School Board Meeting June 7th, 2017 Pt. 1

The June 7th 2017 regular legislative session of the Seattle School Board.

May I have the roll call please.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Director Harris here.

Director Peters here.

So Director Pinkham will be joining us a little bit later in the evening.

He is I think administering some exams to his students over at University of Washington.

Let us now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of Washington.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

I'm going to hand it over to Superintendent Nyland who's going to lead us into our recognitions for the evening.

All right.

We have lots of great recognitions tonight and a brief word to the school board.

We're doing this different than we have done in the past.

So we have four recognitions.

We're going to do each of those individually without having the board come down and we'll have somebody come to the podium and Say all kinds of good things about those that we're recognizing and have them stand and recognize them.

And then after we've done all that we'll invite the board down just once and then we'll invite each of those groups back up to have a picture taken with the board and then the board can remain in the audience for our student performance.

So.

We do have a lot of recognitions tonight.

One would think it's the end of the school year.

We're getting close.

And due to the workload for the board the executive committee is we had no other dates that were available.

We will start the June 28th board meeting with a work session on wait lists and budget.

So we will have abbreviated or maybe no comments and we are not doing any recognitions at that meeting.

So we'll try to get them all in here tonight.

So recognition number one Gail Morris our Native American education program manager was recently recognized with a very prestigious honor and I'd like to invite Boo Foster Balkan to the podium to talk about the recognition that Gail received.

We should be extremely proud and pleased of Gail every day for the work that she does and especially for her recognition.

Good evening board, Dr. Nyland.

My name is Boo Balkan Foster.

I'm a Hickory Apache descendant and I'm also adopted Macaw.

I am thrilled to be here.

Thank you Dr. Nyland and thank you Dr. Kinoshita for inviting me to have the honor of introducing Gail.

I also had the honor to do so on Friday at the Native Action Network honoring luncheon.

Before I did so, Gail whispered in my ear, don't embarrass me.

So I will try not to do that tonight.

Native Action Network is a group of Native women who years ago, about 14 years ago, started identifying women leaders in our community who set the foundation for excellence for generations to come.

It could be through philanthropy, economic development, leadership, education, for a variety of things.

And nominations are accepted from community members and then a committee chooses the recipients.

This year, Gail was one of those recipients for her work in education.

I am humbled to share with you that my letter was selected and I'd like to highlight a couple points.

And then also, just so you have a greater understanding of who Gail is and why she was recognized, I brought copies of that letter for each of you as well.

Gail, as you know, has only been the manager for Indian education for just over three years.

She is the first woman to hold this position since the 1970s.

In the 1970s, it's different than it is now, was started by Native women, which is a tribute to the power and leadership of Indian women in our community.

Under her leadership, for the first time ever, Native students are no longer at the bottom of our standardized testing pool.

And I know that's just a snapshot in time, but we're very proud of her work and what she's accomplished with our testing.

Also last year Shikachi with her leadership and the support and partnership with Dr. Nyland Shikachi was started at GCL High School.

She recruited me with others and I have two objectives there.

One is identity safety and one is academic support and achievement and so far amazing and exciting things are happening at the school.

We've never seen that happen in an urban school district.

There's always been partnership with tribes and so we're thrilled that this is happening at a city level and here at Seattle Public Schools.

I think we're pioneers in that aspect.

So thank you for that.

Also over 450 teachers have been trained in the state mandated since time immemorial curriculum.

And I think as an educator I can say it's one thing to be given mandates but it's something else to be given the tools to be successful with those mandates.

So for her Having the opportunity and the leadership with Shanna Brown to provide us that training I think is instrumental and powerful not only for our Indigenous youth but all the youth that are here in this city.

Also she is always pushing for the Native perspective to be added into decision making and have our voice at the table.

She advocated hard to have the native perspective in the teach-in this year and hundreds of teachers got to hear the native perspective when they attended the teaching at Garfield High School.

Furthermore, my students were invited to be part of the student panel and educators were so moved many to tears that they're still talking about it because they were allowed to hear the challenges that many of our native students specifically face in this city.

