Seattle Schools Board Meeting Oct 11, 2023

Calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

For those joining by phone, please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called.

This is President Hersey I am now calling the October 11th 2023 regular board meeting to order at 4 15 p.m.

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.

Ms. Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Director Crone Barone.

Director Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Present.

Vice President Rankin.

Here.

Director Song.

Director Sarju.

Present.

Director Rivera-Smith I believe is on.

I am present.

Is joining us remotely.

Thank you.

I'm on my way in.

I'll be there soon.

Thank you.

And President Hersey.

Here.

Okay I will now turn it over to Superintendent Jones for his comments.

Good evening President Hersey and board member and to those of you in the audience.

Thank you for being here this evening.

Filipina Heritage Month the month of October is Filipino Heritage Month month a time to celebrate all the Filipino Americans past and present and who have made the United States what it is today.

In fact, Filipino people have been here even before the U.S. became a nation.

The month of October is significant because it commemorates the first documented landing of Filipinos in what is now known as the U.S. in October of 1587. Seattle is home to a strong Filipino community and in our schools we are proud to uplift and immerse ourselves in the stories, accomplishments and the culture of the community.

October is also Disability History and Awareness Month.

Throughout October, every public school in the state of Washington engages in educational activities that teach disability history and center the voices of people with disabilities.

By selling the pride, dignity, strength, and autonomy of people with disabilities, we combat discrimination and exclusion.

I'll say that again, we combat discrimination and exclusion.

Students, staff, and community members with disabilities are an integral part of Seattle Public Schools community.

And during Disability History and Awareness Month, and every month in this year, we continue to strive to dismantle barriers that create fully inclusive environments that allow every student to thrive.

Finally, as we have much to celebrate, we must also support our families who are directly affected by the violence in Israel and Gaza.

Our Seattle Public Schools community represents many races, ethnicities, and backgrounds, including families with cultural ties to Israel and Palestine.

Because the situation is complex, emotionally, politically charged, it is critical we continue to create safe and welcoming environments for our students and families.

While we as individuals hold different opinions about the conflict and the complex history of Israel and Palestine, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic speech or acts will never be tolerated in our district.

We are here to support you and your families.

And if you or your student feel anxious, please reach out for support.

SPS and the greater Seattle community have many resources available.

Speaking of ensuring students have supportive environments, we've heard from many families and community members this week who have concerns about shifts in school staffing to meet a state required staffing ratio.

I want to make it clear that we are listening.

I want to make it clear that we are listening and we are apologetic for the inconveniences that causes.

We are collectively challenged in making sure we are following mandates and rules so that we can get the resources that we need in order to keep our schools solvent.

We recognize that changes during the school year can cause anxiety and frustration for our families and our district leadership and principals have worked very hard to minimize the disruption and make adjustments as early in a school year as possible.

These adjustments are made to ensure that our students benefit from smaller class sizes while also ensuring Seattle Public Schools again remains fiscally responsible.

Please work with us together because we're all one team trying to make this happen.

We're going to talk about financial policy tonight.

And so turning to the business before us, I'm looking forward to the board's discussion of the drafted financial policy being introduced this evening.

I'm anticipating a lively debate.

And as staff, we will be listening attentively and waiting next steps to make sure that that policy and the things related to it are actualized.

Finally, staff and I have had an opportunity this evening to present an update on our work towards meeting our early literacy and math goals, and this update will include data that demonstrates our progress, but also many, many lessons learned on how we plan to fine-tune our strategy.

We are restless, impatient with the status of where we are, the progress that we've made towards our math and literacy goals, but we are committed to continue to make changes, continue to adopt and adapt strategies that are going to make sure that we meet the needs so our students not just that they just don't pass, but they actually thrive.

So I'm looking forward to that conversation with you all.

So without further ado, I'll pass it back to you, President Hersey.

Thank you.

Thank you Superintendent Jones.

I will now turn it over to Director Cronvaron for student member comments.

Thank you, President Hersey.

Firstly, I want to thank everyone for being here.

I'm happy to be here in my first meeting up on the dais of this school year, which is exciting.

Also, I want to recognize and wish everyone a happy late Indigenous Peoples Day, happy and thoughtful, and restate my commitment to decolonized education and specifically decolonial history.

I wanted to spend the time I have today reflecting on the September 27th school board meeting, which was the last school board meeting, which I was not here present at, but I was watching via a Teams meeting.

For those of you who don't know, what we saw at that meeting was a horrific and wildly harmful outpouring of transphobic comments made during public testimony and also an incredible amount of support coming from community.

What that shows me as a trans student in Seattle Public Schools is an unsurprising reflection of the state of our community.

I will say, in my experience as a trans student, Seattle Public Schools, as it is now, is not a safe place for trans students, and that is an issue.

Countless families that I know that my parents have contacted through Parents of Trans Kids Facebook groups, through community meetings, have quite literally been fleeing Seattle Public Schools due to bullying, harassment of their kids.

And the thing that's the worst part about it to me is that this isn't just kids being mean to each other.

In my experience, kids are mean to me, I'll fight back.

I'm a person who's unafraid to speak my mind, as many of my colleagues have come to learn.

What is the most harmful and what has happened in my experience is that the most malicious and insidious harm and transphobia comes from staff and teachers.

Even at my school, at Nathan Hill High School, I've had numerous meetings with my principal with the urgency that on our guiding values of Thinking global citizens of a diverse community, we are not meeting the standard of creating safe places for queer and trans students.

I am really happy that on the Seattle Public Schools level, we have policy with language that is wonderful.

It's wonderful to see that language.

It's wonderful to hear the words, I support you, we support you, trans students.

It doesn't mean anything when we're not seeing any of that support in our actual school environments.

It's something that makes me angry.

It's something that makes me sad.

And most of all, it's something that makes me determined to keep this work and conversation going.

And to finish up, on the note of having safe and loving and supportive school environments, as Superintendent Jones touched on, In the state of our world right now, our communities and our global communities are hurting and are very justified for hurting.

And it is of utmost importance, especially at moments like these, that school is a place where kids can go to feel safe.

Kids and teachers and staff can go to feel safe, loved, and cared for.

And I'm excited to continue this conversation with my colleagues.

Thank you.

Thank you, student member.

You can feel free to clap for that too.

You don't have to stand.

That's awesome.

We greatly appreciate your presence.

We have now come to the board comments section of today's agenda.

As we move into the fall we are working to close out work undertaken by this board and prepare for a smooth handoff to our incoming directors.

To support this our HAC community engagement committee held a meeting today to discuss final deliverables.

This work positions our incoming board well to undertake additional engagement as anticipated in our student outcomes focused governance implementation timeline.

That implementation timeline is reviewed and updated alongside regular board meeting agenda setting by myself and Dr. Jones.

As we reviewed the timeline in our most recent session, we took a moment for additional reflection.

We identified completed bodies of work, Which will build a strong foundation for board operations and governance for our incoming board.

And we've also laid groundwork for additional areas.

On our completed list we have the following.

Our initial planning work training and consultations to build our priorities for improved governance and implementation of the student outcomes focused governance framework.

Flowing from that was our adoption of goals and guardrails, training on progress monitoring, development of a progress monitoring schedule, and now numerous monitoring sessions held.

We have built a strong leadership team, hiring Dr. Jones and establishing an evaluation structure that promotes effective governance and focus on student outcomes.

We undertook a review of our committees, stood up an ad hoc committee on governance to provide recommendations on policy and practice improvements and concluded that work with numerous policy amendments, revised processes, and new agenda formats to focus our work on student outcomes.

As we move into the rest of the year, we have some work remaining, including Planning and executing engagement sessions, building on the recommendations of the ad hoc community engagement committee.

Continuing the work of the ad hoc policy manual review committee to develop recommendations for our 1000 series policies and our approach to board policy development and reviews.

Flowing from that committee's work in our earlier retreat discussions, we have identified that we need to clarify our approach to board goal setting and evaluation and our policies on board conduct and our relationship with the superintendent.

Revisiting our board action report template is also on our work plan, and we will need to identify and embark on next steps for our district strategic plan, which runs through 2024. We will reflect on this in the updated timeline which will be shared with directors and posted soon.

We will now move into our other reports for tonight.

Do we have an ad hoc policy manual review committee report?

We do.

Can I pair that with a legislative liaison report and actually give that first?

That sounds great to me.

Okay.

So as the board's legislative liaison, I'm our kind of conduit between the board and our state legislature.

And these meetings are the only time that I can speak with all board directors.

And keep everyone abreast.

So where we are right now, as I said at the last meeting, we had a pre-session meeting with our Seattle legislative delegation.

I'm continuing now to develop our SPS legislative priorities with staff.

for the legislative session that starts in January.

Where I am in that process right now is continuing to receive feedback and meet with community partners and leaders.

And we're distilling down to the draft that will come before you.

I don't know the date off the top of my head, but pretty soon.

Once that's established, just because there's so many people in here, what that means is that once it's adopted, that is our direction as a board to the district about what our top priorities are on behalf of the community for advocacy in the upcoming legislative session in Olympia.

In terms of the WASDA, which is the Washington State School Directors Association legislative platform, you should all have gotten an email from me with an ask to send me your top priorities from the WASDA list.

WASDA, as the state's association of boards and board directors from all 295 districts, adopts a legislative platform also, and that guides all of our work and the organization's work on behalf of All 295 school districts in their advocacy.

So there's two different legislative agendas.

There's the SPS legislative agenda and there's the WASDA legislative agenda.

And there'll be some overlap, definitely.

But we have our own for us in addition to contributing to the one for the state.

And so, yeah, just a friendly reminder to my colleagues to please get me your top 10 from the WASDA positions.

As I will submit our input.

I need to be able to do that by October 16th.

So I've gotten Dr. Song.

Thank you.

I've gotten a list of that and so I'll compare them and submit submit to the state to the.

So policy, ad hoc policy committee, our next meeting will be on October 24th.

We have finished drafting our policy evaluation tool that we talked about with all of you in our work session last week or a couple weeks ago.

And we are now, as a committee, which is myself, Director Sarju, and Director Rivera-Smith, we're going to use our draft tool to evaluate the 1000 series in the policy manual.

And so at our meeting on the 24th, we will be bringing together our three respective We're doing that as homework, so our three respective evaluations and discuss, and that meeting is open to the public, but discuss how we do or don't line up and how we use the tool and see if that gives us more feedback about the need to further tweak the tool or if it looks like that's a pretty solid and consistent way to evaluate our policy manual.

That's exciting.

Just for a little bit more context, The ultimate goal is to get really clear in our policies about what is policy that is our direction to ourselves in governance and what is policy that is our direction to our superintendent.

And that's really important because policy is about our expectations of the school system based on the vision and values of the community.

We are here as representatives of the community so that our policy is our tool by state law to give direction to the superintendent.

So any one of us could sit up here and say, like, I want to see this or I don't want to have that or have opinions.

But what is legally our direction to the superintendent is action that comes to the board that we vote on, that we discuss, vote on in public.

And if it passes by a majority vote, that is legally the board's direction to the superintendent.

And so we're trying to get really, really clear About expectations and about our expectations for our kids.

A lot of you are here today because I would say a symptom of a system that was not designed around prioritizing impact to students.

If we were designed around prioritizing impact to students, we would still have budget constraints, staffing needs, But we wouldn't do something so crappy to kids or in the way that it happened.

We may still have to do it.

But that's what the really, really important thing about clarity and policy is, is everybody is Well intended and doing their best and we have a system that doesn't have that very clear direction to say everything you do has to start and center around what we want for our kids and build out from there and we don't have that and that's why you all are here today because you're experiencing a symptom of that.

And so that's, sorry, just a little to give context to the importance of the policy work.

It seems kind of far away and academic, but it's actually how we get really, really clear about what we expect and how we evaluate the success of our district, so.

Yeah, go for it.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

You spoke about attending the WASDA meeting in September and tonight, and you and I have discussed the fact that WASDA passed a resolution that got rid of weighted voting, and I don't think that has been made known to the public and what the ramifications are.

And I have to tell you, as you already know, I am beyond outraged and gobsmacked that Stahikon, with 14 students, Has the same number of votes at WASDA.

Oh, 10 now.

Perfect.

Perfect.

My point exactly.

Has the same number of votes at WASDA that this district has, the largest in the state.

And if you could also talk about how that came about, because I think that many of us in good liberal Seattle don't think that we're affected by some of the cray-cray and obscene ugliness That has happened throughout this country.

If you could expand on that, I think the public's got a right to know how their taxpayers or taxpayer dollars are being spent and what that means.

I can.

I could talk about it for probably an hour, which I know is not what we have time for tonight.

So let's see.

At the...

Was it the last?

Yes, it was the last.

It was the meeting on September 27th, I think, was the first meeting right after I returned from Spokane as our WASDA representative.

So if you could watch comments there to hear a little bit about it.

Let me think of how to be the most efficient about this.

Okay so WASDA is like I said the School Board Director Association.

It's something that's codified in state law.

Other states have similar organizations.

They're all structured a little bit differently and membership is different.

In Washington state it's a requirement by the Washington state legislature that all school boards because we are authorized by the state to exist at all and to oversee local public schools.

That all school boards are members of this organization.

The benefits to that is that there are lots of things that impact all school districts across the state.

And rather than every school district individually trying to figure out what different pieces of legislation means, we have an organization that can provide us with legal review and kind of a starting place.

When there's a change in state law that impacts policy, they'll say, here's a model policy that meets the requirements of state law.

That school districts, we know you will be in compliance with law and now you can take that and modify it if you need to suit the needs of your community.

But these are the pieces that are legally required that cannot be modified or that need to appear in some way.

I'm trying not to go too off the rails but there's a lot of information.

Every board, we're the only board in the state that has seven directors.

All other boards have five.

Everybody sends one voting member annually to the General Assembly where we vote on positions that we want to have as a body.

So that's what I participated in Spokane a couple weeks ago and what I was referring to just now about our top ten priorities.

We have a hundred and something legislative positions as a body.

And so there's not always going to be bills that are related to them in a session.

And there's going to be sometimes bills that fall under a number of categories.

So our top ten that we, after we adopt those, vote on the top ten.

That just helps guide advocacy.

PTA does very similar.

If you've participated in your local PTA or state PTA legislative assembly, very similar to how that process works and for a lot of other organizations too.

So we have, as Director Harris said, we have in the ballpark of 50,000 students.

Stahikin has 10 students.

And I think some of their school transportation is actually a float plane.

So pretty different context from Seattle Public Schools.

We have a lot of things in common and a lot of things that are super different.

And like I said, there are 295 districts.

So that means a full board and five board directors for the 10 to the 50,000 and all in between.

And so there's a lot of different values and a lot of different needs.

And we have bylaws and then we have our positions just like other member organizations.

In our bylaws, there is something that is a weighted vote that means that when we vote on things as a membership body, generally, like if there's a position to support, I'll use an example of something that actually we did vote on, which was to support advocacy for harm reduction.

Drug abuse.

So we voted on that.

Generally, the majority of people voting in that who care about kids, that passed with a one vote, one district kind of thing.

Occasionally, there will be something that's a little bit more values controversial.

Or something that plays out in different ways.

And districts can call for a weighted vote.

And in a weighted vote, my one vote on behalf of Seattle counts for 19. And districts with 1,000 students or less, I can't remember if it's 1,000 or 5,000, get one.

And then there's some in between.

So as enrollment fluctuates, there's some changes around that.

And I'm really sorry.

Like I said, I don't know how to explain this very quickly without skipping a whole bunch of stuff.

So basically, with the surge nationally and in our state, and like Director Caron Barone mentioned, we had a vocal population coming and saying things that are very against the value of Seattle Public Schools and the values that...

