Seattle Schools Board Work Session Jan 25, 2023

a good recommendation that I'm just going to remind us of from AJ would be to actually write your questions down if you have additional questions given that we do not have a ton of time in today's work session writing those questions down or at least jotting down some notes so that we can be concise as we are having conversations will not only benefit us in the realm of time but will also benefit anybody who might be trying to track this live or watch it after the fact.

So please if you can try and write your questions down.

Thank you so much.

OK.

This is President Hersey.

I am now calling to order the board special meeting at 4.35 p.m.

Please note that this meeting is being recorded.

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

For the record I will call the roll.

Director Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Present.

Vice President Rankin.

Here.

Director Rivera-Smith joining us remotely.

Present.

Fantastic.

Director Sarju.

Present.

And Director Sam Moritz.

Present.

And this is President Hersey.

The superintendent is also present.

This meeting is being held in a hybrid format.

Directors are participating in person and at the John Stanford Center and remotely via Teams.

The public is being provided remote access today via Microsoft Teams and phone as well as in person at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence.

For those joining us by phone please remain muted when you are not speaking.

There will not be a public comment opportunity and staff will be working to administer the meeting and may be muting participants to address feedback and ensure that we can hear from directors and staff.

The work session this evening is to discuss the budget.

I will now pass it over to Dr. Jones.

Good evening, thank you President Hersey and board members.

Today I'm joined with, to my right, Assistant Superintendent, Interim Deputy Podesta, I have...

Associate Superintendent, Pedrosa and Director Sebring.

We're really pleased that you're sharing your time with us today and I'm glad that we have some laughter at the beginning because this is no joking matter but maybe we can make some light of some things and maybe even see this ultimately as an opportunity to do some things differently.

to President Hersey's comments at the beginning around questions we have purposely developed some spaces in our presentation about every 10 slides or so where we're going to have some prompt questions for you all to have discussion and this is kind of in the spirit of the progress monitoring that we've been doing as well as our project management oversight committee our project management oversight that we're doing we have standardized questions for facilitation, excuse me.

So we're gonna walk through the agenda and I'll tell you what we're trying to do and then we'll come back.

Okay, next slide please.

So here's the agenda.

We're gonna talk about funding our future.

That's the spirit of what we're trying to do.

We'll share with you some key dates as to what you can expect next.

We're gonna give you a fiscal update, very similar to what you all have seen before, but we've made some adjustments.

We'll talk about the budget balancing process.

and then we'll talk about this concept of a system of well resourced schools.

We'll tell you around to tell you about our strategy for communication and then we'll conclude with our next steps.

And as I mentioned we'll we've set up this session today.

I know it's two hours we have about 30 slides but we've also worked in intermittent opportunities to hear you all and we want to try to facilitate your discussion so that so that we can learn.

So President Hersey can I proceed.

All right.

So, next slide please.

Funding our future.

This is really how we're trying to frame this.

We're trying to make sure that we are setting ourselves up so that we can balance, we can have a balancing process so that we can really trend towards meeting our highest priorities and having the resources to do that.

Next slide.

So our goals in this effort is to really stabilize our financial future so that we can fund our highest priorities.

We want to bottom line we want to keep Seattle Public Schools solvent.

We want to resolve some of the long term issues around how we've structurally deficit spent over the last couple decades actually.

We want to instill discipline into our spending and we want to display fiscal stewardship and responsibility.

Next slide.

So how are we going to do this?

We're going to develop and submit a comprehensive budget package of budget balancing so that you will be able to see all of the elements contained in one package.

Secondly, we want to make sure that we reduce our expenditure to a level of future sustainability.

Third, we wanna make the tough choices now to match our resource capacity to our revenue, AKA enrollment.

And then lastly, this is where you all are coming in as well, advocate and hope our legislature will help us bridge the gap.

So we've had opportunities in the past for our legislature to come in and help us out.

We don't know if it's gonna be as robust as it's been in the past.

Next slide, please.

The principles behind our effort here is we are prioritizing quality instruction and learning.

That is our bottom line.

We are guided by our guardrail number two.

A superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service.

We also are assuming by all parties good faith efforts and we are sharing the same values.

We know that the board's responsibility is to represent the values of the community.

We, in turn, implement what comes out of that.

And number four, teamwork.

The board and the superintendent, AKA staff, were on one team and we have a united mission here.

Next slide.

So our assumptions as we go into this is that our immediate efforts will not be enough, will not be adequate to resolve all the long-term standing structural issues.

We'll get to many of them, but we won't get to all of them.

And attached to that is our collective lack of experience with this level and magnitude of reductions and balancing, only gives us approximately 80% confidence in knowing all the impacts from the choices.

So I want to be extraordinarily transparent on that.

We are not professing that we know what all the impacts are, but we have 80% confidence or so around what those may be.

Another piece that's not written on here is I just want to also acknowledge that we have to be prepared.

Our stakeholders will put pressure on us to maybe hold on to the things that they've held near and dear.

those are going to be hard to do the demand management that it's going to require to do that but we want to stay locked in and we want to stay transparent along the way but I just wanted to articulate that clearly that that is going to be a challenge at least historically that's been a challenge.

So next slide.

Some people have asked why now and some people will say your budget challenge is really not as deep and steep as you all have represented it, but we have no interest, no upside, no motivation to create a situation where we have to do this type of balancing.

There's not a...

There's not a reason for that.

However, we invite folks that have a sharper pencil than ours to come to the table, let us know what they see that's different because the last thing we want is to be inaccurate in what we're representing.

So we are at the tipping point.

Our structural deficit has grown to approximately $131 million.

That's a lot.

Our current year budget is based on $82 million of one-time funding.

And that one-time funding in number three here has come from ESSER, funding enrollment loss, funding of transportation without riders.

That's about $82 million altogether that we used to plug the gaps for last year and previous years.

Number four, our enrollment has decreased since 2014, while our staff has increased.

And if you do simple math on that, enrollment is revenue, staff is expenditure.

If those don't match, we have a situation.

and number five, and we'll see some slides here in the next couple minutes, around enrollment is anticipated to continue to trend down.

That's unfortunate, but I think that's the reality, not only with Seattle Public Schools, but in our region and some places nationally.

So here's where I want to turn to the board and start the discussion now.

In what I just presented, how are the board's values aligned with what you've just heard in terms of our mission to get us to a place where we are funding our future, we're balancing so that we can be solvent and we can have opportunities to make sure that we've prioritized our budget and our fund and our resources for our highest priorities.

wants you all to talk so we can listen, want to just see what your initial reactions are in alignment with the values.

So President Hersey.

You can raise your hand and go if you have something that you would like to share at this time.

I just want to clarify I don't know if I missed this when I first read this sometimes we can we see values and we're like we think we all know what we're talking about.

But I just want to be clear that it's not our individual values it's the values of the community that we're here to represent.

So if we can reframe the question in that way I think that would be appropriate.

Yeah I mentioned it in kind of in passing in my opening remarks but as the board represents the values of the community my assumption are those are aligned and so I want to make sure that as we're representing our efforts here it's consistent with community values aka board values and so yes Director Hampson that's correct.

and so we wanna take this opportunity in terms of structuring this to hear what you all talk about so we can take notes, we'll present some more, then we can take further notes and then we can present some more.

So please discuss amongst yourself and you can ask us questions along the way but we're really interested in hearing your feedback.

So I appreciate the question tremendously because the guardrails are intended to represent the community's values the way that we measure your performance and performance of the district against the values that we have gleaned from community that they hold.

however we don't have a specific guardrail around budgeting around building funding and so in thinking about this and I did write this down so I'm going to go straight to it President Hersey.

Whereas historic building decision making is derived from a combination of staff and parent wants and needs and predefined ratios that may or may not be tied to, and they very well may, but the appropriate input tipping points, which I appreciate that you used the term tipping point, necessary to positively impact student outcomes.

Given that we don't have a specific guardrail that says yet you must fund buildings consistent with the values that we've set forth so that we can achieve the goals, what ways do you anticipate demonstrating evidence of how a system of well resourced schools are incenting the appropriate inputs and outputs at the building level that will be aligned with our goals and guardrails.

We'll just keep going and then we'll try to batch these and do some responses please.

I had a similar thought to Director Hampson and I also was thinking about how we kind of lack a guardrail specifically around budgeting and from conversations I've had with community members and just what I know as a director I think where I settled was kind of like a student to the extent that you can show us the math behind your thinking it will really help us understand how you reach the conclusions that you did.

So that would be a value that I would put forth as much math that you can show us to, that you use to make your decisions and your recommendations will be very helpful to us in making the decisions that we need to make and supporting the community through what we all know to be pretty hard decisions and changes.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would say along with that, I really appreciate this centering around not allowing unreliable service because that doesn't just mean that we do things the way they've been done and will continue to do them.

That means saying what we mean and doing what we say and reliability in terms of knowing what's coming not just well we've always had that now we don't have that that means it's unreliable it's like well no what you know as things change we have to respond to the current situation and so the way to at a level of reliability is to help students and educators know what's coming what to expect and how it impacts them.

And so I really appreciate that you I think you know the transparency and communication is a huge value and understanding and you know we're seeing this happen in our region all across the country, districts grappling in various ways with budget shortfalls, with a decline in enrollment as birth rates have declined.

So we won't be facing this alone, but for our community members here, it's of course going to feel personal because it's about us and it's about our kids.

So aligned with what Director Songwritz was saying about kind of showing us the math, I think I want to be able to see how the decisions are being connected to the values and maintaining things that are priorities to the community and most importantly to outcomes for students.

So I like digging in and knowing the whys and hows and all the ins and outs but more than like the math I want to kind of like see the I mean it's the justification and like understanding we made this decision instead of this decision because this thing is connected to student outcomes and this isn't or this thing is connected to something that's a community priority and this isn't.

so that's what I want to be able to see and understand for myself as a board director and also so that I can you know in talking with community help folks understand why this might be happening and that like you said assuming that there's not an ulterior motive that we're faced with a really difficult situation that we haven't had to deal with before and we have an obligation to our students and to our community to do what we can.

