School Board Special Meeting - March 04, 2022

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 Coast Salish people.

For the record, I will call the roll.

Vice President Hampson.

Okay, Director Harris.

Present.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Here, and it's 8 a.m.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It's 10 a.m.

where I am.

My bad.

8 a.m.

Forgive me.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sarju.

Present.

Director Sam Moritz.

Present.

And this is President Hersey.

Director Hampson, just cycling back to see if you have been able to join us.

Yeah, I'm here.

Okay, fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay, this meeting is being held remotely, consistent with the Governor's proclamation on open public meetings.

The public is being provided access today via Microsoft Teams and phone.

To facilitate this remote meeting, I will ask all participants to ensure that you are muted when you are not speaking.

There will not be a public comment opportunity.

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.

We have one item on today's agenda for introduction and action authorization to negotiate an employment contract for superintendent.

May I have a motion for this item?

So sorry, let me actually pull up the motion in its official form.

Take your time.

I move that the school board authorize the board president to negotiate with the assistance of counsel an employment contract with Dr. Brent Jones to serve as the superintendent of the district.

The contract if one is successfully negotiated will be presented to the board for approval with a motion to approve the hiring of Dr. Jones as superintendent.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Okay, this item has been moved by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

This item is on the agenda for introduction and action today and did not move through committee.

As a sponsor, I'll speak to this item.

What I will say is that we have received a fair amount of feedback, to say the least.

around not only what we are looking for in a leader for Seattle Public Schools but what we are looking for in a leader to help us move forward with so many of the various governance projects as well as our commitment to our African-American boys and teens to our strategic plan and someone who has the ability to not only look backward from the work that we have been doing and the work that has been going on in Seattle Public Schools for decades, but also able to take all of those lessons and look forward as well.

What I will say as board president it has been an absolute honor working with Dr. Jones and being able to grow in this role with him as a board and a leadership team and I am looking forward to the opportunity to catch him while we can and really continue to move forward on all of the commitments that we've made to not only student outcomes focused governance but to actually closing the opportunity gap.

What I will say is that Superintendent Jones is planning to join us a little bit later.

He is attending the annual High Five Day at Leschi Elementary, out being the superintendent that we all know him to be.

So he will be joining us a little bit later as soon as he can.

And so with that, we are going to move into directors' questions and comments.

And so there's no particular order to this.

Feel free to raise your hand.

I will recognize you.

And after folks have had the opportunity to say their piece, ask any questions of me or staff that may be on the call, I'd be more than happy to engage with you in that way.

But we will go ahead and get started.

So do we have any questions, any comments, concerns or questions?

I have a question.

Director Rankin.

Go for it Liza.

Just to clarify this item is to approve the the initiation of negotiations?

Yes that is correct.

So once there is a contract do we vote again to approve the contract?

That is correct.

Okay thanks.

Fantastic thank you great question.

Director Samaritz.

Well if there

I just want to understand the flow of our meeting today.

Absolutely.

I don't have a question at this immediate time, but I do have a statement that I would like to read and I'm wondering if now is the appropriate time or I should do it after I vote.

Now would be the time.

Now would be the time.

Okay.

Should I go ahead?

You should.

Okay, thank you.

Public schools have a level of intimacy with the public that simply does not exist in other forms of government, and it's because families are trusting with us their most precious possessions.

We do not have or require that kind of trust of other levels of our government, not our city, county, state, or federal branches.

I spoke of an educator and a parent last night, and in her words, maybe it's not the right person, but the public did not get the chance to know it.

The Seattle Public Library just announced on Wednesday that their interim chief librarian, Tom Fay, is their final candidate.

Their board hosted public forums for its two finalists in February.

Videos for each candidate are posted on a website.

We have given the public more of a view into who we trust for the care of our books than for our kids.

Even the time accessibility of this meeting, I take issue.

We are meeting when parents are dropping kids off at school, when teachers and classroom staff is working.

They're not able to listen to our deliberation.

On the dais, we directors are often asking our district staff what kind of community engagement was done for the board action requested.

