Seattle School Board Work Session Sept. 20, 2023

Good afternoon.

This is Vice President Rankin.

I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 4 32 p.m.

Please note that this meeting is being recorded.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

For the record I'll call the roll.

Director Hampson Director Harris.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sargio.

Present.

Director Song Moritz.

Present.

President Hersey has a work obligation and is not with us this afternoon and this is Vice President Rankin.

The superintendent is also present as well as staff.

This evening's work session is on the 2024-25 budget.

I will now hand it over to Dr. Jones and staff for the presentation.

Thank you Vice President Rankin and board members.

Today we have a presentation and this slide should read funding our future part two.

We're going to talk about this multi-year effort to get our budget in order and to really attack this long term structural deficit.

So before I get started I'd like to just have my team introduce themselves and then we can get started with the presentation starting with Dr. Bettleman.

Good afternoon Kurt Bettleman assistant superintendent finance.

Hello Fred Podesta chief operations officer.

Hello Bev Redman chief of staff.

Art Jarvis Deputy Superintendent.

Thank you all.

And so again this was an extension of what we started last year.

It seems like we just put this to bed and now we're bringing it back up.

We finished our process in July when you all approved the 2324 budget and it was a it was a good process.

I thought the process was healthy and so we we've learned some lessons from that.

Next slide please.

And in this effort today we're trying to start again building the foundation for the budget development process for Seattle Public Schools.

As I mentioned at the start this is around funding our future and doing what's necessary.

Next slide.

So our agenda I want to talk a little bit about lessons learned and commitments from the 2324 process that I just referenced.

Discuss our current situation just make sure that we're grounded in what we're dealing with.

Talk about the proposed goals and principles as to why are we coming together and what we're trying to reach as an outcome.

The timeline which is going to be really important.

I want to make sure that you all are informed about the next steps that are happening with the budget development process.

And then we'll work in here some opportunities for your feedback similar to how we did the previous the previous sessions.

Next slide.

And one more.

So during the 23 24 process internally we became a lot more knowledgeable about our budget and our fiscal picture partly partly out of just being forced to do that.

I think we have a deeper collective understanding around our individual departmental divisional budgets.

We have a better picture around the entire fiscal picture.

We have a deeper understanding of our resources at the division and departmental levels.

People hadn't had to look that deep before, but now we're at that stage where we have some deeper knowledge.

I think we worked really effectively with our legislature and our Seattle delegation to really express what our current state is, to be able to talk with them intelligently about what our needs are.

Director Rankin, you were a superstar in really trying to translate some of the things that we need from a board level and then from a staff level.

I think we had a good teamwork on making sure our delegation was up to speed.

And we prepared to enter the multi-year fiscal stabilization planning.

I think we realized that this wasn't a one-shot deal and that we need to look at this.

Year after year after year and I'll talk a little bit about that.

And then I think collectively we developed an appreciation for the complexity of the annual enrollment staffing and budget balancing process.

And as we move into things like October staffing we're already stronger and we're more informed and we're more aligned with our schools around how they may be impacted.

So that's just one of the byproducts positive byproducts for us going through that process.

Next slide.

And so I want to just give a little bit of context for what we're trying to do here.

And this is, as I mentioned, a multi-year budget planning.

And we are back at it again.

We went through the process last year of trying to reduce and adjust for $131 million last year.

We got to a balanced budget for 23-24.

But this was our approach to attack the structural deficit that had been building year after year after year.

We've historically been able to use one time funds to be able to plug those gaps.

Last year we had eighty one million dollars in terms of funding to be able to plug those gaps.

But now the ESSER money is gone.

The hold harmless enrollment money is gone.

The transportation hold harmless money is gone.

While we receive some money, we're grateful for special education, it's still not enough.

And so we are now tasked with the second year of doing what we need to do to reconcile a structural budget deficit.

And the structural budget deficit is really year after year spending, having more expenditures and revenue coming in.

And so We're in the backdrop of the impacts of McCleary funding, COVID, enrollment losses, and which makes it even more complex going into the 23, excuse me, the 24-25 planning.

And so for 24-25, we are looking at, and we'll see slides later on in the presentation, we're looking at a $105 million challenge in front of us.

Last year we got through the $131 million challenge.

This year we have a $105 million challenge.

I think we did great work together to get to the $131 million.

Now we are challenged once again for one more year.

The bright years are twenty five twenty six though that's where we think we'll have a smaller deficit but something that's going to be manageable.

This year is going to be a tremendous challenge and so we're going we want to make sure we're doing what's on the screen here to refine a district planning and budgeting process to support the development of a sustainable multi-year plan to align expenditures and revenue beyond twenty three twenty four fiscal year.

This includes the dialogue we're going to be having that we're having with the community about well-resourced schools and includes all of the things that we are also aspiring to do so that we can again fund our future.

So with that said I want to keep going on the next slide and just again emphasize this is this is a multi-year budget planning process and our analysis without further ado I'm turned over to Fred Pedessa.

Thank you Dr. Jones.

So Dr. Jones referenced commitments we made in the process before and the language in the previous slide came from the fiscal stabilization plan which was a process change that we made writing the 23-24 budget where we asked the board to give us some explicit direction via resolution And we're trying to build on that for writing this year's, the next fiscal years and future budgets where we bring you more substantive information earlier in the process to try to get direction Instead of just kind of general feedback in the fall in previous years in winter and fall staff has brought the budget challenges to the board and gotten kind of general discussion but not really got to the meat of the issues as early as we're hoping to this year.

So Dr. Buttleman will lay out a new budget calendar.

Again, we're getting more into the substantive details earlier than we have in the past.

We're hoping to preview some of the potential decision points next month.

And it gets back to, as Dr. Jones stated, our problems are systemic and structural.

Our solutions need to be the same.

Both in terms of the substance of the decisions that we'll ask you all to make but also the process by which we make those decisions.

And so this is our first step to think about a new calendar and a multi-year view of things.

A multi-year plan really needs to make changes that are sustainable.

When we get in the rhythm of just solving problems one year at a time, You know we do things by hook or by crook.

Instead of thinking through what are the long range impacts we really need to think about the long range cost obligations we're creating in our operating budget of new programs of partnerships and grants and things that we get into that have A long tail in terms of how they affect us.

We need to make decisions and be thinking three moves ahead, not just how do we get to the next fiscal year.

We have begun looking at all areas that where our expenditures and state revenues and other revenue sources are significantly misaligned.

Not all of those things are solvable, but again, if you take a multi-year view of how we grow programs, how we create our legislative agenda, we can begin to work these issues instead of just trying to balance What's coming in the next year and we want to take a long-term look at cost pressures, inflation, cost of our labor contracts, emerging needs, safety and security, mental health needs, student wellness needs, other sorts of student supports.

We really need to, again, every decision we make now has echoes in the future and we really want to start thinking that as we talk about investments and make changes here to let the board understand kind of the net present value of everything that we do not how is this going to get us through the next fiscal year.

And so, I think we, you know, we're trying to just set the table at this point to remind, this is kind of the place where we stop and say, well, where did we leave off?

And what changes can we expect?

And then I think Dr. Jones had some questions that he wanted to ask.

And again, we really want these work sessions to be as interactive as they were while we were writing the 23-24 budget.

Okay, next slide please.

So there's two yours in here and one should be our.

But what are your thoughts around our lessons learned from last year's process?

And so this is where I want to open up to the board.

