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good afternoon just a quick warning we will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting All right this is President Taup and I'm now calling the board special meeting to order at 4 33 p.m.

I would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people for the record I'll call the roll Vice President Briggs Director Lavalle Here Director Song Here Director Smith Here One more time Here Director Mizrahi Here Director Rankin Here Director Mangelson Director Massoudi here and this is President Topp.

Good evening everyone and welcome to our first meeting of 2026. I just want to take a moment to sort of ground us in where we are and where we're headed.

this is an important stretch for the board we have a full January ahead our February retreat sort of on the horizon and the start of Superintendent Ben Schuldner tenure at the start of February or the start of second semester of the school year Sort of turning to our board work, I've shared the board liaison appointments, updated dais seating under our current board policy.

Liaison assignments are the responsibility of the board.

I approached these appointments with an eye towards balancing the interests folks shared with staff and being mindful of workload.

I also want to thank those of you who reached out with questions about the positions I appreciate the engagement and I also know not everyone got the roles that they'd hoped for moving forward but I hope that we're all willing to sort of work together as we sort of transition and start these liaison roles Board staff is also ready to support folks, directors in their liaison roles and can walk you through the responsibilities that are in our policies, expectations and near term timeline.

So please connect with Carrie to schedule time to get oriented on those.

January will be full of work tonight.

On the 14th here we have our work session focused on the baseline setting for our progress monitoring goal.

college and career readiness along with a legislative update and we'll have our lobbyist Cliff Traisman join us for that.

Then we go to our regular board meeting on January 21st where we will have updates from our student board directors on the student board director policy.

and a presentation on the student assignment plan.

And then we move then into the January 28th where we'll do a deeper budget work session building on what Superintendent Podesta previewed for us at our last board meeting that then sort of moves us right into our February board retreat and the start of Superintendent Ben Schuldner the agenda for that retreat is still in development but it reflects priorities I think we've heard for Many board directors raise how we work together as a board, how we work together with the superintendent, the board self evaluation, superintendent evaluation, committee structure, and how we show up as a governing body in 2026. just want to thank close by before I hand it over.

I guess I'm going to close by thanking you all for the work that we're about to embark in.

It's a lot.

Three meetings in January is is a lot of time to be dedicated, but we've got a lot of work to do, and I'm excited.

So with that, I'm going to move into progress monitoring.

Superintendent Podesta is not able to join us this evening, but associate superintendent Dr. Torres-Morales will lead this discussion.

I'm going to turn it over to you, Dr. Torres-Morales, to start the presentation.

Okay, good evening.

Thank you, board directors.

Today we're going to talk about progress monitoring for our third goal, which is our life-ready goal.

And as a reminder, this is a baseline report.

We came before you all recently and did math and language arts, and now this is our life-ready portion.

I do know there were some questions in advance and so we're gonna incorporate as many answers as possible into this but do know that if we miss something feel free to ask but we are also capturing those in writing and so it may be that I say hey yeah it's coming in writing but we're gonna try to get as many in into this presentation for the public as well.

So when we think about progress monitoring, this is for the Life Ready baseline goal.

So this is looking at where we are at currently.

And so this is as the end of 24-25.

If I can get us to go here.

Okay, so the purpose of this report, it's gonna be review the board-adopted SMART goal and the five-year target trajectory.

We're gonna share the baseline student outcomes for the life-ready goal, so for example, when you see these data, if it says 10th graders, that was the end of last year, that would be our current 11th graders, so that was the end of 24, 25. reflect on lessons learned from the previous college and career readiness goal and outline some potential emerging future strategies to achieve goal targets this is going to be important because when we come forward here in a couple weeks i know one of the things we've heard clearly from the board over the past few years is how are you attaching budget to strategies so really paying attention to this part i want to go back to these are draft we're not trying to get ahead of our incoming superintendent but there's been a lot of intentional work to think about what worked, what hasn't worked, what direction we potentially wanna go moving forward, and how is that gonna long-term impact our investment strategies of the dollars that we do have?

So if you look through the bottom here, you're just gonna see that the board sets the goals and the guardrails, the district designs and implements the strategies, superintendent and board monitor the progress, we make some course adjustments, ultimately improve student outcomes.

So here's the plan for progress monitoring.

You'll see that this slide has been updated to reflect that we did cover goal one early literacy and goal two math in December.

We are now in January, so now we're coming forward with life ready for the baseline portion of this.

The rest of the information is the same around what end of year baseline reporting is, what progress reporting is, and what planning reporting is.

So I will pass us forward on that portion.

If there's questions, let me know.

We've also seen this slide before, and basically this is talking about the aligning, the monitoring, and improving at all levels so that the superintendent and board are the tip of the iceberg, but when you go under the water, there's a lot of intentional work that is happening at the district level around strategies, analysis of data, educator support, et cetera, aligned to what we're discussing here today.

So the Life Ready goal itself as it stands at this moment is the percentage of students that graduate having completed Washington State graduation requirements consistent with their individual high school and beyond plan and having completed one of the following.

So I'm gonna, I know I'm reading but I wanna make sure that we capture all this.

It's dual credit work in ELA world language the Arts, Social Studies, STEM or CTE, or a formal work-based learning experience, or their FAFSA, WAFSA application, which I'm gonna review here in a little bit.

We have a slide on this, because we need to talk through this with you all.

or applications to one or more college, a formal work-based program or other post-secondary program.

And we're saying that this will increase from 84.8% of June of 25 to 94.8% in June of 2030. One of the things to think about is that two percentage point increase per year.

We've had some conversation on this in the past and I think it'd be worth really talking about that a bit again.

Like is that a realistic number or is that a wish, as some people would question.

and so it's worth considering and talking about.

When we think about why does this around graduation requirements plus the extra or one of the three things, a lot of that was a push for the system because what we were seeing was our graduation rates were going up.

We were getting towards a plateau so it was kind of like, hey, where's the next thing for us?

We need to push and continue to push our system, not just say the graduation rate but the graduation rate and something, hence where the three different options came from.

The other thing I will add is that there are endnotes in this presentation, so where you see the superscript, there's endnotes and definitions for each of these things at the end of the presentation if you're curious.

I'm gonna turn it to Chief Accountability Officer for a minute just to review with us our performance status and how we're gonna be looking at these goals going forward.

Good evening everyone.

As we take a look at our performance status, I think you've seen this before where we are building a structure and you see the metrics off to the left, but the descriptors as we build this actual performance data for everyone to see and be transparent around it.

And so it's pretty straightforward with what we are attempting to move forward with.

At the same time, I will pass out a flyer and shortly so you guys can kind of see how this fits in and transparency around this.

Thank you so much for that, Chief Howard.

I think one of the things to just reiterate here is, why are there four?

This helps with our planning internally when we're talking about if we're authentically gonna engage in systems work, we need to know, is it declining, meaning we need to get into some sort of abandonment quickly with the strategies?

Are they maintaining?

If they are, what is it that we need to add on to them?

If they're improving, yep, these are going great, and met target means, okay, we got there.

So that's why there's actually four different measures.

So we're gonna start getting into the actual baseline outcomes.

Couple things we wanted to share was there were some district and state changes that have occurred.

I wanna say some of these started as early as 2020, as noted here.

In terms of state changes, there was SPS COVID grading policy of A or incomplete for the graduation requirements.

Go back to 2019, that was the first graduating class required during 24 credits and passed the SBA to graduate.

And the SPS waiver existed for that until the class of 2021. 2021 was the first graduating class in SPS required to earn 24 credits and pass the SBA to graduate.

In 2021 also there was the emergency COVID court credit waiver.

Those were pathway waivers.

2022 first graduating class with additional graduation pathways.

Students may use the SBA, SAT, ACT, dual credit, CTE sequence or military pathway to graduate in addition to the 24 credits.

So it also aligns where we were saying we wanted to push our system a bit on our graduation rates plus something else.

and then 2025, the graduating class ability to waive core credits and pathways for individual students discontinued.

There is still, just for context, a two credit waiver for non-core credits still available.

At the same time, we were doing some work on our grading beliefs within Seattle Public Schools.

and so you'll see some of that listed here.

A lot of this is really just talking about how are we getting more towards standards-based grading or mastery-based grading and what that means is that for every standard that we assign to a kid or it's part of the curriculum or it's in the state standards, there's skills and knowledge that go with that standard.

And what this is saying is that moving the system and understanding if we're getting our students ready for life, ready for college and career, we're really, it's not that we don't care about the grades, that's not what it is, but we are, we do care that they have mastered those skills and those knowledge and each of those standards so that when they go into college or career of their choice, they're actually ready for those things.

And so that was a lot of what those grading belief shifts were unpacking there.

Okay, so for our measuring of the progression of the life ready goal, what you're gonna see here is that we're gonna talk with you all about the high school and beyond plan.

I wanna thank some of our student board directors, because I know they've put this front and center around like, I've never done this, or I don't know what this is, and so we're gonna talk about that here in a bit, but it does matter because it is part of our goal, and so we should look at it and say like, so what's happening here?

Also it is a state requirement.

The state does say we have to have it done by 12th grade.

We've given ourselves a little bit more of a rigorous target on how we broke it out and at what grades we expect things done.

So it is one of the measures we look at.

So in eighth grade we'll be looking at that.

Tenth grade we're gonna be talking about credit earning.

For 11th grade, we're gonna be talking about the high school and beyond plan and credit learning and the formal work-based learning experience.

And the actual top line measure at graduation would be the completion of the high school and beyond plan, the earning of the credits and the formal work-based learning experience.

So I'm gonna start us off here with some data.

And so here's the top line measure with baseline.

I know there was requests in the past for additional data.

Those do exist and they are in the appendix of this presentation, so we do have those as well.

But in terms of keeping this so that we can just see it a little bit clearer on the screen and keep the focus on the top line measure, what we're looking at is Currently, as of 24-25, 84.8% of our students, and that's all of our students.

We also have it broken out for students who receive or are eligible for free or reduced price lunch, are African American males, and are students of color furthest from educational justice.

And for context, this number is looking at the percentage of students that graduate having completed Washington State graduation requirements consistent with their high school and beyond plan and having completed one of the following.

So this goes back to the goal we were stating earlier, meeting all the requirements and completing one of the following.

And then if you look at 25, 26 through 29, 30, you'll see what we're predicting as a trajectory for the goal.

Once again, I think it's worthy of us having a conversation, especially with incoming superintendent around what are realistic targets and why.

Not saying that these aren't necessarily, but they are very aggressive targets and we need to just own that.

This is our FAFSA completion data.

So one of the things was when we set up the top line measure, FAFSA completion was one of the things that we were interested in looking at as a system to see is this a measure that we should include or can include.