Not just the values of Seattle Public Schools, but literally civil rights at the federal level.

People can have different opinions, but you can't opt your way out of civil rights if you're a public institution.

You don't get to do that.

And so there were some folks who were encouraged to join legislative assembly that haven't necessarily participated before and to vote to remove the weighted vote to try to take WASDA from the liberals.

Not realizing that actually we're all there for kids, right?

And so they were expecting, I don't know.

I don't know what they're expecting.

An anarchist on fire from Seattle.

And it was me.

Somebody who really cares about kids in Seattle and their kids.

And so through the course of 48 hours, there was some confusion about the things that we agreed on, like harm reduction and like curriculum and other things and keeping students safe.

So for this upcoming session, so the weighted vote was removed by a passage of membership.

The votes that we took on positions Leslie, nobody wanted a lesson here today.

The weighted vote is not used that often.

And so there was kind of a misunderstanding by people who haven't participated very much in first of all thinking that I was out to get their kids on behalf of Seattle and that our whole city is lawless hellscape.

And then also just not understanding that actually if all 295 districts sent a delegate to vote every time, my 19 votes don't mean very much.

That if it comes to alignment around what's best for kids, we generally agree.

And that my 19 votes on behalf of Seattle don't actually silence anybody else's district.

It's kind of like the House of Representatives versus the Senate.

It actually represents where the people are in our state and the vastly larger number of children that Seattle represents.

And that's democratic and fair.

But I will say the votes that were taken, I still very strongly stand behind going into this legislative session.

We passed a lot of really important student-centered things like Advocating for banning isolation and reducing restraint across the state as we have done here in Seattle Public Schools by policy and some other things.

So there's definitely organizing happening and a lot of us talking between districts about how to address the next time assembly happens which is a year from now and whether or not the weighted vote will be a factor.

How to try to get it back because it is about representing students.

But going into this session I want to be clear that it's really important that the votes that were taken on behalf of the body are strong and I don't want to delegitimize the work that was done.

And.

The attempt to sway on the representation of a very small group of people who don't want to follow state law, who think that local control means opting out of civil rights.

I mean, if you want to do that, you can, but you can't do it with public money.

You can't be part of public schools.

So it's there and it's a concern and the positions and the organizations that we have for this legislative session are really strong and student centered.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Any additional liaison reports tonight.

What.

OK I'm going to call engagement but any additional liaison reports tonight.

Just to announce that the BEX oversight committee meeting will be meeting this Friday from 8.30 to 10.30 in this room.

Thank you.

Any additional board engagements that we would like to mention tonight?

Go ahead, Director Rivera.

Thank you.

I want to speak now because I know I won't get a chance to after public testimony but I know engagement is usually centered around meetings we've had but I have received a lot of emails as you have and I consider that engagement so I do want to speak to those emails and I want to just appreciate the parents and community members who are speaking up in concern of their classrooms and their schools While I appreciate that, I also acknowledge that for all the people we see here, there's a lot we don't see from schools that are also being affected, but the families don't have the agency to attend or email.

So I know this is larger than what we see in front of us.

And I, as a board director, again, I appreciate all the messages, emails, text messages I've received.

I desperately want to understand the situation better because I want to advocate for you the best I can, but I don't have the information I need right now.

I have two emails at this point out to staff with questions so that I can better understand what's happening.

I am responsible for making sure that the information is accurate and what I'm hearing is accurate.

Because I don't understand with the claims that some schools are not receiving the funding for all the students they have.

That doesn't seem right and I want to understand that better to see if that's accurate and what's behind that, what's going on there.

Because I can't do my job if I'm not getting the information I need.

I appreciate that there's a lot going on and my emails are not the only ones the superintendent's office is receiving.

But I hope that I can get a better understanding of things so that I can Help families understand what's going on, because that's really what everybody needs.

Everybody needs understanding and actual data, facts, information.

I want to be able to do that for them, for all the people who I'm hearing from, as I know my other fellow board directors do as well.

I hope that in addition to emailing the board that everybody here is emailing the superintendent's office as well because that is really the driver between this.

These classroom things were not board actions.

These are not things that we called for and did.

There's a lot of things we do vote on such as the budget, such as policy, such as the CBA which has ratios.

All those things are places we touch but these Classroom reallocations were not something that we had a part in.

And I'm speaking for myself, don't fully understand what happened.

And I would love to, I want to, I need to.

So thank you again for being here and for reaching out and for speaking for your classrooms and your families and your students.

We love you.

We want to support you.

I'm speaking for myself.

I'm hoping to get more information.

And I look forward to hearing from you, your testimony tonight.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

October 21st 2023 that's a Saturday from 2 to 5 West Seattle Library District 6 community meeting.

All are welcome including my colleagues two of them and staff.

Somebody asked for the lasagna recipe and yes there will be lasagna and no you can't have the recipe if you don't show up.

I look forward to seeing you.

West Seattle Library, it's in the Admiral District.

It's behind Met Market.

Any other engagement that we need to discuss tonight?

Go ahead, Director Hampson.

I just want to clarify that we have a introductory item on the agenda tonight which is a fiscal policy a governance guardrail policy that we are considering and If you are here to look at the or to talk to us about the frustration of disruption in the at the beginning of the school year strongly encourage you to stick around for that conversation because this district did actually have mitigation funds until we got into our current fiscal crisis and that was because of some of us as parents coming and sitting in those same chairs.

And telling the story that we had about the disruption in our schools.

And so there actually is a very clear role that the board has in setting guardrails around what our expectations are for funding schools.

And it's going to be a lively discussion and a lot of really important parts of what our role is in all of that.

So I would encourage you, if you have time, And don't have to get onto other things to stick around for the work that we are trying to do to create more stability and more flexibility in our system.

Okay.

Any other engagements before we move on?

All right.

We will now go to public testimony.

We will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I will summarize some important parts of this procedure.

First testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the school board website.

Only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time.

Speakers from the list may cede their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called.

The total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers.

Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list.

Those who do not wish to have time ceded to them may decline and retain their place on the testimony list or wait list.

The majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about.

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

As board president I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by board procedure 1430 BP.

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

Ms. Ku will read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you, President.

Oh, and I will say, I am very lax most of the time with the two-minute rule.

We have a full agenda in terms of speakers tonight.

Please try to stay to the two minutes so that we can ensure that we get as many voices as possible, okay?

I see a lot of heads nodding.

Thank you so much for rocking with me on that.

Ms. Ku, testimony speakers.

Thank you, President Hersey.

A quick logistical note, speakers joining us via phone, please remain muted until your name is called to provide testimony.

When your name is called, please be sure you have unmuted on the device you're calling from and also press star six to unmute yourself on the conference call line.

Each speaker will have a two-minute speaking time.

You will hear a beep when your time is exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

The first speaker on the list is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins box eight four zero six three Seattle nine eight one two four.

On board resolution 2023 slash 24 dash four four points.

Number one the resolution applies to school board members newly elected November 7th.

It would designate these members to attend the November 16th was the conference as representatives of the district.

Number two the conference begins 12 days before the election will be certified.

Number three does the district plan to pick who it thinks should have won the election.

Number four this sounds a bit like issues raised in the 2020 presidential election.

On guiding principles for the building excellence six capital levy the principles fail to address problems like cost overruns shrinking playgrounds and wrongly using mega schools to consolidate and close schools.

Please do not close schools.

Please vote no.

On recent excellent written material three examples.

A brand new book by Seattle parent Emily Cherkin titled The Screen Time Solution.

Ms. Cherkin has worked to support education by human teachers rather than by machines.

Here's a copy.

Number two an article by current Seattle School Board candidate Ben Gittenstein titled Don't Close Seattle Schools and posted on the Seattle Post Alley website.

Number three, a Seattle Times personal essay by Nancy Dickman titled Our Nuclear Legacy and the Weight of History.

Ms. Dickman recently gave testimony in protest of the school district's use of artificial turf which contains dangerous forever chemicals.

I very much appreciate everybody being here tonight and under state law the board has the power to direct superintendent to solve problems.

I look forward very much to hearing everyone speak.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker on today's testimony list is Vivian Van Gelder.

Vivian Van Gelder.

Vivian will be followed by Mary Ellen Russell and then Shannon Crowley.

Vivian, if you're on the line, if you could press star six to unmute.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Director and Superintendent Jones.

My name is Vivian Van Gelder, and I am the current Vice President of Seattle Council PTSA.

I'm here this evening to speak to the topic of the proposed financial planning and budgeting policy.

PTA is a national organization whose mission is to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children.

Seattle's PTAs and PTSAs are part of the oldest and largest child advocacy association in America.

As such, we appreciate that this draft policy aims to create greater transparency around financial decision-making that affects students, require a clear explanation of how funds are directly aligned to outcomes for students, and create appropriate opportunities for students, family, and community input into decisions that directly affect students.

We also appreciate the intent of the draft policy in addressing the role of fundraising in the district's financial ecosystem.

Our state PTA has passed two relevant resolutions by which our local PTAs are bound.

Resolution 4.13 on subsidizing certificated and classified staff salaries and resolution 4.15 on mission-focused fundraising.

These resolutions direct that we as PTAs should not, quote, contribute to the problem of inequities within a school district by engaging in excessive fundraising, end quote.

While we understand that fundraising is but one small part of a complex web of inputs into our district's budget, we appreciate that the board and district are working together to create and implement sustainable and equitable financial policies and processes that serve the needs of all students.

We therefore welcome the opportunity to partner with you all to identify appropriate ways in which our community can continue to support students while ensuring equitable access to opportunity across SPF and protecting the critical advocacy mission of our PTAs.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Mary Ellen Russell.

Mary Ellen Russell.

Good afternoon.

My testimony today regards the proposed budget guardrails.

I want to start by saying that I strongly support the overall goal of this document.

Guardrails 1 through 4 will require the superintendent to provide budget information that is clear, detailed, and placed in the context of previous year's expenses.

This will improve the community's understanding of how SPS functions and help rebuild trust.

That speaker was disconnected.

So the next speaker on today's list is Shannon Crowley.

Shannon Crowley, Seattle resident, property owner, taxpayer, and former SPS parent.

The Seattle School District must undergo a forensic audit.

A walk upstairs in this building amid the boxes of unused curriculum goes to speak about the commonplace Financial irresponsibility of this district.

And now we hear that $3 million plus that we're supposed to get from the state could be taken away if the children in our district in two thirds of the elementary schools are not shifted to different classrooms because the Seattle School District misappropriated funds to intermediate classrooms.

Superintendent Jarvis says that this is routine.

A forensic audit will find out if this is routine.

Fast forward a month from now when you're planning on telling the public and taxpayers that you're closing small schools because they're not well resourced.

We know that well resourced means large schools.

That doesn't mean that large schools are better resourced or better for our children.

Small schools do it better.

Let me tell you about my son who was in one of your well-resourced schools and his case manager emailed me saying, I didn't serve your son according to his IEP because he wasn't failing all of his classes like the other kids on my caseload.

He was only failing some.

So this former SPS parent pulled her kid out of SPS, put him into a small private school where every single teacher in that building knew his name and his learning problems.

So here's my promise to you, Seattle School District, as a taxpayer, 53% of my property tax is going to some sort of education in Washington and Seattle.

I will vote no on every single levy that appears on my ballot if you so much as sneeze in the direction of a small school with the idea of consolidating or closing it until this district goes through.

A forensic audit.

And I will encourage every single person I know and those I don't to vote no as well.

The next speaker is Tyler Dupuy followed by Courtney Helmick and then Jessica Jones.

Again, if we go too far, yes, clap for our speaker.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yes.

Love that.

Please don't start his time yet.

If we do not stick to two minutes, we will not be able to hear from all the folks who have signed up to come out.

So please, I really want to hear from everyone.

I do not want to have to cut anyone off.

Please try to stick as close to that two minutes as possible.

Thank you.

I've practiced this one.

I love it.

Let's go.

Board, after facing massive cuts at ORCA K-8 starting last year in the spring, we lost a third of our middle school staff.

We lost support staff in multilingual.

We started this year stretched as thin as we could possibly imagine.

And now we're being told that because of an under-enrollment of about Two students per classroom.

We're going to need to lose yet another adult from our entire school.

We honestly can't figure out how we're going to do it without utter and complete chaos.

There will be split grades up and down the K3 band.

Classes that were appropriately sized my kindergarten class for the first time in my career was the correct the correct 17 to 1 ratio.

No longer these students will be folded into massive classes torn away from their teachers put in rooms they don't know.

with routines they don't understand, and many more students in them, packed in like sardines.

These changes, they make no sense.

They don't make anything better, and they benefit no one, especially our students furthest from educational justice.

Now, I know that you are in a tough position here.

There's the budget deficit and everything.

But we're standing here in incredibly rich Seattle.

The richest corporations in the entire world are a few blocks away.

This is one of the richest cities in the richest country that has ever existed on the face of this planet.

So no money, not enough money for public schools?

That's not a good enough answer for me.

These cuts that are coming down...

The choice then to make these cuts all the way at the bottom, cutting down to the bone, down to the marrow, where the students, our youngest learners, are going to be the ones to bear and suffer these choices, that doesn't seem like it supports public education to me.

It probably definitely supports those who would love to see public education fail.

They have a vested interest in that.

There's a lot of money to be made there if they do.

But that's not why you're here, right?

You're here to serve public education, to serve our students.

So if that is indeed true, you have the opportunity to prove it.

Right now.

You'll just have to be brave, but you'll have to reject these measures of austerity, reject the idea that there isn't enough money.

It is there.

We'll just go bang down the doors in the halls of power and say, no, we want fully funded schools for everyone.

I'll end by saying this.

The teachers and parents will be perfectly willing to do that job for you, but I don't think you want to be caught on the other side of our solidarity.

So I just will end with a question.

Whose side are you on?

The next speaker is Courtney Helmich.

After Courtney will be Jessica Jones and Beth Steinhaus.

Hi.

My name is Courtney Helmich.

My son is a third grader at Adams Elementary.

I also have a sixth grader who attended K through five there.

Adams is a truly special school with a unique focus on SEL and it really shows in our kids.

I believe in it so much I'm currently the president of our PTA serving with other dedicated parents.

Like several other schools we are not being granted a needed teacher for rising enrollment.

A promise is being broken here.

We've been told more students equals more resources.

We were told this as declining enrollment brought us cuts after cut to vital staff.

Our kids are even going to school an hour earlier this year to accommodate transportation cuts.

Despite it all we have begun to bounce back.

Our school has a reputation for being positive and welcoming because of this our enrollment is going up.

We are all working hard to show the community that Adams is a school you want your children to attend.

But instead of being granted an expected third grade teacher we're being forced into large classes and two grade splits for our entire group of second and third graders.

Not having this teacher means that all of our K through three classes will go above the state limit.

We feel this lack of compliance jeopardizes our state funding.

These affected third graders are the same kids who attended online kindergarten.

We've seen them struggle academically and emotionally.

The second grade class is still recovering from the effects of socially distanced kindergarten and isolation.

These kids deserve more consistency and consideration as do the five affected teachers.

That is why Adams is here tonight.

Schools that need two or more teachers are receiving them and schools that need one are being given zero.

This isn't the right budget fix and it doesn't align with other goals the district says it prioritizes.

Parents who have stuck by us through harder times are now feeling distrustful and are discussing leaving public school.

We believe this budgeting decision is a short sighted one that will directly harm these students now and is also detrimental to future enrollment growth.

The same growth that is essential for solving this problem.

We urge you to reconsider.

Thank you.

Next is Jessica Jones.

Jessica Jones.

As she said my name is Jessica Jones and I'm a parent at ORCA K8.

I have a second grader and a fifth grader who's here with me tonight.