If you think back to July and before then, we had several work sessions.

We had lots of process.

As we reflect from last year to project to this year, what are some of your thoughts around lessons learned?

that might guide this year's process.

I think one of the lessons I had last year was to do more learning about what is happening in districts around us and even nationally.

I know the fiscal stabilization plan did originate from what some other school districts were doing as well but I think we need to just kind of pull out and see that these a lot of these trends are national and regional and we should be learning from other districts about how they're approaching these plans.

No I was looking around if I needed to signify to anybody.

Ask the question one more time.

What are your thoughts around lessons learned from last year's process?

Are there things that we experienced together that we can carry forward?

Are there pain points?

Are there golden opportunities?

What were the lessons that we learned from that process?

In terms of our process together?

That's kind of my question.

Our process together, yes.

Yeah, I think just How important it is to be clear to have represented our vision and values effectively from the standpoint of How we set expectations for our conversations in these spaces.

And I mean starting this early is usually we don't start until October or maybe end of October is when we start to have our first meeting so it's nice to be having these earlier.

I think we had some really strong successes and we also need to continue to get much more goal and guardrail driven in terms of how we talk about the alignment of spending as opposed to staying away from line items.

I'm really curious to get into the context of the rest of this presentation and see Just how we can work together to do better analysis.

I think we're all still learning about how do we do that analysis that's going to help us make the hard decisions to come to not continue to push forward and avoid future potential structural deficits so that other boards and superintendents and leadership don't get caught in the same trap.

Follow-up question.

Director Hampson, you mentioned starting earlier.

What are some of the advantages of starting earlier from your vantage point?

And then around the better analysis, I know Director Samrit said that we need to be looking at other districts.

Do you have any complementary thoughts around what better analysis would look like?

With maybe looking at doing a deeper dive at other districts or I'm not sure but I just wanted to hear if you had specific thoughts about one the better analysis and then what are some of the advantages of starting and starting earlier and maybe ending earlier.

If we start earlier we can have the conversation before everyone starts to get anxious.

About it, because come January, the weight is, I mean, weight, W-E-I-G-H-T, not W-A-I-T, is already upon us to get things nailed down and to be able to talk mission and vision at this point.

And then add that other layer that context of that deeper analysis.

I believe I'll have the opportunity to talk later about the financial policy that I believe I'll have the opportunity to bring forward with some of my colleagues and I think that it's expressed there but that it really is about how is The way in which we're expending our dollars contributing positively or negatively towards our goals, such that when we have to make hard decisions, we're able to avoid unintended consequences of derailing our own strategies, the district strategies towards achieving the goals that we've set and or positively support those, which may mean that we have to say goodbye to some very special things, but yet be satisfied that we're staying focused on our goals.

I think that's the big challenge for us.

I think it's been hard for us to say Yeah let's let go of these things because we haven't had the deeper analysis that said and this is why because if we do these things then we know that it's going to help us achieve the goals that you the board have established for us and that's also a different a difficult conversation to have with our owners that you know why one thing versus another because they want it all we all want it all we can't We have it all, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly that our decisions are smart and they're based on pretty solid data about what we know is working.

I know we're not gonna get there this year right now, but we're making those steps in that direction.

And you mentioned the financial policy.

Will you be willing to kind of talk about that in the context of this in the next couple slides?

All right, thank you.

Sorry.

Quickly.

Director has a direct response to that and then we'll go to Director Harris and then Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

I just want to directly add that I think what the time does what I'm hoping to see maybe this year is I don't think that menu of options is the right word I'm using, but I would like to see the options so that we can weigh them against each other and make sure that we're prioritizing and understanding what the full value of some of our choices are.

And I think that is the advantage of starting earlier.

We see the choices that we have and we can really, as board directors, take the time to engage community about which of these are the trade-offs that we will, if we have a limited set of resources, what are the trade-offs and what should we be prioritizing?

So I think that's what the time ideally should give us and the analysis that we need to be doing.

I agree with my last two colleagues big time.

I was surprised not to see spreadsheets as part of this package.

Seeing numbers seeing the reality of the numbers and tracking those numbers For each budget work session I think is wholly appropriate if not mandatory.

And I appreciate that in the past we've had spreadsheets that have had blank boxes and that's cause for concern and good conversation about those blank boxes.

And I know that you leaders and cabinet have already and Linda Sebring over there at the wall have already started filling those in and being able to compare last year's with this year's and benchmarking as Director Song brought up.

We used to do benchmarking for darn near everything and I think that was a very very valuable Exercise.

Does that mean more work for staff?

Potentially so.

But I'm not sure why we feel the need to reinvent the wheel every time because you know that I'm a believer if it works steal it.

Replicate it.

Targeted universalism vis-a-vis the budget.

But I'm concerned not to see that starting spreadsheet and on the spreadsheet When we get it and I hope that will be our next budget session.

Pictographs.

Percentages.

Percentages as compared to last year and previous years.

So we have context.

I think that people are scared.

I certainly admit to being scared.

I suspect that everybody in this building is scared.

So that context to me is huge and especially with respect to trust with our public.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Harris.

And when you mentioned the spreadsheets, you specifically talked about last year vis-a-vis this year.

Is that those comparisons, is that where the value is?

Or is it more just the spreadsheets in and of themselves have the info that you're seeking?

Is it the comps or the...

It's the comps.

Thank you.

It's getting really solid about what we spend our money on.

It's getting really solid about whether or not curriculum, as in bad years past, is the first thing to come off.

And I hope like heck it doesn't because you'll get pushback, I guarantee you.

But it's...

It's understanding.

We can't make choices if we don't know what we have in hand, what we're doing presently.

And there's no extra money in the couch cushions, despite what other parties have suggested.

And that kind of reality sandwich is, I think, beyond huge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm trying to answer the question.

So this last year, I think I'm pretty sure I feel so long ago now, but it was our first full year doing this budget cycle without JoLynn Berge, who had been with us for a number of years.

So that was definitely kind of, I think, unpredictable because who was filling those shoes, having done the process prior to that, you know, that was it was.

It was different and we had a couple staff members who aren't here anymore who kind of took a lot of the lead on that.

So I think that was that made it a little more difficult.

It's great to start this year with our new CFO.

Is that what we're the title?

I don't know what title we're using, but I'm so looking forward to that kind of kind of learning into it and easing in and early is obviously a significant improvement so that we can all the things people said, all the advantages that come with that.

Also, because this isn't really a one-year or even a 10-month process, we make decisions along the way that are pretty solid.

Allocations go out in February, I believe-ish.

Before we even approve it in July, we already have made decisions that we have to live with and stand on and we can't really backtrack on.

I think that's part of the trust issue is that so much happens before we vote that to give the impression that Nothing.

Everything's flexible until then.

It's really not flexible until then because you guys need to carry on with your year and make those decisions early.

So although like in these work sessions, we don't do we historically have the kind of like straw pull type of stuff because we're not taking action, but we are trying to give as clear and definitive guidance as we can.

So I think that in order to do that, as people were saying, we need that transparency of the budget, what's in there, what we have in our hand, the data, and then the chance to do the engagement along the way before we're giving you that solid move forward with this kind of guidance.

Thank you.

So lessons learned from last year's process.

I think the fiscal stabilization plan resolution was a good approach that I hope we continue.

And if we knew then what we know now we probably would have brought that forward sooner.