One of the issues with the FAFSA data, and especially given a lot of the context going on politically now, there is, it's very proprietary information, and we necessarily cannot get that pulled out from our sources at the student individual level.

and there's a lot of things that have to do with family status, immigration status, all these sort of things where we necessarily might not want to.

So in terms of analysis, what we're suggesting is that we should look at the FAFSA completion data for our school district and use it to inform decisions, but not pull it into the aggregate of the measure, meaning not include it in those one plus activities on the graduation, because there's a lot of implications to that and what we can even access down to the individual student level from the data sources.

So what you see here is the actual FAFSA completion data for the district.

These numbers are not baked in to the previous measure for clarity.

So they're not baked into here because we can't necessarily aggregate it down to the student level and use it for those purposes.

But we can use it for our planning purposes to say, are we getting better at the number of kids completing FAFSA in the aggregate?

That we can do.

So that's how it's presented here.

I'm gonna pause for a second.

Anything you'd like to add before we move?

No, you're fine.

Okay.

So our first interim measure, as I was noting earlier, would be the grade eight high school and beyond plan.

So it's interim measure 1A, what does this mean?

It's the percentage of eighth grade students of color furthest from educational justice who have participated and completed the state required tasks in the high school and beyond plan.

and so for eighth grade, those two tasks we've determined should be the educational and career goals and a four-year plan for course taking.

So the way this works is when the students complete the lessons of the High School and Beyond Plan, essentially their exit ticket or their end assignment or when they're done with it is that portion of the High School and Beyond Plan.

So what we're looking at here is that the number of eighth graders who've completed that lesson on the High School and Beyond Plan and done the task.

And so if you look at it, We are at 52.5 of our students have met this.

When you think about our students receiving free and reduced price lunch, that number's at 41.5.

For African American males, 39.4.

And for students of color furthest from educational justice, 44.3.

I go back to one of the things that we heard clearly from, I would say board directors and specifically student board directors were, I don't really remember this happening or what is this or how does this work and so what we're seeing and we're gonna see another stark data point here in a minute, just prepare yourselves, that now our data is showing that this is confirming what we're hearing from community, from board, from directors and so this really begs the question as we go into a new strat plan, as we're talking about graduation rates, what are we gonna do when we start talking about strategies?

Because the data are here right in front of us as to what's happening.

It's not that it's not, but if we're saying that it is important for us, we're determining that by eighth grade these two tasks should be completed, we really need to do something about it strategy-wise.

And when we get to 11th grade, it'll be even more eye-opening.

So here we go.

Grade 11. Yeah, so I think that's kind of what we've been hearing.

So I think we've heard clearly in this space that from students and from parents that it's not happening, it's not happening.

And it's not that it doesn't because students need to complete it, but there's a difference between saying that we're going to set a goal it should go at a certain cadence, a certain pace, and that it's done by the time, you know, we say that these are the things that need to be done by 11th grade, and there's four things that need to be done.

In reality, if students finish it by the time they're ready to graduate, they finished it, their high school and beyond plan is complete, but it shouldn't be a check the box activity, it should be something that actually happens throughout their academic experience to get them ready for their college or career.

So for us, when we think about this interim measure for grade 11 for the High School and Beyond Plan, the activities that we believe a student should have completed by the time they finish 11th grade are to have reviewed slash edit the course plan, complete the Strengths Explorer, build or update the resume, and my life, my decision costs.

So those are the activities from the High School and Beyond Plan.

Essentially those are four lessons with accompanying tasks.

If they were done, the number would say, yep, these are the number of kids who completed it.

There's a little bit of nuance in here that we do need to talk through though.

if in the appendix what you'll see is that there are some students that are done with some of these.

So some of our 11th graders have completed two out of the four activities or three out of the four activities that is not captured here.

These data are pretty raw and did they complete all four of the four things, yes or no?

And you'll see here that our numbers are pretty stark.

Only 4.6% of our students have met all four of those things by the end of the 11th grade.

Another piece of nuance to think about is we're moving to school links away from Naviance.

In Naviance, the feedback we've received is a little bit clunky, so there's a little bit of there there around that.

So it's not that none of our 11th graders have resumes.

A lot of them do.

They have them on a Word doc, they have them somewhere else, because it's too difficult to actually do it in the system.

But if it's not in the system, it's not gonna be captured in the data.

so part of the data should actually just move strategy-wise when we move to School Links which is actually a statewide system versus using the Naviant system that is gonna be coming in the next year or two.

Mm-hmm, please do.

What is required from the High School and Beyond Plan for graduation?

Like completing the entire plan or

We've got a complete entire plan.

And it has to be done by the time you graduate.

We internally have set that we believe these are the tracks that you should be on.

By 8th grade you should have done this.

By 11th grade you should have done this.

If you have it done by the end of 12th grade or you have it done by the end of 12th grade, but that's not what our goal is.

Our goal is to actually set it up so that it becomes a functional plan.

That's one of the things we've heard clearly from the board is it shouldn't just be a checkbox.

This should actually be something that kids are able to use.

Should be a roadmap that explains why students sign up for their master schedules and taking a look at when they make a decision on what career or what, even if they change their mind, are they on the right track to accomplish where they want to go, what they should be doing, what colleges they're looking at, but by 11th grade if you haven't completed that, then it says where are you doing that at?

Are you doing it in another platform, some students are choosing Big Futures, some are choosing Zillow, some are choosing other platforms besides Naviance because it's so clunky and we saw that students are using a different roadmap to get to where they need to go.

And so taking a hard look at Naviance, why aren't they using it?

for your common app, does it work, does it not work?

We got students who are sitting here right now and I know this time of the year early decisions or late decisions if you're a senior, what have you been using?

So I'd be interested in picking our brains of some of our students here to see if you're using Naviance, why you're not using Naviance.

And I also, earlier in the year, some of the students on the superintendency group actually analyzed about six different platforms.

They did an international one.

I don't want to name them all, but I will share with you guys some of the questions they had as they looked at school links.

So just as a peek, what do you guys use?

Common App.

Common App.

So you use the Common App to actually go through, and once you fill out the Common App, you send it out to all your schools that way?

done was I had just made an Excel sheet and I just wrote down all the schools that I was applying to and specific major and programs that each school offers.

But I didn't use Naviance and then I put that into Common App.

You put it into the Common App.

What did you use?

Well, I'm a junior, so I haven't quite had to worry about it, but I also have an Excel sheet that I use just to keep track of ideas.

And I have a couple questions that I'm saving for later, but I have not used Naviance.

So when you were going through the high school and beyond plan, the plan and preparation of some of these pieces that Dr. Torres has talked about, have you seen that these pieces were helpful for you or did you find it kind of clunky or

So, like I said, I have a couple questions.

But honestly, I remember briefly doing this, maybe freshman year in math class.

But I remember being confused and not really understanding why that was useful at the time.

Oh, OK.

Director Yoon, anything you'd like to add?

Oh yeah, I was also just going to agree with what Director Masudi said about using an Excel sheet for jotting down what colleges were applying to.

If that's a pathway a student would take, that's what most students use.

And then we just copy and paste the colleges were applying to from the Excel sheet to Common App.

And in terms of my Naviance experience, I've actually used it a lot my freshman year.

I actually really like the resume format because it allows me to add a lot of activities and not keep it in one page, which I know that's how resume format is supposed to be, but I could see how it is helpful.

You just got to play around with it a little, which most students don't.

Cool.

From the student's perspective, I got to ask you guys this question.

Parents are always involved in every part of this.

Were your parents involved in this part?

at all?

No, but also my parents really aren't involved in that sort of stuff, so they leave me to my own devices pretty much with all of this cool stuff.

But I do know that some of my friends who have parents who are more diligent about checking on their grades or missing assignments, who I don't think this is really a discussion that they have with their families.

or I mean obviously students are discussing college and where they're applying and everything that comes along with that but I really don't think that Navion specifically has been part of that equation.

You just want them to write the check.

Okay.

Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing.

My parents kind of just left it up to me to do and they didn't really help me on like a lot of college application process.

Okay.

if you needed some help, where do you think you would have went?

They walked to my counselor at school.

If I asked them for help, I'm sure they would have helped me.

I just kind of did it myself.

But my school counselor or even the teachers I asked for a letter of recommendation could probably help me.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, we're gonna move to looking at the grade 10 on track.

So what we're looking at here is the percentage of 10th graders that have completed the Washington State History requirement and earned at least 12 credits.

So first, the Washington State History requirement is not a credit-bearing course, it's a middle school course.

but there are provisions that let's say a student just moved to Washington that this would not prevent a student from graduating per se.

But in terms of our measure, we are interested in seeing that the student has completed that history requirement and earned 12 credits by the end of 10th grade.

One of the things you're gonna see if you look at all students is 68.5% and be like, huh, what's going on here?

Because that's drastically lower than our actual graduation rate.

So there's a couple things at play.

In this measure, since it is a life ready goal and around college and career readiness, when we looked at the 12 credits, you'll see there's an asterisk and a footnote there that explain what we consider to be the 12 credits.

It could be that a student has 12 credits, but not necessarily in these specific content areas.

Those credits would still allow them to graduate, The reason we're specifically looking at these courses is because that puts them on track for the Washington State graduation requirements, so for example, the four credits of language arts, the three credits of math.

So yes, that 68.5% looks slightly low, but there's a little bit of nuance in there as to why, and we know, and it also does beg the question that regardless, we do need to start thinking about in strategies what is happening that we're pushing so much, because even if it is that the student has a 12 credits in other areas, this is still showing us that there is some credit recovery going on in 11th and 12th grade, so what is happening with our courses that that is a thing.

But overall, 68.5% of grade 10 met this, and what did that mean?

This was at the end of last year, so these are current 11th graders.

68.5% of our current 11th graders are on track having done the Washington State history requirement and 12 credits in those core content areas.

Finally, we're gonna look at grade 11, dual credit and work-based experience, so these are our current seniors, and what this interim measure is looking at is the percentage of 11th grade students having either of the following, dual credit work in English language arts, world language arts, social studies science, technology engineering and math or STEM, or CTE or Career and Technical Ed or a formal work-based learning experience.

And you'll see 91% of our students have met this measure, so that means that 91% of our seniors are actually on track with this measure, with the dual credit work-based portion.

So we're gonna start talking a little bit here about draft strategy plan, draft strategic plan development.

We've shared this with you all before, but thinking about that the goals and the guardrails established by the board help drive the priorities, help drive the strategies, ultimately drive the initiatives.

And so when we think about the life-ready strategies, it is important for us to look back at the previous strategic plan and all of this would have fallen under what was called the college and career readiness goal in our old strat plan and so some of the initiatives were around credit earning and on time graduation, for example grading for equity, support for ninth graders, improved data tools and what we learned was we did see some improvements in graduation rates but we do know that we still need some refined grading guidance and this is all from our previous strat plan.

