the departures If no progress has been made or no changes to the plan are being considered I respectfully request an explanation as to why.

A large number of us spent time away from our families to attend and contribute to those meetings.

At a minimum I would like to hear how the voting down of the departures has or has not impacted the project plan.

Everyone I have heard from is in favor of modernizing and expanding the school.

Many of us were really looking forward to a compromise design which did not contain rooms for programs which are not currently funded and which would reduce the building to lot ground coverage percentage allowing for a safer environment for our children and the children in our neighborhood.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Ewan McCartney I'm a freshman at Garfield.

I came to one of your meetings last year to tell you about the lack of racial and economic diversity in Seattle's gifted programs.

Approximately 13% of white kids in Seattle Public Schools are in gifted programs while less than 2% of black kids are.

What is going on?

Why are you failing to know students of color who are smart?

If it's just wrong you can walk around our schools and look in a classroom window and know immediately by the racial makeup of class whether it's an HCC class or not.

Seattle Public Schools runs the gifted program and you are also You also are who decides who can be in the program.

Right now it feels quite a lot like segregation.

I'm here to ask what you've done to fix the situation in the years since I alerted you to this ugly problem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have two more slots open so if anyone wants to testify you can see Lauren I guess not.

That is the end of our testimony.

We are now going to move to board comments.

Don't all raise your hand at once.

Director Currie thank you.

Thank you as always for everybody who is coming to our meetings.

I want to encourage everybody to continue to participate.

Typical of many of the anybody who spends time in school sees the same faces over and over again and being new to the board I am starting to recognize those of you who step up Week after week and month after month and I applaud you all for your care and concern for our children.

Thank you.

Even when we don't all agree and we can't all find the exact cohesive path to move together, the fact that your voices are here for our consideration means that we will be doing a better job to meet more people's needs.

So thank you for that.

A few things, I hear the frustration of our special education families about the enrollment process and I want to assure you that I will continue to think about that.

I haven't heard speakers tonight but I have heard many emails and the frustration that families feel in that Because of the individualized nature of their children's programs they don't feel that they are given the same opportunities to enroll in choice programs or even select their home school, the school that if their child was typically developing they would have access to without question.

And so I will continue to look at that problem.

It is a balance between meeting the individual needs of the children applying versus making sure that they have the same access to community.

That rolls straight into the pre-K, the preschool issue which is one that I will continue also to work very carefully and look at very carefully.

It is the balance between a service that is so desperately needed by so many families and I feel that versus Making sure that when people say that it is going to be accessible to our kids with disabilities that we hold them to that promise and that everybody who is coming before us in an institutional capacity today is remembering that in Every single aspect, every time they say please approve this program I want you to be thinking is this program fair, is it accessible and what are we doing to make sure that the resources are being used to create an inclusive environment for all of our kids.

So that's on you.

If you are asking us to approve it from an institutional capacity then make that one of your guiding lights and I will also see this as I spoke in the past about the EEU and what I think it has to offer I think this is a great partner to bring in to talk to to help us design an inclusive preschool system that will hopefully roll into an inclusive district wide kindergarten system and onwards so that we will see the closing of the achievement gap for our kids with disabilities just as we hear so much mentioned about closing the achievement gap For other groups.

Beyond that I have had great opportunity to meet with different community members and schools.

This time I had a chance to meet with Thornton Creek in district 3, John Minor and PTA principal and Rachel Brooks the PTA president and learned about their Expeditionary Learning, I want to get that right, which is a project space learning program that is happening in Seattle Public Schools so that when people say that we aren't offering different ways of learning I would invite you to go meet the people at Thornton Creek who are so excited about this program and what it does for the kids in terms of bringing in this program based learning where they are learning lots of different things at once.

Experiential along with expeditionary.

Met with community health services Sarah Wilheim and Sarah Regal and learned about our community health services being offered in our public schools and what I found out that I want to share with everybody so you can share it and what I didn't understand is that those programs are available to every single Seattle public school child.

So you don't necessarily have to be enrolled in the school where the health center exists.

You can go to that health center.

So don't feel that just because there was not a health center in your school that that isn't available to you.

They were lovely women and that is an example of a wonderful partnership between King County, the city of Seattle and Seattle Public Schools working to do great things for our family.

I have more to say but I will let others talk and my next community meeting is March 26th.

At the Montlake Library at 11 o'clock.

Thanks.

Director Peters.