I don't believe we directors are holding ourselves to the same standard we hold our district staff to.

And for all of this, I want to say that I am deeply sorry.

Deeply sorry.

And yet, where we are now and the decision today is not about the process, but rather about entering contract negotiations with Dr. Brent Jones.

And I just want to share that I have spent 30 hours interviewing stakeholders as part of my independent preparation for our superintendent search, separate from the work that Hazard Young and Atea was contracted to do.

and much appreciation to the Mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, County and City Council members, State Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, who is the Chair of the House Education Committee, Dr. Sean Pan, Chancellor of the Seattle Community Colleges, five previous school board directors, community-based organizations that work in direct partnership with our district, and critically, central office staff, principals, educators, and parents who are generous with their time, feedback, and their want for our districts, our students' success.

And one theme has emerged for me, consistency.

Building leaders, staff and parents spoke to me about how challenging this pandemic has been for themselves and for our students.

This school year, despite the intense challenges and unpredictability of the COVID-19 virus, under the leadership of Dr. Jones, we have managed to keep our kids in classrooms.

In particular, they and I were impressed with his leadership during the Omicron wave, standing up public health services for tens of thousands of people in just a few days, taking quick and decisive action to keep as many students in classrooms and the virus as much as possible out of our classrooms.

to give our students the consistency and stability they need to do the learning that we want them to do.

And engaging central office staff at all levels, the consistency and alignment of what our vision is for our district, our students, which is a relentless focus on student academic outcomes.

This consistency is a direct consequence of the leadership that Dr. Jones has already brought.

We're not quite there on a building by building basis, but I'm really confident that under Dr. Jones' leadership, we will get there.

And talking to the people who have worked directly alongside with him, managed him or for him, a remarkable consistency in their feedback about his character, his deep commitment to community service, his ability to listen, his ability to collaborate, people like working with him or him.

And this is really important because a unique challenge is to have seven individuals as your boss.

Yes, we should govern as a body, but we are still seven individuals with seven different lived personal and professional experiences that by design we are bringing to the dais.

And we do not have a good record, plainly, for constructive relationships between previous superintendents and previous boards.

I think this board has work to do, but I already think that Dr. Jones has demonstrated his ability to work constructively with this board.

And so for these reasons, with my gratitude to Dr. Jones and his family and recognition of what a huge job this is to be a superintendent, to be a leader for a district with 50,000 students, their willingness to give us two more years, I will be voting in full, full support of giving President Hersey authority to negotiate a contract.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Director Samaritz.

We appreciate your perspective.

That was wonderful.

All right.

Any other questions, comments, or concerns before we move toward the vote?

All right.

I see Director Harris.

Hand down.

Thank you, Director Sean Moretz.

I think that you've captured this beautifully, but as individuals, we can believe the same things and come to different conclusions.

And it hurts me that I cannot vote yes on this, despite my extreme respect for Superintendent Jones, because we have not had the engagement that I believe we need to have.

Now, I appreciate that he is a very, what's the word?

He's not a commodity, but that he is being, I'm sorry, I'm lost for words, that he has many other extreme executive opportunities facing him because of the good work that has happened.

But with deep sadness, I cannot vote yes.

I will be voting no.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm not going to pretend that our superintendent search has been flawless.

Our selection of Hazard, Young, Gateya, and Associates in mid-November was followed by a rather sleepy two months where I personally saw zero movement on the part of our search process.

And while I can only guess the holidays play into that, I really feel that that was squandered time in which we could have made more progress in our engagement with the SPS community.

And when that engagement did finally start happening, I don't believe it was transparent, accessible, or as robust as it could have been.

But before I get accused of throwing Hazard Young & Associates under the bus, they were able to tap into a sentiment shared in their leadership profile report that has brought me to the decision I'll be making today.

And I'm just going to read that from their report.

they have in here that a high rate of turnover at the superintendent level along with the high turnover rate among senior leadership creates a vacuum in leadership resulting in confusion and lack of confidence in the district decision-making process.

Feedback from stakeholders is consistent with research that underscores the importance of stability and continuity for meaningful change.

