Seattle Schools Board Meeting June 4, 2025

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get started here alright thank you everyone the June 4th 2025 regular board meeting is called to order at 4 20 p.m.

we would like to acknowledge that we are an ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people miss Wilson Jones the roll call please face President Briggs

Here.

Director Clark?

Present.

Director Hersey?

Here.

Director Mizrahi?

Present.

Director Rankin?

Here.

Do we have Director Sarju?

President Topp?

Here.

Student member Bragg?

Here.

Student member Ilyas?

Present.

Student member Yoon?

Present.

All right.

So before we begin tonight, I want to take a moment and recognize and thank Ms. Wilson-Jones.

This will likely be her last time calling the role for the Seattle School Board, marking the end of nearly seven years in the board office.

Tonight's meeting will be her 345th board meeting.

She has served 17 directors and six presidents.

On June 9th, Ms. Wilson-Jones will be transitioning to a new role.

She's not going far.

She'll be the senior assistant general counsel on SPS's legal team.

And we're incredibly excited for her next chapter.

But it goes without saying, we will miss her a lot.

Fortunately, she won't be too far.

So if we have questions, we can always come and ask.

So yes, thank you.

So, Ms. Wilson-Jones, thank you for your years of service, for your wisdom, your grace, and your unshakable presence.

We are better for it, and we wish you nothing but success in your next role.

So with that, I'm going to now turn it over to Chief Operating Officer Fred Podesta for comments on behalf of the Superintendent.

Thank you, President Taub.

Again, Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer.

I'm covering for Dr. Jones, who is on medical leave, and we're all thinking about him, wishing him well.

As we get into our last two weeks of the 24-25 school year, we've had a lot of reasons to celebrate lately, most recent of which this week.

I want to thank everyone on staff and others who turned out to raise the pride flag that we raised in front of the John Stanford Center.

Shout out to Director Rankin.

It was great to see you there.

It's a beautiful shirt and thank you for bringing beautiful weather on that afternoon.

It was a great event.

Last Friday, the Kingmakers had their crowning ceremony and that was a wonderful event as well.

I would recommend everyone go.

That is one of the most joyful things that happens in Seattle Public Schools.

It's an annual event that recognizes the hard work and the achievements of African-American students who participate in our mentoring and our programs sponsored by the AAMA.

yesterday in this room.

We were joined by many of our partners, our community partners that help us with college and career readiness.

More than 30 organizations came with sponsorship from our partners at the city's Department of Education and Early Learning.

There was a student panel that described how all the supports that we get in this area are helping them and helping the district and students directly with our graduation and life ready goals.

and we're right on the cusp of graduations, the most joyous time at Seattle Public Schools.

This particular year for those commencement ceremonies that take place at Memorial Stadium, that'll be the last round in the current facility, which is an item on your agenda tonight.

We'll be working to redevelop the stadium starting This summer.

And then thank you for everyone that's joining us here tonight.

Thank you for the students who have joined us tonight to make their voices heard.

We're going to have a discussion about student safety and some of the policy recommendations that we're bringing to the board later tonight.

We all have many opinions about this.

This is a complex subject and really can only be successful if we hear from everybody.

So I appreciate people making their voices heard.

And I'll turn it back to you, President Todd.

Thank you.

We are moved now to student board members.

I think we'll start with Director Yoon.

Thank you, President Taup.

First, thank you to everyone for all your work this school year on behalf of our students.

We know this year was incredibly challenging for many, and we're especially grateful to those who listened when it wasn't easy and made space for our students.

Before we close out the 2024-2025 school year, I want to take a moment to reflect on the journey we've had as student board members.

This year we've accomplished a lot to better support engage with students.

We've been active on social media posting over 20 plus posts with board meeting summaries, our Friday fact day series, and promoting event outreach.

We also conducted school visits to hold group discussions with students, attended the WASDA conference, collaborated with members of the Superintendent Student Advisory Board, and most recently helped lead the student engagement session for the Superintendent Search.

But one of our main goals this year was to restructure the student board member policy, also known as policy 1250 and make it more organized for future cohorts.

Since this is only the third year of the program, it's understandable that some responsibilities were unclear.

So we saw this as an opportunity, a chance to rebuild the structure, lay a strong foundation, and establish a clear system that outlines expectations, responsibilities, and a sense of collective purpose.

A key step in achieving this was revising the student board member policy 1250. I'm just going to highlight that aspect, as I aforementioned.

Director Rankin and I have been meeting consistently for over a month now, almost every Sunday morning, to revise the policy.

and we'll be sharing it as an informational item for everyone to review the edits we've made.

I won't go into detail about what edits we specifically made as that would take a lot of time, but I just want to emphasize that this work didn't begin just a month ago.

It's been a priority for us since the very beginning of our term in September.

Early on in our term, we met with Deputy Chief of Staff Eric Urchie who helped us build a yearly calendar with monthly goals and while we haven't hit every milestone exactly as planned, this policy revision is something we've made consistent progress on throughout the year.

After attending the WASDA conference last November, we joined the WASDA student network and stayed in contact with student board members from other districts to learn how their programs operate and how their policies support student board members.

In fact, we used the WASDA model to reformat our policy.

This work matters not just to us.

but to all SPS students because our roles and responsibilities directly impact how effectively we represent our peers.

I feel that we can't use this position to its full potential unless we have a clear structure in place.

And I'm not saying this one policy will solve every challenge we face this year, but it's a meaningful step towards shifting a culture that too often leaves student leadership roles undefined and performative.

We want to build a system that holds us accountable as well because accountability brings transparency and transparency shows students that we truly care about what they think.

I don't want to do things or we don't want to do things just for the sake of doing them.

It's not about checking boxes or completing a list to say we did our job.

I want this work to have purpose and to lead to something.

I want it to lead to change.

And next time I really want to say we're doing this and this because it moves us closer to this goal.

And this policy would help create the structure to make that kind of intentional purpose-driven work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Yoon.

Director Elias?

Good evening.

Since this is our last regular board meeting this year, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on the progress we've made as student board members.

I mean, Director Yoon has done a great job covering that, so I guess I'll just skip that.

When I first joined, there was no clear guide, handbook, just the understanding that students observe a seat at the table and that I really wanted to make a change.

Over the past year, through consistent collaboration with Director Rankin and others, we've helped shape the position into something more defined, more supported, and more reflective of what student voice can actually look like in practice.

with the draft revisions of policy 1250 now shared.

Well, not yet, but I'm hopeful that future student members will have a stronger foundation to build from.

As you continue making important decisions around budgets, safety policies, and governance, I hope student voice remains central to that work.

not just as a common but as a core part of shaping the outcomes.

It's truly been an honor serving as a student board member and thank you for this opportunity to serve.

Thank you.

Director Bragg.

Alright, so the first thing I'm just gonna say as a student, and as the queer student sitting here, happy Pride Month.

It's awesome and amazing to be here.

Celebrate your proudness, celebrate being gay, celebrate being trans.

It's a tough time, so always remember that.

Do also have a couple things to say as Julia was advised to tell me to share some opinions now, as I will not be staying for the whole meeting tonight.

The first thing I want to say is to share my opinion, especially throughout what I've been hearing from the community and what we can hear from the community tonight is that when it comes to police officers in school, when it comes to talking about that, let's remember the fact that fear and security can lead to a want for things, but putting on a Band-Aid, as it was said by a Garfield student today to me, putting on a Band-Aid filled with razor blades is not the option.

That was very serious.

I'm going to just say some very nice things now.

This opportunity has been one of the most amazing things in my life.

It has shown me how to speak and I want to share that with all of you and share that especially with students and directors staring at me right now.

Talking to legislators, talking, being able to talk to going to conferences and has helped me find my voice and helped me find the fact that it is absolutely terrifying to speak up.

and it is also hard for a lot of adults in the world to tell students to speak up.

So I implore thee, I beg of thee, if you are an adult sitting here, if you are a teacher, an educator, or a staff member, please, please bring up student voices.

Please, please make them unafraid to speak.

And if you are a student, be unafraid and say it, or be terrified and say it anyways, because it needs to be said.

to the people.

Thank you to the people who made me unafraid, such as directors sitting here today, President Topp, Director Rankin, and even more to many of the people who've helped me along my journey, Ms. Scott, Ms. Pentecost, and Ms. Myers.

Thank you for being the reason I'm here and the reason I'm able to say this.

Thank you to so many board directors and staff for making this all possible, for making the students be able to have that change and to have a change that we now see possible.

To be able to see that this is not a position made for performative action.

This is so we listen to it.

And thank you to the community for hearing our voices and please continue to do so.

So what I will leave you with is I cannot wait to see who sits in these seats next, who shares their opinions next, but never forget why this position exists.

Listen to students.

Ask them how they are.

And most of all, remember, this is all for them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We had a small, small celebration for our student board directors before our meeting today.

And I shared these notes, so they're gonna have to hear it again.

But when our student board members speak, in this room, in this space, you can feel a shift in the room.

People pause, they listen.

If they're multitasking, they stop.

Your voices command respect because of the wisdom and experience you bring in your comments and your willingness to speak up and bring your opinions.

And I was thinking today through some of the ways in which we have seen this, throughout the year and recognizing where our students have had some real impact.

And one of those moments I saw firsthand was how you shaped our board goals, particularly our college and career readiness goal.

And I think the feedback that you gave I remember that meeting so specifically in those moments and the feedback you gave to staff reshaped how we are monitoring, tracking and doing and trying to achieve that goal.

And I think that is real progress and a testament to the importance of the role as student board members.

I think it's also a phenomenal step that we have more applicants this year but also applicants from all our high schools except for two and that is a huge feat and a testament to how you present yourselves to the students and what an important role this is seen as to our students.

So thank you for that.

You have made space for students' voices to feel heard in this role.

So thank you all for making a difference and bringing your valuable experience to this work.

I can't wait to see what you do next.

And some of you may be on the dais again.

We'll see.

But thank you.

so i'm going to uh we're going to we're moving into board comments here uh turning to our agenda for this evening we are going to reschedule progress monitoring on guardrail four to our july first meeting so we'll have guardrail three and four in july just a little bit of concern on timing I'm also going to briefly walk through the plan for reviewing the 25-26 budget proposal tonight.

So later in the agenda, staff will introduce the board action report for the proposed budget for the year.

That item is scheduled for a vote on July 1st.

we will then work through our remaining introduction items on this agenda and then move into a special meeting to hold our public hearing on the budget that will convene at 8 p.m.

regardless of where we are on this agenda so i attend intend to move us at efficiently through tonight to make sure that we get as much as possible through the agenda as we can.

Please note that the budget public hearing does have a separate agenda and sign-up process, and that's for the folks in this room.

If you are interested in providing testimony during the hearing and you're remote, please go to the hearing agenda and follow the link for remote testimony sign-ups.

That will close at the start of the hearing, so at 8 p.m.

For those in person, there will be a separate sign-up sheet at the back of the room as we move into that hearing, and you will need to physically sign in on that sheet.

So that will happen at 8pm for our budget hearing.

Back to our regular meeting tonight.

In addition to the budget, we will receive policy recommendations from the ad hoc policy manual review committee, and we will hear recommendations for our safety policies.

I know there are a number of people here to speak about all of these things tonight, so thank you for joining us.

A few housekeeping things.

It is graduation season, which is super exciting.

Board directors are assigned to different graduations.

They essentially certify the graduation.

We are looking for one more board director on June 13th for a graduation, if at all possible.

So just putting a plug in there for that.

And then I want to note that we have our school board retreat this Saturday.

It will start at 10 a.m.

It will be in this room here.

So please join, or board members, just a reminder that that is happening.

And then finally, before we go on to additional committee and liaison updates, we have HYA here, our superintendent search firm, and I'm going to briefly hand it off to Micah Ali to give us a quick update on our search process.

but he will be back again on Saturday for us to go into a more in-depth conversation.

So this is a quick update and then we will have another update and more time for discussion on Saturday during our retreat.

So hoping technology works and Mr. Ali you have the floor.

Good afternoon everyone.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

I do apologize for my inability to appear via camera, but we're ready to rock and roll, so why don't we launch the presentation?

Mr. Ali, I'm not sure staff has a presentation sent from you.

Okay.

Ms. Vincent, can you share the screen with Ms. Vincent?

Find a chance?

Is she not in the meeting?

There we go.

Thank you.

Much appreciated.

So again, we're very pleased to present before you with respect to the superintendent search and the update.

Next slide, please.

So this is where we are very much very much thankful for the opportunity to lead the search on behalf of the school board as well as your community.

This is the search process for which we discussed several weeks past, so right now we're in the engagement phase.

The engagement phase will go from May to June, and that consists of an investment with respect to engaging your community.

We've already done engagement with your students and some of your personnel.

And so the next phase, which is ongoing, is a recruitment phase, and of course we move August We moved to August with this selection phase as well as transition.

So why don't you do me, if ever, Ms. Vincent, why don't you just drop down to the next slide?

No, drop down to the...

Okay, here we go.

So this is the engagement schedule.

What we wanted the board to do, we wanted to start with the students for obvious reasons because many of them have graduated and, of course, they're enjoying the summer recess and moving on to collegiate enrichment programs or sports programs, et cetera.

So we wanted the board to look at the engagement schedule and then bless this.

Make certain that we've captured the sentiment of the board as well as the community.

We want to thank your staff.

We've worked very closely with your staff.

But we want to make certain that we uplift the voice of members of the board and ensure that we're hitting the mark.

So maybe we can take a look at this.

President?

We can take a look at this for a second and then of course members of the governing authority can bless this and if not we can always make amendments accordingly.

It's whatever the board decides to do.

Yes, so I think what we will do is we will, for our retreat we will be able to have this document and be able to provide any additional feedback we may have on this.

So yes, and we will have more time definitely to talk about that.

Okay, thank you.

So, Ms. Vincent, go back up to this slide.

Go back up.

Okay, here we go.

So, I didn't want to slide the board to death, okay?

So, here we go.

Job posting is up live and rolling.

Advertisement, social media, networking, et cetera, active.

We're moving full steam ahead.

The survey was launched.

We're seeing great responses.

We're going to continue to propagate that.

Perhaps we can talk about this Saturday.

leveraging members of the governing board in order to effectuate your networks to push that survey.

The survey really truly encapsulates the voice of the community and it allows individuals to complete it at their leisure.

They feel no pressure.

They can do it 24 hours a day.

We want to capture the voice of the community.

And then, of course, we're continuing on with our community engagement.

Right now we're working virtually.

Soon we'll be on the ground.

working very closely with individuals as well as members of the board.

And so that's where we are with respect to an update relative to the search.

Are there any questions?

I think we will cut you off there.