First of all I want to thank the teachers who won awards that were announced at the beginning of this meeting and to thank all our teachers for all the wonderful work they do.

They are just an incredibly valuable part of our district and a lot of them are unsung heroes and so when we have an opportunity to recognize them I think that is something we should be doing.

I also want to thank the city of Seattle for passing the levies as the superintendent mentioned by significant margins.

We very much appreciate your vote of confidence in us, your vote of confidence in public education but we also recognize it's a huge responsibility to be responsible stewards of these funds and so thank you, thank you again.

I want to correct for my community meeting my next one will be Sunday March 13th at 1 o'clock at the Magnolia library.

I had another date on the calendar before and that has to be corrected.

I understand there is a movie being shown around town called Screen Agers and it sounds very interesting and it has to do with the potentially detrimental effects of screen time for our children and I think this is something that we should all be taking a close look at.

I know it is definitely an issue at my house.

But also we are focusing more and more on integrating screens into education and blended learning and I think as a district we have to be mindful of having the right balance there so we don't overdo it.

So we don't unintentionally create a generation of students who are unable to concentrate on anything that doesn't move or jump or has colors attached to it.

So we have to take a look at what we are doing with our 21st century technology.

Let's see, I participated in the walk in on February 18th, it was a nice vibrant event where we all were trying to remind the state that we are still not fully funding our schools and I appreciate the opportunity to join teachers and students at Ballard High School in that morning event.

Let's see.

You know I wanted to address something that was brought up in public testimony by Jonathan Knapp specifically.

You know he commented on our work session we recently had about preschool.

I just want to just sort of remind him and everybody that our job as governing officials here is to ask difficult questions.

Our job is to thoroughly vet what is brought before us and sometimes we are playing the devil's advocate on some of these questions.

We have a budget that totals a billion dollars and so we have to be very serious and mindful about how we use that, what we take on and so I think any of the questions and discussions that took place in that work session or any of our work sessions are totally legitimate and a very important part of our oversight.

And if we do not exercise this degree of due diligence we are not doing our job.

Having said that I don't think anyone is questioning the value of preschool.

I think we all know that it has an intrinsic value.

The question is how do we do it, can we do it, do we have the resources, how do we do it without over committing our spaces and how do we do it so it's inclusive.

Those are very important elements of this discussion and I look forward to us continuing this discussion later on tonight.

Lastly, I am troubled to hear from Laura Grahmer about the ongoing issues with our deaf and hard of hearing program and I would like to know why we do not have greater outreach to families, why we don't have teachers who are more aware of what is required and expected of the classrooms And so I would like to follow up on this and find out what needs to be done because this is also part of our ongoing discussion about what preschool should look like in Seattle Public Schools and how we meet the needs of all our students now in pre-K all the way up to 12th grade.

So thank you all for bringing these issues to our attention and that's it for me.

Thank you.

Scott Pinkham.

Again congratulations to all those that were recognized tonight showing that we are trying to do the best that we can as a district and I think we also have to acknowledge where we do fall short.

We need to still move forward and not just rest on laurels and say here we go let's keep going to the same old but What I heard tonight from many people was kind of does address that equity issue that we still need to close that gap and you know preschool programs is going to help that but we also got to try to balance that with childcare needs of our low income students and families as well.

Space is an issue, money is an issue but we got to say what is our priority and one thing that I want to see that we do a measure of how well we are as schools is that we do close that achievement gap.

Get it closed to see the news that Seattle school district is having the largest achievement gap.

You know we got work to do.

So I must admit when I saw the resolution opposing charter schools when one of the whereas says whereas that we are willing and able to serve all students we are falling short of that.

We need to do better than what we are doing so if we were doing that we wouldn't have the state pass the need for charter schools or see that need.

So I said more as a challenge for us we need to step up so that this community the people that voted us have confidence in our Seattle schools and that we can't all move together as a community because we need to make sure we include everyone in the conversation.

You know I want to thank those that attended my community meeting on February 27th.

Thank you for the input where they brought up the recess and lunch time issue.

If we do have schools out there that aren't following our policy for lunch time we need to make sure that's in their CSTEPPS plan how are you going to accommodate that.

20 minutes of sit down not 20 minutes of lunch time where these kids have to stand in line get served then sit down and eat and I hear that some schools just have 15 minutes.

So we need to see what we can do so that our kids are getting the meals that they need and especially kids that are coming from low income families they need that meal.

And as our school time suggests that if the school starts at a certain time lunch may be the only meal that child has for a significant part of the day.