So however we can show that that's what we're doing, that's what is important to me.

And I think you said.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi, did you call on me?

Yes.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Sorry.

And there's quite a bit of static-y feedback.

So just if you can adjust it, let us know.

Actually, I probably can't.

So just so you know, the audio is really bad on the tunes end.

I'm on a deficit because, listen, I'm probably hard to listen and I'm catching most of it, but I think, and I've heard this from other places, that there's a quality issue with the audio.

Can you hear me now?

Okay great we can hear you okay at the John Stanford Center so you can go ahead with your statement and we will try to figure out what's going on with teams.

Okay should I talk louder would I help.

It is now resolved so go for it.

Okay.

Anyhow I'm I'm trying from what I was able to catch what was said I'm really sorry I can't be there in person tonight.

But from what I caught I agree with a lot of what I heard regarding seeing the math regarding clear messaging about the justifications for what lies ahead of us.

I think what the only thing I really will add on that is is our you know as board directors are we have we have duties that might almost conflict but we have a fiduciary duty to our organization here to make sure we're not running on a deficit.

We also have our obligations to our students and families that we are providing them a quality education.

And I think we learned fast on this board that we can only do so much with what we have resource-wise.

So as we do that and I know I don't think I'm saying anything that staff hasn't already thought of but we of course want to just make sure that we are you know protecting our most vulnerable students.

And I know that you know we're guided we're guided with 0030 in that work.

And as we flesh out what the options are ahead of us I just hope that we are again like we're being as transparent and clear as we can with our language so that people understand what things mean.

I know we're going to talk about like consolidation and you know what does that mean because sometimes that means closing schools and sometimes it's going to mean other things.

So let's just be crystal clear what that means and give people you know just the information they need to form opinions get back to us with that on how it's going to affect where because you know I know it's way too early to rule really anything out but we're going to get to a point where community is speaking very clearly to us and we need to be able to you know we have to be able to respond to that if we have a decision that is not sitting well about you know what our choices really were.

and why we're making those choices.

So that's all for now.

Thank you.

DIRECTOR HARRISON I may be skipping ahead here and if so I apologize in advance.

We talked about transparency and communication.

I think the number one issue on this and I guess I want to know how are we developing a protocol about answering the questions we're getting?

I'm thinking in particular of I think I counted today 40 emails from the Bryant community we have 106 schools I expect no fewer than 30 schools to launch the same kinds of email questions and because they're part of orchestrated campaigns as well they should be in community organizing standing up for our kids in our communities how do we propose to get consistent answers out there for these questions and when that the who, what, when and why at my community meeting on Saturday I took the last three years of budget books explained that because of our dire circumstances when we start talking about weighted staffing standards hugely potential of all bets are off.

And that was extremely alarming to folks as well it would be to me if I were on that side of the stakeholder map.

Thank you.

I want to compliment you on the principal slide the points three and four about good faith efforts and teamwork and I think the extension I would add is that the collective community kind of also needs to get behind this because this is the right thing that we need to do for our students and my ask for all the stakeholders is that we know what we want for our kids which is a rigorous education, high quality education and we should also accept that there isn't just one path to getting there.

What we have at this exact moment may not necessarily be the best path to getting that for every single one of our students.

So I encourage all of us to just be open-minded to the changes that we have and understand that collectively we do, we're all seeking the same thing.

The thing that stood out to me is advocate and hope our legislature will help us bridge the gap.

And I'm sure we all know that, you know, the saying that my favorite President Barack Obama said, hope is not a strategy, but advocacy is.

And we do hope, right?

I'm not saying don't, let's not lose hope.

But one of the things I think that's important in this process is Families and caregivers of our children need to know what can they do.

What is a way in which they can contribute to this advocacy on behalf of not just their kids, but all of our kids in Seattle Public Schools?

I think sometimes, well not I think, I know, people don't understand the role of a board member.

And as somebody who works for King County government, I received in my email, the memo about not speaking to legislators and so yes I'm an elected official but I'm also a senior leader in King County government so I personally because of that edict cannot speak to my legislators because legislators will not be able to differentiate that today I'm wearing my school board hat and not my county hat, even though my county hat is inevitably involved because of the work that I do for the county.

And so I think it's going to be important through this process, parents need to be equipped with knowledge and information around what can they do?

Because we all have to be in this together, and we all play a role.

Like Director Lisa said, we have a fiduciary responsibility as board members And our advocacy actually can only go so far.

Because quite honestly, legislators really don't want to hear from other elected officials if you actually get down and talk with them, if you talk with them behind the scenes.

They don't want to hear from us.

They want to hear from the real voters.

and the real voters are not other elected officials, like if we're being honest here.

And so parents have to be given and equipped with knowledge, information and maybe skills of what they can do to help us advocate on behalf of all of our kids in Seattle Public Schools.

So I just wanted to say thank you all for for all of that and in an attempt for some crystallization getting back to the heart of the question which is how are the board's values aligned with what we've just heard.

Going back and looking at our guardrails, I have a question that will be related to another piece in just a moment.

We got a good example that we're utilizing guardrail number two.

I also wanted to kind of bring into the conversation guardrail number one and see if your interpretation as a superintendent and the leadership team that these changes are likened to an initiative and what encompasses that, right?

Because I think a really important part there is the superintendent as guard rule number one will not allow school and district initiatives to go forth without engaging students of color furthest away from educational justice and their families, including those who have preferred language and either English and who require accommodations for disability.

So to me, it feels as though these changes, in many ways, are an initiative.

And what I'm going to be looking for, considering that our guardrails, as Director Hampson mentioned at the top of the conversation, reflect directly the values of the community, is what is the strategy for engaging those groups who we have listed out in that guardrail?

I think that the other piece, is looking at guardrail number two, the superintendent allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service.

Critical.

Absolutely critical.

And what I think for the board's values is that we value our kids being able to go to school.

As many of them as possible with 100% where we can get it.

If we do not make some of the changes that are likely going to be recommended to us over the course of the next few months, that is going to be circumvented and we will not be able to hold up our end of that bargain in terms of representing the values of the community.

So I think really focusing in and really thinking about what is it that we are here to do and student outcomes focused governance gives us a good framework for that.

Folks will have their individual opinions as well.

Those are all fine and valid.

But I think that we can all agree that if we do not balance our budget and our schools are not able to provide consistent and reliable service, then we are not fulfilling our jobs as board directors.

So we need to be prepared to do what is necessary.

And that's not just voting, that's communication, clarity out for community and things like that.

Which brings me kind of to my second point, some of the things that I heard throughout all of the questions and whatnot were communication, clarity, community.

And at every phase of this, I'm asking board directors, if there's a piece where you do not have clarity, that is going to impact your ability to communicate with community.

So do not hesitate to dig deep into some of these pieces because it's going to make us all more effective as we go out and have these conversations very shortly.

both digitally and in person.

So that is really where I want our values as a board, our values of communication and clarity to be highlighted throughout this process.

So with that being said, I'll pass it to Director Hampson and then I'm going to ask that to be the last reflection to get back to the presentation.

So again the values to the question and as President Hersey said the values expressed via guardrail number three for the operations.

Two sorry.

And then my other comment was that we do have in fact there's a point in what you presented what I heard about communication and my belief at this point is that that communication is connected to that guard rail and so I'm very interested in knowing how the district's customers who are students, parents, staff and you all and all of your colleagues are how we're going to know what evidence will we have that that communication has been effective.

One of the things I'm really glad that we did at the start of our ad hoc committee is we set a goal for ourselves and I was able to reflect on it yesterday and go back and say okay we said we wanted to have this level of approval.

We tried to set a smart goal for ourselves.

It was a little clumsy.

but we did it and it helped me then reflect as to the success of that work based on how we had established that goal.

And so I'm looking to hear from you Superintendent Jones how we will know that that communication during this time we're always going to hear a lot of bad press but we potentially will have data that could tell us whether or not we've successfully communicated and engaged with students parents or I should say that the district has engaged with its customers and we as board members have more broadly engaged with community around affirming the values that need to be represented in this budget.

Thank you that was Rich and I'd like to do just a little bit of summary of what we've heard.

So as you represented values it was a combination of inputs outputs and outcomes and one of the overriding pieces was what's the evidence.

And so what is the evidence that this this package will be aligned to our top three goals.

I mean.

math, reading and college and career readiness.

And so you should be able to look at our ultimate submittal that we have coming to you and say, yeah, I can see where you all protected teaching and learning.

I can see where you all made a an effort to really be strategic in protecting what's happening in the classroom, the student experience, the educator experience.

And so that should be evidence there.

But we'll work to have a more crystallized assessment of that evidence and present that to you.

The other piece that you said is making sure that the again the decisions are being connected to priorities.

We believe that the priorities are the top three goals.

We believe that the priorities and how we do it are aligned with the guardrails.

And so you should be able to see that as well.

You articulated your values around ensuring the most vulnerable students are considered when we do this balancing.

And that as we do this that we have clear language and that family and caregivers know how they can advocate through this process.

You talked about the collective community having some input in how we do this and lean into this.

And you talked about the value of community engagement.

and then lastly you talked about making sure that we have clear communication.

We have a section on here in communication that we're gonna talk about and I think you'll hear a lot of these pieces throughout this presentation going forward so please take notes as you go along and you'll have other opportunities to weigh in as we go through this but this is a really good start for us to understand what we need to come back with ultimately with the package.

Alright, so we're gonna move on and Fred's gonna talk a little bit about the key dates as you're gonna see us going forward and then we'll get into some of the fiscal pieces.

Yeah, so I'm gonna go over dates and also kind of the substance of the status of budget development.

What we're presenting tonight is really a work in progress.

And so we'll let you know where we've been and where we are now and what we need to do next.

So that's why these dates are important.

Often in these work session presentations, we've shown you a really long calendar of the budget development process that is included in the slide deck at the rear, but these are kind of the key next things that really lead to the major action items.