I appreciate it, Mr. Ali, and I think one of the main goals for us on Saturday will be to review the engagement schedule and provide feedback.

So have an opportunity to really review that slide and information.

So going to board director comments, the audit committee met yesterday, and I'm going to go to Vice President Briggs for an update on an completed internal audit posted for tonight's agenda.

Okay.

Board procedure 6550BP internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal audits.

As the audit committee chair, I am announcing that at the June 3rd quarterly audit meeting, the office of internal audit presented an internal audit report for Ballard High School.

All audit reports are discussed at a public audit meeting and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the Office of Internal Audit Department website.

Thank you, Director Briggs.

So now we will move on to committee chairs and liaison reports.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have a few things.

First, I'm gonna start with a couple positive things because I used to be a very hopeful person and being on this board for, this is my second term now, the optimism has been sort of crushed out of me.

So I'm anticipating rather negative throughout the rest of the board meetings.

I'm going to start with something positive, which is that Beacon Hill International has had an annual Young Authors Day where students read their work to guest listeners.

It's a tradition that they used to have before COVID.

This year today was the first time they've had it since COVID.

And I wanted to shout out and say thank you to educator Nisha Daniel for inviting me.

I think Michelle was also there, although I didn't we didn't see each other but it was really, really a joy and our students are so amazing and yeah, it was just a great time and so if the opportunity comes again to us next year I encourage everyone to take it to go be a guest listener I also was invited to the Native American Education Program's moving up ceremony which is unfortunately in about half an hour from now and so I wasn't able to go but I wanted to give a big congratulations and thank you to the students families and staff of students in the Native Ed program The first Friday in June is National Gun Violence Awareness Day which is this Friday June 6th in two days The board has recognized this in the past with a resolution and the district has annually done a declaration.

I am disappointed that I don't see that this year and I'm not sure why when it's been repeatedly talked about how to make it an annual recognition, not necessarily from the dais but as a community and especially that we have a topic tonight regarding student safety and gun violence prevention and it is the anniversary of the death by gun violence of one of our students so it may not have been publicly or officially announced but I'm recognizing it I recognize it kind of every day and I hope that all of you will take an opportunity this Friday or over the weekend to their various community events.

There are different organizations that give away gun storage lockers or safes.

So if you do have a firearm in your home, safely securing it saves lives.

and just go out and be a positive force in your community this weekend and always.

So attached to the information items is my legislative liaison update.

It's just a recap of the 2025 legislative session.

Since I wrote that, the Department of Education released a summary of the impact of the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

at the federal level that has passed the House by, I can't remember, two or four votes.

And it's pretty devastating for children and families.

And in the proposed budget, what the Department of Ed released that's not in my memo is that the overall funding at the federal level for education is reduced by $12 billion from fiscal year 2025. and the budget also proposes consolidating 18 existing K-12 grants and funding programs into a single allocation formula for states, which if you've been following along or if you've seen some of my previous updates is referred to as converting to block grants.

So there are specific dollars designated to meet specific needs given to states to meet the needs of students.

The current budget proposal is proposing that rather than be allocated based on, based to meet the student need as they were intended, to collapse those all into basically just a check to states, which on the one hand, well, no, it's not the same amount of money, so not only is the money reduced, but it also means that the whole reason for those federal dollars was to close gaps and support states in identifying and serving students with different needs.

And so the concern now is if that remains, that money will go to states.

States can just fold it into general education funds and those gaps might reopen.

There's also no guarantee that it has to even go to education.

So those could just come to states and that money could vanish from the K-12 system, which when you're talking about the level of cuts being proposed to Medicare and Medicaid, I know that our priority in Washington State will likely be to save lives, as it should be.

But if this passes, it's going to have really long-lasting negative impacts.

So the attention is now on the Senate.

Apparently they're hoping to vote either on or by Fourth of July.

which is ironic.

And I know that in Washington State, our senators, Catwell and Murray, are actively working to reach their colleagues in the Senate and hopefully keep it from passing.

But it's, I'm not going to tell anybody how to advocate, but if you have family members, friends in other states, who want to reach out to their senators and provide their opinions on voting for this bill, this is a really good time to do that as this vote will happen in the next month and have significant impacts for children and families and working people across the country.

The memo also has at the end of it a recommendation on increasing our legislative program collaboration in general and increasing our capacity for advocacy as a system.

So that's in the memo.

And then I have two requests to make.

And I'm going to acknowledge my discomfort at making this publicly.

But my discomfort in our failure to make progress is stronger.

So and I've also struggled, as I've mentioned before, to, there's a lack of clarity around how we're setting our agendas.

So my requests that I would appreciate support on is for a special meeting to be called for the board to consider two things.

the possibility of a forensic accounting audit.

It's become clear that we can't get the information that we need to ensure our oversight of the budget.

There are no recommended changes from last year's budget to this year's.

The opacity of the budget's not new.

but we've been promised since at least 2023 and probably before that, the different concerns will be addressed, that there will be more opportunities for engagement and alignment of the budget with board goals, and I do not see progress in that direction.

And so my conclusion is that, Either there's too much weighing down our system to get clear evaluation, or it's beyond capacity, or people just don't want to do it.

I don't know which it is.

It doesn't really matter.

The point is, we need an outside evaluation with more detail.

Regular state audits check for legal compliance.

I want to be really clear, I am not making any assumptions or accusations of misdoing.

but we don't have the level of information that we need and we've been asking these questions for too long without seeing progress so I would like for the board to consider hiring, directing the superintendent or their designee to hire a forensic accounting auditor that would report directly to the board.

The second thing is I have concerns about staff behavior and relationships.

The number of HIB complaints between staff in buildings and central office is higher than I've ever seen it.

And the fear of retaliation is such that students are feeling it.

Students are afraid to speak up when something is wrong.

I have staff who emails me and says, I could get in really big trouble for reaching out to you.

And it's just unacceptable.

Policy expressly prohibits this behavior.

policy and law protects whistleblowers and protects those participating and reporting in investigation of complaints.

It's our responsibility to ensure the superintendent maintains conditions that are lawful, respectful, and safe for all employees.

So as soon as possible, I would like for the board to have the opportunity to discuss the potential need for an independent investigation into guardrail and policy violations related to staff treatment, specifically in central office.

The culture of an organization, and I wrote this down.

The culture of an organization is defined by the worst behavior that its leadership is willing to tolerate.

And poor behavior that impacts the ability of our students to be successful has been tolerated for too long in the hopes that somebody will address it.

I can't tolerate it anymore.

And I feel the board needs to act now to uphold the values of our community and protect the integrity of the system and take serious steps to address what we can as we prepare for a transition in leadership.

So to recap, two item requests for agenda.

is board action to direct the superintendent to hire, to report to us, a forensic accounting auditor, and an independent investigation into staff behavior and treatment and violation of policy, again, with the investigator reporting directly to the board.

There's a lot of Wednesdays between now and July 1st.

There are also other days.

So I am requesting on record that we have a special meeting called to consider those two items for introduction so that we can take action on July 1st.

All right.

Other committee or liaison reports.

Director Sarju.

I didn't know that my colleague Liza was going to make those statements and I had fully prepared to make similar statements of my own.

For the audience, I'm going to admit that I was just in an accident.

and so I am a little shook up and I have settled myself to come in here because working on behalf I'm not injured I think it's I think it should be apparent at least I don't feel injured at the moment but my job here is to work on behalf of kids and so I am being transparent that I feel settled enough and I'm putting my colleagues on notice that I don't want three-way text messages around concerning me, about me being out of control or unstable or whatever things they say in those text messages about me.

Because at the end of the day, in December 2021, I signed up to work on behalf of kids and whatever date today it is today, June 4th, 2025, I'm still working on behalf of kids.

When we have dysregulation in our system, like what my colleague, and I'm not doing the director BS tonight, I just need to be real with you all.

When we have these kinds of things in our midst, it completely inhibits our ability to work on behalf of children.

That's what we're elected to do.

We're not elected to prepare our names for future office.

We're not elected to try to boost our own, uh, whatever you call that.

What's that thing you call, um, what is it?

Resume credentials.

Resume credentials, but personal gen- all those things.

That's not the word, but it'll come to me long after I'm gone to bed.

Um, but we have a serious financial situation that I'm not sure what's happening.

It seems more and more things come to light and it feels like I'm being blindsided and apparently some board directors know about these things and others don't.

And that really inhibits our ability to work as a body of seven.

and so I'm not here to call anybody out.

I'm not gonna call any names.

Y'all are wondering who it is and you're not gonna hear it from me.

But I have put my colleagues on notice.

I want the nonsense to stop.

we have a serious situation on behalf of children.

So all these text messages, why are we talking about SOFG and why does Michelle show up, this and that, I want my name out of your text messages.

I have said that to a couple people.

The other issue is that we have a brewing scandal of unprofessional conduct that I fear is likely to hit the Seattle Times.

and I want it to be on record that it is known by a lot of people.

And so that will inhibit our ability to work on behalf of children.

And so I'm stating publicly we need a special meeting to discuss some of these things.

We need to get serious about the business of children.

We have a lot of pressing issues, right?

We didn't close schools because that was the plan all along.

And so now we're in...

It's not a direct line.

We didn't close schools, and now we're in really serious financial trouble.

But what we didn't do was align our resources to best serve kids, which may have included closing schools.

But there needed to be a plan.

And if you remember, I asked several times in a board meeting, is there a plan?

Before I got an answer, no, there's not.

So I said, I'm not voting to close schools.

And I recognized in that moment what that meant was likely damage down the road.

But we need a plan for our kids.

And if we can't come up with a plan, then we need adults who can.

and so what you're seeing up here is that we're adults we have disagreements we don't have to agree on everything but one thing we have to agree on it that this work is about children and if it's not about children for all of us resign get off the board.

Because at the end of the day, this is not for us to build our own names so we can go out and run for other offices.

We are here for four years, that's what we signed up for, to work on behalf of children.

And I'm saying to the parents, you need to hold us accountable to doing that.

You may not understand how we should be working as a board, but you can hold the adults, the board and the staff accountable for doing right by children.

that's what we signed up for and that's what we need to be doing.

All right, other board and committee liaison reports looking online too at our board directors online.

Just have any hands.

All right, then we are perfectly pretty much at five for public...

Sorry, I have one quick thing.

No, no, it's fine.

Yeah, no problem.

I just wanted to officially also advocate for an executive session publicly as the third board member to request that.

Thank you.

All right.

We are moving into public testimony.

It is five o'clock.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for testimony.

The board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself.

As board president, I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of the meeting may be asked to leave.

I'm going to pass it on to staff now to summarize a few additional points and then read off the speaker list.

Thank you.

Thank you, President Taup.

Apologies, I don't have the right document.

The board will take testimony today from those on the testimony list and will go to the waiting list.

If we are missing speakers, please wait until call to approach the podium to unmute and only one person may speak at a time.

The board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak about.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

If you're online right now, if you could go ahead and mute on your device, we're able to hear you in the room.

The timer, time isn't restarted and total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the remaining time for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, that means your time has already been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

for those joining by phone the beep will be an indication that the time has been exhausted moving into our list now for those joining by phone please do press star six to unmute on the conference line and for everyone please do reintroduce yourself when called as I will miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list the first speaker on today's list is Christy Duong

Just a second as we get mics turned on.

I think you should be good to go.

Good afternoon, School Board Directors.

My name is Christy Young.

I'm a student and a member of the Washington NAACP Youth Council.

I'm here today speaking in opposition to the introduction item amending policy 4311 that will be voted on in July.

In 2020, when the Board passed the moratorium on SROs, we were promised sustainable investments in community-based police alternatives to violence intervention.

We will also promise prevention measures like restorative justice, mental health services, and student empowerment opportunities.

Instead, we have had to fight over and over again for these vital services to be funded year after year.

Since 2020, there has not been an honest open dialogue with the students and families that are disproportionately impacted by police violence, punishment, and criminalization.

As a student and a member of NYC, one of our demands that has been there for years is to incorporate of justice practices in police free schools instead of problematic outdated discipline practices.

Discipline practices that negatively impact students of color have plagued public education for decades now funneling black and brown students in the school to prison pipeline.

We have seen from time to time throughout history and in Seattle police brutalized black and brown communities LGBTQ plus and other marginalized identities.

A 2023 report shows that In 2080 incidents of police violence against students, nearly 60% of them involved black youth.

The impact of police on school premises affects students' comfort in schools and in their communities.

These are all issues that will not disappear overnight and are tied in the broader movement to hold law enforcement accountable.

There are other things that we can fund that can benefit students and cops are not one of them.

It's important to have community-based solutions rather than policing.

There are so many better options than bringing back cops such as expanded mental health care, community-based solutions that promote restorative justice.

Restorative justice practices have been proven to be more effective in addressing discipline issues.

It teaches us skills to de-escalate and communicate instead of using violence and it's preventative versus police that criminalize our students.

Instead of focus on discipline, the district needs to connect students in need with support such as mental health services.

These solutions considers youth psychological well-being, development and healing.

It's time for you to keep your promise and fully fund these alternatives.

Thank you.

The next speaker is James Warren.

James Warren, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference line.

Hi, my name is Jimmy Warren and I am in third grade.

I go to Pathfinder School and I wanted to tell you how important and cool and cool assistant principal in this every minute, especially for kids like me and my friends who have disabilities.

Our assistant principal helps make school a place where everyone feels safe, happy, and understood.

When I get overwhelmed or need a quiet space, they help me calm down and feel better so I can go back to class.

They listen when something's wrong and try to fix it.

That means a lot because sometimes kids like me need a little extra help.

and they make sure we get it.

They also help our teachers so they can support us.

They help They make sure there are plans for kids who learn differently.

It's like having somebody who really cares about all of us, especially when things get hard.

Without Ms. Everman, it would be harder for kids like me to feel included.

They help make Pathfinder better for everyone, and they make me feel like I belong.

Thank you for listening to me.

I hope you remember how important our system principle is, not just for the rules but for making our school feel like home for all of us.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Finn White.

Good afternoon, school board directors.

My name is Finn.

I'm a senior at West Seattle High School.

Instead of splurging on expensive police pay to try and make schools safer, we should focus on the root causes of violence in schools.

These include poverty, lack of mental health resources, and impersonal education.

It's hard for students to care about school when it seems that, because of immense class sizes, lack of access to financial aid and mental health support, and overloads of busy work, school doesn't care about them.

Police at school won't fix any problems.

They will only contribute to them by drawing resources away from potential proven solutions like increased mental health support, financial assistance to students in need, and community-based violence interruption programs.

These violence interruption programs include Community Passageways, Choose 180, Urban Family from the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, and others who are doing preventative work on shoestring budgets fighting for scraps of one-time funding.