Sorry I'm feeling very emotional.

I'm also the immediate past president of our PTSA.

On October 6th, SPS sent a letter, an email to our family saying that they value smaller class sizes for our youngest learners and they let us know they would be making staffing adjustments to meet the standard of 17 students to one educator in all K-3 classrooms in order, as we've said tonight, to receive the maximum funding from the state.

But that same week they instructed ORCA to eliminate a K3 classroom teacher.

And this will result in an overcrowded K classroom, an overcrowded split K1 classroom, an overcrowded first grade classroom, and an overcrowded split first and second grade classroom.

I don't understand how this particular staffing adjustment is helping us meet the state requirement of a 17 to one teacher ratio, let alone the purported goal of academic excellence.

I just don't see it.

We all know we're facing a huge budget shortfall this year, and we've been told that if we don't meet that ratio for K3, we lose out on 3.6 million in state education funding.

Can someone here explain to me how cutting a K3 teacher makes any logical sense?

I want to say that I'm missing something, but I don't think I am.

Our South Seattle Title I school has a majority BIPOC student population, including my two mixed-race children.

And due to cuts from the last two years, we have no assistant principal, a half-time librarian, a half-time counselor.

We have lost 1.7 academic instructional support staff and now 3.5 Teachers it's frankly unacceptable for a school of nearly 400 students.

Our teachers staff and administration including our fabulous kindergarten teacher here with us tonight have moved mountains over the last two years to cover the gaps from the cuts we keep receiving from the district.

But they are not superheroes and they should not be expected to do the work of two or more people because the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to fully fund public education.

We say enough is enough and we implore you to do the right thing and stop this cut at ORCA.

We cannot absorb anymore and still provide adequate education and safety for our students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Beth Steinhaus.

Beth Steinhaus.

Beth will be followed by Jennifer Motter and then Mish Vicio.

Hi.

Good evening.

Thank you.

As you said, my name is Beth Steinhaus.

I am the parent of a second grader at ORCA K-8.

I am also the PTSA co-president currently.

And you've just heard from Jessica and Tyler who gave very excellent discussions of what we're facing at ORCA.

The thing I would like to add is that our community was not informed of any cuts happening at our school until the majority learned Monday at 11 a.m.

And as you can see, we have a huge turnout in the room tonight, and that is how strongly we feel as a community about what is happening right now.

I was listening to the board members speaking at the beginning of the meeting talking about, you know, striving to make the schools a place where children feel safe, feel attended to, and breaking up classrooms, causing the entire school to switch course a month and a half into the year does the exact opposite.

I am deeply concerned for the well-being of these students who have no way to know whether or not their teacher's gonna be there in a month and a half.

Maybe this is gonna become a regular thing.

They don't know.

And if they are feeling traumatized or unsafe in their classroom, or they have a new teacher, or they have a different classroom where they're one of three first graders in a second grade classroom, then those kids are going to be struggling and are gonna be even further from educational justice.

So I beg of you, please, whatever you can do to help us out, We are running as lean as we possibly can at ORCA, and thank you so much for your time.

The next speaker is Jennifer Motter followed by Mie Shvigio and then Dr. Thomas Poole.

Good afternoon I'm Jennifer Motter President of Seattle Education Association representing about 6,000 educators working in Seattle Public Schools.

As we all know we're all here talking about the massive disruptions across the school district due to staffing adjustments and reshuffling.

The district is required is requiring widespread changes to K3 classrooms in addition to the usual October adjustments that occurred due to differences in projected versus actual enrollment.

And this is also separate from special education and multilingual staffing adjustments which my colleague Vice President Mish Vecchio will speak to.

Despite SEA having two regularly scheduled meetings with district leaders in September, the district did not communicate any information to SEA about this K-3 classroom issue in advance of instructing school leaders to adjust K-3 classroom sizes.

As a result, educators, parents, students were left in the dark with more questions than answers.

Thursday we met with district leaders and at that time learned the district approved certain classroom sizes staffing levels last spring that were inconsistent with the state K-3 class size funding requirements.

And now they are scrambling to correct this mistake.

The past three years have been extremely difficult for all of us and we are still seeing the impacts COVID has had on students.

The added disruption of preventable staffing changes has further impacted everyone's morale and will impact student outcomes such as our third grade reading scores at our priority schools.

Our students and families deserve and need stability and consistency not massive classroom changes a month into school after we spent weeks building community with our students.

We need the district to be transparent and honest with the school community about what is happening and what actions it will take especially when mistakes happen.

I want to acknowledge I appreciate that Dr. Jones you apologized at the front.

And I look forward to how the district will authentically engage with and listen to the voices of students, families and educators.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mish Vecchio.

I'm a former special education teacher with Nova High School and currently proudly serve as vice president for the Seattle Education Association.

I second our president's call for transparency and collaboration.

These massive disruptions have had huge impacts on special education and were also preventable.

They are the result of a breakdown in collaboration and engagement.

We understand that adjustments are made when programs are not adequately staffed.

We want our students' needs met and know that the October adjustments aim to do just that.

But we also know that we've developed a more responsive system of reviewing caseloads to address emerging needs as they arise, the Special Education Relief Committee.

Through this process, educators communicated the need for projection review as early as June, and July and August SPS enrollment data supported these requests.

Educators also found instances where baseline staffing was simply not allocated.

In the hopes of starting the first day fully staffed the SEA SPS Special Education Relief Committee met on September 1st but our jointly made recommendations were not followed not even in cases to correct baseline staffing errors that were entirely unrelated to enrollment.

Educators and families do not understand why the opportunity to meet our students needs was missed when the ask was made so clearly and collaboratively.

At this point families and students have built routines and relationships.

We have had to wait six weeks for staffing adjustments required to adequately serve students in our programs.

Staffing needs that we identified collaboratively and according to clear and transparent processes at the beginning of September.

Without proper staffing we cannot set up inclusionary practices our educators or our students for success.

We need to recognize where mistakes have been made follow our agreed to practices with transparency and be honest about how we will ensure that we will prevent this level of disruption from happening again.

After posting hiring and onboarding this wait may become two months since day one of school.

Student need does not wait until the October count and neither should we.

Next speaker is Dr. Thomas K Poole.

Dr. Thomas K Poole will be followed by Naomi Strand and then Krista Brown.

Thank you very much to the board and if I'm honest thank you even more to Teacher Tyler who taught all day long and then came here tonight.

So I am a parent of a first grader at ORCA K-8 and if no changes are made in the coming days my son's teacher Miss Angel will no longer be his teacher effective tomorrow.

I'm a professor at Seattle University and I recently shared what is happening at ORCA with an education professor at a nearby institution with hopes of understanding what's going on in our school.

I shared how within two years, position cuts have resulted in a half-time librarian, half-time counselor, along with the full-time removal of a vice principal, three interventionists, and 3.5 teachers.

She told me, and I quote, "'This is how you break a school.' She said, when these types of changes are permitted in a school, each sequential cut of FTE very predictably has more and more dramatic impacts on the school, despite exemplary work by the teachers and admin doing their best every day. Thus, this last cut removing Ms. Angel from our school will have a disproportionate consequence on our community. I will continue to share these details with my colleague because like it or not, we are now a case study which she will teach in her undergraduate education class. Please reconsider and do whatever you can as a board to undo, if possible, this last FTE cut for our school so that ORCA can be a positive case study example of how this board responded to the community's concerns and Refused an untenable outcome. Thank you very much for your time.

Next is Naomi Strand.

Hi, my name is Naomi Strand and I'm a parent at ORCA and this is my kid.

He's in teacher Tyler's kindergarten class and he is directly impacted by these cuts.

Yes, what do you want to say?

And Ema is right.

Yeah.

I'm deeply concerned that this proposed disruption is going to negatively impact my child and many others when his whole class of kindergarteners, just as they're figuring out about school and how this works.

He loves school right now.

He's actually been able to benefit from a properly McCleary ratio for his first few weeks of school.

Why are we disrupting that?

Hold on, honey.

In order to account for the elimination, ORCA is going to combine the kindergarten and first graders into one class that can't help be outside of the McCleary mandated ratios.

So what are we doing?

Please give our teachers the basic support that they need to actually do their jobs.

Things like actually sticking to the ratios.

They are amazing teachers, but they cannot be expected to perform miracles.

Okay.

And I'm in teacher Tyler's class and I love it.

That's right.

Please don't break our hearts.

The next speaker is Krista Brown.

Krista Brown.

Krista if you're online if you could press star six to unmute.

I am not seeing Krista on the phone.

Moving to Jessica Holman.

Hi, my name is Jessica Holman.

This is also my kid.

And it's true that he really loves teacher Tyler's class so much so that when we had a family wedding to go to, he yelled at us the entire way that he did not want to miss school and asked us to turn around until we told him that the school day was finally over.

And then he wanted to go back on Saturday.

He usually asks us to go to school on Saturday and Sunday.

Much like the student who was speaking today about how the words are nice, you guys keep on talking about 17 to 1, how we're doing this for 17 to 1, how we're trying to meet McCleary for 17 to 1, but your words don't mean anything when they're not followed by actions.

They don't mean anything when we're not supported to do what we want, what we're supposed to be doing.

We know what the research shows.

We know how it's supposed to be.

And we are experiencing right now, we're experiencing 17 to 1 and we love it.

Our kids love it.

Our kids are learning so fast.

And they are so happy.

And our teachers are able to work to the top of their practice.

They're able to spend their energy on connecting with our kids and teaching them what they need to know.

Yes, you can say something.

Yeah, and Mama has just one kid and Mama is actually right.

Okay, thank you.

I'm a nurse, and I did bedside nursing for many years, and not being allowed to practice to the top of my practice, to not being allowed to care for my patients the way that I wanted to and knew I was supposed to be able to drove me away from bedside nursing.

I don't see how doing this to our teachers is not going to drive them away from teaching.

I believe that Krista Brown is now on the phone.

Krista if you could press star six to unmute we can go back to you.

Krista Brown if you're on the phone if you could press star six to unmute.

Can you hear me.

Yes we can hear you.

Hi my name is Krista Brown I'm a Seattle Public teacher.

I am a parent of a second grader.

Who's possibly suddenly in a split class.

And I also used to work at ORCA for 15 years.

When I told my son about these possible changes he cried because he had Miss Angel as a first grade teacher and was confused why he wasn't going to see her every day.

He said this makes no sense.

And he's right.

Tyler and Jessica and others have already given you the numbers, so I'm not going to repeat those.

But having worked at ORCA for 15 years, I have felt the cut that has been made to that school year after year after year.

And through COVID, it was so hard.

We barely made it.

Like the last lady was speaking about nursing and not being able to support your patients.

That's how I have felt as a Seattle Public School teacher.

It's just the constant cuts.

We can't do our job with less.

It's impossible.

Why doesn't education matter?

You say it does, but you aren't showing it.

Your actions matter and this is heartbreaking and it's the opposite of what you should be doing.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Robert Crookshank.

Robert Crookshank.

Robert will be followed by Marty Binkow and then Crystal Hawkins.

Good evening.

My name is Robert Cruikshank and I have three kids in Seattle Public Schools.

First, I want to say I heard what Luna Kron Barone said.

It's awful.

SPS has to do better by trans kids and what we're doing is not good enough so far.

The mess with K3 class sizes is not routine.

It is offensive to tell families that it was.

The district screwed up its class size projections and its guidance to schools.

You're making children suffer for adult failures.

And as you see here tonight, those failures are ongoing.

My fourth grader school Adams Elementary is having to reshuffle kids and lose one of our best teachers because of the district's mistake.

Yet the district might still be wrong in some of its projections there at numerous schools.

The board needs to make this right.

The board needs to direct SPS management to find the funding to prevent these reshuffles at every school.

If money needs to be found, cut staff and salaries here at the central office.

Don't take it out of the classroom.

And don't take it from kids.

Now, the financial policy being introduced tonight and the proposed closures of public schools will make this K-3 class size mess look minor.

We know from research that closing schools worsens outcomes for students whose schools were closed.

You cannot tell us that you care about student outcomes and then propose closing schools.

It's not even going to solve the budget deficit.

Also, if you couldn't correctly predict enrollment this year, how do we know you can correctly predict future enrollment?

The financial policy introduced tonight embraces austerity.

It's anti-union.

It will lock this district into a budget level that is $200 million below what it was last spring.

It will make it hard to restore those cuts when we get new funding from the legislature.

It would try to reverse the outcomes of the recent SEA contract and undermine fair bargaining with unions.

I support Director Song's proposed amendments to this policy.

Yet none of this is necessary.

Legislators have told us that there is willingness to add more funding for our schools in 2024, but the board has to help by stepping up and asking for it.

We need you to contact our legislators to tax the rich, not embrace austerity.

By embracing austerity, you would accept worse outcomes for every child in this district.

We won't accept it.

And we will hold all seven of you accountable if you proceed with this attack on our children's future.

Remember, ballots are in the mail next week.

Next is Marty Binkow.

Hi there, my name is Marty Binko.

I'm a 4-5 teacher at Roxhill Elementary in West Seattle.

Our school is ranked in the bottom 5% of schools in the state of Washington.

We are all working tirelessly to improve our students' academic performance while receiving absolutely no support from the district in these efforts.

Our school is high poverty, high needs, with an exceptionally diverse student body.

In fact, we have one of the most diverse international populations across the entire district.

As you can imagine, every educational minute is extremely valuable and necessary to achieve our goals.

The disruption caused by implementing the district's money-driven decision to reshuffle classes in at least 53 schools contradicts the district's strategic plan goal of predictable and consistent operational systems to meet the needs of students and families to allow them to focus on learning.

The district's issue is that they did not properly adhere to state mandated class sizes and thus are allowing a budgetary decision to impact our students of color furthest from educational justice.

The ramifications of this decision at our school is the displacement of students from three grade levels across four different classrooms and creating more split grade level classrooms.

Over 60% of the impacted schools have at least 50% students of color.

Of the 32 SPS identified Title I elementary school and K-8s, 24 of those schools are impacted by this decision.

At the beginning of this year, every school spent many hours learning about and implementing the racial equity analysis tool.

I'm wondering if the district utilized this in regards to their decision to reshuffle students.

As I tried to use it to analyze this decision, I found it very much impossible to find the equity.

Which of my students would you like me to displace from my classroom?

The one who barely came to school last year and now has perfect attendance?

The one who I bring a snack for every day because she doesn't have food at home?

The one who has repeated behavioral challenges, who I have built a relationship Finally with and started to make real progress with, the one who is receiving specialized instruction with an IEP, the one who's learning English, the one who's working towards being a straight A student for the first time in school, my list could go on.

The decision is wrong and it does not have the student's best interest in mind.

Why do our students have to suffer due to a mistake made by the district?

I hope you will recognize the huge impact your decision makes on our entire school community.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Crystal Hawkins.

Crystal Hawkins.

Crystal will be followed by Meredith Hoban and then Jennifer Goh.

With a student at ORCA K8.

I aim to represent not only my experience here but hopefully those Who aren't able to advocate through this kind of a method.

From a career in corporate retail, I've consistently seen success coming from putting the customer first.

I don't think that's a new idea.

Whether you're a board member, a superintendent, teacher, custodian, parent, no matter what your role in education, what is the purpose if we aren't first and foremost considering the needs of the students?

Reviewing student-teacher ratios and budgets after the start of school is not in the best interest of students, and cutting a teacher and rearranging five classes of students six weeks into the school year is not in the interest of students.

A motto I've often utilized in life is that my procrastination can't constitute your emergency.

In this case, the district's leading these decisions a month into school has passed an emergency to our students.

Financial constraints are real.

The struggles that you guys are facing are real.

But the responsibility exists to ensure that that burden doesn't trickle to students.