We'd like to come back mid-February, and this is marked as tentative because we're going to need to negotiate with you all to juggle the board scheduled to swap dates to where there's another work session about a policy diet where we're hoping we could swap that date and then move that to March 8th.

If that isn't something the board wants to do then we'd come back on March 8th with what we're thinking of as a balancing package.

As I said, this is a work in progress.

We're gonna present it in a summary level and then our goal would be on the 15th or the 8th if that's what we decide on.

or March 8th, that's where we bring you the finished product of what the staff proposal is to balance this budget.

As Dr. Jones noted in his introductory remarks, this is a really big task.

This is a bigger budget gap than we've had to resolve in a very long time, so it's taking us a bit longer to get there.

And we'll show you where we are now and how much work we still need to do and then other really key milestones are the end of the legislative session as we talked about advocacy and hope for help from Olympia.

We'll know where that landed towards the end of April and then we'll have another budget work session which really is the final discussion before we introduced the budget resolution and that's a place for whatever last minute adjustments need to be made based on the results of the legislative session can get worked into this to some degree.

And given that dynamic nature of the legislature's business, that's why we've changed our strategy a little bit and we'll talk about that.

So I'll move on to some context, if we could go to the next slide.

And this is really, you've seen this fiscal update.

This has been kind of updated from what we're going to walk through now is kind of an update based on the discussions we've been having since last fall.

So the last in-depth budget work session was in November.

And you've seen this picture before, and we're going to try to kind of walk from where we are now, from here to where we are now.

This really had two years of real planning and proposed a balancing strategy that was discussed with the board to identify, to liquidate our emergency stabilization fund, to liquidate our reserves.

to transfer some funds from capital spending and to make significant reductions in the central office and at school level reductions.

And these numbers are shaded to try to show the interplay between the budget year we're planning for and the budget year after that.

So if we make those reductions in 23-24, they'll also manifest themselves in 24-25, which is why those numbers are blue from one column to the next.

if we were assuming if we get the revenue increases, which are shaded in yellow in 23, 24, then those work into our assumptions for 24, 25. And so that's the logic behind that.

So in November, we were hoping as part of balancing 32 million in help from the legislature.

And so if we could go to the next slide.

I won't go through these in detail, the individual line items, but our first read of the tea leaves of what's going on at Olympia is the governor's proposed budget, which our analysis indicates is about a $9.5 million benefit to us as opposed to the $32 million that had been put into the last balancing.

If we could advance this one more slide, please.

So we plug that number into the same assumptions that we were using in November to show, you know, so what does that do?

And, you know, this is not overly complex.

If we were close to balancing, but we were hoping for $32 million in revenue, which has turned into nine and a half.

then we're out of balance again for 23-24 to the tune of about $27 million.

And it also exacerbates our problems in 24-25, which now with this model leads to a $123 million deficit.

So we're proposing at this point to kind of change the strategy to start thinking more than a year ahead just to get for a variety of reasons to get to a sustainable path which is what Dr. Jones opened with that we really want to fund our future and also to assist us as we work with the legislature or any other partners that we have a long range plan that we are not looking for a one time another year of one time solutions that we're trying to get to a sustainable path which is why our colleagues in Olympia and elsewhere should it continue to invest in Seattle Public Schools.

And so if we could advance this, well, we'll open it up for questions a little bit later, but this, again, is a little bit different approach than you've seen before.

And yes, please, if you could advance the slides to the table that says multi-year planning.

Oh, I'm sorry.

The table's in a couple slides down.

So again, this is the why we're talking about planning over multiple years and as of now we're really tonight just going to discuss 23-24 and 24-25.

We're really going to need to think also a year beyond that because we get closer to balance in those two years but are still using some one-time solutions so that we're not quite at a sustainable level there but we're flattening the curve a little bit where the previous plan had us kind of balanced till we weren't in 23-24 and then we sort of fell off a cliff in 24-25.

We're trying to smooth that out.

So again, we want a sustainable model.

We want to really adjust in our thinking to forecast enrollment.

We're close to putting the finishing touches on our tenure enrollment forecast.

It's going to be a few weeks out because The 2020 census has been delayed and those final, we'd really like to see those numbers before we call this final, but we really want to start taking seriously what we think our enrollment forecast looks over the next decade.

and we want to do this in such a way that preserves resources in schools to the extent we can and then look for kind of programmatic efficiencies in the central office.

Look for different ways of doing business that create efficiencies.

There's the do more with less.

It only goes so far, but you can certainly work smarter and there are improvements we can make.

If we could advance the slide, please.

So the specific strategies that leads to that are different than the way we showed this to you in the fall are instead of liquidating the economic stabilization fund in one year, we spread that use across two years.

As a practical matter, as I mentioned before, we'll have a proposal for balancing in the next, to finalize the balancing thinking in the next couple of weeks.

And then the legislature will finish its business and we'll have to react.

if we use all of the economic stabilization fund in the coming planning year, that makes that reaction very difficult to do in a short amount of time.

So we felt that it made more sense to preserve some for the second year, which maybe we'll end up using this year, depending on how we do with revenue.

But the previous strategy painted us into a corner a little bit.

As we said, we'll identify central office reductions because we're leaning less on the reserves.

That means those need to be bigger than we had talked about previously.

the reductions need to be larger.

We will continue to identify targeted reductions in schools that we're also proposing be a bit bigger than the last number we showed.

And that we're trying to get more specific in our work with legislature about what specific solutions we think would help us in terms of special education funding and some other things that the legislature is working on.

and we'll continue to work on that.

And then the biggest new concept here that hadn't been discussed in November, I've heard comments in board sessions informally, but that now is Solidified into a staff proposal is really thinking about consolidating our district into a system of well-resourced schools, that this is part of recognizing where we are with enrollment, that having schools that continue to decline enrollment that don't end up with the resources that they need to be successful at the school level and then spreading those resources across a bigger system when our resources are really stretched.

is not what we would recommend, and it would be similar ground that's being tried by other districts and other organizations across the country and in our state.

If we could advance the slide, please.

So in terms of what you've already looked at, putting these ideas into this, ask of the central office where before we had said we were looking for $20 million in savings in the coming budget year, now we're looking for $36 million in savings.

And again, since we're doing multi-year planning and another 18 the year after that, this is not, by any stretch a trivial exercise.

But people are doing good work.

We're making good progress on this already.

The school level reductions, we're proposing 11 million there in lieu of the nine that we were talking about in the fall.

and we're still hopeful and plan to advocate for assistance from the legislature.

The two numbers above the line there, as are noted on the table, represent what was in the governor's budget.

There has been progress already.

on the floor in the legislature around special education.

Not quite to the level we've modeled here, but we're getting there.

And then we have some other ideas that we'll start developing advocacy for for other things that we think are reasonable ask to make of the legislature.

instead of liquidating the economic stabilization fund in a single year, this plan really does that in kind of a two-third, one-third split and gives us, just as a practical matter, if our plans and reasonable proposals we have for the legislature don't pan out the way we'd like them to in the bottom, it gives us room to use that to close the gap rather than in a very short period trying to find spending reductions.

And so this just gives us some flexibility, and then it gets on a path.

And most importantly, the two bottom lines now are balanced, not just the first line roughly balanced, and then the second line $100 million deficit.

isn't really a plan.

And again, we think it helps us in our discussions with the legislature to say we're looking at the long range, which is why you should help us now.

We're not going to just come back with another one-year ask next year.

if we could advance the slide.

We are now going to give you some summary level information about where we are with these processes and I'm going to turn it over to budget director Linda Sebring to walk through those slides.

Thank you.

Can you advance to the next slide please.

So as Fred mentioned we have been going through a central office reduction process and we started with looking at we've talked about the flex view with the board before of trying to take our billion dollar budget and break it down so it's easier to understand and absorb.

but we started with a 15 percent reduction target for each division to see what people can do.

They went through a process of first trying to optimize other resources potentially other places we might have resources that we hadn't been spending grants, capital fund, career and technical education so that we can shift some costs off of the general fund and relieve some of its pressure.

and we've got some additional work above the 15 percent as we mentioned since we changed our direction here after the governor's budget at the end of December where we're working on looking for an additional 10 million.

And at this point we're looking at as it says some reductions eliminations or pausing of activities.

So not just continuing to shave here and there but looking at some things we're doing and saying we need to propose stopping some of these things or scaling them back.

Next slide.

So this is just a high level alphabetically of what 15% of flexible means to these different divisions.

Some divisions a lot more of their expenditures are considered not contractual or legally required.

The example I usually give is the payroll department is 100% considered flexible.

But if we don't pay people that would be a problem.

So this is just showing that we're at about 27 million and then over on the right was just an insert of how that might affect some of the people at the district of shifting staff over to other funds vacant positions closing and employees that will be laid off.

Next slide.

So our other task was to go through a school level reduction and we looked through the school funding formula the weighted staffing standard and we looked at resources that again are not constrained by basic operations classroom teachers we tried to protect to the extent possible collective bargaining agreements.

We've had a couple different conversations with our labor partners the principals union and Seattle Education Association.

although neither of them really want to propose reductions because they see a lot of needs firsthand and they did not.

The principals union provided some feedback on some areas they wanted us to try to focus on protecting special education, safety and security, mental health resources and the Seattle Education Association wanted us to make sure that we characterized our conversations as they weren't necessarily agreeing with any of our suggestions or even the need to do the reductions.

So we want to be honest and say that that is our conversation that we'll be continuing with them so that we get to a common understanding of where we are financially.

When we made some of these choices we know any reductions will impact some schools more than others but we looked at what was historically underspent areas that we provide through the model but at the end of the year they may be saved by schools for some reason or another.

We took out some planned support increases that we had planned on doing.

We just are not in a position right now to improve our resources.

And then we are working on looking through our racial equity tool for some of the decisions on a couple of the areas where there is some flexibility as to how we make those decisions.

So next slide please.

So for those of you familiar with the weighted staffing standards model there is the items are listed on the left.

The applicable dollar amounts.