It's time for you to keep your promise and fully fund alternatives to policing before declaring that they don't work and putting cops back in our halls.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Yulali Adams.

Yulali Adams.

Hello, board members.

My name is Yulali Adams.

I'm a senior at Garfield High School.

today I wanted to discuss about bringing police back on campus I think this is not a great idea due to the fact of having having police on campus sorry let me okay can I restart thank you okay is it gonna restart or Oh, okay.

As I was saying, having a police presence on campus, I come from Garfield High School where we have a lot of gun violence and issues within the community.

But a lot of that stems from outside or it's never been about the students.

I've seen the impacts of having police on campus before.

We fought really hard in 2020 to get rid of them and having them come back would just take away all of that effort, especially since the SBD has been known for their racial profiling and many other things in which Garfield is a predominantly black school with many students of color.

Bringing in a presence of police could have them targeted, which I've seen in many cases where students will will be a bunch of students of white peers playing around and this black student will get assumed that it is them causing the problem when it hasn't.

Having them on campus could lead to racial profiling as well as the school to prison pipeline which was mentioned before due to, school to prison pipeline before because due to the budget cuts, which I'm not going to talk about that, but the budget cuts of having not as much education with the presence of police, that together is just a disaster waiting to happen.

but I wanted to bring up some issues regarding the community of Garfield.

We need to talk about programs on how you all need to talk to each other.

The school board needs to meet with other programs.

For example, housing programs.

Outside of Garfield, behind a block down, not even a block down, the street down from behind the school, There's a housing encampment, there's a tiny house encampment.

That is fine to have, but like housing encampments like that, right near schools, that brings issues with drugs and violence and that's not helping our community.

I think police should be looking at the bigger area rather than just the school itself.

So I was just saying I wanted to bring notice to that where how these like programs you're not in touch with one of each other so that you can work together to help with these problems because example the house that those tiny homes I know for example there's drug dealers posted up right there that's easy access for students to get a hold of drugs and other types of things that brings violence to the school and the surrounding area which I think that the school needs to be aware of and get in contact and communication with.

I just wanted to add that the police, I am not fully against the police being around the campus, but I don't think they should be on campus for the fact that they are there for discipline matters.

Having them there Having them there specifically on school campus can be helpful, but if it's in a community type of way where they get along with the students and well-known.

But having a police officer there, we all know high schoolers are not the brightest.

They can do dumb things in which we're students, we're kids, we're still learning to navigate the world.

So you could do things like, imagine they're doing something bad, like they're smoking on campus and that's that's not okay to do and a police officer sees this.

They could be charged for doing something under the influence and now that's on their record.

I don't think if police are on campus, I don't think they should be able to step in in that type of way.

That should be left for the staff to figure out and their parents to navigate together so that they can learn instead of being charged on that criminal record and ruining their future.

So if there are police on campus, I don't think it should be more of an eyes on witness type of thing.

It shouldn't be like, oh, I have this gun on me.

Because most students are going to feel fear, especially black and brown students.

They're going to feel fear around the police if they see a police walking around their campus with a gun on their belt.

They should feel like another person they can trust and talk to.

So I really think if we do bring them, they need some type of training and strict, strict rules.

where if they break them, they would get some type of, they would get some type of reprimandation.

So, that is my thoughts on that.

Thank you so much for listening.

The next speaker is Rylan Springer.

Rylan Springer.

sorry I'm Rylan I'm a senior at Garfield High School and I personally did know the three different students we lost in the past year which is a massive failure on Garfield the school board and the city sorry every single death was started with a fight and There's a big problem with how we handle intervention with those fights.

I've seen Garfield and the school board and Seattle handle conflict by silencing it rather than teaching students how to handle them and solving the issue.

which leads to extreme measures and I've also noticed that if we're gonna have a cop, they can't be there for the sake of punishing the students.

They need to be there for the sake of making sure that people, adults, coming to the school isn't happening because that's what's killing our kids.

And I think that I spoke to, sorry, I spoke to a bunch of teachers from my school and they mentioned that...

They mentioned that the cop they had there was always there for the students to help them and that they weren't there to punish the students.

They maybe redirected them to their classes if they were stuck in the halls or encouraged them not to make a bad choice but they were not being punished.

for their behavior and the students at Garfield don't trust the police.

The police have consistently failed us.

We shouldn't have this many shootings.

We shouldn't have this violence and until that can be stopped, we can't trust them.

They've consistently shown that they're going to hurt our students, specifically our people of color in our school and I think that until they need to earn our trust, not expect it.

And to do that, they should spend a year just being there and meeting the community rather than expecting that we let them in willingly and trust them all of a sudden.

And I think we need intervention specialists.

If we're going to bring cops, we need the workers to help students as well, not just punish them.

and I'd also like to do a really quick moment to appreciate and recognize the death of Amar Murphy Payne, Salvador Junior Greniel, and Solomon.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On Memorial Stadium, three points.

Number one, the proposal would violate Board Policy 4237, which states, quote, it is the policy of the school board to ensure that school sites remain focused on education rather than as promoters of commercial activity, unquote.

Number two, Memorial Stadium would be run by a private group with alcohol, commercial advertising, and the sale of naming rights.

School graduations at Al's Used Cars Memorial Stadium.

Number three, this is icky.

Board members and those running for the board should instead stick to the original basic stadium replacement project.

Unwritten testimony to the school board.

Two points.

Number one, I wrote to the state auditor about the district failing to distribute written public testimony to the board.

Number two, the state auditor confirmed that the district has been violating state law, stating that, quote, we determined the district was not in compliance with RCW 42-30-240, unquote.

On changes proposed by the Policy Manual Review Committee, some changes appear to wrongly loosen rules, such as changing the strong legal word, shall, to the weaker word, should.

Please vote no on these changes.

Also there is a school board candidates forum at 2 p.m.

Sunday June 15th at the Montlake Community Center.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Brian Massey.

After Brian will be Rebecca Binns and then Ben Combs.

Hi, my name's Brian Massey.

I'm a parent and volunteer at John Rogers Elementary and I'm here to urge the district to improve enrollment projections and to share how recent fluctuations have deeply affected our Title I school.

At the end of the 2022-23 school year, it was clear that John Rogers would lose many students due to our move to a temporary site during construction.

We started 2023-24 having lost nearly 70 students, 30% of our school population.

this decline was expected so we were quite surprised to learn we would lose up to three classroom teachers at October according to the district's own data Northeast Elementary Schools lost an average of eight to nine students per school John Rogers loss was eight times that number and more than double that of any other North End school how was this not anticipated especially when nearby choice schools saw major gains and open enrollment closes in winter by February of 2024 last year our enrollment had rebounded to over 200 and continued to rise leading to overcrowded classrooms in a fifth grade class with nearly 40 students however for this school year the district projected us at 185 ignoring spring enrollment trends in real-time school data in October this year we had 248 students we had endured two months of over 30 students in every class including kindergarten John Rogers is a Title I school serving a diverse community, 61% students of color, 42% multi-language learners, 18% special ed, 23% experiencing homelessness, and 56% on free reduced lunch.

This year my daughter had 36 children in her fourth grade class, about a quarter of which are multi-language learners.

Today I have submitted a letter to the board signed by nearly 100 families of staff and community members from Title I schools which detail our requests.

Upcoming speakers will add more detail, but in short, please revise your timeline for staffing assignments to prevent the October shuffle upheaval.

Adopt a need-based allocation for support staff based on demographic and educational needs at specific schools.

Be proactive and not reactive.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Rebecca Binns.

Hello, I'm Rebecca Binns, Graham Hill parent, former SPS teacher, and I'm here to share information about the disproportionate impact that current staffing policies have on majority BIPOC and high poverty schools.

Nearly half of all elementary and K-8 students in Southeast attend schools understaffed by a minimum of one teacher.

I have distributed reports so that you can dig into the details as the nearly 9,000 high-poverty students in Seattle, half of whom live in Southeast, deserve more than two minutes of your time.

I am here to inform you before the budget is finalized so that these policies can be changed because the harm they cause is falling largely on our poorest, most vulnerable children.

Using the October count to calculate the following year's staffing and enrollments hurts high poverty schools, who often have fluctuating student populations.

When children enroll after the October count, they are not factored into staffing at that school for two school years.

The district goes 23 months, acting as if these children are invisible and do not need teachers.

Half of all schools that gain 10 or more students since the October count are located in Southeast.

Another policy that targets high poverty schools is the two FTE rule.

This rule says that a school won't receive an October staffing adjustment unless the school has enrolled enough students by the October count to fill two classrooms.

55% of all schools that enrolled 19 or more students over projections were high poverty schools and 55% of those are in Southeast.

Finally, the district uses historical data and the October count to project enrollment, but the district erroneously projected declining enrollment at 93% of the elementaries and K-8s in Southeast Seattle.

The result is they grant our schools fewer teachers, then they don't offer teachers when our students show up for two years.

This must stop.

I'll follow up with an email.

The next speaker is Ben Coombs.

Ben, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Hi, I'm ceding my time to Lacey Muse Can you say that name one more time?

Hi, I'm Lacey Muse

Hi, yeah, thanks, Ben.

I'm a John Rogers elementary school parent and volunteer, and I'm also speaking today to urge reforms to enrollment planning policies and resource allocation models that have adversely affected our school.

John Rogers is one of many Title I schools harmed by these policies.

In fact, this year, 70% of SPS Title I schools began fall with more students than projected by SPS formulas.

On average, these Tier 1 schools were over-enrolled by 26 students, which would warn an additional full-time teacher.

Meanwhile, only 43% of non-Title 1 schools were over-enrolled, making this a system-wide inequity.

The October count resulting staffing reassignments compound these inequities.

Kids in overcrowded classes lose months of learning before reassessment happens, while kids in schools that lose or gain teachers are disrupted by quickly cobbled together reassignments, mergers and even split grade classes.

This all happens just before Thanksgiving and winter break, effectively delaying any real stability until the new year.

We believe that the overly flexible enrollment calendar is a major cause of the instability since staffing assignments are made long before option school waitlists close in August.

Equitable staffing and planning cannot feasibly accommodate these late summer enrollment shifts.

The district's 2FTE policy further withholds critical support for over-enrolled schools.

Since Tier 1 schools are disproportionately over-enrolled, Tier 1 schools are disproportionately harmed by 2-FTE policy.

This year, just three of 23 over-enrolled Title 1 schools received a staffing readjustment.

We call on SPS to align staffing with accurate enrollment projections and a more feasible waitlist decision deadline.

Eliminate the two FTE policy, budget and plan so that the fall adjustments are minor and they are accommodated by buffered enrollment projections, especially for Tier 1 schools serving more students from educational justice.

The next speaker is Ashley Johnson.

Ashley you need to press star six to unmute.

I'm Ashley Johnson.

I am a parent and volunteer at John Rogers Elementary and I wanted to share with you today how this current enrollment system does directly contribute to the learning loss of our students.

John Rogers was significantly impacted as you've heard both this year and last year.

In October 2023 we lost multiple teachers which forced mid-year class reshuffling.

That created chaos for families, but more importantly, it disrupted the instruction during the most critical months of the school year.

This past fall, our enrollment was under-predicted by about 70 students.

As a result, every classroom had over 30 students with too few teachers.

My own child was placed in an overcrowded, split class.

The teacher was clearly overwhelmed by the range of needs, and for weeks there was no extra support.

Students began falling behind quickly.

In October, well into the school year, the district finally approved more staffing, but it took even longer to finally assign the teachers to our school.

My child was moved to a new classroom with a new teacher pulled straight from another school.

Unfortunately, that teacher wasn't a good fit and many students became anxious about the school and going to school.

Within weeks, the teacher went on protected leave and a long-term sub took over.

That sub did their best, but this class included students with IEPs, multilingual learners, advanced students, none of whom have their academic needs fully met.

These disruptions caused real, measurable learning loss that these students may never recover from.

Next is Alexis Tran.

Good afternoon school board directors.

My name is Alexis Tran.

I'm a current junior in high school as well as a member of the NAACP Youth Council and I'm here speaking in opposition to the introduction item amending policy 4311. We've seen what happens when schools rely on policing.

Rather than building trust or responding to the underlying conditions students face, it creates a climate of fear and exclusion.

Studies show that having an officer in school leads up to a 400% increase in the number of students charged for disorderly concept.

This fuels the school-to-person pipeline, pushing students, especially students of color, out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system.

SEOs reinforce zero-intolerance policies that punish instead of support, that criminalize trauma rather than address it.

What students truly need is support.

They need more school counselors, more psychologists, and restorative justice practices that foster accountability, healing, and community.

These are the tools that strengthen relationships, uplift student voices, and help resolve conflict in meaningful, lasting ways.

If we're serious about safety, we have to be honest about what it takes.

Safety comes from meeting students' needs before harm occurs, not reacting after the fact with punishment.

Mental health struggles and trauma don't go away with the presence of a uniform.

They require care, trust, and a long-term commitment from adults trained to support students, not police them.

And students know this.

A recent survey conducted by the Keep Your Promise Coalition asked students how they felt about SEOs after being given a clear overview of what they are and what they do.

The results were overwhelming, with over 80% of the sample size of 47 saying that they would not feel safer with them in schools.

The next speaker is Melanie Martin.

Melanie Martin.

Hi, I'm Melanie Martin, a parent and classroom volunteer at John Rogers Elementary.

The SPS enrollment formulas have failed to account for shifting demographics in our Lake City neighborhood, which include refugee and immigrant families, families experiencing homelessness, and new low and mixed income housing construction.

between winter and spring of 2024, John Rogers' enrollment began to increase substantially from the fall, resulting in overcrowded classes in spaces too small to accommodate them, but no additional teacher support due to the two FTE policy.

I began volunteering to help Now, my son is from a well-educated and affluent family, and he will ultimately be fine.

But there are many other kids in his class, the ones that I most often work with, who may not be fine.

These include an incredibly bright Spanish-speaking student who spends most of her day effectively cut off from instruction because we do not have adequate multi-language learning support staff for a school that is over 40% multi-language learners.

It includes the kids whose reading and math are well below grade level, but who do start to get it with a little extra explanation and individualized encouragement, yet they're not getting that attention consistently in a chaotic classroom that is a direct result of SPS enrollment and allocation inequities.

To be perfectly clear, I love John Rogers.

My kids love John Rogers.

I am proud to be part of our diverse community and I am so grateful for the effort our principals, staff and teachers dedicated to creating an inclusive space that all of our students benefit from.

In many ways, John Rogers exemplifies the promise of Seattle Public Schools.