That was very helpful in terms of adding another level of what we're really talking about and that In good budget years or sort of uneventful budget years, goals and priorities are not going to shift so drastically year to year that we're not going to suddenly have a budget structure that is wildly different from the year prior, but in a year where there's a significant Increase or decrease in terms of resources.

Having that additional sort of board approved level of direction I think is valuable and a lesson to carry forward and that maybe we should be doing that sooner.

I am related to that looking forward to seeing the calendar of the year as mentioned that Dr. Buddleman will be providing.

I also was just struck by something as other directors were talking and then thinking about last year that we're talking about a beginning and an end of the process when in reality it's very continuous.

I don't think that you all as staff stop the budget process and then pick it up again.

It's something that's always happening it's just that there's these points where Because a budget is a projection.

It's always the best guess for what our needs are going to be and how we're going to fund those needs.

And there are changes in actuality that happen as it's going.

But at some point in time we have to say as a board Yes, this is what we're agreeing.

That's still not set in stone, that's just sort of agreeing in that moment of time that we approve that that is a balanced budget and a good plan for the following year.

But the process is sort of, doesn't ever stop or end.

And in terms of, What I'm thinking a lot about especially in relation to the fiscal stabilization plan from last year was how much we should see in your presentation of any budget at any time a reflection that investments are being made that align with our goals for outcomes for students that like the numbers and a spreadsheet is helpful year to year to see what's changed.

But what I really want to see is a reflection of changes in strategy towards better supporting students if we're if that's you know I want to see the connection between the budget and our goals and our progress monitoring towards those goals that where there's strategic decisions being made that are that are Evolving based on what we want for our students that investment is going to be part of that.

So we should be able to see that in our budget.

The budget should kind of tell the story of what is happening in our district to support kids in a different way than other things tell that same story.

But our direction to you for the budget If we're doing our job you should have some pretty clear direction based on our priorities in policy and in our goals and guardrails for what will and won't be acceptable to us and what different choices there might be within the boundaries of what we've already directed.

And so I just I think the lessons learned I'm thinking about how to contextualize the budget and And have it relate more directly to these other pieces for that full picture of what it is we're doing here.

And making sure that it is aligned to the reality of our resources and aligned to what The community expects for its kids and I want to be able to I'm somewhat interested in year to year comparison.

I think that's really valuable information.

But I want to see that the budget is reflective of our strategies towards outcomes for students and the things that we have already stated are important.

So I'm hearing a little bit about transparency and data, the comparison year to year, the spreadsheets, the fiscal stabilization plan, the calendar, the strategies aligned to the values, goals and guardrails are all Artifacts, if you will, of transparency and data.

And so I think you'll start to see that emerge as part of this presentation and in subsequent pieces that come forward.

So that's good.

All right, somebody asked President Hersey's question that he would have asked or his statement.

I'm being silly.

Any more lessons learned from last year's process that we should carry forward?

I think I know that President Hersey is committed to a level of engagement community engagement around budgeting right and I think we are Not where we need to be in terms of as a learning organization to be able to do that effectively.

We did try we tried participatory budgeting I shouldn't say we but it was a something that we at least initiated and I think one thing that we could that I would like us to consider is the The it's not an app but a site that Tacoma is using where community members and board members can go in and sort of balance the budget with big numbers.

Yeah there's it's a.

Anyway, I sent that out to everybody and I know he really liked it.

I think it's a really good way for people to be able to engage.

I'd love to have students try it, particularly that are doing any kind of math class that's related to accounting or budgeting.

But yeah, that's something that I think having some more fun tools, for me anyway, that takes it too.

I think it's fun.

I guess a lot of people probably don't get excited about it.

But I guarantee you there's some students out there that would get excited about it.

And they're probably going to become accountants.

But yeah, I think something like that would be.

I don't know what the cost is.

I didn't research how it all comes to be, but it looked like a...

And I didn't call anybody to come and say, hey, did this work for you guys?

Did people use this?

Did you only get five people to use it?

Were there hundreds?

I don't know.

But I thought it was a pretty clever way to Looking to communicate.

Somebody out there has recognized that school boards have a hard time communicating with their communities and is trying to put together some of these tools.

So I don't know what it's called but it's a.

So Dr. Jarvis you were the superintendent of Tacoma school district.

Can you speak for this budget balancing tool that Director Hampson's talking about?

Do you know about it?

The short answer is no.

That particular tool was not in use when I was there.

I have good access to it.

I can find out in a very big hurry.

That's what Brandon would have said, but I tried.

Thank you for that we're taking notes and I think some of these some of these lessons learned you'll see manifested in this presentation if not we'll aspire to get those reconciled for you.

So I think next we're going to have Bev Redmond speak to our well resourced schools initiative and Really break that down.

Thank you.

Sure.

Just leaning into lessons learned from recent past.

One of the things that we certainly would have loved to have done in last year's process was to begin in conversation.

And that's what we've chosen to do in this way.

Begin those steps of community engagement.

So over the summer we hosted, meaning this body, along with board member presence and support, hosted five in-person sessions across our district, around the regions.

And we are in the process of distilling that information through our research department.

We also have Our online session, which is coming up on next Tuesday, we have about, still about 300 to 400 people that have registered again, indicating interest in attending.

So that will be exciting to see and to go through.

The other pieces, we also have actively a survey going on at this point.

It closes on September 29th.

That goes out to our families, our staff.

And we're also continuing to meet internally with various groups throughout the district to make sure that we have aligned or plan to align our plans with the community's priorities and speaking of the community in that whole sense not just one sector or one group but our entire community seeing exactly what those priorities are so that when we craft plans as was mentioned several times here that we know that we are aligning with Or can align or come back to what the community is thinking and what it values.

So very anxious to see all of those points come forward.

We're getting some initial themes that have come forward but looking forward to seeing that in full and bringing a full report to you hopefully next month.

And with that I believe I have a partner on well resourced in Dr. Jarvis as we go to the next slide.

Thank you Dr. Redmond.

I think I would start with a quote that I bumped into just a couple days ago and it is reality is our source material.

In this case, the reality is what we're talking about of a major problem, the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time.

I would add a mantra that I guess that I've used over the years, and that's the acknowledgement that we have about 15 seconds to admire the problem, and then it's ours.

And then our job is to try to come up with solutions.

To try to describe for just a minute what we're trying to do in this process is a very difficult part, but maybe the simplest part to understand is what do we have to remove from our expenditures in order to balance the budget?

Much more difficult is what's the level of engagement of our community that we've begun and our staff and our leadership?

Even more is what is the vision?

What are the values that we're using as we make those decisions and choices?

So I would say that in a number of words that have already been referenced and used, stable and sustainable, underpinning values that when we finish, we have to be in a better place than we are today to match the funding system of the state of Washington.

The resources of the Seattle Public Schools with the program that we run and the simplest way of saying it right now is to admire the problem is we're not there.

We not only don't have an aligned system we don't have one that's sustainable and because of that it's very unstable.

Just a brief aside for a second.

This afternoon I was out at one of the elementary schools talking about this with the school staff.

The level of anxiety is very high.

Principal admitted that on a Friday night activity with some of her colleagues the talk turned to this very topic.

Not surprising knowing our principals and knowing that level of involvement.

So the anxiety is high.

The awareness is high.

The reality is that we all understand that we need to fix it.

But then comes the well-resourced school conversation and I think there are two parts to that I'd like to present.