This equates to about 38.8 FTE or positions.

The core extra staffing is resources that at the beginning of the model were provided as 0.5 out to some schools, middle schools, large schools.

and it was intended to replace or give schools discretion to increase their librarian nurse or social worker.

I went back through and said well we've added all those resources to those schools now.

This will still be a reduction for these schools but they have the intent of those resources have been added to those schools over the last several years.

The school mitigation fund is a central reserve that's three million dollars for schools that when the model doesn't quite work we provide extra resources so it makes it a little tight for us when we have various needs.

K3 ratio adjustment is extra staffing that the state gives us funding so that we can reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade.

and right now we are providing more teachers than are necessary to fully achieve that funding through the state.

So we are still evaluating as we said through the racial equity tool how we would make those reductions.

Running Start administrative funding is something we talked about in our latest contract negotiations and are providing some central support for some of our secondary schools to help students with Running Start.

School discretionary funds was one of those items that I talked about.

We have underspend across the system every year and therefore we're proposing a slight reduction there.

Reduce assistant principals is another one of those equity tools where we're going to need to go through and determine exactly how we would do that.

We have not work that out completely yet.

The second to last one do not add additional school athletic director staffing.

That was one of the things we wanted to enhance at the schools and at this time we're looking for alternate ways to help provide some service to the schools instead.

and the school programmatic changes are some areas where we want to keep the resources and programs that we're providing to students but look at ways to perhaps combine some things or do some things differently so we don't have as much of the administrative costs for running some things.

So next slide please.

As we mentioned there's opportunities for board discussion and we want to lead you all in this discussion with asking you all what resonates and what are you curious about and based on the faces I saw around the room there's a lot of curiosity and a lot of resonations so please please jump on this and please discuss these two questions.

Yes, I'm curious.

I mean, I think what resonates, I don't see anything that seems totally off the wall and where did that come from?

So again, I think what resonates is it seems like we're faced with making really hard decisions and the approach as I see it there feels reflective of I think what we've all been talking about prioritizing.

So in terms of curiosity, one of my, well a question that I will always ask and I know I've said before is How can the board and try to say this in a different way than I have said before.

How can the board support the district or support you because we are all the district.

How can the board support you Dr. Jones and staff in instead of thinking of things as levers up and down more or less of the way we do things and the things we have, doing things differently than they have been done before.

There's so many different ways to meet outcomes that we want and I think a lot of times we all get into the trap of the things that we want along the way and kind of lose sight of what's our ultimate objective and especially with a large school district and so many different wants and needs, it's very easy to get pulled into talking about well I like this thing and so I want more of that thing instead of thinking about is that thing that I like leading to the outcomes that we want.

And I know during in 2020 we talked about seeing opportunity in a crisis of schools shutting down and trying to find how can we do things differently and lots of people want to talk about reimagining education but there were so many other factors of uncertainty and a lot of fear that having those conversations about how can we do this differently was really really hard.

I mean we passed the same resolution three times.

which I think shows that resolutions are not the most effective way to govern.

But also there were a lot of good reasons for people being resistant to or the system not being able to adapt to let's do things really differently.

I don't want to look back in two or three years at this moment and think, oh my gosh, we really missed an opportunity to get laser focused on the outcomes that we want.

And we increase levers up or down on the status quo.

instead of using it as an opportunity to really focus on what are the outcomes that we want and what are the different ways we could get there and how might we better use our resources to get those same outcomes.

So in that, one thing I'm curious about that is, A large expense on one of those lines is the, I mean our largest expense is staff of course.

People are the heart of what we do and they're our most valuable asset.

They also cost the most.

I mean that's where our investment is because it's the most important thing.

In terms of the funded cost of living increase from the state last year, that is already funded, their funding was at, the state's funding for that was based on the allocation that they provide for salary, which is already lower than what we pay.

so then when we agreed to a contract that went again over and above that that increased our deficit.

A question that I had at the time that I still have is and this I mean I'm trying to tread carefully because I know there's lots of implications here but I really want to see investment in attracting and retaining a diverse body of educators and in being able to bring new people to the profession and to our district and they get paid the least.

What?

So I'm thinking about if there were to be or has there been any consideration about looking at the way I'm trying not to raise too many eyebrows, because this is genuinely, I'm curious, I am genuinely curious about the impact of applying that increase the same over all employees.

And I'm not just talking about SEA, because the central office contracts and salaries are connected to the percentages.

They're connected to those agreements.

So even though there's not bargaining on central office staff, increases in contracts that we agree upon with our labor partners lead to increases in central office, which is not inappropriate.

But when I think about in all areas of the district, we have custodians, bus drivers, lunchroom workers, all kinds of support staff who seem to come last when it comes to those increases and they frankly don't cost as much as building staff and central office staff.

What am I trying to get at?

What I'm getting at is when we apply that cost of living equally over everybody instead of progressively like perhaps suspending it for people who make over a certain amount in any position and keeping it, I don't know.

See, this is what I'm curious about.

Is that something that's even possible, feasible, reasonable to look at like a graduated application of that as opposed to across the board?

I don't know if that yields any savings, but if I was the head of a corporation and we were looking at layoffs or some restrictions on increases in salary, I might consider that if I wanted to protect that stuff.

Maybe I just stepped in a hornet's nest, I don't know, but that's a curiosity that I have.

I would like to see not only a strategy for how we are gonna make reductions but whatever comes out of the legislature and there is some positive movement in some areas, nothing's going to save us.

but there is some positive movement.

I want to make sure that we have a plan, again, not just more or less of the way things are done, but making sure that that gets invested into the right places to support the outcomes that we want, again.

So instead of just, oh, phew, we got this many millions of dollars, now we can not worry about these things ever again, I think we still need a plan for when those dollars come to make sure that we spend them in the way that's gonna have the biggest impact.

and then the rainy day fund or the economic stabilization, in our policy and in-state law there's a requirement to replenish that, so what's the timeline on that and how would that impact out years?

and then especially for things happening at the legislature what we need to be able to demonstrate and what I've been having conversations with legislators about is in hearing and when I'm listening to hearings is they also really want to see how new investment will be spent and they don't want to just say okay yeah here's more money for special ed.

They want to understand how new investment will change the service to students so we really need to be able to share that.

And then the last thing is assistant principals.

Assistant principals I know a lot of other districts don't have them at all until you reach at least 500 students.

and I don't know if that's, I don't know how that again impacts their buildings or their student outcomes but I know too that I have heard some principals talk about, especially principals at schools where they don't reach the level of an assistant principal or they've wavered that they would like the option of having a head teacher.

And I know that's way in the weeds, but that's the type of thing that I'm wondering, like doing things differently instead of thinking more or less so that we can make sure that the support is still there and that buildings have what they need, but that may be a different cost output than the way things have been done.

And I think that's plenty for me for now.

Thank you I was taking some bullet point notes here this is listing the last section but let me start with asking the question that we asked at the two by two in terms of this iterative process and incorporating on this calendar more two by twos so that we can in fact get into the weeds and answer questions and understand the thinking because it's not possible to do it all right here right now.

As we know the inclusion policies for special education were a very hot topic in collective bargaining to say an understatement.

That was three months ago.

Have we had a report from the task force and this is a segue from your question and the pushback we're getting from legislators.

Okay so sped funding is a big issue.

The 13.5 cap is a big issue.

What are you going to do differently?

Well we've known this has been an issue for quite some time.

We certainly were reading about it above the fold in the collective bargaining agreements.

What's going on with the task force report and we're sitting here hopefully at our table or in this room are our labor partners to help us with these fixes.

So I absolutely would like more information about that and about the quote unquote inclusion model.

how much money are we really talking about saving and how is that going to be balanced with what I perceive anyway is an extreme need for professional development for general ed teachers in order to be able to in fact differentiate and I'll still say I'll go to Tahiti if I added up a nickel for every time I've heard that word differentiation.

um, I recall several questions about on these charts on revenue asking for what the revenue is based on and asking for another column several board members for what that enrollment is that the revenue is based upon because it feels like half a sandwich there and it also frankly feels a little non-responsive which is troubling.

Two other questions.

There was a remark made about how do we address the race and equity tool that kind of struck fear in my heart not knowing where we're going with that comment.

and then there was a comment made in K through 3 and I quote more teachers than necessary and I'm hoping that was a misstatement and being the person that usually chews on her feet more than any other board member I understand misstatements more than anybody but more teachers than necessary is an oxymoron in my world especially for K3.

Thank you.

I did submit some questions in advance in the form.

Are we planning to have those questions answered at our next budget work session?

You don't have to answer that now.

because I would just like to reiterate the request from Director Harris around the enrollment assumptions that we use to forecast.

In terms of what resonates with me, I'm looking at the multi-year budget planning objectives and one of them is to preserve resources in schools and my observation around that is and I'd like to contextualize some of the numbers that we have in here.

We're talking about a 26, 29 million dollar cut from central office and around an 11 million dollar cut from schools.

26 million should be around the range of 10 to 15 percent of the central office.

36 million, so we're talking maybe like 15, 18% of central office and then 11 million, that is a big number, but relative to the entirety of all the school budgets, that should be less than 5%.

So I see that through line of preserving resources in our school.

So that does resonate with me.

And in terms of what I'm curious about, so two things.

One, I'm looking at the central office reductions has some proposed staff adjustments so I added that up at 71.2 and I look at the 26.8 million dollar number that's roughly 377,000 so it looks like the central office cuts aren't strictly staffing adjustments perhaps there's in the operations line I see 14 million so this is that are we talking about transportation and if so I would like to get some granularity around what are the changes around transportation.

And relatedly, you know, we're preserving resources in schools, and yet I understand at that school level, it's going to be felt.

And so having that granularity at the school, like which schools, what staff members, what is the math behind it in particular, the enrollment projections on a per school basis that kind of justify the adjustments that we're going to be making having that information is really going to support our conversations with those school communities and for better for worse our building leaders our principals are going to be receiving a lot of feedback from their community and I think we would we should try to support them as much as possible with that information in terms of how did we come up with those enrollment projections for that school.