And the recent procrastination of decisions has done just that.

In the instance of ORCA K-8, which is the only one that I have any awareness about, the burden now sits on the shoulders of five to seven-year-olds, forced to adjust to changes that even the adults involved haven't been given any opportunity to prepare for.

That's not fair.

The student-to-teacher ratio keeps being mentioned.

That ratio for my kids' class last year was 26 to 1, again, to teacher Tyler's amazingness.

So there's no convincing me that these issues could not have been addressed earlier.

It's not new news, and it shouldn't be put on our students' notes.

My first graders asking why a teacher has to leave and there's no good answer to that.

There's no ill conduct.

There's no personal decision from the teacher.

The same decisions could have been made six weeks ago with no disruption to the students and perhaps less to the staff.

I want to echo the sentiment that I've heard here tonight from others that I know that there are those who think choice schools should be eliminated but creating turmoil for our students is not the way to that end.

Normally, I would propose a solution to a problem instead of just naming them.

But in this case, the district's lack of transparency has made that near impossible.

It's too difficult to identify alternative solutions when we don't have information and we're not given any notice.

As others have mentioned, the district communications mentioned the 17 to 1 ratio as the primary concern, but the final actions of the schools resulting in cutting personnel does nothing to address that ratio and simply just harms our students.

In summary, what can be done differently to avoid putting our young students through these avoidable, tumultuous school experiences that can have lasting and even lifelong It's in your hands.

The next speaker is Meredith Hoban.

Meredith, if you are on the line, if you could press star six to unmute.

Not seeing Meredith moving to Jennifer Gough.

Jennifer Gough please please correct me as we go along and feel free to introduce yourself with correct pronunciations.

My name is Jennifer Gough and my son is a first grade student at ORCA.

His teacher's job has been is being eliminated.

Thank you.

Dear Miss Angel.

Aaron and I wanted to reach out and personally thank you for the impact you have had on our son in the short amount of time he has had with you.

We have noticed a significant change in his mood and demeanor.

A couple of weeks into school, while putting him into bed, I realized that he was genuinely happy, genuinely happy for the first time in a very long time.

A true gift and blessing.

He started to sing and play his ukulele more, something that he used to do quite frequently.

He's laughing and he's displaying kindness and compassion toward his little sister.

Aaron and I know that you have played a direct role in this change and we are grateful.

Your communication and responsiveness to our emails was much appreciated as it gave us talking points to discuss what was going on with our son at school.

We were deeply saddened ourselves to learn that your position is being cut.

We spoke with our son this evening, providing him as much information as we were able to.

Our son is a child who needs as much information as we can provide him.

We attempted to position all the possibilities in a positive light, but inside we do not feel that this is a positive outcome.

Thank you for all you do to serve and thank you for touching our lives in the few short weeks that you've been a part of it.

I'm sad that we will not have the remainder of the year to get to know you better, and we wish you the best.

Thank you.

Next is Philip Montejo Thompson.

Philip Montejo Thompson.

Following Philip will be Andrew Rader and then Erin Barrington Schur.

Hello, I'm Gerard, Mr. Mountain to my students.

I've been in the district for 10 years and in those 10 years I have taught seven different grades in five different schools.

So there is a routine with the district of movement and change and it doesn't benefit people.

This year was great.

I was gonna go reteach several of my students from last year in my fourth grade class.

Many of them we had to separate because we had an inordinate number of missed instruction logs from our group because I started the year with 27 students and I finished with 30. And seeing these children now in a smaller class sizes has been incredible and that's all going to go away now.

That's all.

Next is Andrew Rader.

Andrew Rader.

Hello my name is Andrew Rader.

I have three children two of which attend school at ORCA.

What I want to know is why is SPS stealing from our children?

Why is SPS stealing from our children's education?

Why is SPS stealing from our children's safety and stability?

This week our children went to bed on a school night knowing what the next day held for them.

They'd wake up, see their teacher, and learn the lesson plan prepared for them.

But that's not what's happening, is it?

Instead, 35 days into the school year, their teacher will be gone, never to be seen again.

Instead, 35 days into the school year, the lesson plan will be gone, never to be used again.

Instead, 35 days into the school year, their classroom, their desks, their learning environment will be gone.

Why?

We want to believe in a school system that believes in us, but you have failed our children.

This destruction of trust comes after we've already seen cuts, including a librarian that's now half time.

Half the time in our school, our children cannot access books.

With this loss of trust, more families will leave SPS.

What then?

How will you stop this vicious cycle that is hurting our children more and more every year?

So please help me understand how removing teachers and combining different grades helps our children and is in a situation we've found ourselves in.

The only explanation that I see is that if you have placed your so-called financial obligations above your obligations to our children, You are treating our children and their education as a business.

You are not considering our children's best interests.

You are considering the finances.

This will fail.

SPS will fail.

You are failing our children and you will continue to do so while this stands.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Erin Barrington-Sher.

Erin Barrington-Sher.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Great, my name is Erin Schur and my son is a first reader in Ms. Angel's class.

I would first like to admit that none of my comments are going to be new or noteworthy.

I'm going to reflect a lot of what everybody's already said.

However, for the first time, my son is excited to go to school.

This year, he could not be more excited and I do not think that it will serve any of these kids to lose that excitement for school.

We have a long road ahead of us.

And we can't take that away.

I also agree that there's no reason why this should be happening 35 days for the school year.

You knew this.

This is poorly planned.

This is poorly executed.

We knew nothing about this.

This is the week of and we're scrambling to cover this up and figure this out.

We're not doing this.

There's no way that we can figure out a 17 to 1 ratio at the same time as cutting a teacher.

As a long-time nurse, sorry, again, 16 years at the bedside and now a nurse manager, I can tell you with certainty I have had to work outside of my ratio, and I've had to make nurses work outside of the ratio.

And you know what happens?

Those nurses get burned out, errors happen, the patients, and now the students will suffer.

I've seen it.

I've done it.

It doesn't feel good.

And I can't imagine doing this.

You are wonderful teachers.

They are so fantastic.

They have done so much work to move this school year forward.

So please, please tell me that this is not set in stone and that we can actually do something about this today.

Thank you so much.

The next speaker is Warlena Wheeler.

Warlena Wheeler.

Following Warlena will be Barry Arliss and then Marissa Melema.

Hi I'm Marlena Wheeler I am a parent also a former Seattle School District student.

Back in the 80s this I mean first of all the lack of transparency is wild.

Watching the students and the teachers the last week the students don't know what's going on but they know something's going on because the teachers at Dunlap I'm sorry I'm a little bit excited but I'm just, this is my daughter's second time possibly being impacted.

Last year she was impacted by being moved into another split class, separated from her teacher, new school district.

So I don't want this to become a norm for anyone.

Dunlap's in a unique area where there's actually three schools on one piece of land.

And then we have Rainier Beach around the corner.

Most of the students there are people of color, like myself.

So it's just wild that there's two students, excuse me, two teachers being removed from the school for 24 students.

For one, the zoning, I looked at the zoning, it's pretty small, which I can understand because of the other surrounding schools in South Shore, K through eight.

What I don't understand is who surveyed the area when you decided to remove two teachers.

There is another building being, there's actually families moving in to a new complex that actually looks as if it's maybe six, seven stories high.

Where are those students gonna go?

Between South Shore and Dunlap, that would be their zoning.

So we're going to get rid of two teachers and then possibly have to bring back three a few months later.

So it's pretty much showing our students that are people of color that already are displaced.

We can't even afford to live where I grew up.

So us being there and also the staff there, I'm looking at the care.

I've never in my life seen a staff at a school, the staffing there reflect what the students look like.

So for the students to come there and feel like they're accepted, they have teachers that care about them, look like them, it's unacceptable.

That's a you problem, not ours.

You're worried about numbers and money.

That's not our problem.

Our problem and the solution should be finding a way to take care of our kids.

They're already suffering from the pandemic and so are we.

So for them to go into a class and be able to Actually, the teacher's name, exactly what's wrong with the students.

I talked to three teachers, I won't be much longer, a meeting of six staff members the other day.

Three of them, it was a combination of 93 years of them being at Dunlap Elementary.

One has been there for 42 years, one 31, and the other one 20. That there alone shows that there are a unit there, and I wouldn't want to leave there either.

They were asked to volunteer to leave the school.

No one wanted to volunteer to leave so that they wouldn't have to come up with a decision on who has seniority and who leaves.

I wouldn't want to either.

And I just think that it's a disrespect and a disservice to come into our neighborhood and our school and displace teachers and our students and cram them all into classrooms when they're perfectly fine.

And to me, I think the lowest number may be 15, 16. That's perfect.

They're coming out of pandemic.

They should be able to have that time with their peers and their teachers.

So that's what I have to say.

Next is Barry Arliss.

Barry Arliss.

Barry Arliss if you're on the line please press star six Barry in the room.

Moving to the next speaker Marissa Melema.

Hi there.

My name is Marissa Millema.

I'm a parent of kids at ORCA K8.

I have a third grader and I have a kindergartner.

I had a whole speech prepared but I think I'll throw it out because I think a lot of folks have said it so I'll just speak from the heart.

We went through online kindergarten with my third grader.

I thought that was wild.

And then we went through cuts last year and the year before.

And I volunteered last year in my daughter's second grade class.

I took time out of my paying job using sick hours to go in and read with kids.

And I saw how much things affected them from the decisions we made during the pandemic, and I'm seeing this again.

Not only will we lose Miss Angel, all of the kids will be affected in kindergarten, first and second grade.

So you're getting three grades impacted by this.

We are a Title I school.

We do get a majority free and reduced lunch.

These are kids who are what we say are furthest from educational justice, and we're doing this to them.

I feel so privileged that I get to come talk to you today, but there are so many parents who feel this way at our school who can't.

And it's very rare that we can say, we can identify one thing that you could do to affect a bunch of kids' lives, and it would be to keep our first grade teacher.

Just that.

That's all you have to do, and you would probably reach 80 to 100 kids and make a real difference in their lives.

So I'm asking you, please reconsider this.

This is one teacher.

For that many kids and this will affect them for years to come.

Please let's not make more mistakes.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to go back to a couple of speakers we missed earlier and then we'll move into the waitlist if they are not here.

First is Meredith Hoban.

Meredith if you're on the phone please press star six to unmute.

Not seeing Meredith on the phone or in the room.

And then to Barry Arliss.

Barry Arliss.

Okay moving to the wait list first will be Catherine Ritchie.

Catherine Ritchie.

Catherine signed up for in person.

Is Catherine in the room.

Okay moving to the next speaker Ashley Allison.

Is Ashley here.

My name is Ashley Allison, and I'm a fifth grade teacher at Dunlap this year.

Thank you, thank you.

This is my third year teaching.

Hello.

This is my third year teaching and I finally feel like I have like a hold on my class.

It's like smaller and I can really get to know students and I can really get to know their parents.

And I have formed this community where I know where each student is at and we're throwing 10 more kids in my class.

And that doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense.

3.6 million in the whole schema thing is a drop in the bucket.

That doesn't make any sense why we're cutting teachers.

I don't know, your policy, you influence policy.

Make splits not a thing.

Influence that policy.

I don't know.

Think outside of the box.

They're thinking outside of the box.

They're cutting art.

They're going behind our backs doing these sketchy-ass things.

And we have...

We can do the same thing.

Get creative.

Do something.

Like they said, it's not our fault.

This is not our fault.

So why are we paying for it?

The final speaker will be Karen Hartman.

Hi.

Wow, a little bit nervous.

So I'm here for the entire reason to deliver this little note that's all on your dais.

This was written by my daughter and her friend in class and I wanted to share the story behind how this came to be.

They were in class literally crying and the teacher asked, what would make you feel better?

And the girls answered, we want to start a newspaper and we want to get people to vote.

So these two little eight-year-old girls wrote the Addams News, and I would like to read it to you.

All Addams students in Ms. Windes' class got surprising news that the class will be split up.

Kids might be without their friends in their new classes.

So we have never had a normal year at Addams.

When we were in kindergarten, we had online learning because of COVID.

In first grade, our teacher got sick and was gone for half the year.

In second grade, our teacher mysteriously disappeared mid-year and we had subs for a month before we got a new teacher.

And now this is happening, exclamation point.

We feel upset, exclamation point.

On the next page is all the people that we found who want Miss Windus to stay.

It's mostly third and fourth graders.

Thank you to everyone who voted.

And then you will see 45 signatures they collected during recess.

So that's the one thing that I wanted to share, is to allow you to see that these kids are in an extraordinary circumstance.

And, you know, as a parent, the mother of this other child and I were like, whoa, what do we do?

So we went to the data.

This is the other thing that you're gonna find on your dais.

We went to the data and we looked up what atoms should be staffed for based on their actual numbers that they have in the school.

And we got out our calculators and we did the WSS ourselves.

You posted on your website and according to your own calculation, They're supposed to be another teacher.

And so they're getting cut for a teacher that they're supposed to have.

So please revisit this and give them at least the teachers they're supposed to have instead of not supposed to have.

President Hersey, that was the 25th speaker for tonight and will conclude public testimony.

Thank you, everybody, for being here tonight.

I think that we should probably take a break, 10 minutes, so that we can have time to do anything to do.

So with that, we are going to take a 10-minute break.

Please be back at 6.02 promptly and we will begin the rest of our meeting.

Thank you very much.

About a minute passed.

I am so excited that everyone is having such lively conversation.

You do not need to leave, and your conversations don't need to end, but if we could just be on the other side of those doors, that would be super helpful.

We have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

Vice President Rankin.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Sarju seconds.

You neither one.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Rankin and seconded by Director Sarju.

We will need to remove consent agenda item 4 from the consent agenda to consider an amendment.

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

All right.

All those in favor of the consent agenda, please signify by...

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

Getting confused.

Did your president actually have you covered?

No.

My person to my right took my notes.

Body.

Okay.

Are we ready to vote on the consent agenda.

All those in favor of the consent agenda please signify by saying aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye

All right.

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

Aye.

Thank you.

All right.

So first turning our attention to agenda item number four.

May I have a motion for such item.

I move that the board approves the guiding principles for the BEX 6 capital levy as attached to this board action report.

Sargeu seconds.

All right thank you.

Do we have a board member that would like to speak to this item?

Do you have talking points?

Is that you?

Well we have an amendment.

Oh but don't we have to do the actual okay we can do the amendment first.

That's fine.

So who is presenting the amendment on behalf?

Dr. Rector Hampson take it away.

Doctor in the house.

Okay.

I move to amend the first bullet point in the SPS building excellence BEX 6 capital levy guiding principles attached to the underlying board action report to include the phrase history since time immemorial as follows.

Place based strategies honor the communities in which our schools are located and comprised of through placed based approaches.

Our project selection and ranking process will consider the land resources and history since time immemorial of each setting and its people.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

All those in favor of adopting the, or do we have any questions on this amendment before we move to vote?

Go ahead, Director Harris.

When we start talking about place-based considerations, that is not limited to just since time immemorial Native concerns, is it?

I was just ensuring that it went all the way back in time.

I understand that I just want to be clear that place based is a very wide umbrella.

So when we're talking about Things like possibly co-locating a need for affordable housing or co-locating with parks and recreation that would be included in this amendment.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Well not the amendment was just to add the committee that presented this

The place-based strategies phrase is in the original document.

The amendment is just to add since time immemorial to acknowledge that saying project selection and ranking processes will consider the land resources.

It used to say land resources and history of each setting and its people.

And this is the addition of that history means since time immemorial.

Appreciate the clarification.

Thank you.

All right.

Do we have any other questions on this amendment before we move to a vote?

Okay.

Seeing none, all those in favor of or we need to do a roll call.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

I'm still coming down.

Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

So I'm calling the roll on Amendment 1 now.

If this passes then there would be a revised motion for the underlying item as amended by Amendment 1 and then you would vote on that.

So this is just about the amendment at this point.

Director Song.

Director Sarju.

Director Hampson.

Director Harris.

Vice President Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

President Hersey.

The motion on Amendment 1 has passed unanimously.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Now may we have a roll call for motion.

So now since the amendment has passed I move we approve consent agenda item four guiding principles for the Bex Levy as amended.

Sarju seconds.

All right.

This item has been moved by Vice President Rankin and seconded by Director Sarju.

Are there any questions on this item?

I want to take a chance to explain what some of the updates were to this document.

So the three of us who worked on these guiding principles, Director Rankin, Director Song, and myself, all kind of split up the engagement duties.

Mine were with students.

So through my engagement with the student board members and NAACP with council students came up with some, I think, pretty important changes.

I don't know But I wanted to just explain that part of centering students was definitely making sure we heard their voices, gave them a chance to see the document and get feedback as they saw fit.

They had some really great items of feedback.

Some of which actually weren't specific to this document, but they were tangentially related and things that I'd really hope to explore later with them.

But in this document itself, we updated in the high quality learning environments.

They felt strongly about getting in collaboration in there.

That's why the word collaborative was added.

Also specifically calling out flex workspaces or learning.

I don't have the new one for me.

Flexible and accessible educational spaces, just to show the importance of that.

Director Converone was on the meeting and definitely added to that conversation to talk about how those spaces are coveted by students and heavily utilized and important to them.

We also had another change in the accessible schools about You know, because we're going to get recommendations regarding the accessibility of our buildings.

How soon are we going to see those, you know, actually being done?

Because, you know, these levees are six year levees.

We don't actually start collecting it for a few years, too.

So knowing that this wasn't going to be like, you know, six years later, we finally have that working elevator kind of thing.

We wanted to make sure there was something that added to the Expectation of expediency.

So we added the word expedient in there which hopefully gives staff the direction they need to know that these are things we desperately need to be done as they are scheduled.

There's one more Addition, which I didn't get in here because I really do want to have a conversation with everybody here about how do we work this in.

One of the recommendations from one of the NAACP Youth Council students was to have specific goals, language around metrics, which will be used to ensure that these goals are met.

And I know goals itself is maybe not the word.

These are guiding principles, but they're working towards an expectation of what our projects will, you know, how we prioritize what we're doing.

And so the one example was An example of Rainier Beach being ignored for so long despite abundant student voices for renovations.

How many years is too many years?

What stage of progress would meet the requirements set forth in guiding principles?

The idea that we're going to call for these things, how do we know that the project actually meets the expectation that we set forth in these?

I think that's a really powerful idea because there's no accountability without Knowing a look back on, hey, you heard our principles.

You picked a project.

Did it actually do what we wanted it to do?

The three of us on this document talked about how that would work in here.

I considered putting it into what's now called What are we calling those lines now?

It was a result now's intent line to say, create a metric to measure this after you do it, to see did it meet the goal of meeting students and support educational outcomes.

That's admittedly very difficult to do, because some of these projects won't even be completed for 10 years, and then it takes years to know if the student needs.

So we're talking a good 12, 15 years later, we're looking back on it.

None of us are probably going to be here.

But it's important that there is look backs because we want to make sure that these projects are staying true to our intent.

So I would love to discuss and open recommendations.

I definitely want to visit back with these students to flesh out how we can achieve this idea somewhere.

Is it in our approval of the levy later on when we approve the levy projects?

Is it somewhere in just like one of the staff members was on the call with us?

What was his name?

I'm blanking on his name.

The staff member who said they do go back and look, hey, did this meet the ed specs?

And in there they could ask, did this also meet the guiding principles?

So there's places we could probably work in those look backs to make sure that the results, that the goal was met.

Because I think that's important, just again, for accountability's sake.

It's not in this document because we all kind of figured it's not maybe the appropriate place for that, but I do think it's a great, I think I love the spirit of the recommendation and want us to figure out how we can implement it somewhere.

All I have to say, yeah, thank you students, the students we talked with and met with and who emailed in because it was very valuable and I'm excited to be presenting this.

Thank you, Director Rivera-Smith.

Go ahead, Director Harris.

Thank you for that.

One of the things that I hope we do with our students in the future and certainly our student board members in the future with respect to levy and capital projects is to make sure that they're learned up on how the levy dollars come in.

One of the things that Delayed Rainier Beach High School rebuild is that we didn't have enough money in the cash flow until X amount of years later.

So showing up, testifying, everybody on this dais absolutely agreed, long past time.

But if the money's not in the bank to build it in the big chunk of change, then you can't do it.

It's not like folks were sitting around ignoring people.

It was the pragmatic dollars in able to pay the bills able to set out the contracts and also building Rainier Beach side by side which admittedly cost more money but you know they managed to do that all over the country and our capital staff listened so that they were not displaced for all of those years but But I think we gotta do a better job of learning folks up on what this process is.

Because it isn't A to B equals C, I want it, I get it, and we're all happy.

Don't we wish?

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Yeah, continuing on that theme, so as Director Rivera-Smith said, the three of us co-sponsors wanted to add another level, and I think we talked about this in the introduction, we wanted to add another level of engagement around the principles that in the past it has been sponsored by like one board director and they have some conversations and then bring it to the board.

And so we wanted to kind of expand that.

And we found that in doing that and even in our own process drafting it, which is a really good collaborative process, but it's hard when you have a specific task not to want to throw everything into it.

So the guiding principles are our direction to staff on behalf of the community about since we can't have everything in the levy, all of the things that we want, that would be an outsized package that we wouldn't bring to voters.

As staff determines through various projects how to prioritize which ones are going to be part of the next levy, these are the principles that we use to say, here's what's the most important to us.

And so the context is really important.

I also, some of my partner feedback folks are in the room, SEA, at the back tables back there.

And I will circle back with you all about some of the feedback that you gave, but I wanted to mention one in particular was, you know, it was very much in alignment with our priorities, but kind of similar with Director Rivera-Smith's experience.

It was like, ooh, this is really good.

How do I elevate this?

And this isn't quite the right document for it.

But one is what was really great that SEA was hearing as well as we was how important it is for families to have a community gathering space in a school building.

And the reason that you don't see that specifically in the guiding principles here is because that is now part of our educational specifications of what a building must have.

So we didn't have to put that into the guiding principles in terms of prioritization because any new school will have that now as part of the ed specs.

So just to share for an example, it was a good experience and I really appreciated working with staff and these Directors and I and I hope that folks see their values and priorities represented.

Thank you Director.

Any other comments on this item.

Go for it.

Quickly, one other thing I wanted to just, because I want to honor the students who gave recommendations.

Another great recommendation from the NAAC Youth Council was about involving students in the decision-making process.

And that, again, wasn't necessarily a principle, but it was something that we have been guiding principle for projects.

But it is, I think, I think it's being met in our process here by having our student board members involved in this and who ultimately hopefully will be also involved in the approval of the levy process with their Recommendations and feedback on that.

We also have students on the SDATS, the School Design Advisory Team.

So there's students who are involved in those individual projects.

And one thing though, I would actually really love to see a student on the BEXPTA Oversight Committee.

We don't have that right now.

And I know it'd be a lot to take in because I go to those meetings and it just blows me away with all the knowledge in that room and all the technical to speak.

But having students in there to be part of that conversation, I think would be great.

I just want the student to know that we took this, I think that we are meeting this partially and we could build on that too.

Not necessarily this document, but it is important that we do honor that students should be involved in these decision-making processes.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the good engagement work on this.

Do we have any other pieces?

Last thoughts, going once, going twice.

Spilson Jones, roll call please.

Director Song.

Director Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Vice President Rankin.

Aye.

Director Rivera Smith.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right.

We do have one additional action item that is here for introduction and action.

I am very excited about it.

Approval of the 2023-25 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle School District Number One and the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 302. May I have a motion for this item?

I was busy being excited.

Sorry sorry.

I move.

Oh I move that the school board adopt resolution 20. No that's not it.

That's not it.

That's not it.

Thank you.

I move approval of the 2023 2025 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle School District Number 1 and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 and authorize the superintendent on behalf of the board of directors to execute the agreement in the form attached to the school board action report.

With any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of this agreement immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Sarge you seconds all that.

Take it away.

Hi, my name is Tina Meade, Director of Labor Relations.

All of the information is within the bar and the attachments.

What I do want to acknowledge is members of the IUOE Local 302, a few members of the IUOE Local 302 bargaining team here present tonight to hear.

One of the biggest pieces into thanking them for their work is that we took four contracts that their members were under and combined it into one with four relevant appendices.

That was a lot of hard, hard work because we essentially touched 140 provisions.

So over the course of six months, Six months five six months.

We had lots of discussions over lots of language and we got to this point and we are hopeful that we're going to see some more efficiencies with respect to implementing the CBA.

So happy to address any questions.

All right.

Thank you.

Do directors have any questions on this item?

All right.

Seeing none.

Mr. Wilson Jones roll call please.

Director Hampson?

Aye.

Director Harris?

Aye.

Vice President Rankin?

Aye.

Director Rivera-Smith?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Aye.

Director Song?

Aye.

President Hersey?

Proudly aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, thank you.

Oh, my goodness.

Thank you to our brothers and sisters over at 302. All right.

We have now reached the introduction items on tonight's agenda.

Our first introduction item deals with the Board Governance Policy Manual and Financial Planning and Budgeting Garderal Section, an administration of the annual budget and financial reporting, numbering, and lettering system consistent with the Board Governance Policy Manual as adopted.

Approval of this item would adopt the board governance policy manual, policies, financial planning and budgeting, and administration of the annual budget, and the financial reporting as attached to the board action report.

These will be included in the guard rail section of the board governance policy manual.

Do I also at this point need to read the amendment?

I think this is the first time I've had an amendment at intro, so I'm a little...

What do I need to do?

You don't need a formal motion or anything, but in the course of discussion then you can discuss the amendment as well.

Okay.

I'm going to go ahead and read the amendment so that we can just do it all in one file.

So there's also an amendment to this introduction item.

So just for clarity, introduction, not voting tonight, discussing, come back, vote later.

Amendment number one to the board action report titled Board Governance Policy Manual Financial Planning and Budgeting Guardrails Section and Administration of the Annual Budget and Financial Reporting Numbering Lettering System.

Consistent with the Board, Governance Policy Manual as adopted.

This is coming from Director Song.

Approval of this amendment would substitute the version of policy titled Governance Policy Manual Policy Category Recommended Guard Rail Financial Planning and Budgeting Interim Policy GPM G2 or 6000. As attached to the amendment, the extent of the attached substitute policy conflicts with the information presented in the underlying Board Action Report.

The substitute policy shall control.

Long story short, the amendment seeks to strike, I believe, 6, 10, and 11. Is that correct?

And 12. Okay.

Thank you.

So that's what we're dealing with.

Director Hampson.

So we're going to start with some context.

This is a guardrail policy being offered up at a time when we have not yet completed the full structure of the governance policy manual.

Which is a set of focused policies intended for the work of the board and the work of the board in relationship to itself and to the superintendent.

That is the core function of the board under the policy governance model as well as many other similar models that more clearly defined the role of the board in relationship to the superintendent and its overarching function as the fiduciary for the school district.

So I'm going to let my co-sponsor and the chair of the Policy Governance Committee who's been tirelessly working with fellow committee members on moving this work along and provide some additional context about this policy coming forward at this time and again I want to clarify this is not an administrative policy this isn't about implementation this is a guardrail.

I forgot my laptop somehow so I'm feeling sort of Untethered.

But basically this is sort of a parallel process.

So ideally we would have completed our policy manual review and identified the gaps before we start filling them.

But there's a pretty critical need for us to give in our governance policies direction about budget development that's specifically about vision and values as opposed to So let me see.

I don't want to do a whole other lecture like I already did earlier.

But basically what we have right now in our policy manual is a whole series of policies that just keep getting added to that have There are some that starts with a zero that are ostensibly philosophy and goals.

There is a series that starts with a one, the 1,000 series that's about the board.

And then there's 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 that all deal with other critical parts of the district.

Generally speaking policies 2000 through 6000 are policies that the board approves that provides direction to the superintendent about what we expect the superintendent to do in his job as managing the district.

The zeros and the ones are either our direction as a board to ourselves about how we have our meetings, there's some technical things, how we have our meetings, how we expect, how we kind of agree on conduct and interactions with the public and things, and also goals about the direction that we expect based on vision and values, not on implementation.

Does that make sense?

In this huge body, there's governance policies and there's policies of implementation that are still ours.

In looking at all of these, what we're missing and what is Partially, the issue that many people were in the audience here today to talk about is that we're constantly trying to work within a system that's very reactionary and that moves according to a series of state requirements, funding deadlines, this and that restriction.

It really resonated hearing people say, you know, it feels like the finances are being put ahead of the kids because that's exactly how the machine operates.

And the thing that's missing is us as a board saying, OK, machine, we know that you have to work a certain way.

And while you work that way, here is our values-based direction to you about the things that need to be considered.

when operations are happening.

And so we do have, if you look in the policy manual, policy 6,000 is a budget and finance document.

It's kind of vague.

It sort of meets legal requirements.

But it doesn't say, here is what is really important to think about.

That we the board on behalf of and in representation of our community are saying you need to think about while you're implementing all these things.

And so that's a goals policy would be a here's what we expect and here's what we want to see progress on in terms of how our students are doing and what we expect for them.

A guardrail would be on your way to that.

Here are literally the guardrails, the things that if you bump into you need to come back and course correct as you're meeting our goals.

And if we're doing our job of governance, we shouldn't be in the, oh, we don't like that or you shouldn't have moved those teachers.

We should be providing the expectation and the boundaries of what can't happen so clearly that the superintendent is able to manage staff and give direction as needed as the executor.

of the district in a way in which the experience that people have is one that's aligned with what we're saying up here.

So like I said, this is parallel processes.

We're kind of flying the plane and building the plane at the same time.

But I hope that makes sense.

And the really, really important thing to remember with policy is that we are in charge of all of it.

Up here, and that any policy can change, be repealed, be added by bringing it here to a public meeting and taking a vote.

Which is to say, we're not voting now, we're introducing this, but even once a policy is approved, if it turns out that wasn't quite what we thought we were getting at, we can bring it back, talk about it in public, vote on it again.

Yes.

Thank you Director Rankin and so to reiterate this is being brought forth as a prospective guardrail policy inherent in the policy is a suggested review date which in the implementation of the policy manual would be a required Review if anybody pays attention to our policies knows that many of our policies are at least a decade old and many of them more.

The policy governance manual is for the board is intended to be reviewed on an annual to a semi-annual basis every single policy in that manual.

It's a much smaller set of policies so it is much more Doable and should be scheduled on a regular basis.

Should it be adopted the board would consider whether or not it becomes a formal guardrail subject to progress monitoring and the next iteration of the goals and guardrails which are coming up for development as our strategic plan is closing out.

This current strategic plan we are at the tail end of the strategic plan so this board and this community or the board that is coming and their representation of the vision and values of community will need to establish a new set of goals and guardrails and this particular policy guardrail in addition to filling a critical gap Could also be, and I would recommend, is considered as a central guardrail in the next era of the strategic plan.

In the meantime, it was originally developed in April in concert with the resolution on program reduction Meaning when the original budget cuts were presented to provide a clear set of expectations to the superintendent as to how this board expects a particular value set as Director Rankin said to be upheld as we work through this fiscal hole.

That we are in and it is a very serious fiscal hole or we would not have had so many people here testifying tonight.