One part of it is the question that says when we look at well-resourced What are the problems that we're experiencing right now?

And a simple version that we'll talk about much over the next couple months is small schools no longer match up with the state allocation model.

The McCleary fix that came in did no favors to the Seattle Public Schools.

And I hope I don't offend any of our legislators but I would say that to any of them.

It took away some of the tools that Seattle has traditionally used to raise additional resources if necessary to match what we do in the district.

That's a very real issue that we have to confront because during the last four years and since the implementation of McCleary we really haven't had a normal year.

We're now experiencing a normal year.

We've had enough time to know that that normalcy is a problem and it's not just one to admire, it's major.

The second thing, and Dr. Jones referred to it, is we lost students during the pandemic.

As they did throughout the nation as they've done throughout the state districts I've been coming from all lost students to lose students which are the main drivers of our stability and sustainability at the very time that the system has removed some of the tools that we use puts us in the position that says we have to fix it but Now let's switch for a minute and I think this is particularly important as we talk about well-resourced schools.

We switch to what is our vision of what we want to do with a quote unquote $1.1 billion that we have.

And as we look ahead, Seattle Public Schools has every ability to continue to be the lighthouse, to continue to lead, continue to do things.

We have partners in our community, in our city that will join us in many ways.

Not if we go to them and say, hey, we have a problem, we put our hand out, we ask for more money.

But instead, if we describe to them the places we want to go, and whether that's a digital world, whether that's a world of artificial intelligence, whether it's a world of aerospace and space, whether that's a world of art and music, et cetera, et cetera, There are so many places that we are already working towards that we're leaders and we need to look at that.

So what I'm leading to there is the question is what is our vision as we go through the process of fixing the stability and fixing the sustainability?

How do we move ahead A second piece of that is that we move ahead with the idea that we will attract students.

We will be client centered and we will attract.

We will serve our students well.

We will retain our students by having well resourced schools.

A quick downside if I mention it of the schools getting smaller and smaller at the elementary level is that the only way you can really do that under the current funding system is to start cutting the support systems in that school.

You can retain eventually some students some teachers a principal and run the school and provide heat but you started to shave everything from wellness counselors service for kids who are marginalized service for kids who have academic needs etc.

So we have to describe what does it take under the funding system to have a well-resourced school and just a couple of references there and then I'll shorten mine.

References would be that a well-resourced school has the ability to serve the students who are there.

Whatever their needs, if it's highly capable, if it's special services, if it's wellness, if it is a family that is lacking and needs support, if it's free and reduced title one, et cetera, et cetera.

We simply can't do that with a school that's one third of the size of the allocation model.

Seattle Public Schools can no longer make up the difference out of the largesse of our parents and support.

So there are many, many ways that we will be describing to you about the improvements, the places we can go, the things we want to sustain and align.

And to me, it doesn't come necessarily in the numbers.

The numbers are the reality that's our source material to say it's now up to us to make it work for the next decade.

We're going to use this to make this next shift out of the system we're in to the system we want and make it work for everyone.

So I apologize for being quite that windy, but I think I hope I can share with you the passion that we're bringing to this is not as let's go cut, but rather what are we creating?

Thank you.

If I may, Vice President Rankin, can y'all just marinate in what Deputy Jarvis said?

I mean, this is a place of abundance, not from a deficit.

It's a place where we can go towards not what we're running from, why we have to do the necessary cutting.

We also should stay aspirational around who we want to be.

And when we started talking about concepts about being ready for Seattle, Having a competitive edge, our graduates being able to do what they want, what they desire, pursue their passions, pursue what their goals are, their wildest dreams, that hasn't been lost on us.

We still want to go there.

We still have to do this hard work, but I just want to take a pause and see if any board members want to react to what Deputy Jarvis just said.

I'm trying to remain professional, which is why I'm not jumping up and down, because that's how I think of this.

And you said it in such a concrete, clear way that we can have all the visions and aspirations we have, but we have to operate within reality.

And that doesn't mean gruel for everyone.

We actually like we just have to think about it in a different way and recognize the constraints but also recognize that there are still a lot of choices within those constraints and that the most important thing is that we center and serve our students.

So I'm this is A difficult issue to confront, but I do think that what Dr. Jarvis just said is the way in which we will successfully confront and work through it as a whole community and keep intact for our students and make sure that we're doing our job, which is serving them.

I also really appreciated what you said about approaching our partners with where we want to go.

That is very aligned to what my approach was with legislators this past year, which was More positive than saying you just need to fully fund our schools, fully fund our schools.

They don't know what that means.

There's not a definition around that.

And lots of people say that and even mean different things amongst themselves.

And so I tried to shift with them about this is what our obligation is for students or these are the goals for our students and here are the places where there are gaps between what the state funds and what we spend to achieve those goals.

And that moved the needle and we were able to describe the gap in special education funding in a way that hasn't been described to them before.

And so I I am excited, and I think this is not only interesting and exciting to me, but also the approach that you're describing is what I have seen to be very effective in how we can come together and make decisions.

Not to say we're going to pretend that there's nothing hard and that it's hard to have things have to change, but it's really, really important That we are staying centered on what we're doing for students and that we still can do a lot for them.

It just may not look exactly like it did before.

Director Hampson.

I was trying to pinpoint What the bullet points were of what I liked about what you said and I was struggling a little bit and then I realized it's because you just modeled what it means to take an asset based approach to a difficult situation and create the vision of a way forward without placing blame.

And instead taking full responsibility for the task at hand and yet not in a way that makes it feel like it's burdens it's hard work you did acknowledge that to go to this new place but it still had that Lightness of belief that we can do this and trust in ourselves and our community.

And so that is what I so appreciate about it is you providing that leadership as one of our senior staff people because that is the culture that we need to build because that's how our children need to be seen and to the extent that we are Demonstrating not just our belief in our superintendent but also in ourselves to do this work.

And I'll just leave you with the one of my my two of my kids won the district softball championship for their age group.

And it happened at the end of last year.

It was super exciting.

I won't tell you which other Little League team we beat, because that would be gloating.

It was super exciting.

But the thing that we all loved about it is that the coaching was really positive and the team relationships were really positive.

As the coach said, it was one of his best experiences with this particular group of kids.

My two kids were on the corners.

If you know softball or baseball, you know what that means.

And so that was really fun to see.

There were some great moments.

His daughter actually brings one of my favorite lines that I now say to everybody, which is what I think sums up your approach, even though you said it so Plainly, the way that you spoke, Dr. Jarvis.

But she would, every time somebody would come up to bat, his daughter would just, with full enthusiasm, would just say, let's go so-and-so.

You got this, kid.

I believe in you.

And that's what I feel like is the embodiment of, you know, and we would giggle about it, and then we just started saying it to each other around the house.

You got this, kid.

I believe in you.

I believe in you.

You got this.

It's such a simple thing, and I'm sure it sounds really stupid, me saying it up here on the...

But it feels fantastic.

And she always meant it.

Like, she's a great kid.

And the amount of transformation and joy that can come from somebody just demonstrating that belief, and I know we're here to talk about the, we do have to talk about the numbers and see that alignment, but that we can do this with what we have Yeah I believe in you kid.

Director Harris.

At the risk of being misperceived as blaming I appreciate the happy talk more than you know I'm more a raw raw girl in my heart than I've ever been a cynic.