And then finally, Um, she was just awarded a grant to partner with the Chief Seattle Club, so our homeless families will now be able to work directly with Hachucida, and we will be able to provide immediate assistance to our homeless youth.

Um, and then as you all know, because she did this in partnership with you, our enrollment system has changed.

For example, my children are Native, White, and Creole, and they show up as multi.

I've never once referred to my children as multi, and now if For the first time ever in the history of Seattle Public Schools they will be known by their tribal names.

And so I raise my hands to Gil for that because as a native woman it feels me to be as pride to know that the school district sees my kids as Hickorya.

It's easy when you hear these accomplishments to understand why she was given this award from the Native Action Network, but honestly what sets her apart is her focus.

She is a proud Nukchanak woman from the Houset Band of Canadian First Nations.

She's been a canoe journey puller with her canoe family as well as the Muckleshoot Native Indian Tribe.

That is something she's incredibly proud of because she sets an example for generations to come about how she lives her life.

She's also, even though we're the same age and my kids are tiny, she is a mother and a grandmother of three.

And she is somebody, even though, again, we are the same age as I personally as an educator look up to.

She inspires women to, and all educators, to be better educators and me personally to be a better mother and a better educator.

So it is with a humble heart and a proud spirit that I am thrilled to introduce to you my friend and also my boss, this powerful woman warrior, Gail Morris.

She's much taller than me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steven Nelson and Venetia for coming out.

I almost fell to my knees when I saw that I was being recognized for this award because Cecilia Fire Thunder, who was president of Oglala Nation, Oglala Nation received it.

Teresa Sheldon on Council for Tulalip Tribes was there.

Laverne Wise, who has been a huge part of the urban community in Vernell Lane, who has also played a huge part in tribal council and education in Lummi Reservation.

So I was like I was so I was actually shocked and surprised, but they told me not to be.

So I just want to thank everybody here.

I want to thank the school board.

I want to thank Stephen Nielsen, Dr. Nyland, Kyle, Michael Tolley who's really helped to push this program forward the way that it needs to be pushed and for teachers to be able to take the training and to access our department to teach native history in the classrooms.

That was a huge part in us moving forward and being recognized.

And, you know, no one's ever gotten mad at me for knocking on their doors instead of sending emails.

So thank you all for allowing me to move this program forward.

And I just want to tell you something quickly.

That blanket.

I was so happy to get that blanket.

The designer is Bethany Yellowtail and it's called All My Relations and it represents the Crow and the Northern Cheyenne who have historically warred with each other.

And so it has that on this blanket and it's them all coming together to work.

So I just wanted to share them.

Clicko clicko.

Congratulations again.

I'd like to introduce Dr. Herndon who will say good words about our athletes.

We have a booklet that honors our state champions for the year and I think I counted at least 11 teams that had won state number one championships.

And so we're blessed with lots of great athletes lots of great coaches and lots of hard work.

Good evening.

Flip Herndon associate superintendent of facilities and operations and I have with me also here are one of our assistant athletic directors.

I want to speak briefly about our athletics program and the recognition we'll have tonight.

Seattle Public Schools is a model for several different areas in academics as well as extracurricular activities and athletics is one of those areas we have a proud tradition of athletes succeeding outside of the classroom and tonight we're honoring those whose performances culminated in a state championship.

Our athletics department is also headed up by Eric McCurdy who has continued a tradition again of strong leadership supporting athletics in all of our schools.

And assistants in the athletic department are Tara Davis and Pat McCarthy who again who's here with me tonight.

So we're going to go through a couple of these.

We have some team championships.

We have some of the head coaches and assistant coaches who are here with us and some are not.

But I believe we have the majority of them which is great.

So we get to recognize them tonight.

We're going to start off with boys basketball.

This year the Nathan Hale Raiders were not only state but national champions.

They culminated in a perfect season 29 and 0 and were led by head coach Brandon Roy and tonight to help honor that here is Darby Haskins the athletic director.

And then I think we're going to have everybody line up and we can do one big recognition.

Another team championship.

One that culminated just in the last few weeks.

The Roosevelt High School boys soccer team head coach Gary Hunter.