What was the logic behind the staffing adjustments.

Thank you.

I'll dive in.

So the first thing that I wanted to say that resonated to me, similar to Director Song Moritz, was the almost $40 million in cuts that are being made at the central office level.

I have a similar request to understand what is the comparable, I think Director Song Moritz hit it on the head, what is the comparable in terms of percentages of that overall budget?

I think that as we are hearing this and as folks at home are saying, oh, they're cutting $36 million.

Well, if it's from a billion, that might not necessarily tell the full story in how we are looking at percentage-wise the reductions that we are looking to make and where are we focusing a lot of those efforts in order to protect as much as possible the experiences that are occurring in schools.

I also am curious about the conversation that we are having with our labor partners around how do we equally and in partnership assess what these reductions look like?

Because if we are in a position, and I'm genuinely curious, what budgetition or mathematician is going to be able to come and say, oh, and give us some understanding around, oh, SPS, you actually do have money somewhere that we are not seeing.

Or, oh, X organization, this is actually the outcast of the budget, and this is why we are moving in this way.

Because to hear, and I totally get it, right?

but to hear like y'all have had conversations and the characterization from specifically the Seattle Education Association is that they don't necessarily agree or share the perspective that we are in the financial situation that we are.

I don't know who's right here.

I'm not a mathematician.

I'm not a budget expert.

But what I do know is that if we are singing one song and our education association is singing a different song, at some point that has to be squared because it's going to create a lot of misinformation out in the community, which is going to make this conversation incredibly difficult for everybody.

I just kind of want to know from the board's perspective, is that a concern to y'all?

Do y'all have some ideas around what we can do in terms of conversation around that?

Because I think if we start off with that positionality, it's going to be really difficult for us as a system to come to a place where we can honestly look at the issues that are in front of us and have a shared understanding of where that goes.

And again, I want to be super clear.

In all of these situations, there's your side, their side, and then there's actually what's transpiring.

And I want to know is it a priority for y'all to get to the point to where we can develop a shared understanding of what's actually transpiring?

And if not, what is your strategy for communication given that there's likely to be some form of misinformation flying around in community if we don't have clarity between our organizations internally about what our financial status and issue actually is?

because it makes it difficult for me as a board director too right so just wanted to throw that out there.

Director Hampson.

Superintendent Jones did you want to respond to that first or.

I'm happy to.

One of our labor partners is in here president of SEA and so we've broached the topic.

I think there's a mutual understanding that this can be difficult collectively for the SPS community if we don't have clarity on that.

And so I believe there's willingness to continue to work that but we don't really have the time to be wrangling over numbers, but it is a great investment of time if we can commit to doing that.

And so there's not two sets of books, if you will.

There's really one truth, and as I've let out with my comments, if our math is not good, We welcome a correction to that because it does, it's no incentive for me or this team to say, hey board, we have this big giant problem and we're ready to go through all of this pain to get to this point of reconciliation if there's not really any problem there.

So we believe that there is.

I think that the difficulty is the magnitude of the problem.

I don't think SEA is saying at all that I'm not speaking for you Jennifer just so you know that I don't think they're saying at all that there isn't a problem.

It's just the gravity of the problem.

that's where we are so it's invitation we're invitational.

I know Linda has you know reached out a little bit and Constance and I have reached out recently and we've we're in communication so it's not like folks aren't willing to come to tables but it's just how do we get there to reconciliation quickly because these decisions are hinging on some accuracy of some of data and numbers.

Can I clarify real quick.

So that's what I need to know, that nuance, right?

Because if I were at home hearing that, oh, we've got X, Y, or Z organization that doesn't necessarily agree without the context where it's like, it's not that they don't agree.

It's like there's magnitudes of it.

as we've had conversations specifically about communication, case in point.

The nuances of those things, at least to me, are important.

And I don't necessarily think that we need to go super far down that rabbit hole, but doesn't put us in the best position in like as I'm trying to figure out like how do I have this conversation effectively because like teachers are my constituents.

I am an educator.

Educators live in my district.

So like I want to be able to walk into a room or a gathering of educators and be equipped with the most useful information possible should I be put into that position.

Right.

And so like that's where I think I am begging as a board directors to just be like properly equipped with the information that we have at hand.

And it feels as though that that is happening more often than not.

So I don't want to make it into an idea that that's not it but any like small misstep on our end and this just spins way out of tail before we even have an opportunity to fully understand what is the conversation we're having.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

Director Amps.

She's going to respond.

But did she have her hand up before me.

Well I had a I did have a question but this is in response.

As chair of the audit committee and chair of audit and finance when that was still a committee I take this particular topic very seriously.

and you might have noticed I stood up straighter when you started talking about I don't know which kind of story is correct because as our board president I don't want to hear you say something like that because it's our job to actually know the truth of our financial situation and the reality is as I know you know that so we have a debt rating as an institution.

Do we still have a debt rating?

Yes we have so in order to get a debt rating there is a tremendous amount of financial analysis done by people who understand what government financials look like.

Government financials are a pain in the ass.

they're difficult for anyone to understand, including leadership in many situations.

It's frustrating that they're so difficult.

However, there are standards, there are people who have done the evaluation, the state auditor, has begun doing our audit for this year as the chair of the audit committee.

I had the opportunity and I told him I said in future times based on our new structure I hope you'll be speaking actually to the entire board and not just me as the chair of that committee because I think my fellow directors have things they would like to express to you that they have concerns about.

and one of the things that I said that was troubling to me is this disconnect between we get audited by your office every year and as an objective person separate from staff I have the opportunity to say here's what I'm concerned about.

and they will look at those things and they do a full audit to confirm that the reality that's being expressed that's reported to the state that allows us to have that debt rating is in fact that reality.

And he acknowledged, which I appreciated, that it is in fact an issue for school districts that the value of the state auditor performing those audits to confirm the veracity of our fiscal statements doesn't seem to carry as much weight as it should and that there's this sort of notion of, I think there's one thing to say we should put off and go and retain a negative spending, operate in the red, and demand that the state give us money.

That's a philosophical thing but it doesn't change the fact that we're operating in the red and that we have been doing that for so long that we are now in serious trouble.

So there's no question.

There's no two truths, there's no two books The new head of the state auditor's office seems to his indication to me was that she understands this and understands that they need to do a better job on their standpoint from for public relations to let folks know that hey no we do stand behind our audits of these institutions.

So there is information out there I it kind of goes to the math question it's really because it's accounting it's frequently less about it's not just math right.

It's we are in a really unusual situation as school districts where we are actively building the plane as we're flying meaning I should say the state is building our plane while we're trying to fly it and making the budget mid-year when we should just be simply looking at historical information and saying making the best decisions for the outcomes that we seek.

We don't have that benefit.

I would love for staff to correct anything that I said that you think is not accurate but I do want to just kind of put a stake in the ground and say no these are solid numbers.

Are there, I did want to correct one thing.

I don't know that we are going to be making decisions.

Somebody said, oh I think Director Rankin you'd mentioned not say this program isn't necessarily consistent with goals or values and I don't necessarily think I don't think we have many programs that are inconsistent with our values.

I think we have inputs programs and resources that are being utilized to teach kids that are more and less effective.

And we have to make really hard decisions about those things that are effective.

I have my other question that's kind of connected to that or I could just let staff respond to the.

Superintendent Jones I don't know if you want folks to add anything or.

Linda will you take a crack at responding to just the point that Director Hampson made about the checks and balances and the auditing and how that will validate or invalidate some of our math.

Certainly.

An audit, yes, is validating that the district is coding and charging expenditures correctly, but an audit is a look in the rearview mirror.

And that is also what I believe our labor partners do is they're looking in the rearview mirror and saying, well, you've had problems in the past and you've always solved them without evaluating how did we solve them and that one-time funds that came from the legislature for enrollment we didn't have, for transportation we didn't spend.

for expenses we didn't have.

So they're like, well, you built a budget and then you didn't spend what you said you were gonna spend.

So you're fine.

So I think the audit doesn't help negate that.

It's the understanding of why the past does not predict the future.

And that's something we need to help our community and everybody understand.

As you mentioned, this is very complicated.

School budgeting is very complicated.

And as the superintendent led off in the beginning, $82 million of one time money that we're operating on right now is your starting point for when you build the next year's budget.

You have to find another $82 million of one time money or you don't have those expenses and then you add on to those expenses they grow and they grow faster than our state funding or our levy funding which is tied to the enrollment.

That's where you start having these challenges.

super helpful.

Do you have another one?

I want to get to Director Rivera-Smith if you do not.

Oh I just mine was I won't there are definitely things that resonate with me in terms of the approach and I think my what I'm curious about is and I'm not going to state them because it's not a good use of time right now so my apologies for not providing that positive feedback.

when you do have a concept like a 15% when you're asking folks to do 15% cut, how do you protect key inputs that are going to be the driver potentially for outcomes.

And we can't forget that black students and students other students for this educational justice aren't just at the priority schools.

And so how are we tweaking the racial equity tool to ensure that goals are protected at all schools?

so that the cuts don't become an excuse to abandon the strategic plan and the goals and the guardrails.

We've barely made progress in those other schools because we're still learning from the priority schools and that stuff is starting to filter in.

That's what I'm curious about.

It's more it makes me nervous when I hear 15% because first of all I think your approach is spot on.

You're doing what you have to do but 15% of the number 18% of central office then there's that guardrail.

How do we protect the operations?

So how do you protect the operations with something like that and how do you make sure that the inputs are protected in light of the racial equity tool which is a fantastic tool and yet we know it has its limitations.

This won't be wholly satisfying but The 15%, when I gave that guidance, it was how are we protecting goal one, two, and three.

As you go through that exercise, the unenviable exercise of doing that, bring back the reductions that don't impact those in obvious ways.

Like I said, about 80% of the things we'll know, about 20% we won't.