But we have to acknowledge That we cut a number of jobs last year for really hard working people who gave their careers to Seattle Public Schools.

And quite frankly I'm not sure we acknowledge them all that well on the way out the door.

And that's really painful.

And we've got a number of folks And families that made very painful decisions to leave our district for whatever reason and we haven't asked them why.

And to me, there's a balance that we're missing here with the happy talk.

We have to acknowledge it.

We have to, when we're talking to our public and our legislatures and our voters and our families, Where we've come and how painful that has been at the same time talking about where we want to go in vision and values and that closures and consolidations are coming and the timeline.

Boy I'm not a weenie in any way shape or form but this is coming at us like a tsunami.

And if it's one-tenth, the ugliness that we had when we had closures and consolidations before, and there's not very many people around here that were here then.

It was violent, it was horrific modeling for children, and we gotta be balanced and straight up about that in our messaging.

Thank you.

Okay, so speaking of balanced and straight up, we're gonna talk about the projected budget deficit and get to some real numbers here.

I think this is Fred or Dr. Buddleman.

I'll say a couple things and turn it over to Dr. Buddleman.

I even get lost in these discussions internally with staff and so for everybody listening for everybody because we say we talk about this year and next year and we've often had conversations where we say well last year but when we say last year we mean 23 24. So it's it's it'd be easy for anybody to get confused.

So I think it's just worth stating that and Dr. Dr. Jones invited you to marinate.

I invite you to bask.

We did balance the budget for 23-24.

We started with a larger structural deficit than we're facing in the coming year.

Even though we don't want to think a year at a time.

And so I do think we can do this and I've balanced public sector budgets for a very long time and an 8 percent issue in a public agency is a big deal but it's also not an apocalypse.

We can get through this and we will and we did last year.

This slide has a lot of strategies that we talked about some we adopted some we didn't.

Some we adopted in a modified fashion.

To Director Song's point about that we want to see all the options we will be constantly revisiting these as we think through this we want to make sure the board understands the ramifications of every decision what we choose to do and what we don't choose to do because there's an opportunity cost and all that.

So that's why we're trying to get here earlier to say you know there are things we What we want to do and look forward to are things we've set are off the table.

As we're modeling this we will try to keep everything on the table and get it on the table earlier so you understand the ramifications of choices.

Saying we're doing one thing means we're also saying we're not doing something else and so people should see that and we're hoping to give you better information and staff work.

So you can appreciate those changes.

And so I will turn this over to Dr. Buddleman that will talk through the kind of the schedule of when we'll start giving you that information so you could make start giving us guidance so to tee up better decisions when we adopt the next budget.

Next slide please.

I'm going to pause on this slide for a moment just to reflect on what Dr. Jarvis said for myself.

So Dr. Jones gave me a speech similar to that when in the hiring process when I chose to take this position around this is an important moment for Seattle Public Schools and we need good thinking and we need to think about the future of the system.

My kids were graduates of the system and so as a parent I've experienced that and I'm getting goosebumps just reflecting back on that discussion I had with Dr. Jones and the notes I took and so I believe my role here in this job is to facilitate this conversation and to get you And the community what they need in terms of information so we can make those right decisions so we can make those great gains for the system over time in the Seattle Public Schools.

And so if there's ever a time and I don't think I probably need to say this because I've been observing the board meetings.

But if I'm not giving you the information you need, thank you for the feedback today, Director Harris.

Let me know because my job is to get you the information you need and to facilitate those conversations so you have what you need to make those decisions.

And so continue to push me, push me through Dr. Jones, push me directly, however you want to approach that with what you need because we want you to get that information.

Our whole goal is to get to where Dr. Jarvis and Dr. Jones are talking, so we can go to the next slide.

And Director Hampson, this is my first work session, so I didn't want to have fun with it, but Superintendent Reichdahl has a set of Legos in his office that sort of signify the different revenue sources that are available for the state K-12 system.

And his red Legos are ESSER and the one-time funding.

And so he talks with legislatures, community members about those Legos are going away and I don't have any more.

And so trying to make this information accessible for people on how these big numbers, hundreds of millions of dollars, relate to what we're trying to do here, which is to help kids.

And so this is just kind of a key for the graphics coming up.

Believe you me, there have been quite a bit of discussion about the next three slides and whether they tell the message they're intending to tell.

And so I want your feedback on those if you're willing to give it today.

So the red parts of these slides represent the one-time funds.

And as Dr. Jarvis, Dr. Jones and Fred have talked about, we've utilized most of that resource for public schools the last two years and over time in terms of the budget deficit solutions.

The yellow and the orange types colors are these ongoing reductions.

The reductions that happened at the central office this last year.

Some of the other ongoing things that have changed over the course of time.

And you'll see on the next slide.

You'll see in the 23-4 year, the majority of the savings was in the red.

So one-time solutions, utilization of the fiscal stabilization fund, remaining ESSER dollars, some of the other one-time things, the furloughs for non-represented staff.

But there was a segment of the other colors, the yellow and the brown, that is ongoing.

So the changes to some of the bus services, the reductions that Director Harris is talking about of staff in the central office and other ongoing type things, those things matter going forward.

And so you'll see them reflected in the next slide where the orange and the brown have carried forward.

So they've Made that bar more attainable.

And the process we're talking about now is this 24-5.

And so to get to the sustainable get out of this unsustainable structural deficit the more we can do in the yellow brown patterns in this year the easier 25-6 and the more we can look forward to making our schools Really well resourced as we approach the coming years.

And so you'll notice I've just modeled a sample there a small sliver of red for 24-5 and that's reality.

There aren't a lot of those one time sources remaining.

There will be some there will be likely some carry forward from this year's activities.

There's some remaining ESSER money that will carry into this come back to Fred's point this year not the following year.

But there are a few things that will carry forward but the more we can do in these ongoing reductions and we can go to the next slide.

You'll see that the 25-6 that sliver of gap where we'll be having budget discussions.

We may be having budget enhancement discussions at that point and how do we prioritize different things because we're adding resources for kids and for families and so.

I want to pause here and see if there's any feedback on this illustration of how we're trying to approach this and how the impact of what we've done in 23-4 impacts the following year and the following year after that.

Was that a hand.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Yeah go ahead.

This is probably a really novice question here, but how do you predict the deficit for these coming years?

So we have an employee Kevin Kent who's been here 30 years and he's retiring in November right Linda.

He's got a very complex formula where he's factoring in sort of what the legislative impacts might be what they have been in the past.

He's factoring any employment agreements we've agreed to and what the impact of that is going forward.

He's factoring in I think some inflationary increases some changes that have been made and there's I hesitate to speculate but there's hundreds of variables going into that calculation.

I'm excited that you asked that question and you'll notice I didn't put numbers on that gap in 25-6 because many of those are variables.

We don't know what the legislature is going to do or not do in 24-5.

We don't know exactly what the labor agreements will look like that feed into 25-6 but we have some staff And Kevin's retiring he's being replaced by a very competent staff member so we're not losing all his intellect and knowledge on this but it's a pretty complex way of predicting it.

And my understanding from the information I've gathered is they've gotten pretty close to having a good projection for what the major components that will be going forward.

Thank you for the question.

Is there.

I personally prefer this way a visual way of presenting the information.

I have a request for a next iteration of that which is to help us understand what are the sources of the increases in expenditure so Something that I picked up by presenting the information this way that I didn't necessarily pick up from looking at numbers on a spreadsheet is how significantly our expenditures are growing year over year.