Beyond that there were over a dozen other references derived from interviews with a plethora of stakeholders to the damage that turnover and instability of leadership has on our ability to do what we need to do for our students.

As directors, we are here to ultimately make the decisions that are in the best interest of our students, our staff, and our communities.

Dr. Jones has come in at one of the hardest times SPS has ever faced, let alone the city and nation and world.

So he nor any of us have been flawless, but we know his heart and we know his drive and dedication to our strategic plan and our goals and guardrails that we have set forth.

What we need in a superintendent, Dr. Jones, has or can live up to.

If he has growth to do, we have growth to do.

He needs the direction from us to be the leader we need him to be.

And as I Believe most of us here, all of us here feel I'm confident that Dr. Jones is uniquely positioned to be the leader we need.

So I will be supporting this motion today.

Thank you.

OK, fantastic.

Thank you, Director Rivera-Smith.

We will now move on to Director Rankin.

Thanks.

I don't know if my, well, I don't know if it matters but order.

I don't think I was next in order of getting my hand up.

But I just wanted to add, try to be brief.

I think Director Songwritz did a really nice job of outlining all of the strengths and all of the reasons that Dr. Jones is the right person right now.

The man has a PhD in educational management, guys.

He's got a PhD in educational management.

He was himself a black male student in SPS.

He was a black father of black students in SPS and he worked in our central offices.

And something that came across really consistently in the engagement that was done was the importance of having somebody who understands Seattle and in addition to all of the other qualities that Dr. Jones brings to this position, there isn't another person that has all that and is homegrown and understands Seattle in the way that a lot of times folks from outside Seattle are criticized for not understanding.

I think the two white women on the board are the only ones that were born in this city.

I think that's Director Harris and myself.

And we're, you know, also students and parents of children in SPS.

You know, I was a kid when busing was happening and all of that.

it's a unique scenario that takes a long time to understand and even in terms of you know we do a lot of work now as a board with urban districts from across the country Seattle is really unique in that the racial segregation that other cities experience is more about urban versus suburban and a lot of these other urban districts are primarily students of color and then the white students are mostly living in other districts outside of the city.

And in Seattle, we have that segregation due to our historical redlining and all these other factors within our city and within our district.

And it's a really, really different dynamic and a different history.

And the understanding that Dr. Jones has of that and the experience in working with different stakeholder groups in addition to all of the qualities that Director Song Moritz outlined is invaluable and I think he also has demonstrated an absolute without reservation willingness and desire to be a collaborative partner with the board.

and that is huge for us.

It's huge for students.

It's so important and I think it's also really important for folks who work in Seattle Public Schools, for our teachers and our staff members to not have the tension there when there's not collaboration and there's not alignment and so knowing that we have that with Dr. Jones is huge.

In terms of Community engagement, you know, I didn't track my hours of personal engagement, but I did from state legislators to random people I met at the dog park.

Without fail, people asked, can you just keep the guy you have?

People I didn't know, people I did know, can you just keep the guy you have?

and I say that because and you know I'm in and out of buildings volunteering and principals and educators how we just keep the guy we have and that in terms of the engagement I know that there are some folks that would have liked to see a more detailed process and you know if you look back at the materials from Monday's I think that was Monday board session The there are parents represented there in the survey results.

There are administrators, educators.

And you can you can see a consistent pattern emerge and for me that's.

I think we in Seattle, we love to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk with everybody and try to get consensus.

which in some ways is admirable, but also a lot of times freezes people from making what is clearly the right decision because we're attached to process so much that it sort of distracts people from what the point of the process is.

The point of the process is to find out what people want.

And if you can find out what people want at the beginning, there's not a lot of benefit to doing the process just for the process's sake.

and there's a whole lot in between there.

I know I'm being very kind of painting that with a broad brush, but I just want to say that throughout the engagement that was done, there were no surprises and there was nothing that, you know, as someone who takes this responsibility extremely seriously, as we all do, there was nothing that made me say, hold on a second, we really need to take more time to look into that.

things really lined up.