My next community meeting will be on March 26th at Northgate library at 3.30.

And I do have one scheduled for April 23rd and then June 4th.

May is currently open so I would invite any of the schools let me know PTA meetings that you are going to have.

I would love to come out there and see your school.

I was at Olympic Hills their PTA meeting and got to meet Helen Young and what job she is doing and want to announce that they are having a fantastic I think results with their STEM group.

They will have a STEM math and science fair on March 24th and hopefully people can come out there and attend.

I was also spent the evening with Loyal Heights community where they were saying that they want to get across they are not opposed to the expansion of Loyal Heights they are just opposed to the size you know what can we do to accommodate that and work with them that okay we can't be constantly reducing the size of our open space for our kids they need that time outside to play.

And if they are going to have a school the size of 450 how are you going to rotate the recess lunch time so students have that release that they need.

But again thank you for presentations and look forward to still being able to carry your voice as much as I can.

Thank you.

Director Barrett.

I want to also put a shout out for the staff that were recognized this evening.

The work that you do, that they do, it's high impact in our schools.

We sit up here and we talk about a lot of things.

We try to make intelligent decisions and create sound policies and be thoughtful and deliberate.

But the work that's done in the schools it's inspirational for us on the board because we're looking to provide resources and remove barriers in the classroom so hearing these success stories and really recognizing the people that are making a difference in the classes is huge for me.

I want to thank everybody on their testimony.

The Loyal Heights community I've heard from several different people about the Loyal Heights community and the challenges trying to balance this capacity.

How much capacity is enough capacity and how much building is too much capacity and trying to understand exactly what are the different forces at play there.

I hope that we can find that compromised position and also take those lessons around community engagement and outreach and apply them to our future sites that we have underway.

Regarding the wellness and recess.

Your concerns, the messages you're bringing up are completely valid.

I really appreciate the clarity and the consistency around that message.

I met with some folks during the campaign season and I love the intent.

I love everything about it and really the challenge for us as a board is to figure out how to fit that into the Tetris that we call our school day and balance that with all the other academic challenges and the other demands.

So keep the pressure on on that and help us figure out how to work it into funding and schedules at the building level and at the policy level.

I'm going to withhold comments regarding the charter resolution and Seattle preschool program until those item introductions.

And I do want to thank Hamilton the community Seattle Education Association for inviting me to the walk in event at Hamilton on February 18th and for the opportunity to speak.

That was my first school that I got to do speak to a crowd as a board member and I promptly Screwed up a factoid on 24 credits, 24 credit graduation and kudos to the community member that kindly and privately corrected my misunderstanding and gave me an opportunity to practice a moment of humility.

I also want to thank Greg Immel and his staff.

I had the chance this morning to drop in at Bailey Gatzert and see their preschool program.

And when I arrived the kids were dancing and then I got to join them while several students shared some self-created story books with the class with the rest of their colleagues.

And then the high point of my day today has been that I got to do some water color painting.

So it was a pretty impressive thing and I appreciate that opportunity and the freedom to just kind of drop in.

And then I also want to thank those who came to my community meeting just last Saturday and I am still prowling for a location for my next community meeting because libraries seem like they are fairly booked up nowadays.

Dr. Harris.

Thank you.

My list of thank you's.

A huge shout out to the awardees that came before us tonight.

I'm not sure we do as good a job as we should and I'm really thrilled to see us celebrating the extraordinary people that we work with.

A huge shout out to the classified employees whose week it is.

These are the people that keep the engines running and I don't know that they get their share of the glory as much and as often as they should.

To the folks that give testimony and also to the folks that call me up on the phone and send emails and respond to my questions and to my colleagues.

I have to tell you it's really quite a joy and a blast to be doing this work and I think I think we are making a difference and I think we can make a heck of a lot bigger difference and I am very very grateful for that.

I am also grateful for staff in answering those phone calls and not making you feel small diminished or stupid when you ask questions that maybe you are obvious.

But they weren't obvious to me or to see the connections on how the laws of unintended consequences play into effect with a district of over 52,000 kids and 8,000 employees and a I think billion dollar budget.

It's really been a pleasure and an honor and I think that It serves to say that we model the behavior we want the young people to follow in terms of crafting solutions and there is no end of problems to craft those solutions for.

I also went to the Benaroya Hall last night to watch the Garfield Symphony and the Seattle Symphony and it was joyful and it was extraordinary and it was profound and Marcus Sudakawa What an amazing teacher and how lucky are we that we have that kind of a program here in Seattle and I close my eyes and I think how many high schools do we have and how many other young people need those kinds of opportunities and we have to figure out a way to make that happen.