It's very apparent now.

So my next question is, what are the sources of that increase?

So I like the use of the LEGOs.

I kind of want to see, oh, the increase, maybe use different colored LEGOs to explain the increase in expenditures.

And then I have more of a tactical question, which is, I think I've asked this in years past.

A lot of this is predicated on our enrollment projections.

And something that I don't feel like I've ever landed on is, do we do a sensitive, like a risk analysis around if the enrollment is off by 10%, what does this mean for our deficit?

I think that would be very helpful for us.

And I'm curious, when we get our October 1 numbers, Will we be updating our enrollment projections for the 24 25 25 26 years and therefore will we have updated budget estimates.

Great thank you.

In October part of the presentation that we'll be making we'll have lots of spreadsheets lots of information through requesting and there's also an enrollment component because we'll have more stable numbers from this year's enrollment at that time and yes there is we can get into lots of detail on that there are Just this week we're having discussions about how the enrollment that's coming in now may or may not impact this year's budget or the following year's budget.

But more transparency on that would be great.

My question was actually you answered it.

It was about why you hadn't color coded the, I'm just calling it vanilla for now.

I don't know what color that is.

Any differently in the 25, 26 year and you're just saying because we haven't identified yet what that will be.

What those gap filling measures will be.

But the assumption, and then you're also making an assumption that it makes up that amount.

I think it would be helpful to know the dollar amount of that ongoing.

I guess it's, no, it's not 104, something south of 104 million, right?

Right.

So I think there's a couple things you could do to clarify.

If we're talking about it from the standpoint of just anybody looking at this, which I think you were asking for that feedback.

If you hadn't explained it, I wasn't exactly sure why that didn't change to yellow because given that you called it ongoing.

So you could just say solutions carried from 24, 25. But yeah, I also like this.

Any kind of graphical representation, infographics are my favorite.

There's a reason there's a whole company founded around infographics because they really work for people in terms of getting messages across.

Yeah.

That's it.

Thank you.

One point I'd like to make about this also in the context of always taking a multi-year approach and combined with starting earlier, if as we identify strategies and we're going to start talking about some in October, That we think would make sense.

And this is my this year, next year problem.

But that we think would make sense in 2024, 2025 and beyond.

Some of those we could start this year depending on what they are.

This will get to all budget all the time, but we want to manage our resources more intensely.

That's how you do that.

You don't stop and think about them once a year.

You think about them all the time.

And so this long view, there are things we may be able to do before the end of this calendar year that is going to help have less vanilla in 25, 26.

Just wanted to give a that was the other thing I wanted to note is I do believe at some point we were Jolynn may have provided us with some form of sensitivity analysis but we haven't but like maybe once but we haven't consistently gotten a best expected and worst case scenario around If certain things change, obviously anything that impacts how much we pay staff, the healthcare piece was a huge piece of change.

Anything that's going to be added on to every single staff person, we're going to be highly sensitive to that.

But I do think that it would be...

It's always helpful to point out what those things are because we do tend to get kind of tunnel vision around the things that really don't have as much of an impact that might save some money.

And yes, those things can really add up.

At the same time, is it going to really have the impact?

And yeah, so that's just a second for that particular type of analysis.

It's helpful.

I think something that Fred was saying earlier is the net present value of some of the solutions and I think when you present information this way we will be able to see the value over time of some of the solutions and how it kind of carries us forward and in the relative size of those solutions over the years.

So I think it's great to present information this way.

I have an enrollment question that might be answered in October which is kind of related to Vivian's question but when we when the when flow analytics did enrollment project tenure enrollment projection they had a low middle and high projection is this based on one of those Specifically, a combination?

And then the other question would be, and it's probably too early to know this, but in terms of enrollment, so maybe we'll know this in October, but in terms of what we're seeing in enrollment so far this year, is there indication about whether or not this year's enrollment is aligned to what was predicted?

It's tracking very closely to our projection for this year within 50 students.

And then do you know.

I don't know that.

That's a great question.

Yeah please.

And by the way you can see that in the monthly financial report which is on the board meeting minutes.

Not yet.

Not yet.

It's from July right now.

We're lagging.

Dr. Jarvis.

Thank you.

I guess every now and then I'm going to pop in with I've been through this a few times.

I've heard the term as we've talked tonight the pain level and some of the difficulty of what we're about to do and the degree.

This is a huge hit to a system.

But in that I wanted to give a compliment as a outside eyes if I may to the board and the superintendent and the senior staff that has done this because in essence in that red block was a statement to the community.

We will do everything within our power before we make the kind of cuts that we need to make in consolidation and closure and change the system.

I think there are those that could come back and say, well, when did you start this three years ago when you lost 1,700 kids?

Because nobody knew whether they were going to come back at that point.

Nobody experienced that.

We've now a very clear evidence of what the issue is.

We've exhausted, you have exhausted sort of every penny that you could bring to bear to prevent that kind of pain.

The little school I was at this afternoon is just the reality is they cannot be sustained the way they are but they will tell you with every ounce of their belief how good they are and what the service they're providing the kids.

This is evidence that you collectively have done everything possible to sustain the kind of program that they're operating.

And now is time to deal with it in the color coding and make that permanent so that it lasts.

And then look at that, I guess I'll say the white bar at the end and say we're now into, I don't want to be Pollyannish, but we're into the place of we can be in our future.

It will take us years of development, what we want to develop.

But I say that all in a compliment to Dr. Jones and a compliment to all of you.

And I guess I just get to use my outside eyes having been through this and through it recently how much pain there is and express my appreciation.

And I think the public needs to hear that from perhaps the outside eyes.

So thank you for that moment.

Thank you very much.

I think Chief Redmond is going to tell us about if there's any hope for more orange in the coming year.

Well both Dr. Jones and Deputy Jarvis have spoken very eloquently about where we are gratitude for what our legislators have been able to provide and also the shortcomings of McCleary and where our hope is is that our answer has to come from within.

With that said we will not neglect any opportunity to keep our story and our needs before our legislators.

They have an open ear and we can expect that this time not necessarily a lot of extra action but certainly an open ear and we will be poised and ready and finalizing our 24 25 legislative agenda.

But clearly our message tonight is we solve this.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

With respect to the legislature, are we doing an RFP for our contract lobbyist or is our contract lobbyist, does he have a perpetual contract?

Well no one has a perpetual contract and right now we're not doing an RFP but I've noted that and we need to continue to stay competitive in our contracting and so it's definitely worthy of consideration but we don't have one out right now.

I think we're to the next slide.

Next slide, please.

So I'm just going to state these.

I know technically we have nine minutes left, so I want to get to the end here.

But you've heard it enough.

We're committed to stabilizing our financial future to be able to fund our highest priorities.

You heard it eloquently stated by Dr. Jarvis and others around.

What we're trying to do.

This is long term and we want to that third bullet here is we want to display discipline.

Fiscal stewardship and responsibility.

So we want to make sure that we're coming to you early and often.

We're transparent.

We're doing all those things that you all have said in terms of Helping you for your decision making and your understanding.

And so that fiscal stewardship and responsibility is a number one for us as we go forward.

But we want to do this in order to meet that first bullet there around.

Stabilizing our future to fund our highest priorities and that's our main goal here.

Next slide please.

Our principals, we want to continue to lift quality instruction and learning.

That's always at the forefront in terms of our how we get it done.