These are what we did and what we learned.

dual credit access, equal opportunity schools, advanced placement, international baccalaureate, college and the high school for all, focused on improved access and had some significant results, but the question becomes how are we gonna align offerings with post-secondary plans so that all students have access to some of these things and it's not just dependent on where you live or what high school that you attend.

High School and Beyond Planning, the implementation of Naviance.

We know that the electronic tool improves student access, but it was too much of a compliance exercise, and we understand the system was clunky.

We are moving to School Links, which is the state-based system, and away from Naviance, given that.

Work-based learning and CTE.

Career Connected Learning Coordinators and High Quality Pathways were some of the things that we did.

What did we find out was there was a significant increase in high quality career and technical education pathways that help with graduation and career exploration.

The worksite learning is quite labor intensive and collaborating with many external partners can be challenging.

One of the other things that we were running into was just the commutes of where the programs and where the kids go to school and going back and forth across the city.

How are we working through that?

That was a challenge for some of our students who were interested in certain programs.

and then post-secondary applications for Seattle Promise and for example the Black College Expo.

Seattle Promise results in a large majority of students applying and completing the FAFSA, but the degree completion rates remain relatively low, meaning when they get into some of the programs they don't actually finish or they finish not within two years per se, let's say if they're at one of the community colleges.

So looking ahead, thinking about the strategic plan for 26, 27 and onwards.

And this is draft, I wanna keep reiterating, this is draft thinking.

But for example, one of the things when we started doing an analysis of the credit attainment, we noted that ELA, math and science are the three areas where students most likely do not have the credits.

and so the question becomes what are we doing around our high quality tier one core instructional materials for our high schools, prioritizing those materials and language arts, math and science ultimately to promote credit attainment, improve graduation, pathway completion, and ensure resource alignment or providing the appropriate resources and cultural inclusivity.

The next thing that we are thinking about is tier two supports available for schools within and outside the school day.

I know I've been before you all many times to talk about multi-tiered systems of support.

Some of the feedback we've received is you need to flesh that out a bit more.

What does tier one mean?

If I'm a parent, what does that mean?

What does tier two mean?

If I'm a parent, what does that mean my student's getting?

what we're saying here is really getting clear on what the tier two supports are for students.

And so some of the emerging initiatives are to develop and implement high school expectations for those supports regarding credit earning, centrally coordinate credit recovery processes for access reasons, and promote collaboration between small and comprehensive high schools to assist with credit earning.

Another key strategy would be access to life-ready coursework.

So the emerging initiative is to improve and refine dual credit offerings to improve pathways to post-secondary success.

For example, college and the high school access and advanced math pathways at our schools.

Finally, in the rigorous and inclusive academic experiences, thinking about post-secondary planning opportunities for students.

Promote schooling's implementation to make high school and beyond planning more meaningful.

That is something that you've heard me note a couple times this evening.

And then establish foundational expectations across high schools for college access support.

The next two priority areas, one is around recruit, develop and retain a diverse and effective workforce.

The other is unified leadership and systems of accountability.

So in terms of recruit and develop and retain a diverse and effective workforce, an emerging initiative to develop career and technical education, and other content area educators to support the life ready goal, an increase to the high school and beyond planning and provide work based learning to more SPS students.

and performance management prioritized life ready metrics in Seattle Public Schools accountability, system beyond credits and dual credit earning to include the high school and beyond plan and post-secondary data.

Thank you so much.

I'm gonna pause there for questions, wondering, thoughts, concerns.

Perfect.

So I think we probably have about 40 minutes to give this baseline thing, baseline conversation an hour and a half and I'm going to start with Director Lavallee only because I cut her off last time and she didn't get to get all her questions in.

So we'll start there and we'll, different subject, I know, I'm sorry.

But we'll go ask one question, we're going to go all the way around again and then if we have time we'll go around again.

Sorry, I didn't mean to catch you.

I was so prepared last time, I'm less prepared this time for all my questions.

All right.

Going into it, and thank you so much for including additional information in the appendix with the additional information of highly capable students as well as multilingual learners and students with IEPs in that appendix as well.

Are we differentiating any strategies to different types of students?

Moving forward when we're thinking about the Tier 2 supports and those sort of things, that is part of the conversation.

When we think about students with IEPs, their plan will drive what their supports would be, but in terms of what would a Tier 2 support look like for a student who requires multilingual services, those are some of the things that we would consider, knowing that in a lot of ways when you think about a Tier 2 support, it is supposed to be a research and evidence-based practice and so thinking about for a multilingual learner what is a research and evidence-based practice for that.

So saying a lot to just say yes.

Within the IEPs, are we evaluating the kind of not correctness?

I'm trying to figure out exactly how to phrase this question again.

I was thinking I'd have another few minutes.

Are we evaluating if these are being correct to each student?

I've heard some inaccuracies in them that people have been reporting to me, being like, well, this didn't do the right thing for my student, or my students were all, you know, emotionally when somebody else's student was all, you know, academically based for their IEP.

So are we evaluating kind of if these IEPs feed into the graduation rates that are super low within this chart that we're seeing in the appendix?

Can you expand on the question?

And I think I know where you're going, and I just want to make sure that I answer what you're wondering.

Yeah, I mean, so, and the specific thing that was reported to me is that there's some disparities between, you know, race in how these IEPs are written.

And so are we in any ways seeing if the IEPs are kind of correctly written and are impacting kids' graduation rates in various ways, especially as we see that our graduation rates for students with IEPs are down in this past year at 65.5%.

We also, I'm not aware of the number of students with IEPs in the district, and so that is concerningly low, figuring that.

I think it's actually something between 16 and 20% off the top of my head, if I'm remembering that correctly.

So I'm just trying to figure out if we're looking at this and we're seeing that 16 to 20% of our students are at that 65% rate, that is a big kind of call out there.

And what are we doing to be like, okay, what are we measuring here?

are these IEPs correct?

How can we improve this?

Because that's kind of a big red flag that's only covered in one of those strategies.

Okay, so I think I got it, but tell me if I did it.

I'm not sure I asked a good enough question, but it was just I had that little bit of tension within seeing only one strategy listed for this when I've heard a number of things and the data itself is showing a concerning trend.

Okay.

So first, when it comes to the IEPs, those are done with the team and with the family.

So ultimately those goals aren't something that, for example, I would establish out of this building or a team would.

So that's done in conjunction with the family ultimately and with the team, the team meaning the teachers, any related service providers, et cetera.

So they're the ones that would determine ultimately the goals for the student.

And so if the question is, what is the level of the rigor of the goal, that is something that we can take back with the team and start talking about.

I feel like the other thing embedded in your question was around the actual intersectionality.

So the way the data presents here is, for example, you could look at African-American male students or you could look at students with IEPs.

And I think one of the wonderings is, so what's happening for, for example, our students of color with IEPs specifically?

And we could cut that data as well, add it to the appendix and or have it.

but I think in terms of your question in there, it would be important for us to continue that level of analysis to see at an intersectional level what is this looking like as well, not just merely at one or the other.

I think one of the things related to this is the extensive work that we did to work on our significant disproportionality.

We have looked at a lot of the IEPs, especially for our students of color, We most definitely, though, looked at their evaluations and how those were going to try to get bias out of them.

But I like the question because what it's pushing us to is, okay, so y'all have done that now for the evaluation.

Are you actually doing that level of analysis for the IEP and the written IEP to see is the level of rigor there different based on race for some of our students?

And that is some analysis we can do.

Ultimately, the goals are set by the IEP team, so we can't necessarily dictate, but it is good to know from our lane if that's a thing, so that when we're doing coaching with our special education supervisors or specialists or special ed teachers, we can put that on their radar.

Like, do you realize there's some implicit bias going into how we're actually creating these?

So thank you.

Yeah.

Kind of going backwards.

Oh, yeah, okay.

One question.

One question.

If we have time, we'll come around.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Director Song.

Thank you.

I did submit a list of questions in advance, but I think, and I won't go through all of them, but I think I'll just pull out the meatier question that I have, which is, you know, I had the opportunity to serve as a City of Seattle liaison and had the benefit of seeing some of the presentations from the Promise team, and something that kept coming up was that our students are showing up to the Seattle Community Colleges is unprepared.

There is a lot of coursework that our students need to do in order to kind of continue with the program.

And so, my general reflection is that while our graduation rates are quite high, I'm not sure that this is an exercise knowing what our students know and can do when they're graduating.

If we know that when they go to Promise, they're not prepared.

So I kind of was trying to really ask around, like, what about these metrics gives us assurance that they are accurate reflections of what our students know and can do?

and I don't know if it would be useful for us to also look at, I assume the kids still take SBAC in high school, in 11th grade maybe?

And do they have to take any standardized testing when they graduate as part of their graduation requirements?

You're talking about like the SAT or ACT?

No, just like a kind of like a capstone standardized test to show like what level of learning that...

No.

No?

No.

Okay.

So I just wondered if we have any standardized test scores that we can refer to in high school and is it commiserate with our relatively high graduation rates?

I seem to recall that at least at a state level it doesn't quite match.

high graduation, but kind of middle-ish test scores.

There's nothing that the state requires, but most districts, including us, we participate in NAEP, which is a national level.

We take a look at those and see how our students do across the national system.

Also, I would say that that is a big telltale sign.

Also, accreditation is what is another piece that we take a look at that's really important to see how our students are doing.

So as we move forward with accreditation for our high schools, that's another piece that we'll be taking a hard look at for all our schools, from alternative schools to our comprehensive high schools to see where we're at, where we're maybe falling down, where we can improve and where we need to develop more strategies.

But you're absolutely right.

I looked at the same data across the board with Deal to see where we were struggling and the supports they're giving us to help kind of mitigate those, how we could make those more robust.

But at this present time, the schools have really develop their own, I would say, strategies with their CSIPs that you guys get a chance to look at and approve.

And we're trying to move to more universal systems so it's all high schools doing it and not just individual schools participating through their CSIP.

And the only place I'd point us is I think if we go to slide, oh here we go, slide nine under graduation requirements, there is some detail there around some of the standardized assessment.

I think one of the things we run into is the number of kids who complete it and being able to use it for statistical analysis, for decision making, but duly noted in the question, do we need to revisit that and think about some sort of valid and reliable statistical measure that can be used across the system to help?

So thank you for pushing us on that.

Yeah, the big predictor that a lot of high schools would use would be the PSAT.

to see if we are actually on track moving forward at early 9th and 10th grade where students may be needing some support in different areas.

And that was a predictor that we could actually make some shifts around 10th, 11th, and 12th grade with the rigorous courses we could be taking across the system.

But you see up there as SBA, SAT, ACT, and then dual credit.