It is and I want to say thanks to many staff people who have given me significant senior staff people as well as community members that have given me significant input on this policy so far.

And one of them was about making sure that at the top that we state what is the value that this is meant to represent and I think that that's really important.

So I'm going to take time to do that now because when I look at the current draft it doesn't articulate exactly what the value is that we're looking for and I want to challenge my fellow directors to as we go through those items about which you have questions or concerns want to have more discussion about That we are also articulating, okay, what value are we protecting or trying to uphold here by this statement or not having this statement here?

And is it consistent?

Are we being consistent?

And again, as Director Rankin stated and as we heard from our community tonight, It is meant as a representation of value relative to how the community expects us to ensure transparency and alignment of fiscal investments and prioritization with the vision the community has for what outcomes we expect to see for our children in Seattle Public Schools.

It is intended to represent the value of strong fiscal management, planning, and reporting that allows us to build trust in our communities for which there is clear data that when we tell our community how we are spending their dollars and why we know and believe that those dollars are working, we build trust.

It is also meant to build trust among adults in the system who would otherwise be caught up in the whirlwind of blame and purported waste Whereas the primary focus is and must always be children and that we are responsible for the resources, for the way that we resource our buildings and our systems in order to deliver outcomes for children.

It is a statement of value that anything short of that is a major pretending that we are here in service of children.

Responsibility for poor alignment?

Yes.

Is there waste?

Very likely yes.

Is it a singular group or individual's fault?

Absolutely not.

Not the state not the superintendent not the principals not senior staff not mid-level staff not teachers not the transportation department not even the feds.

It's no one's fault but ours as a board.

As long as we're focused on anything but creating the best possible governance structure and leading towards improving outcomes for children.

If we don't make a clear stand for how we invest our dollars on behalf of children, we have no starting point, no clarity, no data to lead the conversation and must insist that the conversation among adults centers children.

Adults in the system have organizations and associations that advocate for them and their needs.

Our children have us.

Those of us that are sitting up here.

This is not an intent to promote behavior that is at the expense of adults, however.

I want to be really clear about that.

It's actually the opposite.

Without a clear focus and governance in support of outcomes for kids, we create an environment where adults feel overwhelmed and unsupported in their ability to themselves support kids.

We hear that from all adults in the system, from parents to teachers to principals to social workers.

ER doctors and children's services trying to be all things at all times for kids because we've not yet bothered to stop and align our spending with their needs.

Students depend on school systems to be a bridge to their future.

Clarity of desired outcomes and collaborative discussions about how we get there based on the success of our investments on behalf of children are the fiduciary responsibility of the school board.

The adulting starts here.

Finally, just to reiterate, this is not a document meant to describe implementation.

These aren't austerity measures, just the values expected to be upheld in the implementation of budgetary planning, reporting, and administration.

Not how to uphold them but the limitations on the actions to be taken in doing so.

And with that I will turn it over to directors for questions and discussion.

All right.

Thank you very much Director Hampson.

I particularly have two items.

So first off before any of that thank you for the work that went into this.

I think that a lot of this came from or at least from my perspective this is going to be critical.

I wish we would have had something similar to this going into trying to figure out how to address our structural deficit and I believe that boards and superintendents whatever version of this ends up being implemented.

will find this incredibly beneficial in just having some parameters in how we make decisions, and I think community will also find this incredibly useful.

So first, thank you for that.

My primary concern is regarding items 6 and 10, and we had a brief conversation about this, and I think that it would be fruitful for us to do that in this public session as well.

As an educator myself and as a strong labor advocate, when I read these, I can understand the intent where they are coming from.

I also have pause in knowing that the People who will be occupying these seats and for reference let me read number six and ten so folks know what we're talking about.

Item number six reads utilize or agree to funding models and these are things that the superintendent shall not do right because it is a guardrail.

Utilize or agree to funding models and staffing ratios that one center adult over student need two are not flexible enough to ensure the alignment with established goals related to ensuring student outcomes three And are consistent or rather inconsistent with the board's policies and statement of values including the board's goals and resulting district strategic plan.

Going to go ahead and read number 10 as well just for the sake of the argument.

Number 10 reads fails to propose and negotiate pay scales aligned with multi-year fiscal capacity So as to ensure equitable pay and benefits for all labor partners and other staff and mitigate the risk of compensation, concentration in any class or subtotal of labor class, right?

I want to make sure that we have this conversation now in the open.

While I understand the intent here, what we're trying to essentially do is ensure That we're not centralizing resource into one of our job classifications because we have heard from many of our labor partners that if we don't evenly distribute how we address some of the biggest problems with many of our labor partners who are drastically below market in many areas.

We are not fully supporting our commitment to try to have as many of the folks who are employed by Seattle Public Schools any range of pay that makes it affordable to live here.

Primary concern number one.

So that's what it's trying to do.

That said, when I am sitting here, having been on both sides of the negotiating table in various capacities, what I worry about is that with the language that is currently here, a more nefarious superintendent and some shadow board that wants to disrupt labor could be in a position to utilize this language as it stands to do whatever they want, depending on what the situation is.

It could be used as a means to justify completely reasonable pay increases for any particular labor partner.

And to also be clear, this does not just specifically say labor partners for those who are listening at home.

This applies to everybody.

Folks who are employed by Seattle Public Schools wholesale, whether they're represented or not.

The other piece is utilizing and agreeing to funding models and staffing ratios that center adult over student need and are not flexible enough to ensure the alignment of established goals related to ensuring the outcomes.

I feel as though that could be too vague to the point to where it could be used similarly.

So what I am interested in, and I don't have a good answer for this right now, is really, as you mentioned earlier, getting to the intent and seeing what is the plainest way that we can communicate these things that also provide some real clarity around the intent.

Because the last thing that I, and I know that The rest of our board up here and our superintendent likely feel similarly want to do is to put ourselves in a position to where we are costing an educator, a member of Local 302, another one of our labor partners, a principal based on some random person, board director or superintendent's definition of this particular like or rather interpretation of this language.

From being able to receive a compensation or a contract that is perfectly within bounds of the school district but can be justified in some way.

Does that make sense?

For him.

I'm happy to answer questions too if there's clarity.

Oh, so I have response to the ratio one.

But the other one, I would love to know the equitable pay scales.

I would love to know how to make that language right, because the intent is so important that basically we have 13 labor partners.

And the workers represented are all critical to the functioning of our district and serving our students and are also valued community members.

And a lot of them have kids who are in Seattle Public Schools.

What I really want to see or provide is direction in budgeting that I don't want to get into and don't know the cadence and the timing of when different negotiations happen.

I want to make sure that our budget is, you know, it is what it is.

We can't magic more money out, right?

But that we make sure that we're planning for and have the commitment to everybody who works for Seattle Public Schools, that we won't be in a position where we're saying, I'm sorry, I know that you should have a raise and deserve a raise, but we don't have any more money left.

Yeah.

Because somebody else came ahead of you.

So I don't know how to, like, the intent for me is about collaboration and supporting all workers and also in acknowledging that we do have constraints.

So how do we make sure that we can support our staff and give people what they need within our constraints?

So I want to kind of just to a process point I want to make sure that we don't get caught in the what ifs.

Not because they don't exist.

I think we want to make sure that the statement establishes a common clear value.

If we all here agree that the value is that we are able to provide that when we provide Resources to all of our adults in the in the building that we're doing so in a way that takes long range planning as a tool to ensure that instead of what we currently do which is being reactionary to bargaining.

Yep.

As it comes up, as contracts expire, that we are insisting that our superintendent direct his staff to ensure that when you make these agreements, we've got to make sure that we know we're going to have this money knowing that these agreements are coming up at this time.

So that's all it's saying.

Is that expressing the value of ensuring equitable pay?

By equitable, I mean we have some groups that are getting paid relative to market significantly less than others.

That's what we want to say.

No, it's not okay to pay our folks inequitably relative to market.

How do we Represent the value and not fall...

If there's something else that we need to say to make sure that...

Let me roll that back for a minute.

One of the things that we have done with our guardrails and with our goals But particularly with our guardrails, it always means that there's a conversation between us and the superintendent, and that comes down to, okay, how is this going to get measured?

How are we going to know?

And the superintendent comes to us and says, okay, this is my interpretation.

Can you scoot back a second?

This is my interpretation of this guardrail, and this is how I and my staff are going to measure this.

Yeah.

And then every year that conversation is had again in terms of this is where we are.

So there's built-in this conversation of you shouldn't be having an interpretation that is The exact opposite of what the intent was, or that's a guardrail violation.

And then it's a serious conversation.

And we've had that discussion before about, is this a guardrail violation?

If it is, then what do we do?

And so I think when there is that clarity and that trust that that conversation will happen, that it's a scheduled conversation, that you can rely on that.

Yes.

And so both great questions.

One thing that popped in my head, and I'm not suggesting this as a solution here, but I don't know, do we utilize salary surveys?

And I would imagine that we do.

So taking a long, one way to solve that is taking a longitudinal look over CBAs and seeing at salary surveys like You know, say we are bargaining with 302 one day and SEA another.

We're looking at how close these individuals are in terms to the salary survey and where they land at the end of a CBA on a longitudinal range over maybe 10, 20, 30 years, right?

So I think that there is a timing element that is critical for the superintendent and his team and the board to have a conversation in public around what are we looking at, whether that be on an annual basis or not.

I don't want to get too far off, but I think to answer your first question is, Engagement, right?

We talk to our labor partners and I'm more than willing to support in this however I can to figure out like what have been the concerns, right?

Because we've all received anecdotal comments about, well, this union over here is getting X and these principals over there are getting Y and We're not finance, except for Director Hampson, intimately entangled with the finances, so we're just being put into a reactionary scenario to we just want to make sure that folks get what they feel that they deserve and at the same time keep a balanced budget.

Those two things oftentimes are in conflict.

Guys, I'm going to finish, I promise.

I'm trying to keep it very short.

So that's one piece.

To go back to the question around, I've lost my train of thought.

That's okay.

But I think engagement is important.

And I think having the longitudinal conversations and establishing a timeframe, I don't know if this is the appropriate place to do it.

And when those conversations happen could be one solution.

But I think your intent that you laid out just a few moments ago is actually quite clear around wanting to make sure that over the course of an extended period of time, we are not being reactionary to the point to where we are able to provide significant increases to one of our partners while neglecting another because we did not do longitudinal planning of what our finances are going to look like.

So that's the long short of it.

And so then my request would be if there is some tweak to the language that maintains the intent.

I will sit down.

Yeah, for sure.

But we got to stay out of the implementation.

100%.

Could not agree more.

Because as soon as you get into the, it's not about what the superintendent has to do, but what you should not do or shouldn't fail to do.

Right.

That's how we squirrel around that a little bit.

Yeah.

It definitely has to allow staff to interpret the intent and get to a place where they're doing this work.

I did have a conversation with our staff that does this.

They fed me how they interpreted it and it was accurately perceived.

Agreed, there's always going to be different people, but then that's why you have to look at it every year in case you're getting off track about it.

But yeah, if there's any way to clean it up to make sure that that's really clear, because that is truly the intent is to protect all of our labor partners and try to get them into some sort of much more equal place.

And it's also tricky just because it's written in the negative and it's hard when you're reading through it.

It seems it's like, oh, the superintendent shall not do X, Y, and Z.

Whereas actually, if you are really digging into it, how do we make it super clear that we are trying to empower the superintendent to make sure that everybody has what they need, right?

And just to that point like these are written guardrails are written and they're called executive limitations in other circumstances.

Right.

And the board is in no way shape or form the have does not have the role of Micromanaging the superintendent and telling him how to do the job, but rather what the outcomes are that we expect and what the guardrails are that he has to stay within to getting there.

And that's where you come up with the negative language.

It's very uncomfortable.

But instead of being, you can't be prescriptive or prescriptive, you have to be governing by exception.

Except for these things, go forth and do what you need to do.

Do you have questions?

I just was going to add that in addition to the other things about staff, that the impact on kids is especially related to the market value thing.

When we had a hard time with transportation because they didn't have drivers, that was because they could make three or four more dollars an hour working for Metro.

And so there's an impact to children as well.

Absolutely.

And I know other directors have questions about number six.

And I just want to clarify, six is really where a lot of the rubber meets the road.

We just heard a lot of really, really fun stories about how we staff.

We have quotes from the WSS here.

And I just want to be abundantly clear that this is about All adults.

This isn't about any particular group of adults.

It's about our obligation to make sure and insist that in centering in the conversation while there are adult needs, adults need to get paid.

We don't, but you know.

Generally speaking, adults need to be compensated in order to do this work on behalf of kids.

We are responsible for doing work on behalf of kids.

Literally every bit of federal, state, and other policy is around centering kids no matter what.

And we get lost in that when we Start to fight battles over ratios that are about how our buildings are staffed.

And these are determined in many ways.

We've got the WSS.

We've got the Gold Book.

We've got the Purple Book.

We've got agreements with our labor partners.

And this is asking to take The data that we all have and know about student outcomes and student need and make that center and keep that central in our conversation about what we need in order to do our jobs.

And it's our role as a board to Stand up for that.

And so that's what this is about.

It's not about any particular group.

We've had many conversations about WSS.

And I would say that particular one definitely has a quote unquote target on its back from this standpoint, which is to say to the superintendent, You have to be able to demonstrate to us how this spending, and we're going to talk some more about this in our next session, is aligned with our goals, is aligned with our guardrails, and how are you demonstrating to us that that's working?

We're looking at really hard decisions right now and money being saved or spent, and we need to be having the discussion about, we need to be doing the math This discussion needs to be about the math, but the math is about how is this going to impact kids?

What is the impact on kids when these things happen?

And what is the cost, the various costs associated with that?

So this is really what that's getting to, is regardless of the situation, we've got to bring it back to centering kids and outcomes for them.

I want to go to the other side of the dice.

Luna, did you have your hand up?

I want to preface anything I say or ask by acknowledging that I really don't know a lot about any of this.

I'm a senior in high school and I'm not very good at math.

The thing that got me thinking about point six was thinking about how with this kind of policy and this kind of guardrail, it's almost like an operational definition in a science experiment.

I'm trying to make some similarity.

An operational definition exists so it can be replicated by any person that will do it in the future.

I could hand it to some person in the audience right now and they could be like, oh, yeah, I can do this.

I can figure this out.

I worry about...

Because I really love the intent.

I really, really love the intent and the work.

That without that intent being made overly explicitly clear in the language, anywhere language gets a little vague, there always opens up that possibility for something that was not the original intent to be done with it.

And I mean, I don't want to get caught up in what ifs, but I also think it's important that we be prepared for what ifs.

Because, I mean, what I have experienced within the Seattle Public Schools community is not always Aligning to the interests, values, and thought processes of this board, which are great.

We all have the best interest of labor partners in mind.

We're trying to support our community and trying to support kids.

I just worry when there is not that ultra explicit language.

And I'd love to talk more.

And I'm sorry that this is the only kind of setting that I can talk in for the first time about this and have this conversation about Ways in which, because I think this is all a really good idea, but I'd love to see ways in which it could be even just a little bit more explicit and clear in the language so that there is just genuinely no chance ever in all of our what-ifs that anyone could take this.

As something that they could do something anti-union or mistreat labor partners based on language they found somewhere.

For me to feel comfortable with this policy manual and this guardrail, That's, I think, the conversation I'd want to see.

And I don't know, so I'm wondering, when coming up with these ideas, was there community engagement with labor partners?

Because I don't know if this is possible, and I might be saying something that's totally impossible.

But to me, it seems like when we're talking about best ways to support labor partners, I'd love labor partners to be involved in that conversation because they know what they're doing best.

I don't know if that would ever be possible or if that makes any sense, but that's just my thoughts and what I'm feeling at the moment, and I know I don't know much about any of this, and I appreciate you all for doing this work.