And I think in a time, especially when everything has been so hard, sometimes things are easier because they're the right thing.

And I think we have more conversation to happen in the future about how we define community engagement and what it means to different people.

Because I think a lot of people are using the word community engagement to mean very, very different things.

And that's definitely a big weakness in SPS.

We all know that.

and I think that with Dr. Jones's true love and commitment to our students and his acknowledgement and desire to improve those processes we're in a really good place to have that conversation in a way that's really meaningful and I look forward to it and I will be voting yes okay thank you Director Rankin Director Sarju

um I just want to clarify Chandra have you been trying to raise your hand I do have a comment that I I want to make sure no no please go ahead I okay what I want to reflect keeps changing and so I have put my hand down and then put it back up so go ahead um I I first of all I appreciate uh Director Vivian for that statement I thought it was um it just it had a lot of rich uh points in there and you all know at least my board colleagues know and the district knows that I have been talking about community and family engagement since day one and it hasn't been happening in Seattle Public Schools writ large.

It is a formal process.

It is a version of you know, we are raising up those people who often don't get to talk, right?

Like a good community engagement focuses on not just the usual suspects and the usual voices, not about us without us, right?

While doing interviews and meeting individually with people is, that's more relationship building, it's not engagement.

and we have to get clear about what engagement means to some communities.

And I'm going to speak only for the African-American community because I have no idea what happens in the rest.

I have a little view of what happens in, you know, my sibling Chandra's community because I've been to events that are definitely sibling.

I'm sorry, Director Chandra.

I think of her as my my sibling.

and sometimes those words slip out.

I have been to events American Indian Alaska Native focused and there is a lot of engagement that happens in those places with hundreds of people.

Last summer I attended an event with my Asian siblings in the ID around the Asian violence and hate.

And while one would, I didn't know what I was showing up to, but what I showed up to was community engagement.

And here's why it was community engagement.

They centered trans voices.

They centered the voices of sex workers.

Those were the people whose voices got to be included.

I don't know who organized that.

but there was a deliberate decision to center the voices of people that we don't get to hear from.

That's engagement.

Community engagement is a broad bucket of work.

And if we don't have the expertise on our board, then maybe we need to contract with someone who does.

I talked about what BSK did with community engagement.

for this BS, we're calling it BSK 2.0.

So this is the second renewal of the levy.

It is a huge effort that involves hundreds of people and dollars.

That was community engagement.

If you didn't attend any of those sessions, you really missed out.

And so when we talk about community engagement, we can't just speak the words.

We've actually got to put action behind it.

So for community members who are listening, we're talking about changing adult behaviors.

We've got to change our behavior around engagement.

And if, in fact, the search firm was hired two months ago and they didn't engage for whatever reason, that is just a fact.

It's not a blame game here.

But when I was interviewed by them, I said, what kind of community engagement are you going to do?

I directly asked them that question.

And their answer was focus groups and interviews.

And I'm like, that's not community engagement.

Those are interviews and focus groups, right?

So we have to get clear.

So now here we are.

We are now crunched for time.

What we know beyond anything else, if we can't get this, we need stability in this district.

Student outcomes are not gonna change until adult behaviors change.

We need stability.

And so, yes, there is this urgency and this rush.

And because of that, we weren't able to do engagement because we should have started engagement back in the fall.

That's when engagement should have started.

and this is not a, and I want to be clear for those listening.

This is not, I'm not blaming any board members.

I'm pointing out some facts.

And so moving forward, what we need to do is we need to get clear about engagement and what that really means and how we go about it.

I really feel strongly that it can't just be each mouse to his own house and we do whatever we want.

We are representing a district of 53,000 kids.

I reached out to President Hersey and said, will you do a community engagement meeting with me?

Because it's not just about the people who live in the quote zip codes that are in my quote unquote district.

It's about a larger group of people.

And it's about, really for me, it's about who are we not hearing from?

We need to reach those people.

Those people deserve a chance to speak up for their children and their communities.

And this district has historically ignored those very people.

And so, yes, I'm gonna vote for Dr. Jones.