Those are things that we currently have in place, but still NAEP is probably I think getting to your question, what we're looking at across and see how we rate Missouri or New York or Florida, what the courses we're taking.

Second question is around the grading for equity piece.

I'm just curious like what can you talk a bit about like what kind of reflection like it's interesting that we are now pursuing standards-based grading and so what are our reflections on having pursued this as a strategy that we feel confident that it has actually helped with our students you know what they know and what they can do.

I think we feel like it's definitely helped in that realm, but we've also noted that it is gonna, in going forward, we need to think about the strategy and how it's implemented.

What does it mean?

What does the guidance mean?

Who's following the guidance?

How do a lot of those things work?

And so I wanna, let's go here.

There we go.

So here you'll see the credit earning and on-time graduation and what we learned was that yeah, the graduation rates improved but there is still a continual need for refinement on the grading practices.

So we're noting that unapologetically so and thinking that in a future strategic plan, what does that mean and how do we do that?

Okay, we'll go to Director Yoon, but just to keep things fair, everyone gets two questions in this first round, and then we'll go back around.

All right, Director Yoon.

Okay, I only have one question, so I'll just ask my own question.

So, based on the presentation, my understanding is the life already metrics considers whether a student is ready just by completing one of several options, including the FAFSA submission, the work-based learning or dual credit.

How do you ensure that this measure metrics reflects actual and meaningful preparation for life after high school, rather than just having students check off a box of things they need to do, just because from my experience, the FAFSA wasn't that hard.

Like, yeah, I need to kind of bug my parents to come here and do some tax information.

But compared to dual credit or a work-based learning, like internship, for instance, it's a very different experience.

So I'm just wondering what that would be and also what strategies are kind of in place to encourage schools to prioritize the skill building experiences

The FAFSA is something that we're going to consider taking out of the measure just based on some of the information we talked about around the proprietary nature of it.

But when you think about the dual credits, et cetera, that is something that we're considering taking forward in strategies.

in the future plan.

And I think the other thing is having an honest conversation on the High School and Beyond plan that we've been talking about this evening because if it's done well and as intended, that does help with actually like a map or a pathway as to where you're going and why.

And what we've noticed is, as you're noting, Director Yoon, that it has often just become a compliance exercise and that's actually not the intent of it at all.

It's actually supposed to be helpful in thinking about are you ready for college and career.

And so the idea of the access to Life Ready coursework and dual credits is something that we believe needs to be a continued strategy in a future strategic plan or in a future initiative.

So we agree with you, I guess I would say.

And I would say to you right now, what is in place is a combination of a lot of different things.

Your community service giving you that experience is really the important part of you trying to explore your careers to see if that's something you want to do.

Also, college visits are really important.

but the biggest, biggest piece that I've seen as we started this process with the High School and Beyond Plan which started in 2008 and where they are now talking to colleges, some of the colleges made a big shift in this process because they weren't hitting their numbers.

One of the biggest things they did and I, I know it was a shocker to me when my kids went to college was they gave the student loans to the parents now.

So students could actually make sure there was some accountability that they weren't in college for eight, nine, ten years and if parents wanted to pay for it, great, but you're fitting the bill.

So where's the accountability?

We're talking about grading, we're talking about standard-based grading, we're talking about credit retrieval, but we we miss the part where the actual experiential piece is so important.

Students going to see if this is a job that they want to do or a career path they want to experience.

So those 80 hours or 70 hours or 60 hours of taking a look at that early as possible whether it's eighth grade or ninth grade to see if that's something you really want to do.

The other piece is and I'm old now, so I'll own that.

Most of us, we went into careers, we didn't switch careers.

We know students are switching careers five or six times before they end their working career.

And so are you prepared for that?

If you decide to go off in computer science and you decide that's not something you want to do and you want to go into nursing, what does that look like?

Do you have those skill levels?

So those are experiential pieces that the flexibilities we're trying to build in experiential pieces, but it's no substitute for what we used to do when we were kids.

When you went to elementary school, you did career day.

So people came out, took a look at careers, what those careers are, but visitations to college and the most experience that you can get is going to look at those colleges and having conversations.

So we got to do not just asynchronous conversations, but we got to get you out to the experiential pieces so you can see if that's something you really want to do and if you're good at it and do you like it.

So those are the other pieces that we're working on to make this more of a web base because you have a roadmap, but this is a web base of schooling, actual experiential pieces as well as you get a chance to have those conversations with your teachers and people in the career.

So great question.

We got more to do.

We're growing it though.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just wanted to emphasize also the importance of getting actual work experience.

There's only so much you could learn in a classroom and you really only get to learn what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy doing through work experience.

So I really appreciate the emphasis on giving students the opportunity to pursue different career options through internships and also the emphasis of, you know, the 80 hour or 60 hour volunteer service requirement, which I did my freshman and sophomore year with my friends a lot of times.

the options to meet that requirement is not advertised much and what I mean by that is everyone just kind of does the same volunteer service and there's nothing wrong with that.

It just would be great if there could be more support from teachers, counselors and such on the different types of volunteer service we could do not just something everyone does for it to be again another compliance method like oh I need 60 hours of volunteer I need 60 volunteer hours to graduate I'm just going to kind of do it with my other friends who do this and again there's nothing wrong with that just having more options available and I kind of see the direction headed that way so yeah thank you.

Thank you.

Director Massoudi.

So my only question was, I was just wondering what would the implementation, because here it says promote school links implementation, to make high school and beyond plan more meaningful, what would that implementation actually look like of school links?

So we're actually in process of drafting that now.

We, you know, earlier I said a year or two to get rid of Naviance.

Honestly, we want it done by the end of this year and be into school links by next year.

And so happy to come forward with sharing just the details of what that intended implementation plan for you, for the board, and we'll get it in writing to you as to what we're thinking the cadence needs to be of that.

But there is a draft cadence for us to get out of Naviance and into school links hopefully by the end of next school year.

My question is more like how is it going to be different from Naviance?

Yeah, so my understanding, and I'm not gonna profess to be a complete expert in this topic, one, but that it's not as clunky, it's more user friendly, it aligns more with what would be needed, for example, like the resume writing, those sort of things, and so that's a lot of it.

The other thing is that it's a statewide thing, and so it's not that it's just each district gets to choose their own, and some chose Naviance and some didn't, and so we're gonna be aligned with what the other school districts are doing across the state.

but a lot of it has to do with the user ability of it, user friendly and actually purposeful and so, yep.

I'm passing out some of the questions that some of the students who got a chance to look at School Links in 2024, the superintendency group and they looked at five different platforms and so you get a chance to see some of the questions they came up with and ask Katie who was a developer for School Links and they got a chance to interact with them.

you also have a handout where you guys get a chance to go in and you can ask for a demo as well and take a look at it and learn from it and get feedback as well.

So it is supposed to be a platform that continuously evolves.

It's like, you know, it's not gonna stay with the 1970 clothes, it's gonna move to 1980, 2000, it's gonna keep evolving, the hairdos are gonna keep evolving.

So that's what this is supposed to do.

So your feedback is so, is important, so you may see something right now, and then it may shift.

As an example, I got a chance to go out and see School Links in Federal Way.

They were one of the early adopters, and one of the things the students were asking for was videos.

They wanted to see videos of people in careers that looked like them, that did some of the CTE courses, whether it was firefighting or other things, and they wanted to interact with them.

And so some of the videos are up, and you saw students saying what was successful for them, what wasn't successful for them, what actual courses they took, what courses they didn't take, and they wish they would have taken.

So you get some reflection pieces, but they're students who just went through the system.

So I thought that was really fantastic.

But some of our districts, some early adopters are already into the programs and doing things, and they're learning, they're giving feedback.

So it's a good thing to be kind of where we're at, because we're not on the forefront of it, but we were asked to participate in 2024, and you see some of the questions that students were asking.

That's just, a short list of questions but they looked at Zillow, they looked at Naviance, they looked at Big Future, they looked at a couple international ones as well and they gave feedback about what they saw in school links at that beta testing time and what was working and what wasn't working.

So you guys get a chance to see a preview of that from them.

Director Mangelson.

Alright, so I actually just have one question because one of my other questions is answered by that.

I was just wondering if AP classes were counted in that dual credit.

So I see that, thank you for that.

I also wanted to bring up, and just thank you for recognizing kind of the transportation issues that come with the CTE skill center classes.

I was, I took the Careers and Education Skills Center last year, and because I was a sophomore, I obviously could not drive yet, and I ended up taking the bus for an hour each morning, which was kind of something that my family and I talked a lot about, about whether or not it was feasible for that to keep on happening and having to go through downtown each morning.

So I'm kind of curious, are there future plans to assist in transportation?

Because I was able to get that midday transportation from Franklin High School to West Seattle.

and I know that there used to be options for transportation in the morning or in the afternoon depending on which program you did as well.

So I'm just curious if that's something that is possible in the future again or if that's something people are discussing.

It's something that we're aware of and discussing.

There's no solid decision on this is what's going to happen, how and why, but it is something that we know clearly.

We heard it from students and we heard it specifically from some of the high school principals, especially when it came to scheduling and what that means for the student trying to get the courses at their neighborhood or home or their enrolled high school and then also traveling across cities.

So we're aware to say that we've landed on some sort of decision, not yet, but we are aware and I thank you for bringing it up and raising it again.

I have, okay, I have one more little question that has to do with that.

It just adds on to it.

So I was also the only sophomore in my Skills Center class, and I know that a lot of people, or at least I've gotten asked about this a couple times, but I feel like a lot of people kind of think of Skills Center as like an option that's it goes along or instead of completing or taking AP courses or almost like a last resort for some people.

And I was kind of curious about what exactly if there is an idea about kind of expanding that accessibility of taking skill center classes.

I also took the careers in education one.

So it was teaching, which is something that you do have to get a college degree for.

And so I was curious about if there are plans for kind of expanding those CTE options beyond necessarily things that would take you down a different path instead of college, if that makes sense.

I kind of phrased that weird.

I don't know if that really made sense, but.

No, it's to explore those careers is something that, you know, at sixth and seventh grade in a high school and beyond plan is what you're supposed to be doing and planning and exploring.

So exploratory courses is what we offer at our high schools.

The ones where you get actual certification in it is at the community colleges.

And so when you start offers a lot for students to be able to get the certification and even job placements afterwards.

But you're right, we don't offer a plethora of all those different pieces, but we've depended on Running Start to actually, whether it's nursing or whether it's veterinarian, we're depending on our partnership with the community colleges to fulfill those pieces.

So it's a big piece, but that's kind of what our plan has been right now for the future.

we can keep talking about it.

You're sitting on the board with your board director, so who knows what changes will come.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Sorry, I'm trying not to ask too many questions.