And that's what's been difficult in doing that exercise because Consti in particular had to really wrestle with all of us to talk about how those reading, math, college and career readiness goals were going to be protected and so everybody had that task and so that's the real litmus test that we used is you bring these back and if they're going to impact our ability to get to those outcomes then those aren't legitimate proposals.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Go ahead, Lisa.

Can you hear us?

Can you hear me?

Yep, hear you well.

Okay, awesome.

I'm turning another audio setting.

I really appreciate this conversation, and I really appreciate what my fellow directors are sharing.

I have some questions and concerns that, I mean, I open up knowing that that we need to make some really tough decisions.

And so I only ask these things I'm about to ask because I think that they affect more than what they are.

For example we talk about not filling or removing assistant principals from elementary schools.

Many times those assistant principals are really just filling a lot of little roles that are not already covered in their schools.

one thing cascades into other things in that school.

So if we consider that and go that route, I just want us to actually look at those schools and find out what roles that that AP is filling in that are probably less expensive to hire people individually for rather than have the AP doing them.

What are those needs?

Because really that's the core of sometimes what they're looking for and that's where it's going to hurt those schools.

is not just the AP role itself but in again all the other many places that they fill in for their schools.

When we talk about optimizing non-general fund resources like grants and capital fund and again those are those are opportunities.

I wonder though like is that for example is that how we're looking at I know that the Head Start indirect is going up about 5 percent.

and that's that's a big chunk of change from them because that means staff that means PD.

So and what that's going to do is affect our preschool which trickles up into our later grades and affects our third and seventh graders reaching those goals we have for them.

So again I want to suggest be mindful of that things we do are going to cascade and equal that deficits later.

So I am on record very concerned about that increase for the indirect head start.

I know we'll probably talk about that later but I'm just trying to, again, think about that.

So another for the department cut, is charging climate on that department's page, is that where the family engagement and partnerships is?

I think that's what it falls under now.

I know there's been some organizational changes, so I'm not positive, and I can't see you right now to find out if anybody's nodding.

Yes, Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

And I think we had this conversation already, Dr. Jones, I know this doesn't surprise you that I'm just concerned about us cannibalizing that department to the point that it's not serving that great purpose it's supposed to serve for us in the engagement we want to do with our communities when we're making these decisions and not just this one, but all the other ones that we make that affect our communities.

So I'm just, again, General, you know, big picture is in being mindful of how, you know, we're making some sacrifices now and in the experience of long-term, you know, planning, let's make sure we're not, you know, going to be, you know, biting ourselves coming out the other end.

So, and I know, again, we've got some great minds that work on this, but I just wanted to highlight a couple of those right here tonight.

Thank you.

Director Sarjic.

So what resonates and what am I curious about?

What resonates mostly from what was just presented was I, as a person who's not a finance person, I'm a programs person, I do feel like for the most part I can follow.

Right, like being elected to school board does not magically put me as budget director Sebring expertise.

That's not my job.

And I just, I wanna be, I wanna reflect back on what I know President Hersey said is about clarity and communication.

and just ensuring that a parent in our district can actually understand what is being communicated.

Because if we're going to ask them to lean into their role of advocacy they have to be able to articulate some basic things.

and I think for the most part it is understandable and I'm not, you know, I'm not afraid of asking questions, you know, sending you an email, Director Sebring, about can you explain this because I didn't understand this part or Superintendent Jones or anybody else.

In terms of communication, I think one of the things we have to be clear and careful about is choice of language.

So I was going back, I was sitting with consolidate into a system of well-resourced schools.

That's a very sophisticated statement.

and I think what we're saying in that statement and I'm not clear and I consider myself to be pretty well educated.

I think what we're saying with a statement like that is we may have to close schools, join schools together, or some variation of.

And I think that's an example of, for example, if you don't speak English, of which we have quite a few people in our district where English is not their first language, they may not get the meaning of that.

We can't be afraid.

If we're gonna be transparent, then we can't use sophisticated language that leaves one wondering what you're trying to say.

And so with that, when we think about labor partners, communication and transparency goes both ways.

And I'm thinking back to what happened in the fall.

The kinds of questions I got from parents that were directly connected to information that they felt like they were getting from our labor partner was mind-boggling.

And I had to just say, OK, maybe they didn't actually hear what they thought they heard, or maybe we're in a game of telephone or something.

But that is an example of what we don't want to do.

We don't want to have that kind of mixed up messages, miscommunication, games of telephone, leaving people to wonder or conclude that it's us versus them.

I don't want to play that game.

I'm not going to play that game.

Anybody who knows me well knows I don't have a problem being transparent.

And you just saw it right here.

So I'm making an ask for everybody.

Just because a decision is made and it doesn't line up with what I want, it doesn't mean I wasn't heard.

That's what's going to happen through this process.

There are going to be decisions that have to be made that I don't like.

This is not about whether I like it or not.

But at the end of the day, if it ultimately is going to keep us solvent so we can offer all of our kids a high-quality public school education in Seattle, there's a give.

I have to be able to let go of something that I like or that I want for the greater good, for the long-term good.

My last statement is we are in financial trouble, period.

We are not in a unique position.

King County government is in financial trouble.

The city of Seattle is in financial trouble.

A lot of public sector government systems are in financial trouble.

It does us no good to argue about whether or not.

I honestly have to believe you are not faking the numbers.

That you are being authentic and that you are being clear you are presenting a very clear picture about the financial trouble we are in.

We owe it to our kids.

We don't owe it to school board directors.

We don't owe it to the senior level leadership in our district.

We don't owe it to teachers.

We don't owe it to building leaders.

We owe it to our children to get ourselves out of this financial situation for long term sustainability so we can offer a world class education.

So companies like Microsoft and Google, they don't have to go out of the country because we're doing it right here in this city.

And right now we're not doing it.

We are not training our kids to take over and lead.

in whatever capacity or skill they have to do that.

So at the end of the day, we can argue about a couple million dollars.

We are in financial trouble and we owe it to our kids to figure out a way to get out of it.

You see your hand is still up.

Do you have another question or should we keep on rolling.

Back to you superintendent.

I very much appreciate those comments.

Director Sarju.

and we have a really limited amount of time, right?

And we always do for budgeting and we don't know what's gonna happen with the state until it happens and then we gotta be done.

The point I was trying to make is that so and this is coming from it's the budget as finance person talking to a budget perspective and because it is a backward look right but if I can look back and say somebody has consistently demonstrated the veracity of their numbers, then I'm much more likely to be able to trust what they're telling me going forward.

And so that's kind of what I was trying to get to with that, not saying that they're the same thing, I don't want to conflate them because they're definitely not the same thing, but they are an indication of trust and reliability.

and I want our community to take comfort in that because we have such strength in Seattle Public Schools in that regard.

And so I think that's what I was trying to get us to and not to say that there aren't disagreements about okay so yes we've managed to make it work every year but yet we've also still managed to spend more than we have.

So if we think about it in terms of a household you know I mean I think what we're grappling for as board directors is we have to be able to explain this larger picture to our constituents.

When Director Hersey and I talk about it sometimes I end up just using a household budget because people can understand that.

and because people don't they think in terms of their household budgets versus actual finance and what buckets things go into and whether they're appropriately represented and whether you know your husband told you that they spent the money on extra basketball shoes versus you know groceries kind of thing that happens in my house.

So I just gotta say I feel personally attacked.

I had no idea you were buying basketball shoes.

So the impact in terms I think that's what we want to get to some common language around how do we express that we've been living beyond our means and that in order to really do effective decision making we need to be living within our means and yes it's frustrating that we don't have what we need from the state but what I heard from you all at the beginning is rather than it's advice actually that I used to give businesses that were in trouble when I was making loans to people like don't use up all your cash while you're in trouble which is what I was hearing you talk about in terms of the rainy day fund because in some ways that's going to prolong the issue.

And so those types of things if we can start to talk about them in more simplistic household budget type of ways I think that will help us.

At the same time I don't want us to shy away from the math from the accounting because we are actually a system that needs to demonstrate the ability to learn about those things because that's what we need to see reflected in our classroom.

The skills that are necessary for us to effectively lead in this moment are the skills we need our children to have when they graduate from high school.

and they serve in these capacities and our education system hasn't historically prepared particularly has not prepared students of color for some educational justice well for those things and then so that's how you create the opportunity gap right you don't have you're not providing the access.

So we all have to be willing to talk and that was one of the reasons I particularly appreciate Director Sargi's comments about maybe not having the inherent acumen and yet there is plenty of evidence of trust that has been built.

It's not a situation where we can say well there's not you know we haven't there's no trust.

We have things that we can point to and then we can debate about whether or not we're aligning with our values which I think is where we have to funnel the conversation.

That's what I was trying to get to.

So I think you'll find this next section having some definition around a system of well-resourced schools and have a graphical representation of what the challenge is right now.

So hopefully that's a nice segue to move forward.

So I'll ask Fred to kind of tee up this next section.

Thank you.

And I very much appreciate Director Sarju's advice about being plain spoken when we talk about well-resourced schools.

And this phrase was not meant to soft pedal the fact that built into that prop is likely a strategy of closing some schools.

It's to try to focus on We believe that consolidating into larger schools that have the resources they need is a good strategy whether you have money problems or not.

That continuing to spread what will be thinner resources across the system that's too large is not, we're proposing that there are benefits to this and we're trying to focus on the positive.

I would say in this whole sea of numbers, After we do all this, Seattle Public Schools is still going to be a $1.2 billion organization.

We have resources, the exercises to use them as best we can.

And if we could advance the slide.

we need to recognize that we need to spread those resources serving a smaller enrollment, a projected smaller enrollment, so it makes sense to think about doing that at fewer locations and have the locations that we prioritize, have all the resources they need and be the best schools they can be.

This diagram, we're not gonna go into details of this history, it's just the point to show the divergence over the years of our staffing, our spending versus our enrollment and revenue.

This highlights enrollment per se.

If we just looked at our revenues and expenditures, it wouldn't look exactly like this, but it would look similar.