I think Director Rankin has a response, but I do want to thank you for that operational definition.

I appreciate that you're saying you're worried, and you should feel worried.

This is brave work.

This is really brave work.

Nobody has done this yet in Seattle Public Schools.

They've done it in a lot of other places, but they haven't done it here.

And so it's inherently nervous making.

That's why it has a short timeframe on it for review, right?

But that is the right feeling to be having, right?

Because we're stepping out and saying, let's see if we can commit to our values on paper.

and see if we can actually do this work together on behalf of kids.

I'm going to take you back away from labor partners, though.

That is a very different conversation.

This isn't just about labor partners.

This is about all the adults in the system, all of them.

It doesn't say that there's the...

Like, we could take out number 10. I think it would be a shame to take out number 10 because I do think that it's...

Really important, and I fear it wouldn't happen, but we could take it out just because it kind of conflates those things, and I don't want that to be the perception.

This is about how we all in the system behave, and it is intentionally not overtly explicit for that reason, and yet I think the clarity that you seek is really important, and I want to get to a place where everybody feels really comfortable with the expression, the more explicit expression of the values.

We are actually not good at mitigating risk in this district, which is why in internal audit we're spending all this time working on risk mitigation and enforcing our policy on risk mitigation because it is part of being non-reactive but being proactive is mitigating risk.

And so it makes sense to me that you would have that response of like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen?

Because there's no trust built up.

And that's why it's not just about all of these types of things.

It's also about the transparency.

This is a 10-year process that we're talking about.

This is not something that's gonna happen even in the next couple of years.

This is to just give the clear direction to the superintendent and his senior staff that you need to head down this road now.

Or we're never going to solve these problems.

We're going to be here again in this room with the same groups of parents having the same conversations just like we did 10 years ago if we don't make these changes, if we don't get really, really clear.

But thank you because I'm going to do some homework.

And we've got a month.

And I would say it's not up to, like, I'm giving direction to the superintendent, not to, you know, our labor partners.

We, I mean, when I'm writing this in my head of like, what do I want him to do as I'm representing these values?

That's not to say that they couldn't have input and we have a whole month for there to be input.

I just don't want to get stuck in this thing that it's like, it's about labor partners, because that's not what it's about.

I wanted to talk about why number six is so critical.

So critical.

And again, it's not about any one group of people or person.

It's about acknowledging that Public schools exist to serve and educate the children of our communities.

That's why any of us are here.

That's the whole purpose.

And all of the adults have all of the control over a system that's intended to meet the needs of students.

And so because adults are the ones making decisions and adults are the ones in the room talking about these different things, it's easy to Forget that it could work really, really well for adults and still not serve kids.

And so we have to put what we need for kids at the center and build around that.

That doesn't mean that all adults have to sacrifice themselves and their time and their well-being.

That wouldn't be a well-functioning system to serve anybody, much less kids.

We know that.

So what this is about is even in my own household, my husband and I could be as well-meaning as we wanted and make decisions and do things that we think are going to be fine for our kids and never examine the impact of that and realize that we have a really great operational household and kids who are not getting what they need because we didn't start with them.

It doesn't mean that they get everything they want, but we start with them.

We start our definition of, is our household functioning?

Are we taking care of our kids?

It has to start with how the kids are doing.

And then we need to do what we need to do as adults to make it possible.

So we need to think that way in our school system.

Tons of adults across the wall here that have a lot of control over what happens to kids.

There are people in buildings every day with kids.

But again, we all exist here for our students, so what we heard today in public testimony was the symptom of adult decision-making taking priority over what's best for kids.

And that's not a slam on anybody.

Those adult decisions have to be made.

We have to meet the class size ratios to get the funding.

We have to complete and turn in a balanced budget every year.

I'm not saying that we don't do those things.

But instead of organizing around whether or not we meet The mandates that are put on adults, our measure of success needs to be how those things are impacting kids.

And if it's not doing a good thing for kids, I don't care if we check the box on getting the task done.

We have not done our job.

So this is just about saying, I'm sure it made sense And it was convenient at the time to say, oh, we know these adjustments are coming.

Somebody well-meaning or multiple people well-meaning looked at the calendar and thought, ah, rather than stagger these out, let's just do them all at once in October.

We've done it before in October.

That was an adult-centered lens.

That was not thinking about, gosh, we know now we need to make these changes.

We should do them soon so that we have less of an impact on children.

It doesn't mean we don't do them.

We still have to do them.

But we have to think about the kids first.

And everything for adults, too, has to be so that adults can show up in the way that they need to for our kids.

So it doesn't mean, screw the adults.

But we could have super efficient transportation.

We could have the best accounting department.

We could have all these boxes checked and still have kids struggling and suffering.

And we could say that was a successful system because we balance our budget and we meddle the state requirements.

What we're saying in this is that's not good enough.

It has to start with the kids and build around them, and that's how we get to success.

This may seem like a diversion, but I'm going to ask you a question.

How are the children?

You can't answer it because all the children are not well.

All the children in this district have never been well.

We have certain groups of kids who historically have been ignored and marginalized by adults.

By adults.

At the end of this, if we cannot answer the question, how are the children?

If the answer isn't, all the children are well.

And when I say all, I mean all.

I mean every single child in this district, no matter their parents' income, no matter their language, no matter the shoes they wear to school or don't wear to school every day.

If we collectively in this room cannot answer the question, all the children are well, none of us None of us are doing our jobs.

We have failed.

We have failed.

That's why I'm sitting here, because I could not answer the question, all the children are well.

I didn't run so I could bring in my special policy and infuse some perceived brilliance into all of this.

I ran because I cannot answer the question, all the children are well.

I cannot answer the question.

At the end of this financial policy, we can argue and change the language, but if every single one of these points, and I'm talking to my colleagues here, if we cannot answer at the end of this, all the children are well, it's not mistakes were made.

Humans, we have failed.

This notion of mistakes were made and who makes mistakes?

We do.

We live in an individualistic culture where we can't admit our own mistakes.

We have failed.

I have failed.

I fail.

I have had to apologize to my own children for my failures, and then I had to do an about-face and do better.

I got a two-week-old grandchild.

He's my grand bean.

You know why I'm sitting here?

I got two years to get this ship turned, because three years after that, he's going to be in a Seattle public school.

And y'all don't want to see me as a Mimi up in here.

I'm serious.

This is about, can we answer the question?

How are the children?

You should be able to walk in here and say, all the children are well.

That goes for labor.

That goes for the people sitting on this side of the room.

That goes for our janitorial engineers.

It's everybody.

It's all of our job.

In addition to that, what I was just ringing in my head when Director Rankin was speaking and Director Sarju brought it home, is I think a lot of people in our system, even I think everybody in our system makes mistakes.

That being said, I think everybody in our system, or at the bottom of my heart, I hope everybody in our system really wants to lead with the interest of children.

We have not done a good job of exemplifying how that is done, which is why we are trying to work through this framework.

So I think it's a perfect case study, the example that you just gave in terms of tonight.

We have to lead and show the system how to put children first in your decision making.

Because the alternative to that is fear.

And people are rightly afraid.

Because when mistakes happen, we have really serious consequences.

And I can guarantee you that wherever that mistake down that resulted in like the disruption of learning environments for our students, the person who or people or collective or whatever happened is probably terrified in this moment, right?

Because somebody is probably feeling some decision that they made along the way caused this.

And they don't want to end up on the other end of a really tough article or being called out because our system has retaliated and fired people for those types of things for decades, right?

So, and we say this all the time, we hope that what happens in the boardroom trickles down to the classroom.

But back to Director Hampson's point earlier in their conversation with Director Crone Barone, It is really difficult for folks who are on the other end of this conversation to trust that this is going to happen, which is where my questions initially came from.

I trust us, right?

And we still get it wrong a lot, as we should, because that's the point of this is to get it wrong until we get it right.

However, one of the key things that I hear when I am out in community is when I'm trying to sell a lot of what we do is that, yeah, that sounds great.

We'll see, right?

And there's not a good answer or follow-up for that.

And I think that that's what I want to acknowledge that a lot of folks who really want to believe in the work that we're doing are probably feeling.

It's like, yeah, and we're starting to see it slowly.

Folks are saying, like, yo, this work is really dope.

Like, I'm really excited about what y'all are doing.

At the same time, that can be unraveled.

In a heartbeat.

And so I'm trying to figure out and square what is the balance between us laying stuff out and leading by example, and at the same time, as I've said many times from this seat, we can only show people better than we can tell them.

That also doesn't guarantee that it's going to be this way forever.

And I think that's a discomfort that I have, is that if we put this in, yeah, there is a what if for me, but that doesn't necessarily mean that.

We don't move forward with what we know is true and right and what is necessary for the system.

Also beckon the fact that we do a really good job at the top end of showing what it looks like to lead our conversation and our decision-making with putting children first.

And that doesn't mean that people lose out.

And that also doesn't mean that some people won't feel like they're losing out.

Because when you lead with children, that means that whoever you were leading with before is no longer going to be in the front.

And we have to be able to mitigate for that and stand resolute in our decisions that by putting children first, the system has to look different.

And in the ways that the system will look different, that's going to be wildly uncomfortable for a lot of folks.

So I just wanted to lift up the quality of those conversations, because I think that they were really productive.

Director Rankin.

I'm sorry.

I missed someone over here.

Oh, come back really quick.

Sorry.

I just wanted to add to Director Hampson's point.

I mean, Director Hampson and I met in these chairs advocating to stop October staffing shuffles in 2015. We helped lead a group of parents called Kids Not Cuts talking about the massive disruption that a huge number of staffing changes was going to impact kids.

And what we're trying to do differently now is to say flat out, this is our expectation for the system.

Basically, this is scary and a shift, and it's the change that people have been begging for.

Begging for, like, please, we need a change.

Even Director Eden Mack, when she left her position early and actually completely left Seattle, said that everything was just a lot all the time.

Things were confusing, things were reactionary, and the board needed an intervention.

And there are folks talking about, you know, we need change, we need change.

Shifting into this governance structure that actually doesn't just Say things, but puts it on paper, puts it on record, holds the superintendent accountable to specific measurable goals.

I mean, there are folks that are not as, believe it or not, not everybody's watching a school board meeting, but people that are not as tapped in that when I've been out in community and I talked to, they're like, I can't believe this doesn't already exist.

I can't believe that's not how things have already been working.

And then they're like, but that makes a lot of sense because they have experienced this reactionary surprise kind of thing over and over.

And I think a lot of us came to the board to address that.

I know we did.

We talked about it when we both campaigned in 2019 about centering student needs, about being transparent about what it takes to run a school, including outside funding.

Not to say we shouldn't have that funding, but what does it take?

How do we all together as a whole community talk about the resources it actually takes to put things into our schools that our kids need?

And then how do we make sure that every kid can have that education that we would want for our own child?

How do we make sure that every kid can have that no matter what neighborhood they live in?

And it doesn't mean no outside funding, but it means for decades, forever, I don't know, grants come in, and they come in as earmarked, and they go to the thing they were earmarked for, and we don't talk about the fact that however many counselors are being funded by PTAs.

We don't talk about the fact that somebody mentioned the half-time librarian.

Every kid should have a full-time librarian.

Every kid should have a full-time librarian.

That's absurd that it's even a question.

But if we're not willing to talk about what it takes to get there, what our options are within the constraints, because we do have constraints.

We can't pretend that the money limitations don't exist.

But we have to stop talking about this building to building to building and talk about it as a whole community.

That's actually our job.

How do we pass a budget that is going to support the education that the community says it wants for its kids?

Period.

And we can't do that if we won't talk about all the different things that it takes that go into actually funding schools.

And it's not even just about funding.

What are the resources?

What are the supports?

What is the education that we want for our children?

And how do we make sure that every kid has access to that?

How do we make sure that in another 10 years there's not parents coming here again with you two up here as board directors saying, we met when we came here fighting for this?

This is how we get out of this cycle is to not just double down and continue things the way they've always been, is to make a shift and say, we are doing things differently because we have heard how much people want transparency, how much people want to support our schools and our kids, How much they want to know how to contribute.

How much they don't want to be contributing to inequities but they still want to support their school.

We can't do that if we won't all talk about it together.

I mean that's what I hear every day and have been hearing it every day for 10 years.

How do we get out of this?

How do we in a city with As many resources as we have, as brilliant teachers as we have, as amazing kids as we have, the only thing stopping us from doing right by all of them is fear of doing things differently.

But at the same time, we're saying we all want to do things differently.

But here's even the better thing.

We could pass this.

It could be amended.

It could be changed.

It doesn't get set in stone.

The only thing that makes a policy a policy is that it's brought here, discussed in public, and voted on by the board.

The majority has to vote on it.

That's it.

That becomes our direction to the superintendent.

So we could literally the very next day be like, whoops, actually, we don't like a part of that.

And we somehow missed that.

Let's bring it back and talk about it again and vote on it again.

That is how this works.

That's how we do this job of governance as community representatives.

Policymaking is actually our school, our learning process.

Sorry.

That's right.

Director Samaritz.

I'm sorry, Director Song.

It's okay.

So as you know, I submitted an amendment suggesting that we take out four of the clauses in this document.

And so when I was reading this policy, I think that the intent of each of these individual clauses are very understandable to me.

We've had collectively, individually, many, many conversations, I think, Those are understandable and knowable to me.

I kind of explored this from a slightly different angle.

I was trying to understand from the superintendent's perspective how he might actually execute on this.

And I think that we really need to be striking a balance between clear expectations for one and only employee And then also giving him enough flexibility and try to avoid being prospective.

So this amendment, I think, is reflective of that.

And so I'm going to kind of quickly go through each clause to describe my rationale.

So clause six, I think my thought here is that what we're trying to achieve here is that we want our budget to be driving student outcomes.

We're funding kids.

That's what we're trying to do.

And I think we can say that without having to bring in the funding model and the staffing ratios about it.

I think it is a little too perspective.

Clause 10, again, I think the values are there.

We want not just equitable paying benefits for the people who work with our kids in our school buildings.

We want excellent pay and benefits for them.

My thought about it, however, is that the district does have somewhat limited leverage on this, right?

Because the compensation increases for our largest labor partner are really set by the state legislature.

And I think that there is opportunity for us as a body to be advocating for that.

I saw that was one of the WASDA legislative priorities.

I made that one of my top priorities in that list that I submitted to Director Rankin.

And so Given that that is essentially a directive from the state, I don't think that we have so much leverage over that.

So that was kind of my thought about Clause 10, although I do agree with where this is going around the multi-year planning of it.

I think we have been flat-footed multiple times with that.

So just wanted to share that.

I just didn't know how much control we had over that.

I think I'll take clause 11 and 12 together, which we haven't really discussed yet.

Those are the ones related to grants.

My thought on this is that grants are just simply not a major factor in our budgeting process.

And while I think that some more reporting on what grants the district has, I think this is better tackled in a separate grant policy.

It just is not a major factor in our budgeting process.

And I think having a separate grant policy where we are really working with community Having direct conversations with our building leaders, I haven't had an opportunity to talk to our principals to really understand what the implications of these two clauses are from their perspective.

So I would encourage us to try to tackle this in a separate grant policy.

And if anything, Something that I do think that has more of an impact on our budget that I would prioritize over the grants is requiring the legislative agenda to have a fiscal impact because that is a major lever of our budget and where I think that I don't feel like the numbers are there for us.

The legislative piece we the fiscal impact of the legislative agenda you mean the well so that's talked about all the time during during the development and then as legislative session goes by as we do or don't get our priorities we that that goes back to our It comes back to us and our budget office and is then reflected in iterative work sessions.