We need to put arts and music and drama back into our schools and we need to We need to raise all votes.

We are judged by the quality of our arts not just by our test scores.

Got to attend the Chief South International High School.

They have a pretty terrific jazz band as well.

And had a great community meeting and one of the things that came out of that community meeting was the concept of lunch and recess folks being more than willing to meet with the executive directors to brainstorm ideas about how we actually make sure that we have little people in chairs for lunch and that we have enough recess for that brain reset time.

And that's pretty exciting.

Safety continues to be quite the issue on my emails, my phone calls and my working with the district and I'm told and I believe we will have some clearer Guidelines about when parents are advised of lockdowns and shelters in place and I'm excited about that because I can't think of a more terrifying scenario.

Been hearing about it on your local blog and you know the kids in West Seattle they just text Tracy Record at the West Seattle blog now as opposed to doing anything else and all of West Seattle explodes and it's not a good feeling to know whether or not your child is safe.

The other big issue that I have been hearing a great deal about is the equity issue of special ed, preschool, And the Seattle Preschool Partnership.

I did tour the facilities.

I was extraordinarily impressed.

I am excited about the possibilities.

Was lucky enough to speak with the mayor about a number of those possibilities and with Mr. Chappell and with Ms. Aguirre as well.

We are going good places but we have to remember that we need to bring everyone along And to treat each other with the same kinds of opportunities.

I look forward to the conversation.

I look forward to extending those conversations because we are judged by how we treat people and this one is too hard and too important to ignore.

Near term a couple of issues that I am delving into presently are the concept and we have asked budget to determine what the numbers are to take on more than one curriculum adoption at a time.

We can't close the opportunity gap and respect pedagogy if we don't have current materials.

And that's one of those places where the board hopefully will have an opportunity soon to impact the budget development.

And the other is if we are going to use PTSA funds to the tune of about $3.2 million to balance our budget a year and almost a million dollars to pay for staff Do we do the responsible thing and plan as part of those resolutions a way to come out of this subsidy scenario in two or three years?

Love your thoughts and your feedback on that and I well appreciate that that is a political Pandora's box minefield but what the heck you elected us.

Thank you so much.

Dr. Blanford.

I'll start my comments by thanking the executive committee for scheduling the recognition of our teachers and our building leaders and our program staff.

That's a great way to start off this conversation which before it's over may be a little bit difficult.

I think it's an important way to center us to recognize that we've got So many leaders in our classrooms and our schools and even in this building that are leading us forward and so I'm very happy to be able to celebrate them.

Also to the classified staff during this week, the classified employees week it's great to recognize some of the unsung heroes for the work that they do.

I also want to appreciate the folks at Schools First who had a huge role to play in the 72% margin of victory on our levies.

As someone who served on Schools First in my past, I know that's a lot of work.

Going out and raising money to put out the message about how important those levies are and what is being done with those levies and so and it's unsung work so I just want to recognize all of the work that the schools levies or schools first organization did.

On Friday I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit West Seattle Elementary School and to celebrate with a member of the Sounders and folks from United Way and others encouraging kids to have a healthy breakfast every morning And I've seen a lot of very young and energetic kindergarten through fifth graders very excited about the opportunity to kick the ball around with the Sounders player and yell and scream about how important breakfast was was a neat opportunity for me.

And then that same day I left from there and went and got a chance to visit with some students at Madrona K8 as they were demonstrating their work.

They did research on black history month and wanted to share what some of their findings with the school board director and so I got the opportunity to talk about some of their heroes And how they updated it, a few of them talked to me about their favorite hip hop artist and what the lyrics of their songs said and I even discovered and felt a little bit younger as I discovered that one of them had the same favorite hip hop artist that I have and by the way that President Obama also has, we share the same My favorite music so it made me feel young for a moment and so I just want to share that fact.

Also on Saturday and it's been recognized or has been brought up before that along with Principal Jung who at Olympic Hills I got to give a keynote address to the equity teams and in my mind because that's something that That I think we as school board hold very dear.

It was a fantastic opportunity and I was humbled to be asked to give the keynote address but more importantly I got about half way through my prepared remarks before a barrage of questions.