And that Again, this is part of the rationale for our thinking that consolidating to a system of well-resourced schools makes sense and that thinking about not one year at a time but multi-year long-range planning to solve a structural problem is what we need to do now.

if we could advance it one more.

And as I mentioned, our enrollment planning department is working on finalizing our 10-year enrollment forecast.

What this chart shows are the different planning scenarios that they're working with, low, medium, high, and you can see even the high scenario is still pretty flat compared to our historical enrollment.

So we believe that, and again, a budget is just a plan, so that we should continue to plan for what our best forecast of the future is that we probably have declining or fairly flat employment or enrollment for the next 10 years.

and our employment has grown, has been steeper than our enrollment, which is one of our problems to solve.

So I'm gonna ask Dr. Pedrosa to go into, again, the benefits and the thinking behind what consolidating into our ideal school sizes might look like.

You can go to the next slide, please.

Great.

I'm just going to preface this so we've been having conversations as Linda mentioned earlier with PASS, with SCA and just also really thinking about with central office and the leaders that I support specifically around how do we look at this as reallocations, readjustments and reductions but that it requires us to look at potential consolidation that envisions new ways to support schools that maintain our values and able to provide adequate resources.

That is a reality.

Having served as a school leader for many years in those such schools, resources do get spread thin.

So we have to think about, and we're always trying to, we have a lot of great schools that have figured it out over years, but it's really time for us to sort of think through what does this actually mean when we think about doing, as you said, Director Rankin, how do we revision how we do this?

And we don't have all the answers yet, that's why we have to work together on that.

So just highlighting this slide a little bit, just developing a system of schools with sufficient enrollment to have a broad spectrum of resources and educational choices, as we mentioned before.

Supporting inclusionary practices and services as we shift our instructional model prioritizing student outcome goals and guardrails within that, optimizing resources in neighborhood schools and that we are guided by Seattle Public Schools educational specifications that we've outlined and we've shared here in many of board meetings and then planning for changes specifically for 24-25.

Next slide please.

And then how do we think about this in terms of how we're centering our decision making?

So this is important for us because I want people to understand that we're utilizing a variety of things and thinking about this but of course centering policies 0010 and 0030. 0010 for those of you who don't know was just adopted in this last July but it is now our flagship instructional philosophy and making sure that that is centered in the work.

that were also guided by equity analysis to assess impacts and then work with community and board on guiding principles and parameters and then apply objective and transparent parameters to identify schools in which to invest and develop.

Next slide.

and I think this is important because we also know that this is happening very locally around us and nationally.

We've seen this in the news, many different variations on how approaches and different approaches that districts are taking.

So my wonder is then how do we learn from those similar processes and other districts so that we can not make the same mistakes, right?

Leverage Seattle Public School processes for capital planning and attendance boundary adjustments.

design engagement and decision making processes for this spring and then begin process this fall to really do that work with student voice, families, our school leaders and our educators, our entire community so that we are making really sound decisions as we move forward.

I'm gonna pass this to Dr. Jones.

Next slide please.

So as we realign to our new realities and student outcome focused governance, what are the inherent opportunities that you all are seeing in this?

I know it's challenging to ask what are opportunities when this seems so hard and difficult, but there are inherent opportunities and I'm just curious as to what the board is seeing as we go forward.

So I can hop in immediately.

We will in the very short term be standing up the Community Engagement Committee.

So I don't know if Director Hampson and Harris knew what they were signing up for on this but it might be a good opportunity for us to look at the way that we do engagement specifically around things like the budget and utilizing this as a case study in how the board does its work in comparison in tandem to how the district does its work or rather how the senior leadership team does their work in terms of community engagement because those things are very different.

The way that we will have conversations out in community for very good reasons needs to be very different.

So that's one piece.

I think what I'm also really interested to know is as we look through everything within SOFG lens now.

Where is the, like, oh, let me back up.

The actual question that I had is on the previous slide it said that the processes were in development are either going to be developed by spring in hopes to start that engagement in spring or you're saying that they are going to be developed in the spring.

I'm just trying to figure out like what's the chicken and what's the egg.

Yeah so we'll design the process in spring to roll forward in fall.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

Okay.

So yeah I'm wondering where I don't have that question fleshed out yet and I didn't write it down so we can go to the next director.

Do you have your question written now?

Go for it.

So an opportunity that I see is to define both as a community and also by school is what do we mean when we say well resourced?

Because I don't think that looks the same to everybody.

So what does it look like for Jane Addams Middle School to have all of the resources they want versus for Mercer Middle School or whatever.

And I know that there is a certain level of foundational basics that we expect all schools to provide, but even though we are a neighborhood mostly a neighborhood school system, that doesn't mean that we don't have unique approaches or unique offerings based on the community that it's serving and that's something that's so wonderful about public schools is that we have this sound of foundational, broader supported by state and national laws and then locally controlled by electing school board directors, sort of our bigger umbrella over what our broader community sees as successful public education.

But then within each school, depending on the community, depending on the staff, there's opportunity for differences.

So I think this is an opportunity to look at what it means to be well resourced.

And also in terms of small schools, I'm sure that there are folks from small schools listening right now who are nervous that their school is going to get closed.

And if we look and see what's happening in Bellevue right now, and I know a lot of other districts, the opportunity that's there is to do everything that we do with purpose and intention instead of well that just sort of happened.

So I think that there is great value in having small schools and for some students a smaller school might be what allows them to access appropriate education.

But what we have right now is schools that have lost enrollment and became small by enrollment in buildings that they're not filling.

And so if we're going to the opportunity is to talk about not that small schools should just go away, but if we are going to maintain schools that are smaller than our general volume of building size and how many staff are allocated, I would support additional funding being invested in deliberate purposeful let's spend this additional money in staffing for this school or this program because it fulfills this need of the community or need of the district but that's when it's done with intent instead of well just fewer kids were born so fewer kids are at that school so not small.

I think also with option schools and other sort of off the standard things that we have that have a great deal of value.

This is an opportunity to assess what we want from those offerings and if we as a whole community do want them to continue to look the way they have or if there's reasons to think about what problem is this trying to solve and does it still solve the problem that it was intended to at its inception and just make sure that we can kind of prove that viability or value added for those things.

So I guess the opportunity is not to just, the opportunity is to look at things through that lens of student outcomes and serving a need in the community as opposed to well this is a thing that we've always had or this is a thing that just happened.

We are being forced to have conversations that maybe we should have been having in other contexts but it was uncomfortable.

Now we're going to have to make decisions and have to have the conversations so the opportunity is what do we want from this thing and is it providing the thing that we want and is that done with intention?

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you for several segues.

Brother Stefan Lanford used to say, what is our problem statement?

I think we really have to go back to those basics.

I think we also need to take a look at history and take a look at the school closure wars and how that divided the community and how the perception and lack of trust in this district stick to us today.

What did we do well then?

What did we pooch on a huge basis and how are we going to do things differently?

I know several of you all were in here when people were throwing stuff and we had to have armed police officers here and we pitted school communities against each other unconscionable and then when we reopen them all to the tune of $90 million.

Maybe we should have been listening to some of the folks here in the audience.

Maybe the task force and the way that it was set up and the highly paid consultants who left with money in their pocket, but maybe not the same kind of results that we actually needed.

and if you can tell there's still a bitter taste in my mouth there because I'm sick of answering those questions all these many years later.

With respect to option schools, which I hate the term, the alternative schools, I submit to you and anybody that knows me knows that I am a huge alternative school supporter.

I submit to you we have alternative schools now that are no longer alternative and why don't we belly up to the bar and admit it and determine what is the definition of alternative schools and to the extent that we need to re-evaluate our boundaries to address that or why we have two language immersion schools sitting right next to each other.

Well, because we've always done it that way and you had successive boards, et cetera, et cetera.

That's the opportunity here is to get real serious about acknowledging the fact that our students are not widgets, that there have been some extraordinarily stupid decisions made, in the past and that we have the intestinal fortitude and courage to fix some of this stuff.

And if we don't acknowledge the fact that we can talk all we want about the race and equity tiering and everything else and I don't know the answers to this and Lord knows far smarter people than I, have taken a look at it and we've got no solutions on the horizon.

But when we fund staff positions by PTSA money or booster clubs or, or, or, then we're not being honest.

We're not being honest.

and has there been progress in terms of the consortium of folks raising money and giving it up?

Absolutely.

But that's not our money.

But we have to own the results of this.

And again, decades in the making.

And if somebody comes at me with, well, Title I schools get more money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it really evens out, I submit to you, it does not in the public perception and I will lose what little is left in my mind with that argument because it's a fallacy.

So definitions.

Are we going to invite the community in on task forces?

We've lost a lot of task forces and I understand the problems with task forces in terms of representation, et cetera.

But don't we then leave ourselves open that, well, you know, SPS administration really doesn't want to hear from the unwashed out there in the community.

They don't do task forces anymore.

They've rolled those all back.

So there's, There's a dozen really difficult questions that are going to have to be answered with fewer staff.

We're already kicking the heck out of y'all down here, and there's going to be a lot fewer of you in order to do this work.

And it's all really difficult, nasty work.

But if we've got the courage to belly up to the bar and say, what is the definition of an alternative school?

Which of our schools that we presently have now really aren't?

What are our principals?

How are we going to meet the needs of non-comprehensive school kids?

And Linda will laugh at me probably in a moment when I say middle college, show me please on the spreadsheet How many lives have been saved and what value are you applying to each one of those lives?

Because I can definitely get you over 50. I don't know what that equates to.

But those 50 are very cool young adults and they're taxpayers and I'm counting on them to help in my retirement.

Thank you.

Lisa.

Take just a sec.

We're getting a little feedback.

Sounds like it's stopped.

Go ahead.

Come back to me sorry.

Director Sam Moritz.

In terms of what are our opportunities I want to go back to something that our deputy superintendent said which is at the end of this work we still have a school district of 1.2 billion dollars and this is a real opportunity for us to have some discipline around what our mission is which is what I believe what student outcomes focused governance will be and I really feel confident that when we do this work will just be a stronger organization.