I know him well, and it's not about knowing him well.

He has what it takes to move us forward.

He doesn't have everything.

Raise your hand if you got everything.

If you are the perfect employee, right?

We are never gonna find someone who's perfect, but we have found somebody who is great enough, who is more than good enough for this time.

And our children are depending on us to change our behaviors so that their outcomes can be the focus and center of everything that we do.

Thank you, Director Sargeo.

um seeing no other directors with hands up I'm gonna go ahead and take the liberty of being able to share some comments and I want to make sure oh I see you director oh go ahead you want to go you could go you could go but I'm guessing you probably want me to go first yeah that's fine go for it okay um so I I I want to reflect on on on things that folks said obviously I did everything I could to bring Brent Jones to this district I'm I'm quite I'm proud of that because I do believe that he is a singularly talented, effective, appropriate, passionate leader that we need in Seattle Public Schools at this time.

My only successful work in interacting with Seattle Public Schools prior to running for school board was around community engagement with Dr. Brent Jones.

and if you've seen him out in community you know how effective he can be and how much he is and I'm using that term community engagement very very loosely because even when that work was happening he was still operating within this system which is in need of substantive change that was him leading from the staff standpoint as under community engagement so I don't need to go on and on as I have many other calls about my support for him being the right person at this time and I could not be I have to just extend my profound depth of gratitude that he's willing to give of himself at this time in his life and in the history of this district to try to help us right this ship because we do as a district have a serious reckoning and we as a board have a serious reckoning and as Director Sarge you said is we if we continue to set expectations that we cannot meet with community in terms of whatever that undefined notion of community engagement is we will continue to accomplish nothing which is the history of this school board.

It all sits right in our laps.

Each and every one of us and us as a group.

It's on us.

I think it's absolutely appropriate to acknowledge that we have community members, other types of institutions that might see the process as it has been done to get to this point as not being what they would have chosen what they want and we can hear that and acknowledgement and sit and acknowledge that and sit with it and then question ourselves how we set expectations for what capacity we have what capacity the organization has and where we are in our transformation because We are on an uphill climb with the odds stacked against us to transform this district and specifically this board to be something that is truly functional, focused, and effective at producing outcomes for kids.

No one in this district cares more deeply about that than Dr. Brent Jones.

and that is why he is here before us.

That is why he's willing to answer the call and believe me, it is answering the call.

But the level of distraction that we all continue, I did it yesterday.

I'll be 100% blatantly honest.

I found myself distracted and putting myself in a situation that was thinking that I was doing right in my community, but taking away from my ability to focus on the transformation that we each have to personally bring to the table and move forward as a collaborative group and with our superintendent and model the absolute highest level of behavior that we can.

I think it's appropriate to say to our community, there's a mismatch between your level of expectation and what we either have the capacity to do, what we know how to do, or what we believe is the right thing to do in the moment.

Without question, under President Hersey's leadership, I 100% believe that this is the right thing to do in the moment.

And I'm grateful that he had, because having been in that position, I know how hard it is and how grinding it is to even move us to this point.

So bravo, thank you for getting us to this point, because I know how difficult it is. there's so much that nobody else can see and it's okay that they can't we don't need folks to understand us to and how difficult our job is it's that's not on them right that's on us we just simply have to get our heads in the game and focus on what it takes to move this organization forward and I'm as we move further along in the process of it doesn't matter whether we're doing policy governance or student outcomes focused governance or other kinds of leadership development we all every single one of us on this board has a massive amount of work to do to become better leaders for our kids to show up for our kids every single one of us has a lot of really heartfelt hard work to do so and part of that is standing up for how we have moved forward, acknowledging how people feel about it, holding that, and at the same time being really clear that this is where we are, this is what we have capacity for.

Everything that we've talked about, we can, you know, Monday morning quarterback, but this has all been clearly laid out, folks.

throughout the entirety of this process with HYA.

One of the things I stated very clearly when we got the list of potential search firms and having done my own research about what is even the universe of search firms is that their capacity and their structure and who they are is extremely limited.