But that promise is ultimately empty if we cannot allocate resources to adequately support all of our students, especially our most vulnerable students at Title I schools.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Caitlin Murdock.

Caitlin Murdock.

Good evening, directors.

My name is Caitlin Murdoch, and I'm here to urge you not to pass the budget until Fred Podesta and Dr. Kurt Budelman restore full-time assistant principal support of Pathfinder K-8 and the other five option schools facing reductions in assistant principal support next fall.

For years now, we have routinely faced an annual overspend in the tens of millions of dollars.

Tens of millions of dollars that could be used on frontline educators and administrators.

This year alone, there's an expected $20 million rolling over.

Yet option schools such as Pathfinder are being unfairly penalized due to inaccurate and artificially low enrollment rejection.

Last spring, SCS froze Pathfinder's waitlist before the choice process concluded, stranding over 70 students and leaving more than 50 budgeted seats empty.

These enrollment freezes directly triggered staffing cuts, including the removal of half our assistant principal, a move that destabilizes our school and punishes students for a district decision they had no part in.

This isn't just a Pathfinder issue.

Across the district, option schools are bearing the brunt of staffing losses.

Eight of 15 option schools are projected to lose counselors, nurses, or administrators next year, while neighborhood schools gain over 140 staff, which they need.

This inequity undermines STS's commitment to student-centered budgeting.

At Pathfinder, 28% of students receive special education services, far above the district average of 17%.

These students need a full-time assistant principal to coordinate services, support teachers, and ensure safety.

This isn't a luxury.

It's basic support for student access and equity.

The SPS budget is not yet finalized.

You still have time to do what's right.

Fund the front line and restore the full-time assistant principal at Pathfinder and the other option schools facing cuts.

Show families, teachers and students that they matter more than spreadsheets.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Oliver Miska.

Good afternoon school board directors thank you for your volunteer service I just want to recognize that and the good faith effort you're making to engage in this complex issue.

I first want to thank also the students that came here to rally and testify today and also recognize that there's so many youth that couldn't join us that have been pushed out of neighborhoods like the Central District that are now in Kent and Renton and Tukwila.

I have the honor of both being a substitute teacher in Seattle Public Schools and helping organize students across the city.

And the demands haven't changed.

They haven't changed for over a decade.

And it's counselors, not cops, invest in restorative justice practices and invest in community-based violence interruption programs.

But none of these programs have been, A, either funded adequately or sustainably or implemented citywide.

So when the board passed the moratorium on SROs in 2020, there were calls for clear measures of accountability, and I know a lot of you have worked and made those calls yourselves.

But as we can see, even SPOG in the union, they were kicked out of MLK labor in 2020 for explicit racism and lack of accountability, but nothing's been changed to address that lack of accountability.

If we reinstate SROs and SEOs into our schools, the district and board will have no oversight or accountability of these police officers because the Seattle Police Officers Guild have one of the strongest contracts in the country.

Since 2022, we've seen bad faith efforts by SPD to manipulate public perception of the law claiming they are not allowed in our schools or must be invited in like they're some sort of vampire.

That's just not the case.

So, allowing officers into our schools right now is breaking the promise that we made to our students, all as a short-sighted compromise during an election year.

We need the state law changes if we want this accountability to be had, and we need a city council that will actually take action to address this lack of accountability in the contract.

Neither of these have happened yet, so neither should you pass this.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Samantha Fogg.

Samantha Fogg.

Samantha Fogg, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

co-president, PTSA.

And I want to start out by wishing everyone a half-pride and also reminding all that pride is about more than saying that we love each other.

It is about taking action to protect our trans youth, our LGBTQIA plus youth.

It is about making sure that Seattle Public Schools policy 321 is followed, that Right now, I am aware of multiple instances in this district where 3211 is not being uphill, where even the first step of the superintendent procedure has not been followed.

If we're going to take safety seriously, we need to listen to our students.

We need to listen to our families.

We need to have an engagement process that is not simply people coming to a school board meeting and speaking for two minutes.

We exist in the service of our students.

We are here to educate, support and to help be prepared for the world.

Our students board members have worked really hard all year in service of other students and on working to improve the efficacy of the work and the actions of the school board through improving the student school board policy.

I was disappointed that I heard about their work and comments and not agenda item at this school board meeting.

We must center our students.

We must do better.

They're scared to tell their administrators about being dead named in class because they hate retaliation and they just don't want to risk their college.

I don't think that it is appropriate to have students scared to ask for our policies to be followed.

We need to do better.

We need to protect our kids, support them, help them grow.

But we also need to let particularly our high school students to give them space to lead.

We need to give them the honor of listening to them when they speak.

And when our school board directors, when our student school board members work on a policy.

We need it on the agenda.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Janice White.

I'm Janice White and I'm the mom of three SPS graduates.

Two of my kids attended Garfield until 2023. I've seen firsthand the public safety challenges that shape the sense of urgency in addressing them.

but I've also experienced the harm that can be caused by having armed police at schools.

My autistic son's elementary school called the police on him, causing trauma.

That same year, another parent of a child at the same school arrived to find him face down on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, drenched in sweat and urine, and with several police officers standing over him.

Studies have consistently shown that armed officers in schools perpetuate inequities for students of color with disabilities and other marginalized groups with little evidence that they actually reduce or prevent violence.

I believe we must expand the proven strategies that are already working in our schools, investing in community-based organizations that build strong relationships with our students and through serving their needs, interrupt and prevent violence.

In addition we should partner with SPD to increase patrols near schools, especially at key times when students are arriving and leaving and at lunch.

Before we even consider bringing armed police back to any of our schools, we need to be sure that we have done deep community engagement.

We need to ask whether there is training available that is effective to ensure that police officers will not cause harm to marginalized students.

And we need accountability when families and students are concerned about potential misconduct.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Balvina Cortez.

Balvina Cortez.

Hello, my name is Belvina Cortez.

I came before you back in 2020 speaking on behalf of the Garcher Latinx community when the movement was to remove police officers.

I am here today to repeat my statement.

If the correct thing to do is to remove law enforcement on campus, that we need to have an alternative in place to ensure student safety.

Back in 2020, the Latinx community expressed they wanted to focus on improving relationships with law enforcement by creating community outreach programs, having police officers trained to deal with the community that they serve that included the neurodivergent community.

I hear some young people tonight saying essentially the same, to protect and to serve, not to punish student behavior.

In order to ensure student safety, even from those hired to keep them safe, policies, procedures must be created with the focus of providing resources and guidance, not criminalizing student actions.

We must also keep in mind that with such a diverse student population, one size does not fit all.

whatever works for Garfield might not work for West Seattle High what works for primary schools will not work for high schools it will be beneficial if the district could provide spaces at each school to hear from its communities being mindful of language barriers because if we're not at the discussion table decisions are made for us and not with us and to all the young people tonight thank you for speaking your heart the future is yours great job thank you

The next speaker is Alicia Spanswick Good evening my name is Alicia Spanswick and I am the co-president of the Garfield PTSA but I speak today only as a parent and community member I want to address the issue of police in schools and the upcoming discussion about bringing a school engagement officer back to Garfield These last couple of years at Garfield have been extremely traumatic for students and adults alike.

We are in crisis.

There have been five shootings on or near Garfield campus during the school day in the last two years.

One ended a life and another caused serious life-changing injury.

That is a crisis.

I don't pretend to have all the answers to this complex issue, but one thing I do know, more trusted adults on campus is critical to ending that crisis.

More adults include the amazing work of CBOs like Community Passageways and Wise Scholars, teachers, mental health professionals, and school staff.

And I believe under very specific constraints that police could be part of this network of adults.

I continue to hear that the SEO will not be part of discipline and that is the bare minimum.

I want this to be codified into the MOU specifically.

The example that I've been using is to say the SEO sees a fight and works to de-escalate that fight.

That's great.

Are they allowed to defer the discipline of the students involved in that fight to the school and act only as a witness or will they be obligated to conduct an arrest?

Could they call in a separate unit if an arrest or charges needed to be filed?

I don't know.

All of that should be written into an MOU under officer's discretion.

And if it cannot be, if SPD will not allow that, then I think we need to find other ways to ensure that they are officially not part of discipline or they cannot be invited back to campus.

The next speaker is Sarah Bromey.

After Sarah will be Erin Combs and then Castalia.

Hi, I'm ceding my time to another Garfield student, Noah Funk.

Good evening.

My name is Noah Funk and I go to Garfield High School.

I love my school and I trust the people inside of it.

I feel safe inside of my school.

However, every single day I walk up the stairs where Amara Murphy Payne was murdered last year.

The problem isn't inside our school.

It is outside.

We need SEOs outside to help the problem.

I want a safe environment for my students and my staff.

This is our school.

This is our community.

This is our safety that we are talking about.

We're the ones that show up every single day.

I strongly support the emplacement of SEOs outside of Garfield High School.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Erin Combs.

Erin, it looked like you were unmute.

If you could press star six again, Erin Combs.

We're not able to hear you, Erin.

I'm gonna go to the next speaker and I'll come back around to you.

The next speaker will be Castalia.

Hi, my name is Castalia Simone.

I am Cleveland High School PTSA president for the school year.

First, I want to thank President Taub and Director Hersey and Director Clark for attending our Zoom meeting last week.

I want to thank you for taking the time out to speak with Cleveland High School's community and hearing our voices and our concerns and answering our questions.

First of all, I also want to thank the Seattle School District for not limiting the cap at our school and hopefully it's not being limited at other toy schools.

However, we still have a problem with funding.

Funny should be equal to all schools.

There shouldn't be a cap with any school, regardless of a choice school or not.

Schools should not be pinned against each other.

That's another form of oppression.

And also, I'm sorry, but reading what Rebecca wrote in this right here, this flyer, it basically says the October count is pretty much a form of racism.

and I felt that way.

I have an older son who graduated from Garfield and now I have a senior who's graduating in a few days from Cleveland and it's a form of oppression.

I'm like, okay, are you guys trying to oppress us?

That's not okay.

It should be equal.

I know as just speaking from experience, when things change in the middle of the school year or even within the school year, me and my friends we did not do well in school and so if we're not having funding in the beginning of the school year that's another form of oppression and it limits success for our students not just our students and also within our staff and teachers it's unfair it's cruel and it's another form of oppression this should not be allowed at all it's not it's not okay

The next speaker is Katherine Ichinossi

Hello, my name is Katherine Ichinose, and I am an organizer for Seattle Student Union.

I work directly with SPS students from Franklin, Roosevelt, Nathan Hale, Lincoln, and more, many of whom could not be here today.

And I am testifying to or due to uphold the moratorium on SEOs as many other students and impacted communities have testified today.

when the school board passed the moratorium in 2020 it was an appropriate and essential response to a national reckoning on the police and the threats that they pose to a healthy and safe community and since then as a city we have not addressed the dangers that the police pose to our black and brown communities or to our queer communities who are recently brutalized by SPD.

Since 2020, we have invested in alternatives to policing who are more trusted by students, who are more effective in practice in schools, and who are more cost-effective than stationing police officers at schools.

They are more effective at preventing violence and at disrupting violence including organizations like Community Passageways who operate as violence interrupters in schools and are trusted and respected by students who feel that they can go to them in a crisis before it happens rather than responding with aggression to one that is already underway.

Putting armed engagement officers in schools creates a climate of fear that stands in the way of this violence prevention work that organizations like Community Passageways does and makes them less effective at preventing violence from happening.

in 2020 we promised to invest in that work like community passageways and that work is not yet finished and will not be finished if this board goes back on that promise.

Thank you.

The next speaker is David Jacobson.

David Jacobson.

After David it will be Elena McCollum and then Joanna Aretha Taylor.

I'm David Jacobson.

My daughter attends Garfield High School, which CBS reports is the site of more school shootings in the last 20 years than any other school in the United States.

According to the K-12 school shooting database, there have been 17 shootings incidents in Seattle since 1966, of which seven took place at Garfield.

All except one of those happened after 2020 when the school board's moratorium went into effect.

Last year there were six shootings incidents at Garfield.

In my daughter's class alone, one student was killed and another was severely wounded.

In contrast to what you've heard today, students do support police presence at the school.

According to a survey conducted by Garfield last fall, 61% of the 481 students who responded, about a third of the student body, feel comfortable with the idea of an officer inside the school.

Only 13% expressed discomfort.

46% say an officer inside the school would enhance their sense of safety, and the same number feel very positive about deploying police officers outside the school.

Moreover, the PTSA's Safe Schools Action Plan urges waiving the moratorium on SROs.

We must maintain community and mental health-based approaches to prevent gun violence and to stem school-to-prison pipeline.

But we need a well-trained, strictly defined, respectful police presence too, not none at all.

like Officer Benny Radford, who used to patrol Garfield until 2020. Hearing about Amar Murphy Payne's murder last year, he told the Seattle Times, I never should have left.

Those are my kids.

That was my school.

The most basic responsibility of a school board is to keep our children safe.

You are not doing that.

Thank you.

Next is Elena McCollum.

Elaine is a teacher that couldn't make it, but wanted to cede her time to a student.

We do need to have the person here in order for them to cede time.

I'm going to go to the next speaker on the list, which is Joanna Areza Taylor.

Good evening, members of the board.

I stand before you today as a proud member of the K-8 community, where we continue to go through transitions and hopeful about the future of our schools.

This year, due to an outdated formula and policies, our school, like many other KAs, are having their AP resource moved to part-time.

Our APs are simply essential to our schools and this is a decision that simply hurts our students and staff members and it needs to be rectified.

I urge you to take a simple step of just reading their job descriptions and think about how important their work can be to accomplish by being in a school building part-time.

It's just not possible and the ones who will suffer are their students who are supported by them.

I use Pathfinder as an example because it is my lived experience.

Our school has over 400 students and almost 28% of them have disabilities according to the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction.

By the job description, the AP is directly supporting those students, something they would not be able to do while being in the building only half the time and having other responsibilities on top of that.

Again, this is just affecting our kids.

I'm asking you to ask questions.

push for a change look into the decisions being made across k-28 schools and their assistants principal positions and how it affects the population in them and not just follow a blind formula which does not serve those who we are meant to protect the kids who are our future are the ones in danger and we got to do something about this thank you i'm going to go back now to aaron combs aaron

If you're on the line, please press star six.

This is Erin.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Awesome.

I gave my time to Alice Appleton, who's also on the phone.

Hi.

My name is Alice Appleton, and I'm a volunteer with All Together for Seattle School.

To date, there has been zero meaningful opportunity for public input on the budget.

In the absence of transparency, parents have taken it upon themselves to do a budget deep dive, which has revealed major concerns.

This was emailed to the board today.