I will say the looking ahead, the strategies, these feel like the right strategies.

to me.

Kind of along with what Director Song was bringing up in terms of why we set goals, why we do progress monitoring, what we really are getting at is what do students know and what are they able to do?

How do we know that they know what they know?

How do we know that our system is preparing them, not just to check the box, but to go to community college and not have to take a bunch of makeup classes?

How do we know those things?

The strategies feel right?

I am wondering, and this doesn't have to be answered right now, but when our, when Superintendent Schuldner arrives, being an instructional leader, I wonder if our top line measures are the right things to measure.

I don't know if they actually tell us what students know and are able to do.

And I think part of why, I'll just be totally frank, in a well-functioning, high-achieving system, going from setting goals to getting metrics should just take a couple of months.

We've been in this process for like two years.

and I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody.

I don't think anybody is shocked to find out that we don't have that muscle as a system to really easily get that information.

But I'm wondering if, as we're looking at these things, will those top measures be the right measure to tell us if students are actually graduating life ready?

which is funny because you would think you would need to set those and then create your strategies.

The strategies do feel like the right things to get at where I think there's a lack of systemic support to address those things.

So I just wonder about, yeah, how do we know?

And also with that discrepancy between you graduated, what did that actually mean if you graduated?

And now you can't demonstrate that you can do these things that you're supposed to be able to know to graduate.

So that's more of just a wonder that I imagine we'll be revisiting those top line measures should we be measuring, not change the goal, but is the outcome measure, is there something that will be more helpful for us?

Going into the, sorry, grading goes along with that.

I think during the pandemic, we didn't want to penalize students for what was going on and our grading practices changed and I don't know if we have revisited those as robustly as we should given that we're no longer in a pandemic and I have a high school student, Evan has high school students.

The whole 50% thing, kids are gaming that and I don't have to turn that in, I can get 50% and I can pass the class without doing that.

You can graduate with straight Ds.

I don't know that that is setting kids up to take the next step in their lives that they want.

Or I will say it's not.

It might at the time be like, I'll just do this to get through this thing that maybe doesn't seem relevant to me right now.

but that to me feels like a failure on our part to actually prepare kids to do the next things that they wanna do, so grading practices.

In terms of the, I promise I'll ask a question, the tier two supports available for students within and outside the school day, the expectations for two tier supports from personal experience right now as the parent of a junior, that feels critical.

and I'm wondering where the counseling audit that was done not too long ago that was reported to the audit committee, where that work dovetails with that.

There were a lot of pieces of information there about, I would just, I guess I'm asking, is the counseling position, do you anticipate that being a way to implement this strategy through counselors or is there something different that maybe coming on, there was a lot of really valuable information about the role of the counselor in that.

I would say not specifically at this moment saying the counseling position is what's going to do the Tier 2 strategy, but noting the feedback, when we're thinking through Tier 2 strategy, thinking about how are we leveraging counselors to do some of this, we think about tier two needs to be researched and evidence-based but there's a lot of different tier two strategies depending on what the actual need is and so it wouldn't be absent from saying potentially some work with counselors.

So basically just duly noted thank you for sharing and raising that up so that we can take that into consideration as we're fleshing out what those supports could and should look like.

I think the big piece we have to do is systems have to be aligned and role clarity has to be put in place.

For high school and beyond plan it has to live in a place where there's some accountability for it.

Who owns that?

Right now it's in most high schools or in middle schools it's either in your advisory period or your homeroom period but who owns that?

And all of our schools don't even do advisory.

So those are the systems that we have to design to get aligned.

And so we have some accountability there.

So if Dr. Torres looks at ninth grade or tenth grade to see if these are complete, he could see if things are complete or not with the dashboards or the accountability around those pieces.

So we got some work to do as we build this infrastructure.

So the goal that the board has put in place is fantastic.

We have to actually come up with some quality indicators along the way as we design this to make sure if things aren't working, we can catch these things in different places, whether it's in the homeroom, whether it's in first period, second period, third period, whatever class periods that we set this up, but we got to design it first.

And then it kind of falls back to the same question you were analyzing.

How do we actually make sure that this is the right metric that we're actually measuring and we have to continue to analyze that with our teachers and quality teaching and principals doing walkthroughs, us doing walkthroughs with our principals to make sure those things are in place because if we're not walking through and modeling that then of course teachers and other people don't see that as important.

So we got some work to do and you guys have given us a blueprint for that to start to happen.

So what should we, so I mean, I will be looking for evidence of those things on, like if we get another report of corrective, progress on, excuse me, progress on corrective action plan, for example, from the counseling audit, that's one thing I know I will be looking for, of are we moving in this direction?

I will also be looking at, you know, next year's and the budget as it's developed, I imagine will show us where maybe investments are moving, but what else can we as board directors be looking for to ensure that those structural shifts are actually happening, not that we're layering new things on top of a structure that already didn't provide what we needed it to provide.

So just to clarify, meaning the structure shifts within the system.

So to say it a different way, let's just say multi-tiered system of support, like where are the evidence points that this is happening for the board?

So I think a lot of that is gonna have to come through the work that we're bringing forward in these progress monitoring sessions.

So if we run this through a scenario, if we're saying that is one of our strategies, we're coming forward and we're investing it.

We're clearer with you all like what is a tier three mean for a family, a student, tier two, tier one, working with teachers and we're saying we're doing it yet our data when we come to these spaces is not moving.

For me that would be the indication of well we need to re-tool this machine because something's not working correctly.

whereas if we say we're doing these things, we're coming before you all with information and data on students and we're showing like, nope, look, this is moving, I think that's also an indication, no, that the system is shifting.

Thank you.

Director Mizrahi.

I think my question's more of a clarifying one.

So on Intermeasure 2A, the 10th grade Intermeasure, You said it briefly, but maybe I didn't quite catch it right.

Can you explain the Washington State High School requirement?

That's the one that I get the other one and why, how that fits into the whole picture, but yeah.

Yeah, so in Seattle Public Schools, it's not a credit bearing course.

It's something that we do in the middle schools.

And so it is a requirement.

We currently do it in the middle schools.

There are a few districts, and I want to be clear, a few, that in the state of Washington do as a credit course.

Most do not, we do not, and it is done in the middle school, but it is a requirement.

But let's say, for example, you just moved from Kansas to Seattle, you're an 11th grader, there are options for you to not necessarily waive that credit but do some sort of project base to align to that credit and or you have evidence that you completed something similar in your home state, we would accept those sort of things.

So please let me know if that.

and if we're able to up the percentage of students who are doing that, that's going to put more students on track to graduate.

Yeah, the reason it's in the measure is one of the requirements in the state of Washington.

So although it doesn't bear credit because it's done in the middle school, it is one of the requirements for graduation.

So not having it for whatever the reason being and being able to look at that in data will let us know that, hey, we need to do something with this, essentially.

That's why it's part of the measure.

Okay, and then on Intermeasure 1B, if I heard you correctly, a lot of this stuff might be happening already, but it's just happening later, and we want it to happen earlier so that the actual benefit of the plan is enjoyed.

It's actually like not just jumping through a hoop or checking a box, but actually the student's actually getting some benefit from that.

So I guess one of the things that just is not listed explicitly in the strategy, or maybe it's embedded in there implicitly or whatever, but is just making sure that whoever in the building is in charge of making sure that students are doing this, this thing that they already may be doing in 12th grade, just say gotta move that up a year, right?

So making sure that's just adequately communicated out because this may be a very functional way to make these plans a lot more useful just to get schools doing it much earlier.

We feel that this is one of the measures we should be able to move relatively quickly because when you look at what it really is, it's a technical exercise.

versus like an output, more so than an outcome.

When you think of your outcomes, it's like we're trying to get our academic data to grow.

This is literally a technical exercise with an output that we can put some strategies around and say, no, this is when this should happen for students, not if your school is advisory, this is when it happens, those sort of things, and move those numbers quickly.

So just co-signing your check that yes.

We have to shift it and turn it into a growth mindset for our students so they understand that we want them to go to college or we want them to explore and we have to do some more work around exposing that to our students.

There was a question that you asked a little earlier about, you know, are students on track early enough?

Maybe that's a question we need to ask and reflective.

The other question was implementation accountability indicators.

What do they look like at each grade level?

Should we be doing this at kindergarten, first grade, second, third, or should we wait to sixth grade?

That's a big piece.

Equity and guardrail indicator, what does that look like?

So we are demystifying that and everybody understands that so they understand what their role is.

So if somebody is off track or not on track, what the next step is to help that student get there?

So we need to have tools to help our students get on track but also a pathway for the students if they are off track how to get that and that should be seamless.

The third piece that was talked about generally but not big enough was the parent participation.

In Naviance there was a parent portal for parents to be able to go in and get that information.

Do our parents do it or not?

Why aren't our parents doing that?

That's the other accountability that Some parents are and some parents aren't.

And how do we involve our parents and use them as a leverage to help their students?

They were the first teachers of their student.

Why do we abandon that by the time they get to college?

We need to have them be a part of that as well.

And so those are reflective pieces that we're looking at as well.

Well, on that point, when it comes to things like the FAFSA, is there any way to pull out data on first in family to go to college?

Do we have that?

I don't even know if that needs to make track.

No, we don't.

I think we can take that back to the team and see what we'd be able to find out, but not that I can think of in the moment that we have that readily accessible.

And I just want to call attention to in the appendix, there is a little bit more detail on that question around what has been completed.

So we do know that it's not that nobody's done anything.

And so, yeah, it's when.

Director Smith Thank you.

Sorry, I'm moving the mic around.

So for these metrics, I think it's a very difficult thing to measure our students' life ready.

And so it's a work in progress.

I'd say for a lot of them, the high school and beyond plan, the FAFSA, the 12 credits, there's the risk of every metric can become a target.

And I think these are things where The way that it's been discussed today, I don't think that that's happening, but I think it is something we want to be aware of.

Because if we said, oh, hey, we just got every student in their senior year to fill out the FAFSA, that wouldn't be actually making them more prepared for life.

So, I mean, if they were also going to college, it would, but not necessarily.

So I think that's, I don't know if there's a question here.

That's my comment.

And so, Yeah, for those three metrics in particular, and with the high school and beyond plan, the way you're talking about it is like, is it a meaningful and useful thing for students to do?

Because I think if we want it to be a target that we want to improve, I think just making sure that it is something that will actually improve the intended outcome of life readiness, not just checking the boxes.

But I do appreciate that the way you're discussing everything, it's like, oh, do I even need to bring up my questions?

This is all very good.

So I didn't ask a question, did I?

Do you have any comments, or should I move on to the next one?

You highlighted the important part.

It's not just a plan, it's a readiness.

How do we get students ready for the real world?