There's not a universe of people who can in whole cloth come into your community and do quote unquote community engagement.

if you go back and you look at the contract all they were ever doing was a survey it's a survey it's not community engagement we're surveying people about how they feel this isn't Seattle Public Libraries uh this is the the best thing that we can do is take the best that is out there try to make that our minimum and aspire to do more and work our tails off to do more so one of the things that I stated really early on was that we can in talking with many people throughout the country about this process that we can't depend search firms are extremely limited in their capacity and the rest is on us as a board given who we are where we are what's going on in our district what the district is where we are in the in the progression of the district this is where we got to and we did the best that we could and I am really really okay with that and I'm grateful to President Hersey I'm grateful to staff for their support I'm grateful to HYA for putting in the work that they did I do not think it sets a good example for kids when we continually say we're not good enough but we're gonna move forward anyway I do not want to send that message to kids we have work to do we can always do better but I don't think reflecting onto each other and onto the rest of the district to say our best efforts aren't good enough.

We might want more and we can work harder and we can reflect and play that tape back.

Right.

We can play the tape back.

And again I think that's more than appropriate.

Let's play the tape back.

If we're in this situation again let's somebody wants to write up a report about what could be different and how this could be different in the universe of how school districts move to different superintendent leaderships, then we can do that.

But I don't think it does us any service to kind of slam ourselves when we really didn't intend to do anything differently, right?

It is what it is at this point.

And I think the best that we can do is to help people understand what we are focused on.

We were not focused on having the most extensive, massive...

We just did that a few years ago.

I know you want me to wrap up, Brandon.

So I hear that there are people out there that are dissatisfied.

I also think there are other people who on the complete other end of the spectrum have no issue with us not even having hired a search firm.

There's a full spectrum.

and there are different ways of doing business of running organizations.

This is our one of our singular most important.

In addition to getting the district focus on student outcomes, hiring and managing the superintendent is central for us.

So I don't think that we need to feel at all apologetic about how we came to this point.

Obviously that I'm a very I'm very biased in that.

but I feel really strongly about the fact that the community is in fact reflecting back to us that we are with all of our flaws and inadequacies we are heading in the right direction.

I could not be more excited to have Brent Jones be leading the implementation of that and partnering with us to finally get this district's focused on outcomes for students and particularly on outcomes for students further from educational justice and particularly for black males.

Thank you, President Hersey.

Thank you, Director Hampson.

Okay, I'm going to wrap us up because I know folks have work that they need to get to.

Let me be 100% clear.

For anybody who is watching to provide context, every ounce of what you heard about community engagement falls on the seven people who represent you.

It falls on every single one of us because everybody has had the opportunity to engage in this process Everybody has had the opportunity to hear how this process was going and has been kept in with good communication around how this is proceeding.

Let me also be clear that we, as boards, are supposed to be the community engagement experts here.

Whatever HYA was supporting us in doing is supposed to be supplementary to what we are doing in and of ourselves.

We campaign, We have the ability to hold community meetings regularly, and we have the ability to do community engagement, not only as individuals, as board directors attested they have done here in the past week or so, but also in teams, in pairs, in duos, whatever the case may be, right?

So what I have heard here as your president, looking from a perspective of service and how can we play the tape back on this, is that I didn't hold this board accountable to the level of service that we all agree to provide to our community in terms of engagement.

So what the challenge here is, and I want you to see this, because if we were really focused on student outcomes, not one of us said we did not interview enough students, or that when we went out, we were speaking with students, we were speaking with adults, People who we as individuals perceived to be quote unquote community.

The biggest regret that I have in this process is that I did not provide a bigger opportunity for student voice to be reflected here and we will repair that moving forward.

But not one comment was made on how are the children doing?

How are we getting their feedback and where are they represented in this process?

So what I want to offer to you is.

In that.

While we are supposed to be here to vote on this particular move to provide stability to our district, and we use this as an opportunity not only to hold the process accountable, and I want to make sure that nobody passes the book solely to our search firm, because it's on all of us, to be clear.