About how to actualize equity in classrooms came and the degree of engagement, the types of questions that they were asking, the challenging nature of some of the questions that they were asking Was for me very refreshing and I encourage all of my colleagues on the school board to take the opportunity to attend one of those sessions if at all possible beyond the opportunity to learn ourselves we also demonstrate to To the folks that are in the room and to the broader community that we hold equity as a serious issue and as I'm sure some of you know there are people in our community who question our commitment to equity and so I think that's an easy way to demonstrate that it is indeed we're walking our walk.

I want to thank Evan McCartney who spoke earlier today.

I remember well last year when Evan came and challenged us in the same way that he did tonight to look at the enrollment of our highly capable programs and to question and to take action to ensure that those programs mirror the diversity of our school population as a whole.

And so from someone who is a ninth grader holding us accountable to that I think is a wonderful recognition of all the instruction that he has gotten in his life and something that I hope that many other students and parents and community members are thinking about.

Finally I will end by announcing the fact that my community meeting which was scheduled for next weekend is not being held because our board retreat is being held that same Saturday.

So I will look for a different date and look for a different location and try to make sure that that is scheduled soon scheduled and announced.

And then finally there was the superintendent spoke a little bit about the event where 256 African American men showed up early in the morning at South Shore Elementary School.

As someone who has been watching Seattle Public Schools and participating in one way or another I must say that that was one of the proudest moments that I have had as an employee, as a supporter of Seattle Public Schools and now as a school board member.

I know that there's a stereotype around African American engagement And for anybody that was there that day seeing that many men willing to put time and effort into celebrating the efforts of the students at that school it was something to behold.

It was nice to see that the Seattle Times covered it on the front page and as I traveled to other schools I talked to a lot of principals who are all adamant that we need to figure out a way to do that at every school next year.

And so I know Anthony is working really hard on that.

He's made some changes in his professional career but he and I are going to be talking about how we can spread that out, distribute the wealth to all the schools in Seattle Public Schools.

So I just want to publicly acknowledge Anthony Shoecraft for the magnificent leadership that he provided in making that event happen.

Exemplary work that we should all be appreciative of.

Thank you.

I would like to say thank you to all of you who came to testify tonight on behalf of the various issues that you are passionate about.

My hope is that we are working on those various issues that you have mentioned and that you will see the good results as we continue.

I also would like to say congratulations to all the staff who are recognized tonight for all the great work that they continue on to do on behalf of our children and honor well deserved.

And also I would like to say thank you to all of you who actually continue to let us know what is in your mind.

I know that we don't always Do things the way we should do but at the same time we are doing the best that we can to accommodate the children because I realize that being on this board the main things that we think about is our kids.

As long as we know that our children are actually taken care of that is the goal of this board is actually to be able to Find ways to actually to provide opportunities for all our kids.

We may not do it on a timely manner but I know in back of our mind this is the reason why we're sitting on this board to make sure that we provide opportunities for all our kids.

I really had a great opportunity to visit ORCA and it was their national parent day and they actually I had provided various classrooms where parents were able to go in and actually be able to observe the various classrooms while their students were, their children were inside.

And I think one of the classroom that I went to was actually a math class.

The math teacher actually taught math And more of what she did was actually, she did a rap while she was teaching math and the kids really, really enjoyed it.

As she was trying to rap the instruction, the kids were following along with her and it seemed like they were so involved in it that They were making up their own rap when she was rapping about what they were supposed to do in terms of adding or subtracting.

So I thought that was a really creative way of actually teaching kids to enjoy math and you know math is always a subject that a lot of us do not like.

But teaching math in a way that's fun and exciting really got kids involved and then also I got a chance to go to the kindergarten class which is one of my favorite and we were able to, they were able to actually to ask us to sit down so we can, so they can actually ask us some questions and Some of them asked too many questions.

So we said, oh, it's time for us to leave.

But it's very enjoyable to actually to go into classes and be able to interact with our students in various schools.

I would like to also say that my community meeting is on March 26th.

From 10 to 11.30 at the Cafe Vita.

Thank you for those who actually attended my last community meeting, had a great conversation in terms of what's happening with our schools.

And then last but not least, I actually, I have a grandson that really, he's a faithful supporter of watching our board meetings.

Usually you know I ask my other kids if they watch it and say no we don't want to watch it but this grandson of mine makes an effort to watch our board meeting every Wednesday when we're on TV because when I see him he said I saw you on TV so I'm going to do a shout out and say Marquise thank you for being a faithful supporter of our TV show for the board and I want to say hi.

Now we are going to take a 10 minute break thank you.