For instance, nearly 380 million is allocated to district office staffing, with no public breakdown of how that money is spent.

Central office staff has grown from 27% to 36% of total staff since 2013. at the same time that student-facing staff and programming was cut.

Also, financial contradictions.

Every year since 2009, SPS has predicted a far worse deficit than reality, often ending with a surplus of $20 to $40 million.

So do we have a deficit or a surplus?

Without a financial oversight committee, how does the board know?

Here are my urgent requests.

One, bring back the finance oversight committee.

Two, make central office cuts before anything student facing.

Critically evaluate central office expenditures.

Three, process waitlists now and adjust staffing before October.

Mismanagement of the choice process has cost SPS up to 12 million in lost revenue last year less.

This hurts all students in our district.

4. Rebuild public trust by conducting an independent financial audit and hiring a superintendent from outside the district with a fresh perspective and the courage to break the ship.

Finally, on transparency, I want to call out proposed changes to public testimony buried on slide 121 of the ad hoc policy manual committee.

These changes would eliminate the ability to feed or share time during board meetings.

This is a deliberate move that would further silence working families and underserved communities furthest from educational justice.

During the horrific closures debate, you all saw parents do the ADM click race in order to cede time to others with less bandwidth and less flexibility, whose voices deserve to be heard.

We can all agree the testimony process is flawed, but if the board really means and cares about equity, the solution is not to restrict participation.

It's to remove barriers and expand access.

Thank you.

The next speaker is June Noe Ivers.

If June is here, this will be the 25th and final speaker.

Hi, I'm ceding my time to Fetawe Ghebramale and Leofalip Belyamande.

What's up, y'all?

Good afternoon.

I am a student at Nathan Hale High School.

I'm speaking in opposition to the introduction item, amending policy 4311. There's been a survey mentioned by people here, but in that survey, there are no mentions to the alternatives to policing.

So what we need is actual data on what those alternatives are, and in the survey we launched, we mentioned what those are, and we showed much more students actually showing that they are in opposition to police when they know and what community passageways are and what violence interrupters are.

Hello, my name is Vitaly Gurmariam.

I go to Franklin High School.

I want to speak about funding counselors instead of COPs.

COPs have systematically been racially profiling BIPOC communities, especially black and brown communities.

Most times the students are acting out.

It's due to the environment they're in.

These environments include home life, friends, gangs, drugs.

Instead of finding ways to help the students in improving their environment, the school systems ignore or punish these students, which cause more issues in the future and breaks the student's trust within the schools.

Students have asked for counselors, not COPS, which was supposed to be funded for $20 million but was reduced to $14 million.

Funding COPS would be double the amount we need for counselors.

Instead of paying double to the COPS who systematically have failed us, I urge you to put the funding into counselors and mental health resources in schools.

Thank you.

President Topp, that was the 25th speaker.

I want to thank everyone for taking their time out this evening to provide public testimony.

We are going to go into recess till 6.10, so that's seven minutes.

However, board directors, student board members want a photo with all of us, so...

They just requested it.

They're all here.

yeah so if we want to maybe congregate before our break right beneath the screen and maybe staff would be able to come and help take that photo that would be wonderful otherwise we will be back at 6 10.

Alright, I'm gonna call board directors back to the dais.

We're gonna get started here.

So, I have my two board directors who are online, but I'm missing Director Mizrahi, Director Sarju, Director Rankin, Director Briggs, and the student board directors.

We'll be coming back to order.

If you'd like to continue your conversations, if you could please step into the lobby.

Alright, here we go.

Director Rankin, Director Briggs, Director Sarju.

Technically, I guess we do have a quorum.

Folks, appreciate everyone being here tonight, but we are going to continue our agenda, so if you would like to continue your conversation in the foyer, that would be wonderful.

all right one more time we are going to continue our business if you would like to continue your conversations please head to the foyer Alright, we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

We have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda May I have a motion for the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda Second The approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Director Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

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

Director Sarju.

I'd like to remove item number five.

All right.

All right.

Hang on just a second.

Any others?

Okay.

May I have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended?

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

Okay.

Approval of the consent agenda as amended has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

All those in favor of the consent agenda as amended signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent agenda has passed unanimously.

We will now move to items removed from the consent agenda.

The item removed was item five.

Do we have a motion for the item removed?

So we'll make a motion, we'll see if there's a second and then we'll move into discussion.

I move that the school board approve resolution 2024-25-18 certifying that the proposed Aki Kurose middle school modernization and addition project will not create or exacerbate racial imbalance as defined by...

That's not number five.

It is...

Yeah, that's number five.

Five, the number five...

So let's continue through this process.

When we go through, we'll do a vote and go through discussion.

No worries.

Director Briggs.

Vice President Briggs, I'm sorry.

That is okay.

I am just fine with that.

Will not create or exacerbate racial imbalance as defined by Washington Administrative Code 392-342025.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, so then we will move to a roll call vote.

Director Sarju would like to speak for just a moment.

Just so people aren't confused, I got my pages out of order and I don't have any problems with the consent agenda item number five, just for the record.

I know, Fred, you sitting over there like, why is Sarju doing that?

It was a mistake.

I made a mistake.

Thank you.

Alright, so that concludes discussion.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, I call for the vote, please.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Aye.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Hersey?

Aye.

President Taup?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

That concludes the consent portion of the agenda, and we're going to move on to the action items for tonight.

the we will start or may so the action item on today's agenda the selection of school board student members for 2526 can I get a motion for this item is this I'm reading this okay

I move that the board select Josephine, Mangelson, Isabel, Masudi, and Sabi Yun as the three school board members, school board student members for the 2025-26 school year.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Alright, so we have motioned and seconded.

We are joined this evening by one student from the Student Member Selection Committee.

This student committee reviews and recommends candidates for student board members to the board.

This year we received over 90 applicants.

for our three positions representing 17 of the 19 high schools.

So the most number of high schools we've received applications from before.

My goal next year is 19 out of 19. I'm gonna personally work on those last two schools.

I wanna thank the committee for their work and I'm gonna pass it over to one of the committee members, Myles Von Lehman, who will introduce or talk about this item for us.

Yes, thank you President Topp.

I and the rest of the student board member selection committee worked together reviewing written applications, evaluating them based off their demonstration of leadership, commitment to community and equality, and collaboration skills aligned with Policy 1250. We chose seven candidates to interview, and after reviewing interviews and letters of recommendation, we had the hard job of choosing three finalists.

But after much debate, we selected Sabi Yun from Ballard High School for their dedication to representing SPS students and determination to make a positive impact on the education of students.

Isabel Masoudi from Roosevelt High School because of how she demonstrated efforts to make her own school more welcoming environment and her leadership abilities and her ambitions for the district.

And finally, Josephine Mangelson from the Skills Center and West Seattle High School for her demonstration of communication skills and her ability to speak not only for Lincoln High School students of all of SPS, but also for elementary school students and educators.

These three students we are recommending represent a diversity of viewpoints, experiences, and strengths.

We are excited to see the work that these students will do on behalf of SPS.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Miles for that wonderful introduction.

As he's up here, do board directors have questions for him?

All right, thank you so much.

I will just say two quick things.

We are very excited to have Director Yoon continue on the board and continue the work on Policy 1250 and hopefully take it to completion here.

And also look forward to, well, if this passes, swearing in the three new, or two new, but three board directors at the end of August.

So, seeing no other question, I just want to say thank you.

Thanks for doing that.

It's a really important part of our process and thanks for being here today.

And of course all the other selection committee members who couldn't make it here today.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, can we have the vote please?

Director Hersey?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Director Rankin Director Sarju Vice President Briggs President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Amazing.

We are going to move to the tables for the introduced items because there is a PowerPoint and it's difficult to see on this screen as well as multiple folks to speak for the different items.

So we'll take a minute to transition but we're not recessing, just heading over to the tables.

Alright, first we are going to move to the first item for introduction, approval of resolution 2024-25-19 fixing and adopting the 2025-26 budget.

I'm going to pass it over to Assistant Superintendent of Finance, Dr. Buddleman.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

I just want to start out following Director Rankin's introduction with some good news.

First and very importantly, we have a clicker at the table tonight for the first time.

So I'll be advancing my own slides.

That is really exciting stuff for me.

Applause from Chris.

Secondly, just want to rest on this title slide quickly for a moment and recognize the students and the good work that's going on in schools around the art programs.

I'll just read off from left to right the artists of these pieces.

Rio Galas, the ninth grade is the piece on the left of the PowerPoint there.

Sylvia Peters in eighth grader is the second piece.

Bertikon Werdekal, I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing the names, is an eighth grader in the middle piece.

Emily Alaranta is an eighth grader with the fourth piece.

And Scarlett Shimada, senior, is the fifth piece there.

So trying to feature the student works in our publication of the budget bill.

There's a brief agenda for tonight.

You can all read that and see this is a general outline of how the presentation will go.

The budget hearing which follows will be public comment responsive to this presentation and to the budget book.

The objectives of this presentation are to summarize the budget book, the 191 page document that's been online for the last couple weeks and some of you have hard copies with you.

Another objective of this presentation is the introduction of the two related board action reports that follow on your agenda.

So this is the fixing and adopting of the budget and the extension of the Interfund loan.

and the third objective of tonight is to receive any remaining questions the board may have or unanswered questions you may have so we can clear those up tonight and or if they're more complex questions or need more complex answers be responsive to those between now and the vote on the budget on July 1st.

Just to review with the board, these were the budget development goals and principles that have guided this process since we started last August, reviewing the process and engaging in the budget development for the 25-26 school year.

The timeline, we're on the third row of the chutes and ladders game, as Director Harris liked to refer to this.

So we're June 4th, where we're introducing the formal budget for approval or consideration on July 1st.

So we're a couple steps from the final part of this process, and then in August will be time for assessment of this year's process and any changes that should result for future processes.

This is a repeat, but I thought it was good context for the details that will follow in the rest of this presentation.

We talked about this two weeks ago.

Some highlights of what this budget contemplates.

First of all, the budget is $1.35 billion in the general fund for next year.

and eliminates the projected 104 million dollar deficit with some not ongoing solutions.

Some of those solutions are ongoing, like the legislative and the levy increase, but some other one-time solutions to make it a balanced budget for the 25-26 school year.

Over 70% of the general fund is being allocated for teaching and teaching support activities.

I'm trying to connect this to the guardrails that are being discussed at this table in other meetings.

One of the guardrails is around this topic and trying to keep that teaching and teaching support activities an appropriate percentage.

Just to reiterate, all schools would remain open for the 25-26 school year with this budget.

And there aren't any reductions that are made intentionally around teachers or class sizes, increases to class sizes, program reductions, assistant principals, librarians, or school discretionary funding.

However, as we heard from many community members tonight, there are some changes that are happening or contemplated to happen in schools as a result of staffing and enrollment changes going on in the community.

This budget does include an additional $2.3 million investment in safety and security going forward and it was developed through seven of these public study sessions, board engagement and other engagements throughout the year.

Quick summary of the highlights of how the $104 million deficit would be closed for next year.

Again, the bar that's on your agenda for tonight for introduction is to extend a portion of the Interfund loan the district took last year and repay up to $17.6 million of that in this coming budget year, leaving around $11 million as a balance.

Utilizing some unrestricted fund balances from 23-24, the year that closed a couple years ago, as a one-time solution to the gap that's happening for next year.

Deferring, repaying the rainy day reserve account.

The district has a policy where you would establish and maintain a rainy day fund.

A few years ago, one of the solutions was to utilize that to help balance that year's budget.

This would defer a repayment to that rainy day fund.

There was a fairly successful in the grand scheme of things legislative session with some further investments in special education and maintenance or material supplies and operating costs and raising of the cap for local levy revenue collection.

So this contemplates using those funds and then there were some reductions in central office budgets that we talked about in some detail at the last meeting at this table.

sort of the top level, how this would potentially impact the fund balance of the four funds that the district manages.

The four funds are the general fund, which is the majority of the conversation that I'm facilitating with you over the course of the last year.

The Associated Student Body Fund, the Capital Fund, and the Debt Service Fund.

And so you can see there the projections that we have for what the fund balances would be at the beginning of the the fiscal year in September 1st of this coming year and what if the entire budget was spent, the entire $1.3 billion were spent next year as the budget contemplates what that would leave in terms of a fund balance going forward in each of the different funds.

So that's the information on that slide.

Enrollment, so the next two slides are sort of joint slides.

This is head count of enrollment, which is what sort of is the common way of referring to enrollment, and you'll see the district's enrollment the last couple years has been flat-ish and is projected to be flat-ish for the coming school year in terms of head count.

The way the budget looks at enrollment is through AAFTE, which is different from headcount.

And because of the machinations of OSPI and the state, these data exclude Running Start and Open Doors programs.

So there is a difference in those numbers.

It's around how students are counted differently.

And the graph that you're looking at there, the blue bars, are what was budgeted.

if you take the 24-25 school year you'll see the blue bar is shorter than the red bar so at that year at this point in time anticipated lower enrollment than what actually happened in that school year and the budget was adjusted accordingly throughout the year to take into account that there were more students that came than were anticipated at this time in the year you see the projection there for next year We will line up what actually happens, that October count in the AFT, and we'll make adjustments accordingly to the budget if more or less students come to Seattle Public Schools in the fall.

Are there questions around that?

I see either, okay.

So it's the way the state counts students, not butts in seats, as they say, but rather what the services are that those students are getting.

So if you're a half-time student in Running Start and a half-time student in your school, in this instance you would count as a half of an FTE for the purposes of the budget allocations.

Some kids don't count as whole people.

Oh, I understand that.

What is AAFE?

What does that stand for?

Annual average?

Annual average?

Is it on there and I can't see it?

I probably just can't see it.

Thank you.

Yeah, average annual full-time equivalent.

So the difference between budget and actual last year, How does that, like, what we learn from it, what are the things we learn from that that then are baked into the projection, the budget projection for this coming year?

Like, Did we find out why we were off and did we bake that into the new projections, I guess?

So the enrollment forecast, which is different than the budget, the biggest outlier was we typically have a little bit of enrollment trough in sixth grade in middle school and we saw less of that in this past fall than we typically forecast for.

So it's hard to know, so is that a new trend?

Is that a new thing?

But that was the bulk of it.

And just while we're on this point, and so that was a happy surprise and we got four million in, four point some million in revenue because of that higher student count.

As we did those adjustments, we know people, nobody likes those fall adjustments, but my recollection is we ended up spending every penny of that on staff.

So as we keep having this enrollment discussion about if we lose students, what that does to the revenue, yes, the revenue goes up, and the expenditures go up and the revenue goes down and the expenditures go down.

So mostly, if we're lucky, we kind of break even.