And that's a question that's ongoing every day, but the readiness is so key, and that's what you're pointing out.

It can't just be a plan, but the readiness is the important part, that experiential piece.

It has to be there.

Yeah, and I know a lot of other directors and your responses have really covered that.

And so I think for my two points that I'm bringing up, the second one is going back to the intersectionality of students with disabilities and race.

I think there's a risk there of a bias towards students of colors having IEPs that target behavioral issues versus sort of like learning issues, and so tracking that I think is something we will want to be focused on.

So I think it's been touched on, so that's a question and more a request.

Yes, thank you.

And just related to what you're noting, we are very intentionally thinking about how do we make the high school plan more meaningful.

If we're saying it's a metric, we're saying it's important, it's codified in state law, what does that actually mean?

So it is something that's on our radar.

And I think when you take a look at school links, the handout that you're taking a look at, that roadmap, that's the transparency that has to happen.

We need to have all eyes on it, including board members, including our parents.

It has to be transparent around that.

If we're not doing that, then How do we improve?

And as we take this on, we don't have to defend anything.

This is a fluid piece of the work we do.

We're going to see things.

We're going to improve.

Things are going to change.

I often think back of asking for help when students ask for help, when we ask for help.

I remember my parents asked for help on how to program the VCR.

you know now I ask for help on my on my cell phone you know for my students it's just quicker way to do this you could do it this way and I'm like show me you know but asking for that we have to get to that point I'd be remiss if I didn't hit this point that you're bringing up during COVID our students lost some skills communication skills they love the text but students didn't know how to walk into the classroom and communicate and be able to express their ideas but they could do it on the computer and we're trying to get them back to expressing themselves to be able to articulate that and that's the other piece that when you say readiness that's the other piece that we're working on and that's new for our teachers because that was something that was so many opportunities for that to happen but how do you break them out of that skill you got to get more opportunities to practice at it.

and then how do you come up with a metric to measure that?

There you go.

We have an expert in the room that might be able to help us with that.

I appreciate the conversation.

I think as we were developing our goals, I think the number one thing that I heard at least was I want my kid to be able to be ready when they graduate Seattle Public Schools for whatever it is that they're going to do next.

for them to be prepared for that next step.

So I think this goal is really important.

I have two questions.

The first one being, Dr. Torres Morales, you put the seed into the conversation that this target might be a little aggressive.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Yeah, there's multiple things around that when you look at the top line.

One, just thinking about something I was noting earlier between what an outcome is and an output.

So when you think about that, an output is more of basically almost like a technical exercise.

Like, I'm going to do these things, these steps I'm going to complete.

It's almost like when you have your to-do list and you check it off, oh, I got through the nine out of ten things on my to-do list, is very different than saying that you're going to do shifts in actual student outcomes and attainment data and those sort of things.

And it's not that we're saying we don't want to have aggressive targets, but when you think about what a 2% per year target is for any student outcome data, it is very, it's a press.

and so even if you look at some of the largest districts across the country that have had some great success, when they're seeing some of their gains at let's say 10%, that took years, it took over to 10 years to do that.

So thinking about for us, what does that mean when you look at a target like this?

The other thing is that our graduation rate is relatively high already.

And there are other factors in here that we need to consider.

Not that we don't want all of our students to graduate, but there are students that are on alternate standards for certain reasons.

And so are we setting up a condition whereby we're not actually doing things that we want to by pushing that number all the way up there?

I don't think that we necessarily shy away from it.

I think that we engage in more authentic conversation around it and then really determine what do we mean here kind of thing.

And hopefully that answered your question.

And then I guess the second question that I have is there's some conversation a little bit around you know does graduation rate really show what students are able to do and I guess my question is should graduation rates be an indicator of what our students are able to do and if so why is there sort of the sentiment or how do you fix the sentiment that it doesn't or is it not and that's just something we should be aware of or understanding?

I think it's definitely further conversation because at the root, if a student graduates, it should be that you're graduating and you're ready.

What we're hearing at least from this conversation and part of the reasons we even do these are to say like, hey, so this is where we're at.

What do you all think?

You're the voice of the community.

And so what I've taken from this is yes and, and so not necessarily that we would shy away from the idea of a graduation rate, but what does it really mean?

When you think about skills and knowledge, are our students actually ready?

I think Director Song really hit on the number of kids that are going to community college and then needing to take remedial courses.

And so that is gonna push us as a system to think about behind the curtain, like, so what's happening then?

So if this is the graduation rate and we're pretty excited, like, look, this is a great number, especially for a large urban school district in the United States, the question then becomes, is it a great number?

Because what is baked in that number?

so more of a duly noted received thank you and wondering, more wonderment I guess around like so what is a different way to look at this then that can capture the actual life readiness that was the intent of the goal and I don't think that we necessarily shy away from the graduation rate but I think we think about what are we missing kind of thing.

And also wouldn't it be nice if graduation rates said our kids were ready for what's next but thank you.

Vice President Briggs.

is definitely a predictor.

Thanks.

I guess I'm gonna tie in, not shockingly, little tidbits from what my colleagues have all said before me, but specifically around, yes, what we were just talking about, what does it mean to graduate from Seattle Public Schools?

Certainly I think it's happening to kids who are graduating at the top of their class and getting into a college that they were excited to go to and then finding out that they need to take remedial classes there too.

It's not just happening for kids who are going into the Seattle Promise.

that makes it tricky then to rely on the data around graduation, as has been pointed out.

So I think Liza's question around, given that situation, is this the correct measurement to use?

But I guess my question is, to what extent are you all aware of that issue of the perception of kids graduating from Seattle Public Schools showing up to college or community college unprepared to move forward in their coursework?

Is that a surprise to hear that in this conversation or is that something that has already been on your radar?

I would say it's something that's on our radar, especially given some of the work that Director Song was talking about.

The city has been pointing out some of these things.

I think the part that I would say is a little bit more, I don't know if I would use the word surprising, but interesting and good to know is that it is not just our students that are going to the community colleges, it's even the students that are graduating at the top of the class, because then it really begs the question for us to run the level of rigor of the courses.

And so I would say that the latter is more thought-provoking and interesting to think about.

But to say that we're not aware that some of this is happening, no, we are aware some of this is happening for sure.

Okay, great.

And my examples are all anecdotal.

I obviously haven't gathered stats on this, but it seems like worth looking into it.

And I think academic rigor is, or lack thereof, is something that we heard a lot too during our and community engagement meetings, and that obviously ties into what we're talking about.

My other, my second question, in the two minutes that we have left, is, okay, I think we can wrap this up, is, oh my gosh, I just lost, no, it's back.

So you were talking about the High School and Beyond Plan being codified in state law, and I was curious to know if you know if we're in compliance around that.

Because I'm pretty sure, I think in state law, kids are supposed to start that process in seventh grade.

So yeah.

Yes, and so the way that we've mapped it out, yes we are.

The intent is that they go along the pace, and that's where when you even look at some of our metrics, we've even said like these are the things that we think should be completed by a certain time.

So like in eighth grade, you should have completed these two activities.

By 11th grade, you should have completed these four additional items.

So yes, I wouldn't say that we're out of compliance, I would say that we're not meeting some of our own benchmarks at all, like when we're showing this to you.

So ultimately for the student to graduate, they'd have to complete it, but what something like this is telling us is that a lot of students are just rushing it in 12th grade to just get it done and checked off.

And so in terms of compliance, yes.

In terms of spirit of the law and the intent, that's where we're having some more conversation because it should be more of a plan, like a pathway of where am I going versus I need to get this done so I can get my diploma in 12th grade.

Right, yeah, I guess by compliance I meant is that happening across all of our middle schools?

Because having had two kids go through middle school in Seattle Public Schools, I never saw any high school beyond anything at all.

So I guess my question is just then, in what sense are we in compliance?

And I think that's partly like this one I'll show you right here.

If you look at the grade eight measure, this is the middle school measure essentially.

So these are the students who have left and are current ninth graders in high school.

And so we say they should have completed these two activities by then.

But if you look at our data, it is saying only 52.5% of students across the city have completed this.

and so that's when we're talking about strategies going forward it's around like how are we tightening this up because it should not be that we're saying this needs to happen but only half of our kids are doing it across the city and then it even begs another question around like and so who are those half of the kids and where are they and what are the schools so really thinking about what is the actual guidance around this and the strategies that need to be put in place to pull us more in compliance with what you're noting.

Yeah, and I guess that becomes a question then of like to what extent are all middle school educators on the same page about needing to be in compliance and ensuring that that's happening in their buildings, yeah.

I can tell you what we've seen, speaking to your anecdotal, we've seen it's basically presented to students as optional.

it's asynchronous for students and then it's an add-on.

So there's nobody really owning it at sixth grade or seventh grade or eighth grade to say at the end of sixth grade you should have had this experience.

And it's more of a prevention, not just an outcome.

because if students are doing the high school and beyond plan, then they get a chance to get access to the courses, the master schedule, they're thinking about growth mindset.

So we're changing the culture mindset, but we got to get some ownership from our teachers to actually make sure that this is not on the students.

You had their students speak and say, using this.

I created my own system.

Well, how come we're not using the system that we have, and how do we use this as a prevention model, not just an outcome-based model?

We can do both with these, but you're absolutely right.

We've noticed those things, and now we're, as you guys set that goal, we looked at these indicators, and now how do we flip that?

All right, we're going to wrap up the Progress Monitoring Life Ready baseline report.

Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales.

Thank you, Chief Accountability Office Howard, for the presentation.

Board Directors, we're going to take a seven-minute, so really come back here at 6.10 break, 6.10, and we'll continue then, and we will have a legislative session portion update with Cliff Traisman and Julia Roth.

All right, it is 6-10.

We will join back together here.

All right.

Director Song, Director Smith, Director Lavalle.

Thank you.

All right, so we are gonna move into our legislative session update.

I'm gonna pass it off to our Director of Board Relations and Strategic Initiatives, Ms. Worth, but we are also joined by Chief Redmond, who is filling in for Superintendent Podesta this evening, and then Cliff Traisman will join us as well, so I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you President Topp.

As President Topp mentioned I am joined by Clifford Traisman this evening who is our district's contract lobbyist and has done exceptional work for us for the past 19 years I actually just found out this evening.

Cliff anything you would like to add for your introduction?

No I mean I would just is this working?

I would just say I'm happy to be here and appreciate all the collaboration from everybody here on staff and board and superintendent and making sure that we speak with one clear voice in Olympia on our legislative priorities each session and we do do that I've been lobbying Olympia for many many years I work on a lot of environmental issues in addition to K-12 and have a few other areas I focus on but my passion with four children who I put through Seattle Public Schools with in June I could say it in past tense my daughter's a senior at Roosevelt High School but I was doing the math in my head I've had a child in Seattle Public Schools for the past 23 years so in June that will stop for a while at least until there's maybe grandkids but This is my passion and I'm happy to be here.