So if we could have any members of the team and coach come on up.

Looks like they all showed up which is great.

I'm also going to go now to one of our individual champions.

State champion in the girls breaststroke 100 meter in swimming.

Madeline Nguyen head coach Mark Nichols who's not.

We have another state champion in swimming this time on the boys side backstroke 100 yards Emmett Waite head coach Chris Holland.

He was from Roosevelt Roosevelt High School by the way.

All right.

Next championship.

This one also culminated in the last few weeks and it's been a little while since this team has won a state championship but there are certainly no strangers to state championships especially in this area.

And that is the Garfield girls track and field team head coach Kwajaleen Griffin and assistant Shirley Roten.

Now a few individuals from the track season as well.

We have our state champion in the shot put wheelchair and the discus Josephine Nguyen and coach Isen Goldwire.

A few more individual accolades from the Garfield Bulldogs state champion in the girls 200 meter girls high jump and the girls long jump Iman Brown.

Another individual champion off the Garfield track and field team state champion in the triple jump Lyric Harris.

Another championship for the Garfield girls track team.

This one in the relays four by one.

Some of these names might sound familiar.

We have Amani Mourncola, Kirkland Kelly, Talijah Gibson-Sims and Lyric Harris.

They won the 4 by 1. They also won the 4 by 2 in the track and field championships from Garfield again.

Imani Morancola, Talijah Gibson-Sims, Iman Brown and Lyric Harris.

Another individual champion this time in the boys 300 meter hurdles from West Seattle High School Cass Elliott head coach Will Harrison.

And completing our recognitions for athletics tonight.

In the state championship and girls ultimate we have the Franklin High School team head coach Hannah Kawhi and Lisa Neiman.

That concludes our athletic.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Athletes don't go away.

We want to get a picture of you in just a few minutes.

I'd like to introduce Michelle Aoki to introduce and congratulate our students who have completed a seal of biliteracy.

Good evening everyone.

I'm delighted to be here for the third time that we're awarding the seal of biliteracy in Seattle Public Schools.

It's a state seal of biliteracy.

This was introduced with legislation.

So my name is Michelle Aoki.

I'm the International Education Administrator and also World Languages Program Manager.

So far we have about 279 students that have been qualified for the seal as seniors to earn the seal.

We have many hundreds more that have tested and will be earning the seal when they get to their senior year.

And we also have a lot of international baccalaureate and AP students who will get their test results in July and then that seal designation will be added to their transcript.

I would love to name all of the students who are here tonight but we actually have a very large number.

I want to just thank all of them and their families for coming tonight.

This is an amazing program because it is one of the few times when we are able to recognize riches that people bring from their homes and their own personal lives and we have a lot of languages represented.

So I'm going to just ask the students to Stand when I say their high school and I think we should just go ahead and have them start gathering over here because I know we're the second group for the picture and I'll mention all the languages as well in just a moment.

So for advanced placement and international baccalaureate exams we had those represent Ballard Garfield Nathan Hale and Roosevelt Chief South and Ingram International High School.

For the competency based world language credits that's for students who have languages that don't have AP or IB tests and that's quite a long list of languages now including Amharic, Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Tigrinya, Vietnamese, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Farsi, German, Italian, Japanese, Mongolian, Oromo, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Tagalog and Urdu.

So your high schools and so students why don't you go ahead and stand when I say your high school.

Ballard High School.

Thank you.

Chief Self International High School.

Cleveland High School.

Franklin High School.

A lot of them I think students are toward the back.

Garfield High School.

Ingram International High School.

Nathan Nathan Hale High School.

Nova High School.

Rainier Beach High School.

Roosevelt High School.

Seattle World School.

Southlake High School and West Seattle High School.

So I'm going to just ask the students to think and sort of gather over here so we'll be all ready when the picture time comes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And I'd like to invite the Ballard Robotics team to tell us about a world championship.

Okay this is actually I am Brian Conley I am the coach of the Ballard High School robotics team and this is actually a small group of who we took to Houston with us.

We had 27 students that went and there were 400 teams all from all across the world and we are the first team in the Pacific Northwest in Washington to actually win world.