We assume with the board and superintendent and my team that we have good faith efforts and we share the same value.

This is a team.

And we proceeded that way.

At least I felt that way for the last process that we went through.

And part of that is because of this fourth bullet, that we were clear with each other and honest around the challenges and the opportunities.

And so we want to embody that as we go forward.

And so hold me and us accountable to these principles.

This is where we want to be.

If we fall short of those, we will bend over backwards to make sure that we're abiding by these principles, but this is again where we need to be, and I think that's how we had a successful budget balancing last year.

All right, next slide, please.

I just want to open it up real quick to Director Hampson to talk about the financial policy that she was going to speak to.

I think there's a nexus and alignment to what we're trying to do.

And if you're so inclined, Director Hampson, please speak to that.

Yeah, let me enter my 60-character password real quick.

The policy started off with directors Rankin and Song and myself reviewing an initial version of it and then working with Superintendent Jones and ultimately then with Dr. Buddleman, thank you.

Just make everybody a doctor, everybody a director.

And then with interim deputy superintendent Podesta on coming up with a version that I hope at least initially, the initial draft reflects the Some clarity in terms of what this board didn't yet express via a guardrail, but it is a proposed guardrail policy.

I think, again, we've talked many times about not having a fiscal policy.

It's a very common guardrail.

And so I am looking to bring this forward It's actually technically two policies.

It's divided up into one that is the annual budget and financial reporting.

So that speaks to the spreadsheets that look forward as well as the spreadsheets that look back.

And then the other policy is around, or the other specific policy is around administration.

I might have made a mistake.

Financial planning and budgeting.

I think I need to change one of the titles.

Oh, no, I'm sorry.

My apologies.

The budgeting component is one policy, and then the second policy is administration of the annual budget as well as the reporting of the annual budget.

And we could break it up into three.

I used a standard policy governance model to craft this, and that includes the sort of vision of our expectations as well as then the sort of thou shalt not to provide the limitations.

And I can't receive feedback from directors outside of this meeting right now in future meetings.

I can't receive any direct feedback.

You'd have to give that to probably Julia or to Kurt.

But I do think it's important in the context of these meetings and this policy that the two are consistent, that this is our opportunity to, apart from a very large myriad of fiscal policies that are primarily administrative, we as a board have never said with clarity, these are our expectations.

And again, though we did not do it as a guardrail, I believe that it is absolutely critical that we have that in statement and particularly as we head into these processes, it's not particularly long.

But it does have some very strong statements that provide the limitations on how we expect to receive data.

So I encourage everyone to take a good look at it and to make sure that whatever we are talking about here is going to be consistent with What we've said in our policy around this.

And I'm really appreciative of the time and effort that staff took to review this with me and make edits.

And I'm sure there will be some additional edits before we're done.

Some things were...

I don't know if it looks drastically different from where we started, but some things were taken out.

There are a few things that were added.

I don't want to go into any details, but I do hope that as Fred, as you were speaking, I was thinking about the extent to which If we ask with some great clarity what we need to see, how we need to have things presented, it will help us kind of break down the confusion to an extent.

We're still in a governmental accounting scenario, but it will help break down some of the confusion around what's past versus what's present versus what's future.

The overarching thing I want to emphasize is that the practice that we do for a lot of these asks in this policy or sort of limitations that are presented in this policy are meant to address the fact that when we do our progress monitoring, Which is one of our primary responsibilities as a school board.

We are meant to, as we've been learning, look back.

We're not talking about the future, we're talking about what we've learned.

This is meant to give us as much as we can within this context of this accounting system and within what's reasonable to add to demand from staff, a better picture of what history looks like.

And how that's connected to our progress monitoring.

So it's the same concept.

We're looking backward.

It is really impossible to make good decisions from a budgeting standpoint.

It's truly, we have been given an impossible task every year without knowing what happened last year.

And what happened in comparison from year to year.

And so this is an attempt to be really clear about it.

If we're gonna make good decisions in collaboration together we have to be basing it on okay what were the fiscal strategies historically?

How did those work out?

And then to be able to understand what we're doing to impact the future in the most positive way and hopefully not set up a structure that keeps future boards from ending up in that same There's things may happen regardless outside of this organization's control but to really take a more holistic view past present and future and that's why you have the three parts the reporting the administration and the budgeting.

And I'll just add to that that the existing policy that we have about financial, I can't remember the title, financial planning development and approval or something.

It's 6,000.

In the 6,000 series it is 6,000.

And in our policy review committee, which you'll hear more about in next week's work session, but we're developing a way to evaluate our policies about what is this policy?

Why do we have it?

Is it effective?

Who's expected to do the work that's in it?

And we ended up talking about our existing policy 6,000 for about an hour, which was not expected.

And my takeaway, and I think our collective takeaway, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, was that if it's unclear to us as board directors what's expected from that policy and why we have it, that is really If it's unclear to us, it's definitely not clear The folks who are doing that work.

So moving into two policies, one of which would be a guardrail and one of which would be, I can't remember what else you said, but makes so much sense because we went back and forth about, is this a governance policy?

Is it a, it's not a goals policy, is it administrate, like what?

Because it had so many different pieces that didn't give clear direction on what the expectation was from that policy.

They're both guardrail policies.

I just wanted to add that in that we're discovering in multiple places the need for this direction.

Director Harris.

Is this working?

Yes.

Perfect.

I'm beyond thrilled to see this.

I wonder where this shows up on the board's work plan.

There are some really radical paragraphs in here that excite me beyond measure.

But we're talking about something that wasn't necessarily attached to the agenda this evening.

And probably should have a draft watermark on it and post it as soon as possible.

I don't know if Greg Narver is on the line or not but I feel very uncomfortable.

I'm beyond excited.

Hear me clearly.

Paragraphs eight and nine are revolutionary but I think our public has a right to see what we're talking about with a big old draft watermark on it and to know when the board this board or the board that will take seats in December will be addressing this.

Thank you.

I don't have the answer to that.

No, so I think we should reconcile that.

And this question was around how do we ensure clarity going forward?

So put that on me in terms of teeing it up to have this conversation.

But I just think the policy alignment with the work that we're trying to do regarding reporting, administration, and budgeting is key for us to continue to develop and grow.

Director Harris will we'll run that aground and we'll get we'll get an answer to that.

And if if the watermark piece and all that to be slapped.

So I did I because I stood in on the policy governance that that wasn't.

So I've talked with Dr. Bettleman about this.

I do believe that this is critical, that we, this isn't something that is based on, this encapsulates things that have been discussed for years and is not in existence elsewhere.

And it's a bit of parallel pathways.

And I believe we absolutely need this level of clarity if we're going to do this level of work.

If whichever board forms after November is going to do this level of work, it needs this level of clarity.

This also has an annual review statement on it and should be reviewed this current statement is in June of this next year so that the next board would have the opportunity with this staff to take a look at it and say okay how did it work for us through the budgeting process or July you know whenever the next the budgets approved and then would be able to look at it and say okay how do we need to revise this.

It is not the expectation that any board would then take on the necessary revisions into all the administrative policies.

That is per policy governance the responsibility of the superintendent.

So the administration of these limitations and the value and then the limitations established here is a statement from the board in terms of This is what we believe is consistent with the values that our community has expressed, and I do think that we will get that kind of feedback.

And I did work with the policy director at CSEC and somebody from Seattle Council PTSA on this as well, and they've given their feedback.