All right, thank you.

So we're going to provide some foundational information for you all this evening going into the 2026 legislative session which kicked off on Monday.

So a quick review of our 2026 legislative agenda which was passed in November 2025. There are three main priority areas.

so addressing funding gaps in basic education and the priorities in this area cover special education, transportation, material supplies and operating costs and then protecting and maintaining funding levels that are already set by the state.

Supporting student learning and well-being which covers areas of high quality instruction, safe and supportive schools, and a request to limit any new state requirements, particularly if they do not come with additional funding for implementation.

And the third area is efficient and reliable operations.

So priorities in this area around high quality and sustainable capital investments and then addressing an issue with sales tax on retail services that school districts are now subject to.

These priorities are available on the district website which is linked at the top of this slide and also at the end of the presentation and you can read more detail about the priorities themselves there.

Just to note that these priorities were developed in collaboration with our partner districts statewide associations and based on previous community engagement that was also aligned to our district's needs in order for us to meet our goals.

So they represent a lot of work that has happened over the last couple of years to support the district strategic plan and goals going forward.

So I will now pass it over to Cliff to provide a bit of a landscape view of how things are looking in 2026.

Yes, and then probably best to do when we get to the point of doing Q&A, that's probably the best way to do it.

But, you know, in a general sense, it's going to be a very frustrating year.

The state is faced with at least a billion-dollar deficit.

If you look at the four-year outlook, it is much larger than that.

and they have to, by law, pass a balanced budget by the end of session.

Last year was a long session year, it was a 105-day session.

This year is what's called a short session year, a 60-day session.

In the 105-day session last year, they set a two-year budget and in the second year in the 60-day short session, they alter that budget.

Unfortunately, they have a budget that is not balanced based on caseloads and the deficit that they have.

and so for us we want to make sure that in any budget cutting K-12 education is held harmless at the very, very least.

We can't afford any more reductions in state investment in basic education.

That is a non-starter for Seattle Public Schools and the K-12 community broadly.

Our kids and our families should be demanding that and we are.

I would say beyond that we're still asking for additional revenue we're always underfunded on special education and there was a increase last year on the multiplier and the safety net dealing with a special education and our strong delegation led on that and we had some success last year but they didn't really succeed on funding what's called materials supplies and operating costs otherwise known as MSOC or on student transportation.

So we are seeking the passage of legislation that will increase the MSOC funding that would help Seattle Public Schools and to at least fund what's called the transportation safety net so we have more state funding for our special populations, homeless and McKinney-Vento populations and we'll be pushing for that as well.

and as the legislative agenda laid out the Senate Bill 5814 which is now law last year which is a sales tax on retail services did a tax on temporary services that negatively impacts Seattle Public Schools and school districts special education contracted services security contract contracted services, those sort of things, live presentations.

So Kurt Butlerman, our CFO, and others will be calculating those costs and we're going to be pushing the legislature to try to remedy those potential negative impacts from the law last year.

I would say those are the highest priorities.

We're blessed with the strongest delegation in Olympia, great leadership in the House and Senate.

and we'll be pushing on all these and other areas beyond just saying no cuts.

And then finally, we don't want the passage of any new legislation whatsoever that would force us to incur more costs.

Legislature has a tendency to sometimes I say with a smile pass legislation that doesn't come with the necessary funding to implement that given our dire budget situation throughout the state for school districts and in this tough economy we really cannot afford more costs and more deficits as you well know and under your leadership you've been working hard to reduce those deficits.

I think those are the major areas and Julia you'll let me know if I forgot anything.

Thank you.

President Topp, would you like to take some questions now on session landscape or wait until the end?

Let's see if there's any questions now for Mr. Treisman on sort of the landscape in Olympia.

Were there any specific pieces of legislation that are currently being considered that are related to supporting student learning and wellbeing that we should be paying attention to?

At this point you know there was the K-12 funding equity work group I sat on that representing us talking about doing a new K-12 education formula that eventually will have to happen and in a future legislature I don't expect them to be making changes to the formula in this short 60-day session.

There are always bills that we monitor on a week basis some that we weigh in directly some that we weigh in behind the scenes but most of this year will be about really quite honestly reducing hopefully getting support from the legislature on funding and making sure that we're not swept up in the budget cutting discussions that are going on in Olympia.

The $1 billion deficit, do we know what is driving that?

Is any of that coming from K through 12?

Is there a reason for us to think that we wouldn't be able to maintain the levels of funding?

It's a complicated question that I don't really know the answer to.

I know that we have been pushing that any savings in K-12 that the legislature realizes be reinvested in K-12, both on the capital side and on the operating side.

But no, no one is blaming K-12 education for the statewide deficit.

I know that there's been a lot of discourse around progressive revenues but it doesn't seem like we would immediately benefit from that.

Are there any other conversations that around maybe like further levy lifts, levy cap lifts that could bring in a little bit more revenue opportunity for Seattle Public Schools?

That is a big one for us and last year we were successful we were one of the winners if you will around that levy issue they did allow us to increase our levy cap so we were able to capture more of those dollars that our voters already were approved and that helped greatly I believe the number is 12 million this year alone so last year through the leadership of our delegation they pushed really hard not to go home without that so we were lucky to have that last year this year that's off the table there is discussion and a bill in the legislature focus focusing on what's called LEA levy equalization that helps those districts that are the non-levy districts have funding it's complicated because the governor cut that in his budget slightly so there are discussions about LEA levy equalization assistance but not around levy for this year but it will always be a priority for Seattle Public Schools to be able to help solve its own problems on the local level without letting the state off the hook and then on the issue of The revenue there is going to be a bill that will be introduced any week and there's only a few weeks in a short session here on what's called the millionaire's tax and many legislators including legislators in our delegation are talking about that being something that would benefit K-12 education and if that millionaire's tax or so-called millionaire's tax were to be enacted into law, the earliest that the state would probably see revenue from that would be 2029, so it is out in the future.

It is something that could help K-12 education, but for our immediate needs, probably not.

I happen to be at the Education Committee session this morning, so thank you so much for your incredible work.

The committee did pass the safety net transportation unanimously.

Right, the Senate.

Yeah, and it's a big source of deficit spending for this district, so thank you for lobbying for us on that.

Appreciate it, and we testified on that yesterday, so they're moving quickly.

Yeah.

Director Lavallee.

With what you were just talking about with the millionaires tax, is there any, you said that it would likely benefit education.

How would we be, or would we be able to push in any way to, I mean we can't get a guarantee, but get any sort of prioritization of that within that getting passed.

The concern being that oftentimes when things like this are passed, they get redistributed based on a bunch of jockeying from different entities that want a share of that.

It's an excellent question.

That's something we need to really keep a keen eye on and make sure that to the extent that that bill is in any way tied to K-12 education funding that it's real and that we benefit and again we're lucky to have delegation members.

When I say Seattle delegation members those are the legislators in Olympia who represent our region.

who will be supporting many if not all will be supporting that legislation and we'll work closely with them on that.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Just to add to that, there's lots of things that in the past have said, this is for education, but if there's not actually an appropriation or a spending plan, that's exactly what you're talking about.

So that's in our priorities, we have sort of had a acknowledgement that progressive revenue, that more revenue is needed from the state, that we need sustainable funding sources and that progressive revenue is something we support, but it's not like we're not gonna become an advocacy arm for progressive revenue at the top because all that revenue could come in and K-12 could see and not a single dollar of it.

So the prototypical model that Cliff was talking about that it's a longer project to get that to change, that's where we would see, that's where we need to see the increased spending is to have that be like, here's what is planned to spend on K-12.

Otherwise, exactly what you said.

That we could raise the revenue, which would be great, and not see any of it.

I have a question, too.

There's always been a tension, and it's probably not gonna come up this session, but a tension between the levy lid and LEA.

LEA is being talked about right now.

Is that being talked about in the way of because you did the levy lift last year, now we need you to do LEA?

Or is it being talked about because the governor cut it?

Because the levy lid is really, really important for us.

A lot of other districts in the state don't either can't raise a levy or don't.

And so the LEA dollars come from the state.

So when we're advocating for, if we advocate for a lift to a levy lid, and we do it without bringing in folks who need the LEA dollars, our legislators, as strong as they are, can't pass a bill on their own.

What's the conversation about that tension and how in looking at a state deficit, how might we still have that conversation?

Because I can see on the one hand, hey, not to let the state off the hook, but we need more revenue.

We can get it here if you will let us.

and that means less that you have to find but we also don't want to leave other children in Washington state without the resources that they need.

No I'm glad you asked that question.

Under your direction and leadership, the school board, you have always directed us to support education funding for all the kids of Washington state.

so we have always supported increase of levy equalization assistance LEA funding from the state even though our kids and our families don't directly benefit from that you've always directed us to advocate for that because we have a very generous voter base that passes our levies not every district in the state is blessed with with that property-rich district political environment where they can pass levies.

And so LEA is supposed to smooth that out on some kind of a percentage basis, not a dollar for dollar, but last year when we got our levy lift, we also advocated for an increase in levy equalization assistance because we care about all the kids of Washington State and their education and the legislature for all kinds of reasons.

passed the levy bill and not the LEA bill.

So the bill in the legislature introduced by Representative Steve Bergquist from the 11th Legislative District would help smooth that out.

That was unrelated to the governor's cut, which I don't fully understand, honestly, on exactly how he cut it, but it was by $100 per pupil for a short period of time.

under your direction we've always supported no cuts to LEA and in fact enhancements.

So I hope that answered the, excuse me, I hope that answered the question.

Yeah, I think it did, just to put an even finer point on it, our delegation can advocate hard for us to support a levy lid only.

but it needs a lot more votes than just our delegation to pass.

And so we care about the rest of the children in Washington State and also we can't pass what we need alone.

Exactly right.

Well, yeah, but like, yeah, but that caused a lot of hurt, I guess.

Yes, yes.

One more question.

As this is a short session and we go into 2027 are you working on priorities for that longer session in an attempt to get more of that special education transportation and MSOC funding that we weren't able to get in the last longer session?

The short answer is absolutely.

When the bill last year passed led by Senator Jamie Peterson under his leadership to increase what's called the special ed multiplier and lower the safety net threshold which allowed more revenue to come in to serve our neediest kids.

that are children with high needs.

That was something that got whittled down and weakened each and every week during session.

And the reason was the probabilities of a larger revenue package kept dwindling as well.

And so although it's the state's constitutional duty to provide ample funding for K-12 education with or without new revenue, the new revenue discussion good or bad was tied to special ed last year and so we were able to get some benefits from the legislature but they knew and we told them in real time this doesn't get the job done it doesn't close the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of underfunding for special education in Washington State so absolutely we'll bring that back obviously that's up to the board to adopt that agenda, but the work is not done.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's move on to the board legislative advocacy section here.