We want the students, we absolutely want the students.

We want to be a provider of choice, but this, we need to do this better and we need to allocate these resources better, but it's just not that simple that, well, we hadn't gotten those 400 students and hadn't gotten the 4 million in revenue, that that would be some sort of loss.

It's the net that matters, not just the revenue.

So we'll dive into the general fund in a little bit more detail.

This slide talks about the sources or the resources that are feeding that $1.3 billion for next year.

You'll see about two-thirds of that is from the state.

The levy proportion is going up slightly due to that levy cap being raised by $500 per student for all school districts.

That's changing from about 15 or 16 percent to 17 percent going forward.

and then you'll see a dip in federal funding.

That's primarily the way the state or the state and the feds are, they jointly fund the special education safety net funding and over the last couple of years the state has increased their proportion of that spending and the federal government has decreased the way that that sort of goes together.

The other reduction there in the federal funding is there was a blip in the previous year because the district got some additional funding for title students late in the game because the poverty levels came in higher than anticipated so the schools didn't have time to spend that in the year it was received.

It carried forward into the next year and caused that increase and is going back to the normal levels for next year in 25-26.

I just want to be clear that none of those decreases on the federal government currently on the screen have anything to do with changes from the administration in Washington D.C.

at this point in time.

Part of the ongoing struggle to understand this information is the school districts report their financial situation three different ways, activity, program, and object.

So this is the first of those three.

which is by activity and see there's five sort of high-level activities, teaching activities, teaching support, principal support, other support, and central administration.

As I said earlier, teaching activities and teaching support combined continue to be over 70.8%.

You'll see a slight decrease in teaching activities.

that's partially a function of projected enrollment, and it's also a function of moving some coding to a more appropriate place.

So substitutes on contract had been in the teaching activities activity previously.

As we continue to refine the budget information, those were moved into the central administration or the human resources line.

So you see a slight increase in their spending if you looked at the detail in the budget book.

The primary decrease in teaching activities is related to substitutes on contract, just moving from one activity to another.

And the other thing that may pop out to you is the increase in other support activities.

And that's primarily driven by increases in transportation expenses.

There was a change, a GASB change in how subscription-based technology contracts are accounted for.

So they show up as a large amount in one time and it's accounted for in other support activities.

And then the Interfund loan repayment is also in that other support activities.

The main driver of the real things that are going on increase and other sport activities is increases in transportation costs for Seattle Public Schools.

You'll see central administration is also up slightly.

Largest drivers of that is the switch from the teaching activities that substitutes on contracts and then legal expenses for the school district continue to go up fairly significantly over time.

and just, we've talked about this before, that central administration activity, if you compare the Seattle Public Schools across similar districts in the state of Washington, this is typically about the middle of those range in terms of the percentage of the total budget.

The next slide is just a graphic of that.

I'm trying to outline that the majority of the spending is in teaching activities, more than half of it.

We do get questions and if we double down on the guardrail metric being around teaching and teaching support, want to continue to make sure people have a clean understanding of what that entails, so have just provided a slide with those definitions.

So teaching is not just the teachers and their salaries, it is their salaries, so the direct instruction, but it also includes instructional materials, basic instructional and student supplies, but it does not include textbooks or software.

And teaching support is services related to teaching and student well-being, such as counseling, pupil safety, health-related services, instructional professional development, textbooks, and instructional software.

So I just want to make sure that there's growing understanding of what those are, especially if they become a part of the ongoing metrics of how to measure the guardrail adherence.

The second way of looking at the expenditures that the state requires is by program.

You'll see again there continues to be growth, or not again, I haven't talked about this yet, but there's growth there you see in special education spending.

So from 272 million and 298 million, needs of students continue to increase in that category.

So you see that's the main significant amount of increase in spending along with the support services.

Again, that's where the transportation contracts and things of that nature are embedded in the program look at this information.

And then finally, by state object, You'll see a couple of things moving around there.

The one that caught my eye and probably catches others' eyes the most is the purchase services.

Again, this is related to transportation.

Our contract with our bus providers is a contract and a purchase service.

Also some of the special education contracts with outside providers fall into that line.

Utilities fall into that line.

Insurance is going up dramatically for Santa Public Schools and other school districts.

And then legal costs in that.

So outside counsel that's hired by the district are the primary drivers of those purchase services increases.

and that was the most sort of significant change in terms of percentage on this slide.

So I wanted to provide a little more detail on that.

Much of that is in the budget book as well for folks who want to look at that later.

And then finally, the material supplies and operating costs.

So the state has a...

antiquated formula for how this is reported and it's constantly evolving.

Director Rankin was probably in some of those conversations at Olympia this year.

So this slide represents the way the Seattle Public Schools have typically provided this information to its board by these categories along the left side, technology, utilities, insurance, etc. the state for this year is combining that all into one number the bottom line there the total but we decided just to keep consistency and consistent information we would for one more year provide this information this way the takeaway from this slide is that Seattle Public Schools is slightly underfunded for material supplies and operating costs, and also there's a lot of capital transfers to supplement the operating costs of Seattle Public Schools.

So you'll see in the middle column there the deficit the state gives the district 75.8 million.

The expenditures as defined, and none of this is people, this is just material supplies and operating costs.

is $76.3 million, so a slight small deficit there.

This does not show what is charged directly to capital.

The next column shows what's transferred of those costs to capital, so the district, by using its capital funds, is freeing up $22.7 million in additional resources to resource schools, so because of the The capital fund and the investments of it, the $22.7 million is used for things that are underfunded such as the special education program, the transportation program, substitute costs, the security staffing, underfunding of staff cost of living adjustments and things of that nature.

So I wanted to provide that information.

and then finally, the Associated Student Body funds.

New staff member in the accounting team, Chris Johnson, did a great job this year collecting all this information from the schools and this is a compilation of that information.

You'll see the schools are planning to bring in about $7.2 million in revenue and spend about $6.6 million of it for the coming year.

Approving this, the Associated Student Body budget is part of the board's requirements for this year, so presenting that.

And then debt service.

I think this is the second to last year that the capital fund will be paying off the debt service for the John Stanford Center building.

And so this shows how that will be and what the debt service payments will be on that for the coming year.

And then finally the capital fund, the most important number to see on this page is the $471 million in the right most column about in the middle.

That's the anticipated spending on building projects for the 25-26 year.

And finally, the four-year forecast.

The budget of projected enrollment is that $49,940.

You'll see there the resources anticipated in the general fund are the $1.2 billion.

The expenditures anticipated are $1.3 billion.

And then if everything happened as it's written in this book, all of the revenue came in as anticipated and all of the expenditures happened, that would result in an $89 million reduction in the district's fund balance.

The district's fund balance does continue to erode over time.

It won't likely erode at this amount for the coming year, but this is a way of looking at it the way the state requires us to say, what are your resources, what are your expenditures, and what would that impact on fund balance be if the budget played out exactly as it's written in the documents you submit to the state.

I think that's it.

Okay, we're gonna go into questions.

I have three quick things just to provide some information.

One, I think we heard strongly at our last budget work session that the timeline wasn't working for us and regarding budget and resource allocation.

This is something we are gonna chat more about and have a deep dive into at our board retreat.

I believe staff will be coming with a proposal.

So just so folks are aware about that.

Also, Director Rankin raised some federal concerns.

Not a large portion of our retreat, but we will have just a preview of essentially the answers that she got and an opportunity to have a little bit of discussion on some concerns there.

Third, after the hearing today on the budget, if we do have more questions, we will have an opportunity at our retreat to ask them on the budget.

So those are the three sort of housekeeping things, but want to open it now up for discussion.

Director Sargio.

I just want to ask the same exact question that I asked last time because I'm not sure I see it's possible that I missed it.

I stated earlier, I am a little bit foggy.

I actually don't feel very good right now.

Do we have a plan or a solution or whatever terminology for the upcoming years on how to eliminate the deficit?

I mean, I know, Dr. Bettleman, you and I had an exchange, but I don't want my question answered with a question like that's the $100 million question, because that is the question that I'm asking.

Did you represent tonight?

I know that there's some new stuff that we haven't seen, or I think you presented more extensive.

I don't know if new is the accurate term, but I'm still not clear on how we're going to close this deficit because basically if we don't, we're mortgaging our kids' future.

I'm going to just keep saying that because this is about kids.

It's not about the adults.

So what is the answer?

And if the answer is we don't have a plan yet, that's fine, but we need to state that because I keep coming to these budget meetings, and granted, I am not a finance person.

I'm a social worker, I'm a public health, I'm a midwife.

I do those things all really well, but this is not in my wheelhouse of sophisticated understanding.

So this budget does not outline a long-term plan for sustainability of Seattle Public Schools.

This is to get us through 2526 using the new revenue from the state and the levy and some one-time resources.

Hopefully, as a result of this strategic planning process, there'll be some opportunity to develop that longer-term plan in conjunction with the task force that's being assembled at the direction of the board.

And I guess the only points I would add to that are some of the, that we have talked about are some of the things we entertained as options for this year that didn't do.

We talked about school budgets.

We talked about changes to transportation.

We talked about additional fees.

Those things are, and we were able not, to get started on that this year, because we wanted to see what the other revenue sources would be, but those will be at least options and building blocks for how we get to a sustainable budget.

All right, we're gonna go to Director Clark, but I'm just gonna remind folks, I'm gonna keep us on a tight two minutes again, just because we have a lot to cover before eight.

Director Clark.

Okay.

Thanks for that reminder, President Topp.

I have one, two, three, four, five.

I have about eight questions.

So maybe I'll just ask one or two now and then bring them with me to the rest of them with me to the retreat.

I think that's on Saturday.

Yes.

Okay.

So my first, let's see.

my first question has to do I think it was with on slide three there was a bullet point about how we're not making any staffing changes but then we are making staffing changes due to enrollment or reduction it's bullet number five could could you please explain to me like What enrollment scenario would lead to dropping an assistant principal from full-time to half-time?

So the weighted staffing standards model has a matrix of sorts where if a school falls under a certain number of teachers as driven by the model that causes an assistant principal funding or takes away an assistant principal funding.

So it's a function of the teachers and the teachers are a function of the students.

and I can get a lot more detail on that.

The detail of that is in the purple book and we can talk about that whenever you want to.

Happy to talk more about that.

Okay, and then just as a follow-up to that, if the enrollment numbers increase after the start of the school year and the number of teachers increase, would that assistant principal go from being half-time back to full-time?

the way the district has done that in the past, which doesn't mean that's the way it will always be, the adjustments of that nature were simply around the teachers and not of the other support staff in the school.

That's how the model was currently written, but that's what's happened in the past, yes.

Okay, and then I think we can get into the three goals for the budget on Saturday, so I guess I'll just ask about the legal costs.

I'm just curious, how do we project what our legal costs are going to be for an upcoming school year?

I think a lot of it's based on history and lead counsel Narver's office anticipating what outside counsel will be needed to supplement the internal staff and what lawsuits are sort of what stages they're at.

I'm not the person projecting that and I'm sure we can get a more complete answer from lead counsel Narver.

Okay, that would be great.

Thank you and I'll save the rest of my questions for Saturday.

If you do want to send them to me in advance, happy to try and answer them fully and be ready for that on Saturday.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm happy to send them to you.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm stepping in for President Topp.

Director Mizrahi.

You like Director Clark.

I have a lot of questions that I'll save for the retreat, but I'm just, I'm going back and forth between slide or page 11 and 25 and just trying to understand, the 20 okay so on the four-year forecast it looks like we're forecasting on page 25 89 million dollars in contributions from the fund balance but then it looks like on page 11 the 25 26 resources that the fund balance is less than that amount so I'm just trying to understand the difference so are we getting what happens if that fund balance is negative?

Or am I just reading this wrong?

I'm trying to follow the question.

Sorry, so on page 11, when I look at fund balance and go over to 2526, it shows 78.9 million in fund balance in the general fund.

I see that.

Is that right?

Yes.

That's what's being used to balance the 25-6 budget.

That's what's being used.

So we have more than that in our funds.

Yeah.

There's approximately last year in I think it was 111. Some of that's restricted for different things.

But the total fund balance I believe is 111 million.

So this contemplates using some of that that's unrestricted.

Got it.

the $42 million from the 23-24 year that was a function of the end of the ESSER funds and some legislative funding that happened sort of mid-year in that year and a couple of other items that I don't recall off the top of my head.

So why is that number different than on page 25?

So 25 is trying to represent if all of the resources come in as anticipated, the 1.263 million and all of the spending happens, the 1.35 million, the gap, and that would be 89 million.

I think, and I'll have to double check this, I think the difference there is the loan would be outstanding and it doesn't run through the fund balance, and that's that $11 million difference.

That's the $11 million difference.

But I'm going to double check that before I commit to that.

Okay, yeah, we can talk about it on Saturday.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Is that it for you, Director Mizrahi?

Okay.

Director Rankin.

Thanks.

I actually don't have any new questions because I don't see any new information.

And I also, I'll just flat out say it, I don't think it's the best use of board retreat time to do work that should have already happened.

but that's where we are.

What I want to see from a budget, I trust and believe staff to provide a budget that is balanced.

But a balanced budget doesn't mean it's the budget that we need to serve students.

I know I've said this to Dr. Buttleman before so hopefully it doesn't come as a total surprise but in the current form I can't vote yes on this budget because it doesn't I do not see an alignment towards meeting the needs of our students and I don't see any changes in staffing allocation or resource allocation from two years ago to now.

And the commitment that had been made to us since the direction to align the budget to student needs in 2023 hasn't been met.

and so I don't expect some perfect turnaround but I do expect some steps towards progress and what it actually looks like to align resources with student need and I just don't.

Also in terms of the object, the three different ways that the state describes the funding, that seems kind of mysterious.

WASDA has a really, really good set of like six different budget trainings.

You can do them in person in conferences or you can just go online and look at them.

I've taken, I think, four of them, maybe one of them twice.

And it's really helpful in just understanding what these numbers mean because actually you don't need an accounting degree to be on the school board and I actually believe that a balanced budget will be produced to us.

We have state audits to confirm that we're meeting with state laws but what our job is is to make sure that we're spending our resources in the best way we can to meet student needs and so many things have come up over the past two years that are not, there's no reflected changes.

I don't I just don't really I kind of feel like I'm slamming my head against a wall but until I see progress on changing the way we allocate our resources.

Not just, you know, moving line items up and down.

I mean, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and that's what our budget feels like.

Director Yoon?

Yes, thank you.

For the ASB funding, what does the process look like in terms of checking how funding is being allocated to different school programs and extracurriculars?

And is there any communication happening with ASB leaders directly in this process?

I know there's communication with ASB leaders.