What we did here was put into perspective an aspect of what we know to be true in such a negative light.

and everybody deserves the ability to share their piece and I want to make sure that that is clear and I am so supportive of that.

But in this particular juncture, when we are conflating our frustrations with the process and how we arrived here, which Seattle Public Schools has never done well, there has never been a process where folks have not complained about process.

So that's an incredibly easy route to take.

We have conflated this with what we should be celebrating is the fact that Brent Jones, the Brent Jones, has agreed to enter into contract negotiations after the year this city, this pandemic and everything else has put him through.

With offers where he could be off doing so many other things, impacting so many other people in so many other children in so many different ways.

and in some ways the way that we as boards operate demand this type of process because we have allowed it to happen for decades and so I'm not going to sit here and not take responsibility this is on me and it's also on us moving forward so please be prepared because we are going to do some serious work because if we hear one more complaint about community engagement then we have not done our job effectively all seven of us So take this as an opportunity to be invited into this work, because if we're going to do this here, we have to be able to have follow-up, because I'm sick of talking about it, to be clear.

So let's get it done, and I'm excited to do that work with y'all, and we're about to do some deep engagement.

But also, let me be clear, putting that to the side, I am so incredibly excited to move into this phase of the process, and I know that this is what our community needs at this juncture, and this is what our students are demanding, stability and leadership who understand Seattle and, most importantly, a man who looks like the boys and teens that we are trying to serve.

Not only that, one of the most intelligent, decorated, celebrated individuals that our city has to offer.

If we're talking about Black excellence and having a commitment to equity, it doesn't get any better than Brent Jones.

and so I just want to make sure that we do not do this brother, this man, this pillar in this community, the disservice of equating our failures with his successes.

I will not let that happen.

So with that celebration and joy and excitement and from a humble positioning, Ms. Wilson-Jones, will you please call the vote?

Vice President Hampson.

If I were man in Indian Country I'd say Aho.

In my language people say Ha.

So unequivocally with great celebration.

Yay.

Director Harris.

With sadness no.

Director Rankin.

Without reservation and with extreme gratitude, yes.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Amen.

That counts as aye.

Director Songwaritz.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Proudly aye.

Motion has passed by a vote of 6 yes to 1 no.

Superintendent Jones, I see that you joined us.

You have missed some very riveting conversation, but you were out serving our students as the Superintendent.

We know you are and will hopefully continue to be.

So I want to give you an opportunity to share a few comments if you would be so inclined and then we'll get out of here.

Thank you.

I appreciate your deliberation.

I appreciate the point that you've arrived.

Know that I'm here on video with you in solidarity.

I'm claiming a brighter future and a partnership that's going to be long lasting, replete with tremendous outcomes for students.

I am in this 100% with you all.

We talk about this concept of engagement.

I believe that's what I'm about.

I will join all seven of you in improving in that space.

Families, community, civic leaders.

Our wonderful staff, our teachers, our educators, our principals.

We all need levels of engagement on behalf of our students.

I've said it 100 times and I'll keep saying it.

My mission is to create the conditions for students to thrive.

We are going to do that together and I'm appreciative of what we've done so far.

It's only been 10 months.

It seems like a long time, but we've come through some real heavy, heavy times and we're still standing.

Our students are strong.

Our staff are strong.

So I am with you.

Let's work out all the details, but I'm 100% in.

So thank you so much for the opportunity just to speak with you today.

I just left Leschi Elementary School.

Greeting students is part of what we do.

We want to make sure that they have a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, safety, and that they know adults love and care for them.

That's what we're about.

So thank you so much for your vote of confidence in me.

Humbly, I accept where we're going to go, and it's going to be a wonderful journey together.

So thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

And there being no further business on the agenda, this meeting stands adjourned at 1040, or excuse me, 848 a.m.

I hope you all have a wonderful day.

It looks like the sun is shining in Seattle.

Take care of yourselves and we'll see you soon.

Thank you, President Hersey.

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Thank you, Philip.

It's an absolute honor.

Thank you, everyone.

Shout out to Principal Lou at Lashai.