Great.

So I'm going to go through some of the technical aspects that govern the board's advocacy activity, but want to start by emphasizing again that one of the most critical elements of the legislative advocacy program is coordination.

and unity throughout session around the legislative priorities and strategy.

So collaboration between staff, CLIF, and board directors is really key to our success.

So the board advocacy program is governed by board policy 1225 and state law.

A couple of key activities highlighted here in board policy 1225 is to develop an annual legislative agenda, which you all have done, so check.

Support and work for legislation that promotes quality education within SPS, the region, and state of Washington.

so again to that point even in board policy that our advocacy also takes into consideration the rest of the state.

Staying informed on pending legislation and actively communicating concerns that you may be hearing to fellow directors as well as staff so that we can take that into our strategy discussions.

And then the last bullet here is a direct quote from the policy that board members individually or as members of professional organizations will not represent positions conflicting with the district on legislative matters.

Unless it's made clear that you're doing so as an individual and not in your official position at the district.

So being very clear that the district speaks with one voice.

We are also legally only allowed to advocate on the board's adopted priorities.

So, the priorities that we just discussed are the topics that we are allowed to advocate on, the positions that we are allowed to advocate on, so anything that conflicts with that as a district official under the state law and using our district resources, you're not allowed to advocate.

So, segwaying into the state law on board advocacy activities, what is allowed?

Communication with legislators on legislation that's related to the adopted agenda, again, in coordination.

Discussing legislation at open public meetings that's related to the board adopted legislative agenda.

So that could be updates on bills.

It could also be a discussion of legislation that the board wants to take a position on.

So it could be that there's a bill that gets introduced during session that was not contemplated on our agenda, but that the board feels strongly the district needs to advocate around.

You can have a conversation and then take official action as a board to add it as an allowable topic and position for us to advocate.

so that can happen at a public meeting as well.

You are also allowed to work with staff and use district resources like your laptop or district cell phone or district paper and printers to prepare materials related to the board adopted legislative agenda.

So if you want support on developing talking points or data requests and analysis, if it's on the board adopted legislative agenda, you are allowed to use district resources in that way.

and then finally communicating with legislators at their request on issues related to public duties of the district.

So if a legislator reaches out to you and says, hey, is this bill going to impact the district in some way, you are allowed to reach out to staff and ask that question and then communicate back to the legislator on that.

What is not allowed is to communicate with legislators on legislation that's not on the board adopted agenda like we just discussed, especially on behalf of the board.

You are not allowed to work with staff or use district resources to prepare materials that are not related to the board adopted agenda.

So if it's not a topic that the board has taken official action on either through the legislative agenda that's been adopted or other official action at a board meeting, you cannot ask staff to produce data or talking points for you on that or use your district devices to advocate on that topic.

Also importantly, elected officials, school board directors are not allowed to solicit advocacy from families and community members on behalf of the district.

So while you as public officials can advocate, you cannot go to the PTSA or from the dais, encourage or ask parents in the audience to go and advocate for the district on a specific piece of legislation.

So you may get requests from parents like what would be helpful for me to do to support the district and getting additional funding or passing this bill.

you are encouraged to direct them to the district website which has our legislative priorities and then also other resources so that if folks want to get involved there's a link to the state PTA, to our Seattle Council PTA, to other advocacy organizations.

There's contact information for their legislators so they can then take it upon themselves to get connected with those advocacy resources versus you directing them and what they should do in order to advocate.

So that is always a bit of a tricky thing to navigate every session.

There's at least one.

one instance where there's a question.

So just being very clear, you cannot solicit advocacy or ask folks to do something, but if you are asked, please direct them to our available resources.

You are also not allowed to provide materials that were created with district resources to families or community to use an advocacy.

So again, if you get a question of, hey, do you all have any talking points on this particular bill, you cannot provide the district created talking points to the or the community member who may have requested that from you.

So again, directing them to advocacy organizations that can support them in their desired efforts is important.

Then moving into supports for board advocacy.

So this is really how the work gets done during session.

As mentioned before, there's a lot of collaboration during session.

So the board president appoints the legislative liaison.

The liaison term is for two years.

That board director works with district staff and lobbyists and the lobbyists to review pending legislation, discuss strategy that is aligned with the board adopted agenda.

So the legislative liaison is kind of the single point of contact but certainly not the only board director that's allowed to engage in advocacy.

They are just the point person for staff and lobbyist collaboration and then help facilitate the strategy around testimony or talking points or what information needs to be shared with the full board.

Legislative session moves very quickly so it's very important that we have a single point person to go to and say, hey, how would the board like to approach this piece of legislation that we just found out is being heard tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., right?

So it's helpful to have that single point, but other directors are definitely encouraged to be tracking legislation, reaching out to staff and the lobbyist with questions.

Staff and Cliff, sorry, I keep referring to you as the lobbyist.

with questions and coordinating.

If you would like to testify on a bill, we're happy to help you with talking points, analysis, and keeping those lines of communication and advocacy open.

and I believe that that is it.

Happy to take any questions and then just a couple of resources that were referenced here.

So the government relations page is where you'll find our legislative agenda and then other advocacy resources that you can point community members to.

Board policy 1225 is the board's adopted policy around advocacy and then the Public Disclosure Commission has a really helpful resource around guidelines for allowable lobbying activities and not allowed activities under state law that gets into more detail on things like grassroots or indirect lobbying and things like that.

So if you have the need for more information, those are also excellent resources.

Okay.

I'm going to move to questions.

I'll just really quickly just kind of promote a little bit about what was said here.

I think we all have a responsibility.

We all have different relationships with legislators to be advocating for our shared agenda and, you know, this is a quick 60 days, but we all have a responsibility in those 60 days.

With that, questions for Julia on sort of the do's and don'ts and what we're allowed to do?

Director Smith.

This isn't exactly on the do's or don'ts, but when you say we can direct people to the legislative agenda, is that in these links?

Because it doesn't look like it unless maybe on the government relations page?

Yes, on the government relations page, there's both a printable version of the priorities as well as a web-embedded version where you can open it up and see all the detail.

Okay, perfect.

Vice President Briggs.

This is also not a do's and don'ts question.

I guess maybe it could be considered but are we taking an official position on Senator Hanson's bill around prohibiting ICE agents from coming onto school property because that's something I'm hearing that families are concerned about.

So, yeah, just trying to figure out how to talk about that.

And is that, yeah, do we have an official position on that?

Or is that something that we need to discuss?

So that is something that would potentially fall under our safe and supportive school environment.

So depending on the specific language of the bill we would work with the legislative liaison on if our current agenda covers advocacy on that or if the board does need to take a specific position.

So still TBD but a lot of our agenda priorities are kind of broad in that area to to cover things that we may not have anticipated.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask specifically, because this is, I know we've talked about it, but I don't know if we've specifically, you know, advocacy is, it's a group project.

We cannot, no one district can get done alone what our kids deserve and no one board director can do all of that.

So we all have a role in that.

and different boards, there's different, some boards have people that came to the board because legislative advocacy was their thing and they've been signing in and giving testimony on bills for years and some folks may be like, sign in what, I'm sorry, who?

So the specific question that I have is we have sort of had a, shared understanding-ish, and we have a lot of new board members, but in the past that if you're gonna sign in on a bill, like basically don't sign in on a bill without checking with Cliff first.

That typically if there is an official Seattle Public Schools support of a bill, Cliff will sign in on our behalf.

So if individuals have other bills that are maybe not part of our platform that is still something that for an individual is important to them and they do want to sign in on it, should we just leave?

I don't have any specific thing.

I'm just thinking it's come up before.

Should we leave the, you know, it will ask you for your name and your organization.

If we haven't run that by you, should we just leave it blank?

Yeah I would say that in all my years.

Or would you say don't sign in because people know who the board directors are and that muddies the waters.

I would just say in all my years I can't recall where there was ever a problem where there was any vagaries about a Seattle Public Schools position on a bill.

what you do as individuals, I don't know, but the rule of thumb that has always worked is always check with Julia.

She is excellent at working the entire bureaucracy and getting what we need.

If a legislator or anyone asks questions and we have to give an answer, She's excellent at getting the answer and getting it to me to get to the legislator.

I can't think of any time we've had a bill where I'm sure it's happened but where a school board director signed in where we didn't have a position or we didn't know about it.

But I understand the question.

It's a good question.

I just don't recall there ever being a problem.

And I would say, as individuals, you are, of course, allowed to sign in or advocate on issues as long as you are not indicating that it is the position of the district or the board.

So I would say if there's a question on if there's a district position on something or if it falls under the legislative agenda, then I would err on the side of leaving your SPS affiliation off and signing in as just an individual.

But as Cliff said, please reach out to us and ask and say I would like to sign in on this bill if it's something that we do support or oppose, whichever direction you are going, and we can provide you with that information.

Great.

and then my other question in the same vein of it being a group project is one of the most important things that I have found in terms of advocacy is collaborating across the state and I This is not a personal thing, people may have different reasons why they weren't available, but it was pretty disappointing to be the only one from Seattle at the WASDA legislative conference.

It is an annual opportunity with WASDA, WASA, which is state administrators, WASBO, state business officers, superintendents are there, to talk to other folks around the state and work together on our shared priorities.

There's also training opportunities.

This is how I learned about effective advocacy and how WASDA works and all these things.

And so I don't know what the reasons are, but it is really disappointed that we are here as representatives of our community.

And if we're not in places, our community is not represented.

I did bring back some talking points on some of the WASDA positions that are aligned that I'll give to you, Julia, in case, I mean, some of the WASDA stuff is, you know, it's all in the same vein, but there's slightly different emphasis, but in case that's helpful.

And then the other thing I wanted to mention that I'm not sure how this happened is that our student board members didn't come.

I offered to chaperone Last year the students had a really great experience and we even had a student on a student panel and I'm not I'm not sure what kind of fell through the cracks that the students didn't get Signed up for that again, but I'm just noting it so that as we're moving forward and documenting some things that we make sure that that's Written down somewhere that our students have the opportunity to come to legislative conference and that that's a I mean if we agree that money's gonna be allocated to that but just that it's something that's kind of a standing expectation so that they get to do that.

Others?

Alright, thank you so much Cliff, Julia, Bev for your presentation.

Thank you.

all right well thank you everyone for the work session tonight the good discussion sort of between now and when we meet next on January 21st I hope folks will do some work to move our agenda forward in Olympia but otherwise our regularly scheduled board meeting will be on January 21st and there being no further business on the agenda, the meeting stands adjourned at 6.50 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.

Have a good night.