I don't know the process myself.

I haven't been involved in that, but we can get someone who has to provide a better answer to that.

Sorry, but I was asking, like, how do you check how the funding is being, like, allocated?

Is that part of your, like, responsibility or is...?

No.

Okay.

it's actually technically in state law a school board responsibility and it's been nested into the full budget approval instead of us approving it independently and I believe that's something we can work on since you're staying we should look at the ASB policy I think it would be a really great opportunity both for transparency but also for students to have a that conversation with each other for the ASB to actually present their budget annually to the board and have a meeting together about how that works but we're really far away from that but in state law it's the board's job to annually approve the ASB budget and I don't know when but sometime in the past somebody decided that the way to be compliant with the law was just to nest it in to the full budget and it doesn't ever get talked about.

So I'm glad that you zeroed in on that.

Director Mizrahi?

Okay.

All right.

I think you're up for the next introduced item as well.

Approval of the board resolution 2024-20, authorizing an amendment to the schedule for repayment of the inter-fund loan.

So I tried to get away with using the presentation for that, but I can do a quick introduction of this.

So this is a request to authorize extension of the repayment schedule for the Interfund loan, one of the short-term solutions in the budget presentation we just had.

was to extend that loan and repay up to $17.6 million.

The legislature provided some extra time for districts who took advantage of this to have balanced budgets from two to four years, and so this resolution would authorize the district to continue that loan, a portion of that loan, into the 25-26 school year.

Further questions from directors?

Okay.

Those were the two budget items.

Again, post-hearing this evening, we will have an opportunity at the retreat once more to have a discussion and hopefully also have a discussion on timeline.

But we'll move into our next item, which is, next introduced item, which is amendment to board procedure 3,520 BP student fees, fines, or charges.

And I think We are doing a little staff trade-off.

The staff person introducing us will be the director of culinary services, Erin Smith.

Thank you.

Aaron Smith, Director of Culinary Services.

The purpose of this bar is to increase paid meal prices in accordance with Board Policy 3520. This price adjustment is required to comply with federal lunch pricing guidelines, which mandate that the average price charge for paid meals must not be lower than the federal reimbursement rate.

To meet these requirements, the proposed increase is 55 cents per meal.

This charge will bring the district into compliance with the state auditor.

It is important to note that this price increase applies only to full-paid student lunches.

Students who qualify for free and reduced meals, as well as those attending community eligibility schools, house bill sites, will continue to receive their first meal at no cost.

For further context, we have also included a comparison of lunch rates from neighboring districts.

The last time the district made adjustments to meal prices was school year 21-22.

Questions?

Looking for director's questions, Director Rankin.

Thanks.

From my own understanding, I want to ask you a question and just have you tell me if I'm understanding it correctly.

The increase is because the federal government only reimburses at a certain rate, and to get the reimbursement, we have to charge up to a certain level.

So we're kind of filling that gap.

Correct.

Our average meal prices cannot be lower than the federal reimbursement rate.

The formula is the amount of students that pay elementary prices and secondary prices.

That average meal price needs to be higher than the federal reimbursement rate.

Okay.

Because we just had a budget conversation, I want to clarify that we're not like, oh, here's a great way to fill some budget.

We'll charge kids more for food.

So just to clarify that it's to align with what the reimbursement rate is.

I mean, costs have changed for everybody on everything, so.

And the federal reimbursement rate has gone up, but our prices have not gone up.

So what that means, and the language in this says, this prevents paid student lunches from being subsidized by federal funds.

So in other words, we maintain the federal funding to pay for our students.

They want to make sure that we're not...

Correct.

...getting from students and from federal government for the same...

Right, and paid student lunches, yes.

So that's a good question, but yeah.

Thank you.

Director Mizrahi.

There we go.

If we didn't raise the prices, would we lose the federal funding or it would just be capped at the amount that we charge?

If we didn't raise the prices, then the district would have to subsidize for that cost, for that difference.

The difference between, so we'd still get federal money, we'd have to subsidize the difference between the federal reimbursement and the amount under that we're charging?

Correct.

Got it.

Okay.

Understood.

All right, questions?

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Erin.

It's great to see you.

All right, so this next one, I have to read the whole title, and I'm so sorry for this.

Review of board governance policies in the thousand series and approval of revisions amendment to board policy number 1000 legal status and operation 1005 responsibilities and authority of the board 1100 2 board member orientation 1,104 board member resignation renamed board member resignation and vacancy 1,210 annual organizational meeting slash election of officers renamed election of officers 1,220 board officers and duties of board members 1,240 Committees 1310 policy adoption and suspension creation of manuals and superintendent procedures renamed board policies manuals and superintendent procedures 1400 meeting conduct order of business and quorum renamed board meetings 1,450 absence of board member 1,731 board member compensation and expenses renamed board member compensation expenses and insurance 1,810 annual goals and objectives renamed board governance goal setting and self evaluation and 1822 training and professional development for board directors slash participation in school directors association renamed board professional development and participation in school directors association repeal of board policy number 115 vacancies 1410 executive or closed sessions 1420 proposed agendas and consent agendas 1430 audience participation 1440 minutes 1732 board member insurance 1820 evaluation of the board and board procedure 1430 board procedure audience participation okay now that that's taken up all the time and we've had nice staff turnover lots of work done by the ad hoc policy manual review committee also a nice 148 page document that goes along with it I want to talk through a little bit about procedure and then we've got the ad hoc policy review committee here who's going to talk to this first the chair of it Director Rankin Vice President Briggs and Director Clark but tonight we are just going to do introduction and on for timing purposes our goal is to have questions and workshopping at the June 11th ad hoc policy committee meeting where all members I plan to be there because I have questions and want to chat through things at June 11th at noon we can talk for discussions edits or say whether there are amendments that we want to bring all of those things so workshopping it then and having most of the discussion then before action on this item so with that kind of laying out the process here I'm going to turn it over to Director Rankin

Thank you, President Taup.

Yeah, so this lengthy package is not a sudden appearance.

It's reflective of the current recommendations from the ad hoc policy manual review committee for updates to our 1000 series policies, which are policies that apply to the board of directors.

and we've been reviewing these over the course of six public meetings this year and conducted a thorough review of these policies, identifying areas where revisions should be proposed to the full board.

We, in some cases, made very minor updates.

In most cases, it was to try to provide more clarification for ourselves, future board members, and the public about why we do what we do and where it's documented.

And so a lot of the policies that are recommended for repeal are because we have collapsed them into other policies.

So instead of having the agenda meeting and the audience, whatever, we have a meetings policy where the content is, I think, been trimmed also for efficiency.

It is contained now in one new policy on meetings.

As a person with ADHD, just in awe of Ellie's executive function skills to track all of these changes.

and all the different input from the board members, but if anybody wants to really dig in and didn't attend our meetings, you can look through past meeting materials and see this whole matrix of where we were in the process, what kind of changes we were looking at, and so on and so forth, and it's color-coded, and you can kind of follow the path that way if you weren't along with us for the ride in our meeting.

So there's some minor updates, some pretty significant rewrites or consolidation, and then there were some that we reviewed and didn't make immediate revisions to because we felt that it needed a larger conversation that was more than our committee was charged with, that there are some that are flagged for We've reviewed these for now and recommend that the full board dive deeper into these together and provide recommendations before we update it.

So throughout this process, we also identified some potential gaps where we might want to add to our policy manual.

And, yes, and then those that might require more extensive revisions.

And, of course, policy is always flexible and movable.

And so nothing gets etched in stone.

This is where we are now, where we're recommending now.

And any policies could be taken up again immediately or in two years or whatever.

And so all of this is hoping that we are creating a more solid foundation in direction and governance.

And also our next phase then is establishing a regular cadence of reviewing these so we don't arrive at a time where So, as President Topps said, we have already scheduled a committee meeting on June 11th.

and we will be meeting as a committee to address any questions that may come in between now and then or for directors who want to join us at that meeting and provide questions so that we don't get into OPMA issues could you anyone who directors who have any questions between now and then please send them directly to Ellie so that she can compile and then we can all look at them together in a public meeting and also Ellie has also offered that staff is available if directors have any technical questions or want to get into a deeper one-on-one conversation about some changes she has offered that staff are available to do that so please reach out to Ellie and let her know and thank you for making yourself available for that.

And if my committee members have nothing else to add or Ellie, that is the introduction of this package.

And I'm going to say, if there are no burning questions, we'll continue on.

And I will say thank you, Director Rankin and to your committee for meeting as a committee and taking care of these and producing this package.

I appreciate it.

And I did take Ms. Wilson-Jones up on her offer to walk me through.

She has a great matrix.

It is extremely helpful.

And even though she is leaving the board office, she is still willing and able to help with that work.

So please take her up on that.

She's still ours for a little bit longer.

five more days.

So thank you.

I am looking at board directors.

We are moving into our final item of introduction.

Do we want a five-minute break?

Okay, we are going to take a five-minute break then.

We will be back at 725. And we're going to be up here because we have multiple presenters.

So five-minute break, 725 for the last item on our agenda before our budget hearing.

Gonna lose everyone before I'm done talking.

All right, I'm asking board directors to please return to the tables.

We are a minute past our deadline.

Hello, there we go.

All right.

We're going to...

joined back together and Sarah and Brandon are online.

All right, we are moving into our last item for introduction.

I'm going to first read it into the record.

This is not as long as item number four.

Amendment to board policy number 3432 emergencies, 4,210 weapons prohibited for adults and visitors, renamed firearms and other dangerous weapons prohibited.

4,010 relations with law enforcement child protective services in the county health department renamed district relationships with law enforcement and other government agencies and 4,311 school safety and security service programs and repeal of board policy number three two four eight firearms and dangerous weapons prohibited for students and 4,315 release of information concerning sexual and kidnapping offenders.

We have three presenters here.

I want to just say this is not a meeting for a final decision.

This is a start to a conversation, not an end.

And tonight is hopefully about listening.

learning and asking questions that we are hearing from community and hopefully being able to continue the conversation.

I think that we've heard a variety of concerns, families asking for more visible safety supports, raising deep, valid concerns about harm that certain approaches have caused particularly black and brown youth and I think overall the overarching concern is everyone agrees more needs to be done on students' safety.

We've also heard clearly that we've also I think as a board have clearly stated if there are things that staff needs from the board to make this happen they should bring it before us and I think that's why we're here tonight.

So tonight we will hear directly from staff and school leaders We're gonna surface the difficult and necessary questions on behalf of our communities, center what matters most, the safety, dignity, and well-being of every student.

So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Chief Operating Officer Podesta to start the conversation.

Here's my ask.

We're gonna get through the entire presentation before we start asking questions and getting into dialogue, okay?

So I'm going to pass it over.

That way we have to end at 8 no matter what to go into our budget hearing.

We will be able to come back and ask more questions later, but let's get through the presentation first.

So Chief Operating Podesta, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, President Topp, and thanks to all the board and everyone who turned out to talk about these subjects tonight.

As we talked in a recent meeting about interim guardrails and the concept of safety, we're committed to Safety is going to land, there are many things we can do, but it needs to land on do people feel safe or not.

And that's in all kinds of the, all sides of that equation.

Do they feel safe because of the things that we're doing?

Do they not feel safe because of the actions that we propose?

And so we want to take a holistic view of this and we need everybody So none of these measures that these policies would allow will work over people's objections, over a school community's objections.

So that's critically important to hear from everybody.

So we have two major topics of discussion.

One is a package of student safety policies and procedures.

I'll go over those very quickly because clearly there's one aspect of this that is the biggest interest to everyone, so we'll go over that in a little bit more detail, and then I'll ask my colleagues, Chief Accountability Officer Ted Howard and Garfield's principal, Dr. Terence Hart, to talk about some of the practical implications and their experiences, just policy, many of the topics aside, just to hear what folks with the most experience with these programs, what they have to share, and you can ask them questions as well.

So, the first group of policy updates in this package addresses firearms and other dangerous weapons.

Again, this is somewhat a housekeeping and kind of modernization of our policy to conform with state law and WASDA models.

The language we reviewed was spread across a couple of different policies, so we're proposing a consolidation to much better align with state guidance.

The second changes really revolve around emergency planning and preparedness.

We talked about that also in our discussion about safety and interim guardrails.

And we would suggest realigning this and pairing it with a superintendent procedure aligned with the current state requirements for emergency planning and drills.

The next relate to our relationship with law enforcement and this is really to be aligned better with current statewide guidance and repeal an outdated policy that can be better addressed with procedure.

That policy to be revealed describes district responsibilities to share information about sexual and kidnapping offenders with students and parents and our requirements to do that, which seems more of a procedural issue than a policy issue.

and then the one that has garnered the most feedback tonight and the one that I think we really want to spend attention on is policy 4311 which describes our overall safety and security program and reintroduces language about the role of school resource officers which is the term of art used in state legislation is kind of recognized We prefer, in the past, the district has used the term school emphasis officer.

We propose, and we'll talk about this later, prefer the term school engagement officer to really describe what we think the role is about.

Emphasis often gets used in policing about emphasis patrols policing and so we think that term is archaic and resource is a fairly general vague term so it's hard to, we're just trying to be a little bit more descriptive on what the goals for such position are.

So what we'd like to do is reintroduce that language and align it with state law which has changed since there were school resource officers on our campuses to make sure that any agreements we enter into define and limit the role of a school engagement officer to some of the things that we heard about in public testimony tonight that this role is not about policing, it's not about school discipline.

Our overall policy does and has always emphasized that disciplinary issue and safety issues are primarily dealt with with district staff.

The fact of the matter is there are times when we need to engage with law enforcement and we do and the interest in this is really to make that process more effective, not to supplant the work of adults employed, adults and partners and others who need to be the first line in working with students and stay the first line.

This change in state law and our policy alignment with it also does align with some of the goals that the board outlined in 2020 when the existing program was suspended.

Again, that we want detailed agreements.

The board recognized that there were kind of gaps in how our relationships were documented.

Those documents were old and not specific to how we wanted to operate the program and what the roles of the officers really were.

that these agreements need to be reviewed with students, parents and community.

The policy and state law would require that such agreements are reviewed annually and renewed or not annually and only after there's input from again students, parents and the community about what the role is how it's overseen, there are requirements for training, there are requirements of how staff are selected to serve this role.

I think we all agree that this is not the same kind of function that a regular patrol officer places, so we have to have a detailed agreement with the city, with any law enforcement agency we work with on what this role is meant to do, what the goal of the role is.

So I think it would also be good to think about this in the context of safety recommendations that Dr. Hart really led and worked with us on since last summer and really had five major strategies that he had identified, increased SPS staffing with regard to safety and security, a partnership with community organizations, he was interested in community passageways in particular, He wanted to find roles for student coaches in case management and employ restorative practices and a regular presence by the Seattle Police Department.