I lost my train of thought.

I want to be mindful of time and make sure that we get through this and don't derail into a policy conversation.

So I will shut it down.

I just want to make sure that I do believe that this needs to come through expediently and we need to get used to this idea that it'll come back around.

And it's not meant to create an endless cascade of additional work.

It will take a lot of time For staff to figure out, okay, can we implement this?

What can we implement?

It's a directive, but some of those directives will have to be modified as we go forward.

Because we don't know, we haven't tried these things.

But this is, we're saying, this is our expectation that we, that you, Superintendent Jones, attempt to live within these guidelines.

And but I also want it thought it was really important to bring it up now and I agree yeah we want to get it out there.

I wish we had a here's policies we're thinking about page because I don't want us to be inconsistent in the two conversations.

So however it works out I just didn't want to leave it out of the conversation and make anybody surprised.

So in the current structure the request would be to the board president to place it on the agenda for introduction.

Part of the charge of our committee is also to make recommendations to the full board about how should a policy come forward and ensure that it's made public at the appropriate time and who can work on it and such and such.

So that's a different question but for right now I think What I'm hearing is that we need President Hersey and the board office to place this on the agenda for that to come forward.

Yes.

I already made that request and I talked about it during the last work session on the work plan as well.

This particular policy.

Okay great.

So you have a work session I believe next week with respect to the policies correct.

Might we use this draft as an example so we can get it moving and we can get it out there for people's feedback.

I'm totally uncomfortable having this conversation without this in the realm.

And again I'm very excited about this.

I think there's an easy way to do that.

Thank you.

I think I will have to check with staff because we have planned the work session and materials to be posted already.

So I will check with the board office.

So this has been created.

We're talking about it.

This is should be at this point publicly accessible.

If somebody asks me to see this, do I have any reason to tell them no or right to tell them no?

Because this is we've created this document is available.

I don't I just you know, I want to That's my question.

And somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the only thing that we can't do as a board is make decisions or have discussion about business around it without being in a public meeting.

With each other.

Yeah, you could.

It's also, it's in our, it's Director Hampson sent it to us in email.

That is, that's part of public record.

It can be a public document that you can share with people.

As a, we couldn't have, we couldn't have this discussion that we're having right now not in public.

But.

Okay.

Yes, we ready to, great.

Vice President Rankin, we only have a couple more slides, and so if we can go to slide 23, the next one, I want to just show you a visual of the timeline so you all can be aware of next steps.

Next slide, please.

We've referenced this as the racetrack, as the snake.

But these are the next steps, so follow it.

And if any of you have played Candyland, there's not a chute or a ladder in here or all those types of things.

Anyway, but it's coming in, right?

So here we are today.

We wanted to really express the foundation of the process.

And then next time we get together, October 18th, That's when you'll start to see the strategies.

You'll start to see those emerge.

And then November 15th, that's when you'll see the resolution with a lot more specificity on it.

And then you all will take a vote in December.

But you can follow this racetrack all the way to the end.

And we end in August 28th, 24. And then depending on how responsive we are to the new fiscal policy with the direction in there, we'll have a different process perhaps for subsequent years.

And so just please familiarize yourself with this.

I want to make sure that you all are seeing what's next in total.

Dr. Buddleman, do you have any narrative around this?

The intent of this is to just be clear about what the process is and ensure there's minimal surprises along the way for the board, the community and the staff and students of Seattle Public Schools.

So trying to set this out upfront so people know what to expect and when.

Okay and then next slide please.

So like I mentioned October 18th this will be a little more specific.

We'll see an enrollment update.

We'll have a well-resourced school update and then we'll have a discussion of the general strategies for how do we reconcile in the 24-25 budget.

And then November 15th, that's when we'll come with the fiscal stabilization resolution plan.

And so that will be, again, a lot more detail around these are what we're actually proposing as we go forward.

So that's the long and short of it.

And next slide.

If you all have advice as we go forward, guidance, I don't know if we have time for it now, but we stay and remain open for your guidance.

If you have something that you want to share with us now, we can stay for a little while longer, depending on the chair's prerogative.

But otherwise, we're open for feedback later.

If staff is prepared to spend another few minutes for folks to share last questions, I would, yeah, go ahead.

Just kind of going back to the questions that were around based on last year's budget development experience, what are the keys to ensure clarity going forward?

Yes.

Something that I thought was very helpful to last year's process was the conversations that we had around special education spending.

So I just want to bring that back because I don't currently see it on the timeline.

I think I can only speak for myself as an individual director, but my ability to evaluate the recommended strategies will be very dependent on my understanding on the largest source of our budget deficit.

So I'm sincerely hoping that between now and November we will spend time as a board learning up Learning up on what are we spending on and what is our plan going forward knowing that we are going into deficit and we are not getting the academic outcomes that our special education students deserve.

And to that end, I believe Dr. Jarvis and Dr. Torres have some very distinct thoughts about that that I would love for them to share as we tackle this going forward.

And so that will be a central part of what we discuss.

And so I think that's definitely part of the October discussion.

Related to that, and now I cannot remember where I saw it, But I saw somewhere I think in a work that we have a work session coming up on instruction that I'm wondering if that's connected to the strategies that's connected to budget.

Am I making that up?

Where did I see that?

I don't know if you're making it up, but we can definitely check that out.

Talking about special education services, inclusion, and those things aren't going to be a one-shot deal.

So we'll talk about them in the context of budget, but they're also central, obviously, that you all know, to inclusion.

And so as we talk about how we are making our services accessible, more accessible to more people, That will be central to a lot of different conversations.

So I'm not sure if there's a specific work session schedule, but we'll have opportunities for sure.

Well, and I would, in terms of getting learned up, Having a study session to be prepared, for me the question of that large deficit is, is it a deficit because it just costs more than we have, or is it a deficit because there are costs that we have continued to expend that may need to be reconsidered?

Does the legislature set an arbitrary and capricious cap without any basis in reality?

That is a big part of it.

But the bigger part is that the funding that they provide is not in any way connected to services and what it costs to provide the services.

So my question connected to that is, is that the sole source of the deficit?

Because if it's just a matter of it just costs more than we are funded for, which we know is a huge part of it.

And I think to Director Song's point, we need to understand that it's such a big number.

What is included in all of that?

And where are there places where we do have some control as opposed to just, yeah, we don't get as much money from the state as it costs, which we know is obviously a huge part of that.

Sorry if I invented a work session.

I don't know where that came from.

It's central.

I think all those considerations, that analysis that you just laid out is necessary for us to understand what the challenge is in front of us.

Again, I'm asking for feedback and guidance as we move forward, so if you're not providing it right now, that's fine, but let's stay in communication.

We'll be back on October 18th, and then we'll be back again November 15th in both formal ways, but in the meantime and in between time, let's stay in communication, please.

I want to thank my team for their preparation for this.

You saw their investment, their passion for what we're trying to do.

And thank you all, board members, for just stay invested.

I think we're on track, one team.

Team Seattle, let's go for it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you superintendent and team and I'll reflect that gratitude.

This is a very different framing around the budget than I think we've had before and I really appreciate that we're looking at this from the lens of all you know it's not just a problem of numbers on a spreadsheet that are imaginary.

This is Real impact to students and teachers and communities and I feel that being taken very seriously and thank you for that.

If there is no nothing else for the good of the order there being no further business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 619 p.m.