So I just want to go back to what Fred said.

At the end of this we are still a $1.2 billion institution serving 50,000 kids.

You ready, Director Rivera-Smith?

Still not ready Lisa.

Can you hear me.

Oh she's frozen.

OK.

She will be back with us shortly I'm sure.

OK.

Not a bad idea.

Any other comments on opportunity.

As difficult as it is I believe I'll echo what Director Song-Marit said and say that I think this presents tremendous opportunity and to Director Harris's points as well to show some discipline and some focus that we have not shown.

I don't believe that prior boards were that there was any negative intent.

I think they felt they were doing right by kids, creating programs, not you know not making any trade-offs throwing a lot of stuff in there and it's been some time that we haven't really had a lot of really good data about how to do public education well and we are now part of a wave of public school institutions that are finally trying to say we can use our data and our know-how to actually and combining that with targeted universalism and really focusing on the students that we've historically failed in the worst ways.

The opportunity to really have that unequivocal focus is I believe is brighter.

It's a brighter opportunity when there isn't as much noise.

When we're not.

And it's possible we may end up there may be things where we've got to bring that back.

But we've not put ourselves in the situation of understanding that.

And there's For me it's a hopeful within that there's also tremendous hope that we can let go of some baggage that has really been holding us back from being as effective as we can be.

And at the end of the day we are a public institution.

We're a government.

and there's limitations to how much differentiation that we can do with the resources that we have unless the the way that we fund education in this country changes significantly in the near future.

And so doing the absolute best that we can for kids with what we have particularly given that those that are furthest from educational justice are completely and utterly dependent on public education to reach their life, to find their joy.

And it's our job to make sure that we are as focused as we can be on making sure that happens.

And so for me that opportunity is richer with more focus.

Director Rivera-Smith are you ready now?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Was that a yes?

Yes.

I can't explain how bad the audio is.

I'm sorry.

And if I missed this you guys might have already discussed and talked about it and I didn't hear it right so apologies if that was what I'm about to say was already covered but I believe Dr. Hersey you asked about the engagement from a previous slide and I don't see them now so I don't know exactly which slide it was.

But you asked about the timeline for that.

My question is more about the specificity of engagement.

Does this mean when we take our decisions out to community just to inform them?

Is this about shared decision making?

Because you know there's different ways of defining community engagement but one of them is of course shared decision making.

So and I think Dr. Sarju asked at the beginning of this meeting like what are what is the pathway for people for families and stakeholders to affect what we're doing here to be involved.

And I don't know she asked this part too but what is it we want from them.

Like you know because I know there are things that are very much like site specific very even classroom specific that aren't things that we're necessarily tackling as we make these huge decisions.

But what are those ways that people can be can advocate effectively for their communities and for their schools.

And then knowing that I think will help not waste a lot of people's time and you know not on both ends on people on community and on the district.

trying to take it in and make use of it.

So having that kind of clarity.

I'm trying to frame this in the idea of your question which was what are the opportunities in regards to synonymous focus governance.

So I'm looking at guard ball one and I think somebody already mentioned that that is also pertinent to this to what we're doing here and that's that the superintendent will not allow school and district initiatives to go forth without engaging students of color for some educational justice and their families following stakeholder engagement principles that are utilizing current adoptive best practices.

I don't think that's recent, actually.

I got that one from the website.

I think we changed that, didn't we?

Anyhow, but the general idea is still the same about engaging with students and families for this educational justice.

And I haven't heard a lot about that tonight, about how there's an engagement with students and where student voice is going to be coming into these decisions because they are ultimately the ones we're doing this for and who are going to be affected by whatever cuts we need to make so I'd like to know more about that.

I'd also I'm also curious if the participatory budgeting I don't know what it's called a committee or group has been involved in this too and if that's ongoing or if that's was done last year and you're just kind of using what you gathered from that time.

But that was also something that was on this board was utilizing just for the exact purpose.

So I haven't heard anything about that either.

So those are my questions and comments.

Thank you.

Any others?

Okay.

Alright so for these last few slides we'll talk about communication hopefully to capture some of the immediate concerns about how people will be informed.

So if you can go to the next slide please.

So we're going to be having information sessions hosted by our finance team and school leadership.

We want to make sure that to the extent that we can and we've tried to embody that, that we have transparency about what information is shared and where the district needs feedback.

We're going to be sharing information for 23-24 and there'll be more robust opportunities for feedback for the 24-25 planning.

So let me be clear, the opportunities for feedback in 24-25 are gonna be more robust for the 24-25 planning than they are for the 23-24 planning.

We're planning on getting you a budget package, if you will, February 15th.

So that's not opportunity to do the depth of community engagement that probably we would want to.

But this is a new process for us.

But we're going to be transparent in terms of sharing the information.

that level three consultation, back and forth feedback, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, we're not gonna have enough time to do that, so the 23-24 package is forthcoming.

And you all can give guidance on that differently, but that's our reality in terms of what our capacity is.

Next steps, we're gonna, next slide please.

We're gonna be hosting those information sessions I talked about.

Internally, we're gonna continue to try to find the 10 million more dollars of additional reductions centrally, that's the central office.

We're gonna have conversations with our legislators regarding our funding shortages for special education, transportation, and other pieces.

And then we're gonna have continued conversations with our labor partners.

That's the high and low of it, and if we go to the next slide, we can show you the calendar.

This has the specificity around what those next steps are.

We let out in slide five earlier in the deck with the high-level pieces, but this is some more detail about what's forthcoming.

So we'll stop right there.

I know we threw a lot at you.

We try to have a combination of narrative and graphical representation, try to give opportunity to hear you all around, your wants, wishes, desires, fears and concerns and needs.

I think, I don't know what kind of grade we give ourselves, but we did go pretty deep tonight and I think this was healthy.

Again, our objective is to try to get get our game plan in front of you so you can see what we're trying to do, why we're trying to do it, the rationale behind it, and then get your feedback and guidance from a governance perspective around what we need to be sensitive to, what we need to show you as we go forward.

So I don't have any more to say on the matter, but I want to give President Hersey the opportunity to close out and or solicit any more thoughts from the board in terms of kind of closure and how do we bring this home.

Absolutely so just first thank you to staff for engaging with us on that conversation.

This is not easy for anybody involved.

And I think that like the true sentiment that like I'm leaning on really it's coming from Director Samaritz is like at the end of the day like we are managing a school district that is bigger in many ways than the metropolitan area of my hometown and has a budget that is bigger as well.

So when we think about the scary word that closures or consolidation are, it is really easy to think about it in terms of our individual experiences.

As a student who is facing the reality that their educational situation might change, as a parent who is facing that reality, as a school board director who is facing the reality of what those conversations are going to look like, cortisol levels go up.

but what we also must remember that in this state we are incredibly fortunate with the amount of money that we have resourced to our schools.

Is it enough?

By no means.

we still have a responsibility to do what we can with what we have and deliver as many outstanding services as possible.

I think that for us as a board where we have a lot of work to do is to figure out the best way for us to go give a clear clear understanding to as many of our constituents as possible about what is happening and what is not.

and it's just going to be critical that we have those conversations so like as we stand up that community engagement committee it's not just limited to the three directors that are going to be on it.

I would highly highly encourage anybody who has the time to come join us because that is where a lot of this like heady work is going to take place in terms of figuring out what is the communication strategy.

We have been hit over the head so many times about your communication support, your communication support.

We're never going to be able to satisfy everybody.

But what we can do is be accountable to a structure and a plan and some discipline around the way that we do it.

And at the end of the day, if we can do that, I think that where we land is going to be where we land.

And it will largely be better than what the alternative of Chris Reitdahl coming down here and telling us what to do would be.

The last thing I would say is that as a board our main focus is vision and values and the big piece about vision and there's a we have to be looking forward right the decisions that we are making right now are going to impact every Seattle Public School student that has not been here yet.

we have to have a school district that is well resourced balanced and that can continue to accept students and that is our primary objective.

Educating students yes but also being open so that we can teach students.

So in my opinion we have to continue to figure out for us and this board might be in a position to where boards down the line look back at us and they really screwed up on that one okay.

but we have to really figure out what are the actual metrics that we are going to be like holding ourselves accountable to as we take votes on what the superintendent is putting in front of us and how do we stay consistent about communicating to community what those metrics are and how we are going to be making those decisions.

Go ahead Director Harris.

what we didn't talk about was that Saturday this Saturday there is a school fair right here in this room and out front and I there first of all they're a blast it gives you an opportunity to chat with students families but most importantly our extraordinary educators and if you ever wondered what they're doing which school is doing what bring a big bag with you because the literature has it has come along so far in the last six years and it's an opportunity to to hear the boots on the ground from all of our stakeholders and more importantly it's fun so if we're going to cut programs let's know about the programs etc that we're going to cut

Indeed.

Thank you for that reminder.

Go ahead.

Thank you, I have one very quick, very specific thing related to this last slide, which I've asked about before.

HR begins displacement process for SEA staff.

The words that we use really matter a lot, and I don't know if displacement is something that's legally required or an HR standard term, but displacement is something taking the place of another and pushing it out, and that's not actually what happens during that process.

what happens is where enrollment is, where need is, staff who is employed by the district, not an individual school, may be more needed somewhere else.

And so just calling it displacement sets it already as a negative subtraction or some kind of it feels unfair pushing out and what we're actually doing is trying to align staffing to where they're needed and those staff members are needed and eagerly welcomed into those other school communities.

So I don't know if there's a different way that we can talk about that doesn't, I mean when I hear displacement it makes me want to like grab the table, like don't push me out of here and that's just, I don't know.

Words like that make a big impact and matter in these conversations.

So that's obviously very specific.

But thank you all very, very much for the way that you're approaching this conversation with us and providing this information and all the work that has gone into it.

Thank you.

All right.

With that being said, given that there is no further business on the agenda, this meeting stands adjourned at 7 p.m.

Have a safe and wonderful weekend, everyone, and we will see you when we see you.