We've made progress on all these fronts in one way or another.

We doubled the security staffing at many comprehensive high schools including Garfield.

There is a community passageways partnership agreement and through that vehicle we're providing some of the aspects of student coaching and case management that Dr. Hart was looking for.

There was a coordinator during the school We have a current school year that is helping with the restorative practices program.

We need to keep working and that has been funded by the city.

We will need to keep working with the city or others to see if that's something that can be more than a one-year practice.

Regular SPD presence, we did have a pilot of a police officer at the start of school for 60 days.

We wanted to start there to give Dr. Hart time to work with his community to see if it was effective, how the community reacted to it.

The fact of the matter is there are a lot of safety, you've heard from folks tonight that there have been many victims of gun violence in the surrounding area over the last couple of years and shots fired.

So we're working a lot with the police at Garfield one way or the other.

because things happen surrounding the campus that need to involve the police.

The reason there's an interest in school engagement officers is to make that relationship better and to make sure that we're working with officers in sort of a liaison role that understand our school and the needs of our students, not to be the primary police force and not to be the primary security in the building.

That is the responsibility of SBS staff.

So again, we've been working with the community for the better part of a year.

We heard from some of the Garfield PTSA leadership tonight and certainly heard from them last spring and summer.

We worked with the city who provided some data analysis and some focus group support for multiple campuses, not just Garfield, but to understand kind of the patterns of security incidents, the patterns of 911 calls and our security incidents to try to see what priorities, where the greatest needs were, Our staff have participated with other city departments including SPD in the Central District Public Safety Accountability meetings that are hosted by Garfield Happen Monthly to hear from multiple community members about their concern in the Central District including Garfield.

I mentioned that we did have a 60-day pilot and then that allowed Dr. Hart to engage in communications and dialogue with his community.

He also formalized that through the use of some surveys that I'll ask him to give you an overview about.

We have been talking to the police department to see are we on the same page about if we had such an agreement that would be compliant with state law, and the policy we're proposing tonight, are we even starting in the right place?

These have just been discussions.

Again, our policy requires community feedback and review of any agreement that we would make, and our intent if this policy were supported would certainly be to have these agreements be campus specific and then by our policy and state law they would need to be reviewed and renewed again or not annually depending on how they're working.

We would like to work through a timeline to see if we can pilot this program in the coming school year.

Again, there's intervening outreach that needs to happen and I don't want to convey that the surveys, the great work that Dr. Hart has done so far is meant to replace that outreach.

What that was about to see to determine if this is a conversation worth having.

And that's why we're introducing a proposed policy change today.

The actual deeper engagement has to be around the specific agreement.

I think we have heard enough support for it from the Garfield community to say this is worth entertaining, but then we need, really, if we're gonna get in deeper, we're gonna have those serious negotiations with the police department, we had to get to this step to convey that this is something we're willing to consider.

And again, the role The principles we're talking about, kind of the terms that would be in such an agreement are that the role of a school engagement officer is to make the school safer to support education.

It is not to conduct policing per se.

It is to keep the focus on students and diverting students from the criminal justice system, not entering them into the criminal justice system.

to be a visible presence, to monitor the environment with us, and really to provide information, incoming information, because there are things the police know about risks in the community and threats to our schools that we don't know, and we work with them every day and we get good support.

It's not the same as having a sustained relationship with someone.

and it's not someone who specializes.

When we're talking to the police and working with the police now, they don't necessarily specialize in schools.

I don't want to minimize the great support we do get.

We work with them every single day, but it's with generalists instead of folks who are particularly attuned to the needs of students and our schools.

So I would like to turn it over to my two colleagues.

Mr. Howard has a deep history with this, how this program had been administered in the past.

Garfield High School was the only school that had a school emphasis officer deployed.

And I would like Dr. Hart to share kind of the current circumstances he's facing and voices his opinions about what we're proposing here.

directly, because you've heard more than enough from me.

Thank you, Mr. Howard.

Thank you, Fred.

President Taub, board directors, if you would join me in just taking a moment of silence as we want to acknowledge lives that have been lost in Seattle Public Schools that are students.

Thank you.

While I was taking a moment of silence, what I looked at was my family in my picture here on my phone.

And I can only imagine what that feels like when a parent sends their kids off to school and then we don't have all the resources that are available to us and we lose a child.

I'm here to talk to you a little bit about the history, but also a little bit about what it takes to rebuild community.

It's not about a police officer.

A police officer is part of our community, just like a firefighter is part of our community, parents, the grocery store, all these things are part of our community and as we prepare our students to go out in the real world, part of our job is to make sure they have the skills to walk out and advocate for themselves, be accountable for themselves, but also help change the world.

As a black man, I have just the ultimate respect for the challenges that our young people face.

But I also would be remiss if I didn't say that sometimes it's scary.

It's scary for me as a black man in 2025 to still be talking about the things that I felt should have been resolved 50 years ago.

But that's what we're faced with.

And that's the legacy we're leaving to your next generation to help resolve.

and the moment we take that out of your hands, we're not allowing you to figure out how to do that.

Our job is to make sure you have those skills to do that.

And so rebuilding community is a part of that.

We also have in our system site-based leadership and that's with Dr. Hart.

You guys are the closest to the ground, you know what's happening, boots on the ground they would call it, and we need to allow you to figure out what that looks like with student voice, with parent voice, with staff voice, and for you guys to figure out what that looks like for your community, your culture and your community.

Every community is different.

And as we do that, it's up to you to figure out what that looks like and to build in adjustments.

I want to commend our board for actually putting a moratorium in place because at the time there was no checks and balances, no accountability.

Now the state has put these matters in effect and is holding us accountable for it for us to put those things in place.

But what's missing is rebuilding community.

That means We have to give you the skills that are needed.

So, to talk about what was there before at Garfield, Colin, you talked about it a little bit by saying about student voice, so we listen to our students.

I want to just reiterate, there's no students in Seattle Public School at this time that had or been impacted by a police officer in their buildings.

They've all graduated.

So there's testimonies that have talked about it.

The second piece of this information that I want to make sure that as we talk about equity on a regular basis, about speaking for marginalized communities, we pull a chair up for the marginalized communities for them to talk, to bring the focus groups of them here and not to talk for them.

So when we talk about racism, we talk about equity, that is racism when we talk for somebody else.

No one can talk for me as a black man of what it feels like to drive down the street or get pulled over or get harassed.

That's for me to tell that story.

And if I don't feel empowered enough, like you said Colin, to speak your truth, then something else is going on.

Our job is to do that.

Garfield has a long history of speaking the truth, from taking a knee long time ago, it seems like a long time ago, but it was just a short vehicle a minute ago of taking a knee and standing up for students' rights.

And as they saw that, students spoke their truth.

Our young ladies spoke their truth.

Our young men spoke their truth.

Different racial groups spoke their truth.

And that's very important.

So Garfa has a long history of speaking the truth and being leaders about what they need to do.

And so with that, we want to talk about some of the programs that allowed them to speak their truth.

So we focused on respect, safety and character building.

At the ninth grade it was a foundation of awareness.

Awareness of who you are, around respect, around consent, around empathy, and creating healthy boundaries.

Very important at ninth grade to develop those things.

And then at tenth grade it was about responsibility and action.

Bystander skills, conflict resolution, and accountability.

Because we're all accountable for making decisions and we make those decisions a lot of times as young people.

We don't want to deal with the consequences, but we have to learn how to do that.

At 11th grade, we talked about advocacy and influence.

We talked about peer mentoring, policy advocacy, and youth leadership.

And then the last piece was legacy and reflection.

If you walk into Garfield, you see two things are up on the wall, legacy and promise.

The legacy is what you guys leave as students to promise is to continue to keep building on the actual education of everyone.

And so that is capstones, that's community leadership and cultural change.

Everything that happens in Garfield should be unrecognizable for the next group of students in four years.

The change should be happening that quickly.

So if we're still talking about things that didn't happen, that means as our education system didn't do its job to empower you to make those changes and have lasting change.

And so that's what we're trying to build today, the flexibility for that to happen, for your voice to be heard, for you guys to stand up as you are board members sitting here as student youth to make change happen.

and it needs to happen not in a reactive way but in a proactive way.

So those are some of the things that we have built into Garfield to make that happen.

And so rebuilding that community, having that site-based leadership and then having our teachers, our principals, our parents, our community leaders and police officers and firefighters who are part of making sure we're safe to be a part of that conversation.

That's ongoing conversations that need to happen.

So at the school district level we need to be doing that to help support all our high schools and that needs to be done at the high school level with leadership.

And that means monthly conversations to bring these focus groups together and bringing in expertise that's needed in different areas so to make sure those things happen.

I will say the last piece in closing.

This is about raising young people into leaders, not just students who graduate, but citizens.

Citizens who stand up, speak out, and create safety in their communities.

That's what we're building.

And so if we're doing it correctly, you will walk out having those skills to be able to go and make a better America, a bigger and better America that impacts the world, not just our community.

So I'll turn it over to Dr. Hart.

All right, good evening, actually.

I'm Terence Hart, the proud principal of Garfield High School.

This is my fourth year serving as principal of Garfield.

And I just want to sort of paint a picture about what the experience has been for our students post-COVID.

You know, the freshmen that arrived at Garfield post-COVID are now seniors and about to graduate, and I've been through the four years with them, learning from them, experiencing trauma with them.

And the reality is that, you know, within the first semester of my time at Garfield, there was a shooting on campus right in front of the front doors.

and that was just the beginning of this.

We had multiple shootings in the area around campus, and on May the 18th, 23, we had a 19-year-old that was shot at the Teen Life Center, which is adjacent to the Garfield campus.

On March the 24th, we had a Garfield student who was shot at a bus stop, technically not on campus, but adjacent to campus.

and on June the 6th, 2024, we had a murder on our campus.

We had the death of our student, Amar Murphy Payne.

And these events and everything that has followed those events from the constant lockdowns because of threats in the area to the students letting outsiders in our building and we're having to chase them out of the building because we believe that they're targeting students.

This is the reality of our running Garfield High School.

It's not just about instructional leadership, though that's what we want to focus on.

The reality is we have these major safety concerns that continue to be a part of how we are expected to operate and run Garfield.

and there's significant impact.

I mean, we hear students talking about just the anxiety, staff members talking about their anxiety and their burnout.

Staff members telling us that any time they hear the ding from the the intercom system when we given an announcement they freak out because they are so afraid that they're going to hear shelter in place lockdown because that's been that's been such a big part of our experience at Garfield over the past four years and that's our reality and yes I was fortunate enough to go to come to the leadership and I asked for some things to fortify our safety on campus.

I asked for increased security specialists.

I got additional two security specialists.

I asked for community passageways or some CBO organization.

I got a partnership, an MOU with Community Passageways and we're proud to engage with the work with them.

We asked for student coaches, case management from Community Passageways.

We were able to get that support.

We asked for restorative practices and we were able to fund, at least for this current year, a restorative practice coordinator who has really come in and I've done work to shift the culture at Garfield and to really center student voice and center the development of circles and RJ practices.

But the reality is we are faced with safety concerns each and every day at Garfield.

This is our reality.

And I as principal, it falls on me.

At the end of the day, it's my responsibility to keep our students and staff safe.

And we do everything in our power.

We fortify the building and the doors.

We're doing everything in our power.

And I don't think that a school resource officer or a school emphasis officer is the only answer.

but in combination with these other supports that we have, the increased security specialists, community passageways, case management, restorative practices.

We also want regular SPD presence on campus and I think this pilot is a perfect opportunity to reintroduce that.

The thing I want to emphasize is that This is not a new program to Garfield.

For years prior to COVID, Garfield had a school resource officer.

And when I talk to alum, when I talk to staff members, I hear nothing but good things about the relationship building that that individual had on our campus.

That students believed in him, students trusted him, he engaged with them, he was part of the Garfield community.

and all of a sudden those resources are taken away and nothing is replaced.

Nothing is given to replace that resource that was the SRO that was at Garfield for many years and by all accounts ran a successful SRO program.

Now we're coming from COVID Violence has increased and nothing has been replaced.

It's just take the support and figure it out.

And I am full support of a pilot.

And I love hearing our students advocate for themselves.

But I want to make clear that what I don't want from any SEO or SRO is policing on my campus.

That is absolutely, I don't need anybody to support discipline.

That's what our admin team is for.

That's what our support staff is for.

what I need is someone to come in and build relationships with students someone who can respond in a crisis situation because we've had many crisis situations over the years that's this year alone we've gone into shelter in place lockdown because of threats near our campus.

And I feel better having a consistent member of SPD who has been trained in culturally responsive pedagogy, or culturally responsive practices, who have been trained in trauma-informed practices.

And that's what this program, that's what I'm hoping to get out of this pilot.

an SEO who is trained and who we can learn from them and they can learn from our students.

I think in building whatever this SEO program will look like if we have the opportunity to implement it next school year, it's student voice.

I want to hear from students, let students be a part of the table talking about what are your needs, what are the limitations, what are the parameters, what don't you want to see?

And there is no way that I, as a man, as a black man, will allow a SEO on our campus running amok and being disrespectful and doing harm to our students.

Absolutely, not what I want.

And that's why I think it's important to emphasize that this is a pilot.

We're learning from this.

This is an opportunity for students to talk about what they need, staff to talk about what they need, engage families.

But I think This is worth us piloting and learning from it and making adjustments.

And if we see that this is not having the impact that we want, I'm perfectly willing to say this is not working, let's abandon this.

But I think we owe it to our students, especially after everything that we've been through.

And it's not just over, because fortunately this year, it's been a quieter year and I'm afraid to say that with so many days left in school, but it's been a quieter year.

But, The support is still needed.

The support is still needed.

And I just want to take this opportunity to really advocate for us piloting the program and really centering students in making this program what we think it should be.

Right on 8 o'clock on the dot.

So we have an obligation to move to our budget hearing.

But I want to thank you all, specifically Dr. Hart, for coming down to central office for the presentation.

This is just the start of the conversation.

I think all board directors have a lot of questions.

I have a whole page here.

I know that students board directors also had testimony they wanted to provide if they're not going to be here at our next meeting where we can we'll continue the conversation I want you to provide the testimony to staff so we can make sure that it is included in the record for things.

And we're going to move very quickly because we have to start at 8 to the budget hearing and we'll head back to the dais.

But there being no further business to come before the board, the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8 p.m.

We will call the budget hearing to order momentarily.

If you are here to Testify for the budget.

There will be a sign-up sheet in the back of the room.

You have to sign up in order to provide testimony.