So that's a big accomplishment.

So please give a round of applause.

Okay it's not gonna run unfortunately but take a look at our winning robot world champion robot.

So tell us what it can do.

I'm gonna have a student do that.

So the main goal of the robot this year was to transport these 11-inch plastic gears across the field onto these pegs and also to climb a rope in the last 30 seconds of the match because the way the match works is it's three-on-three robots against each other.

And so you try to compete in the two and a half minutes to score as many points as you possibly can.

Our robot can drive at about 20 feet per second, which is approximately 13 miles per hour and was one of the fastest robots at the World Championship.

So the way it works is there is a metal barrel right there with Velcro on it and then our rope had Velcro on the edge of it and a slipknot so it could wrap around a few times before it started putting weight on it.

And it can climb the rope in about six seconds.

All right.

Any more questions?

All right.

Congratulations again.

So at this time we're going to invite the board.

Don't go away for the robotics team here.

We're going to invite the board down front and we're going to start with the picture of the board with the robotics team and then we'll do a picture of the board with the biliteracy students and then we'll do a picture of the board with the athletes and then we'll do a picture of the board with Gail.

And then board members can sit in the audience when we're done with the pictures for our performance.

All right.

Okay, I'm going to take a couple.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

Couple more.

One, two, three.

One more.

One, two, three.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

All right.

Okay, do we have everybody?

All right, one, two, three.

One more, one, two, three.

You'll be right in front of Franklin.

Okay, Franklin, come on up.

You may have to sit in front, but come on up.

Thank you.

Come on up, please.

All right, my friends, ready?

One, two, three.

Athletes, if you'd like to leave now, please go ahead.

You're welcome to stay if you want.

Your son has it.

Your son has it.

State champs.

Do you need more moving this back?

Okay I would now like to invite the board to join the audience and I would like to welcome our performers tonight.

It's the Catherine Blaine.

Let's see.

This is the elementary instrumental music program.

Catherine Blaine is a K-8 school and it reintroduced strings into its program.

It currently serves 85 fourth and fifth graders at the school.

Everyone in this group started as beginners either last year or this year on violin, viola, cello and bass.

They're joined today by eighth grader Eric Souza Ponce on guitar and their teacher Mr. Nathaniel Oxford in a program of Baroque modern classical folk and jazz.

So thank you very much for coming and we look forward to hearing your performance.

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Medium tempo.

One, two, four, one, two, three, four.

Okay, okay, stop.

Pay attention up front.

One, medium tempo.

One, two, ready, go.

Good.

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One, two, one, two, three, four.

Thank you.

Can I hear you, Eric, Anthony?

What's your blues?

No.

I mean, one, just the bass and cello starts.

One, two, one, two, three, go.

Five, go.

A section.

And no backgrounds.

One more round.

Not yet.

That's cool.

Go ahead.

A section.

Keep it.

Just, just me wondering on a second.

Okay, here we go.

You want to do it?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was good.

Okay.

There's a microphone on I might as well address what we're doing here.

We just played a tune called Wizard Blues by the jazz fiddler Martin Norgaard and he has a lot of tools out and he's done some brain research recently which is pretty fantastic.

Prior to that we did a traditional Irish polka called John Ryan's polka and we opened our set with Winter by Vivaldi.

We're going to play our final tune Adamant.

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Thank you.

That was fantastic.

And that was such a nice array of different styles of music.

So well done.

So I'm going to pass the microphone around and I'm going to ask each of you to just tell us your first name and what grade you're in.

My name is Anya and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Justine and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is May Lee and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Sharla and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Annika and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Miley and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Jackson and I'm also in fifth grade.

My name is Brooke and I am also in fifth grade.

My name is Luke and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Ethan and I'm in fourth grade.

My name is Lucy and I'm in fifth grade.

My name is Ada and I'm in fourth grade.

My name is William and I am not in fifth grade.

I'm in fourth grade.

My name is Eric.

I'm in eighth grade.

My name is Matthias.

I'm in fifth.

Thank you all very much and good luck with your continued pursuits in music.

Thank you.