Help me understand better what you mean by the legislative agenda and the fiscal impact.

I think we know what the potential fiscal impact is, but we're not prioritizing our asks based on the financial impact.

I'll give a very specific example.

I don't know that we did enough advocacy work around transportation which is the second largest source of our deficit for this district.

So I would actually seriously push back on that because there was statewide, like that was for districts across the state, for OSPI, for WASDA, transportation and special education were the top priorities.

We didn't get what we wanted.

We got a study instead of, but that's not for lack of advocacy and the numbers were there and districts were sharing this is the gap, this is the impact.

I don't think that the district ever conveyed to us what the fiscal impact around the transportation was.

I just took a guess based on how much money we've been improving for McKinney-Vento and special education busing based on the sizes of those contract.

And I don't know, like I think that so I just offer this as an example of where I think some including something around legislative And financial impact could be included in this financial policy because it's much more impactful than, say, grants.

Can I respond to the grants piece of it?

And maybe you guys should have the legislative conversation offline because I think there's some misalignment there.

I would just reemphasize that if it's not direction to the superintendent, then it doesn't belong in this particular guardrail.

But you may be intending something different.

So I'm not sure about that.

I do want to say that the reason that I, as we heard today, we're talking about $4 million right now is the amount of money that we're looking to retain from the state.

PTAs gave $4 million, over $4.8 million this year to this district.

And the individual budgets of ASBs at buildings are somewhere between nothing and millions of dollars.

Luna and I sat down for an extended period of time and looked at the impact of The fiscal management of ASB and other resources, booster clubs, et cetera, that support the experience of students in middle and high schools.

And so one of the reasons why, for a very student-centered reason, that is why that is in there, because the experience of students in our schools, even though the number is small, The impact on the daily life of students is actually significant.

I don't know if you remember when we had the student come talk to us about, from Roosevelt, it was actually supposed to be, I don't know what the work session was supposed to be on, something completely different.

Maybe it was on student board members.

I don't know, but we heard about instead about the inequity of the fees that she was having to pay or that her family was having to pay at Roosevelt.

We're currently not following state law on that, right?

That would be a reason to not do it because there's actually a really strong state law.

We still have not taken an appropriate action to clarify for the superintendent what we mean about that.

And so that was why I chose to include it.

We could leave it to the state to call us into compliance.

However, that would not be a statement of our values around the transparency which there isn't any in terms of how the money that goes into buildings that is not directly from state sources or levy dollars is being used to have impact on kids and what is their experience with that?

I have heard more about that from students.

Lunch, nutrition services, the things that we hear from students in terms of what really impacts their experience day to day, these are pretty high on the list.

That would be my pushback on that in terms of why grants, per se, actually are incredibly impactful.

I agree with you.

Percentage-wise, it's a drop in the bucket.

And I agree with you in terms of the felt impact by our students.

My point is that it's not a major factor for us when we are making budget decisions.

That's why I think it really belongs in a separate bucket.

When we're approving the budget, we're not considering what the grants are.

Actually that's not true because the grants are included in the budgeting process as part of the equity tiering.

I don't know if you remember the big sheet but they're actually included.

They are used to factor in what money is given to individual schools and yet we don't actually know what the impact of those dollars is.

I don't think that the tier like you're talking about the tier The tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four.

When you look at the big sheet, there's a section...

We haven't gotten a big sheet in...

I realize that.

They haven't been updated in a while.

Not since my term started.

But it is included in the calculation of individual...

I mean, hence the other parts of the policy, right?

To try to provide greater transparency about what money is coming into these buildings and what impact is it having?

Because those monies are factored in too.

Schools do get less if there are other monies coming in.

That can be a factor.

Or at least it puts them into a category that would cause them to not receive a particular allocation.

That brings me back to the point where I was saying is that I haven't had an opportunity to talk to principals about what is the implication of this clause.

So my suggestion was to just tackle this in a separate policy.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make sense from the standpoint of like us, our focus is on the goals and guardrails and our governance policies.

That's our focus, not creating a whole other sets of policies.

But also the 4.5 million dollars that was granted to the district in PTA spending I want to be really clear that's not total PTA money that's money that came from PTAs to the district to pay for basic education to pay for staff.

And we have to talk about that when we talk about what it takes to fully staff a school.

There's plenty of other ways that PTA Monday perpetuates or doesn't inequities, and also ways that do really awesome things for kids.

And when it comes to how we allocate staff to buildings and what students have access to, this is not a grants issue.

This for me is a transparency issue about What's happening in our buildings?

I honestly like if as a whole community we're all committed to a full time librarian at every school and the way to get that and get some other things that we want is for PTAs with means to fund half a librarian.

That's not ideal obviously but that's a way for every kid to get a full-time librarian.

We have not been willing in my 10 years of doing this.

It's like the third rail.

We haven't been willing to actually talk about it.

And because we won't talk about it, we also can't go to the legislature with clear and honest information about what we need them to fund.

And so it may seem like a small amount of money, but it has a big impact in our buildings.

It's about staffing, because our $1.5 billion or whatever, that pays for a lot of stuff.

That includes construction and all these things.

So that's hard to find the impact to our students.

But when we're talking about what do we want for our kids, And then we're in a public school system with constraints and we're trying to serve all kids and trying to get all kids what they need.

And then some people are kind of excusing themselves from that conversation because they're just taking care of their own kids.

We can't have an honest conversation if we're not just talking about, hey, what does this mean?

What does this do?

And then also in terms of principles and how it impacts buildings, I can tell you there will be a lot of principles that are probably freaking out.

Because they have closed gaps of things that they need at their school with PTA dollars.

But we have to actually talk about it because we end up creating these really terrible situations where parents are actually, through their dollars, having a bigger influence over how they think the school should run and having influence over people's jobs.

And saying, well, actually, we want to pay for this, but we don't want to pay for that.

So can you just fire her?

Because we want her instead.

I mean, it just, I, yes, that's a real example.

That's a real example.

So it's just but the fact that we won't aren't willing to talk about it because people are afraid to give up what they have and I don't want to take money away from anybody's kids.

I want every kid to have what they need.

We have to get everybody's been all I hear transparency and equity transparency and equity and we were not honest about that if we're not talking about what is going into our schools and where it's coming from and how we shift things to make sure every kid can have what we want them to have.

And that may include private fundraising, which is fine.

But we can't pretend it doesn't exist.

Yes, I guess I'm the chair now.

Yes, go ahead.

Go ahead.

No, I appreciate the conversation because I agree with so much of what's being said.

I also want to acknowledge that there is an amazing, you know, movement right now among PTCAs to group together and do it.

The South End's been doing it.

The North End's got a group doing it too now.

They're trying to look at their fundraising more equitably and how they can support the schools that don't have the parent power that some other schools have.

So I wouldn't want to supersede that movement and that effort because that's great.

I mean, I know anybody would say, we'd rather not fundraise dollars, but they also, We can't replace what they're funding right now and what they're helping other schools fund.

If we don't have that mechanism in place or a vision or a view of when that's going to be happening, we're creating We're just creating more unmet needs.

And again, I'm not just saying for those schools that can fundraise because they've got some great mechanisms.

I forget the names of the groups that are formed in the North and South to raise money for all the schools and be more equitable about their distribution of that.

So I admire that.

And I just want us to keep talking about this.

I'm not trying to say right now, let's kill this because we do have that goal of the equity and of getting rid of the outside funding for individual schools.

It's a bigger conversation to have and this might live somewhere else as Director Somers is saying.

I don't think he's necessarily saying this is a bad idea.

It's just like maybe this is not the place it belongs.

And I think that that was kind of some of Director, President Hersey's sayings with the other ones that some of this, you know, We're not sure if there is a better place for it that allows us also to have more conversation about it.

Because I really appreciate this whole thing.

I mean, I have questions still because I'm kind of figuring out like, okay, these are things that don't actually exist yet, but they might exist as we get through the policy work.

Because I was really thrown by that too at first.

I was trying to figure out what we're looking at.

The parallel process.

Yeah, and I was like, what did I miss?

So I appreciate the explanation of that because I want to learn, I want to know more about that.

But I also, and I wonder specifically looking at number six, which we had some discussion about earlier, is it enough to just remove Like the staffing ratio is words, like use or agree to funding models.

And the rest I do, I think outright saying student-centered is it should be everywhere.

And I wonder if there's just certain verbiage that even number, I was actually going to bring up number nine.

I had concerns about that.

And I wondered if it could just end after Provisions, like our end after fiscally sound due to any existing, and end it right there, because then we get in an area that's a whole different work, whole different body of our job, a whole different policy.

And that probably, the rest of that, if we want to get into the rest of that, probably belongs in 50-20, which is our collective bargaining policy.

But I get that we do want to be fiscally sound and mitigate risk.

So some of these, again, the spirit is awesome.

Parts of them, maybe, if maybe that's the answer.

It's just taking out some words that are kind of the buzzwords that Dr. Kirsten is worried about and Dr. Somers is worried about because I think that's part of what we're trying to compromise.

There could be some compromise on this, I think, and that's just what I'm trying to offer as a possible pathway.

So if there are somehow we have to if people have actual I just want to be clear this has existed since April this policy.

So yeah Director Song you've had it since April so which is the first time that I sent it to you the three of us brought it forward as I stated when we brought forward the I brought it up then and made sure all the board directors knew about it, the resolution to have a reduced program.

I insisted on a long time between intro and action for this.

If we were not in the current budget crisis that we're in, I would not be moving this forward.

But critical decisions are going to be made this year for which we need to give really clear guidance.

And this is the place.

This is the only place that we give this type of clear guidance to our superintendent, and it is the Certainly the one and only place and the place that has not existed in the past where the board says to the superintendent these are our expectations.

These are the limitations within you will meet those expectations and here's how you're going to demonstrate to us through actual measurements that you have done these things.

Right.

And so that's what comes with this is measurement.

Right.

So if it's not here it's not going to get measured.

Any updates to other policies would flow from this.

That's what the conversation I had with Dr. Buddleman is that the updates then as staff sees necessary for the administration, the implementation of these things would be made The board of course would approve them to say oh yes these are in fact consistent with the guardrail that we've established with the things that are with our goals and with our guardrails.

All the other policies need to be consistent with this but this is where we put our line in the sand stake in the ground however you want to say it to be really clear about what our expectations are and then and that's it.

That's not to say that we can't say a thousand other things but saying a thousand other things has absolutely worked not at all for this school district.

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

As far as the PTA fundraising stuff this doesn't preclude the superintendent from continuing to accept $4.8 million from PTAs.

It doesn't preclude it's a matter of saying and if there's parts of it that we all decide should be Soften to allow for more flexibility.

There was an ASB one that was in there before that I got feedback on and I softened that.

We can definitely change some of the language.

The idea is to provide the without this requirement then we can't provide families with the transparency of how these dollars are actually being spent in our buildings.

And we've only even had that opportunity for two years since ESSA required actuals.

I don't think most people don't know that until two years ago we weren't required to report actuals in buildings.

So we were just budget things would happen and we would not look back.

Superintendent Jones is trying to preside over a district that for the first time in its history is going to actually look at what are we spending and how is it aligned with the goals that we have set up for ourselves.

This is a starting point.

So the PTA thing that you're talking about, PTAs don't report to us.

And they shouldn't.

And people have gotten into real trouble with this in the past.

And there are a couple of us in this room that have presided over the Seattle Council PTSA and really pushed for PTAs to do the right thing.

The whole notion of bringing funds together to do sharing that kind of thing.

The evidence and the data out there is not good.

People want to give to their own school communities.

And I sent you all a presentation from PTA that Sabrina Burr actually sent me, which was really helpful, that talks about what families want to see.

I think Director Rankin stated it pretty well earlier, is they want to be able to contribute to their school community, and they want to know that they're doing so equitably, that they're not making those mistakes.

But they don't want to necessarily not be able.

And so coming from feeling like It is there's an element of tremendous lack of ethics to parents buying teachers right.

And this district has to figure that out because we got a lot of checks being written that we are cashing.

And that we're maybe about to cash I don't know but we can't have honest conversation with these folks about the money that is coming to these buildings and what we're saving where if we're not demanding this information.

If I thought that it would happen that there would be the wherewithal and the commitment for it to happen without this yeah I wouldn't have put it in there.

And it's not because I don't believe in Superintendent Jones it's because I know that it is a Really, really hard thing to tackle.

Well, and it's been an issue that community members have been begging to be addressed for a long time.

I have a suggestion.

I have a suggestion.

It is 748. As the chair, I would like to suggest that because intro was today and the vote isn't planned for another month and even that could move if it needed to, I would suggest that we pause unless there's something pressing that we pause and take the opportunity to talk to community members read it over again submit feedback or suggested amendments via the school board the board office or well can they Now that it's intro'd we still can't have discussions off to the side but if somebody had a suggested amendment can they send it by email to the full board in between now and action.

We can get you some clarity by email and follow up to this.

Okay.

So, yeah, my suggestion is I sense we're probably going to end up repeating ourselves.

So unless there's and prolonging the same wonders, unless there's an urgent question, my recommendation would be we pause this.

Oh, yeah, superintendent.

Chair Rankin and board members I found this to be a fruitful conversation anytime we're talking about how we hold ourselves accountable and me accountable and staff to being to centering students to being resource stewards.

to be really focused on our highest priorities.

I've always find that to be a great conversation.

I would even suggest I know it's late in the evening.

However, I don't feel like we've gotten to directional conclusion.

And if there's not a way forward to do that, I think it's We need to set up some time for the next conversation.

But I find this to be super helpful.

One of my favorite sayings is, clarity is kindness.

And we're getting to that point.

But I think that the intentionality of this conversation, the forthrightness of this conversation is well.

I mean, I think this is good time spent.

So if you all could spend just a little more time, I'm asking For the board to talk about what are your next concrete steps because I I'd like for this to to come to closure around how are we going to get this financial policy either lifted or modified or or abandoned.

But I think this this has been tremendously helpful for me me being an observer and up here hearing you all talk about direction to the superintendent I I'm actually feeling like there's clarity being emerging as we speak so.

To the extent that you all want to continue this dialogue, I'd just like to hear what the next steps are.

So I'm very aware that it's late in the evening.

We're still a solid quorum, but we are missing two valuable voices.

So typically we would bring something for introduction, have a few questions, feedback, and then a couple weeks later we'd see it again.

This is obviously a new thing that has a lot more Complexity to it.

So my question for you all is, do we see value in providing comments, asking questions still now, or would it be more helpful for us to take a pause, either set up some time for, I don't know, a work session, or I'll work with the board office on getting, you know, how do people provide feedback?

What would be the most helpful way for you all to proceed?

Yeah, I think I don't know the scheduling and but a work session would be awesome because we can have dedicated conversation and get more clarity because right now we could probably go another two hours on this, you know, just because we all have so many questions and and brilliance to share in regard to it.

That's just what I'm thinking.

Do you have one tactical question, which was I think clause nine was least clear for me on what the intent was.

So if there was a practical, like a specific example of what, like a problem statement that we were, like an example that we were trying to solve with Clause 9, that would be helpful.

Do you mind reading it?

Oh, yeah.

Omid or fail to propose budget changes which mitigate risk and or are fiscally sound due to any existing provision and a collective bargaining agreement for which there is no legal requirement.

That's about working conditions versus the educational environment, right?

Actually, that is written in a confusing way.

So, oh, OK.

I know what this is.

Yeah.

So this is based on an example.

This is based on explicit examples that have happened over and over again since I've been on the board and have seen happen before that, which is that If there is a significant proposed budget change or component that is incredibly important to mitigate fiscal risk, other risk, and is fiscally sound, what we've heard in the past is, oh, that's in the CBA, we can't touch it.

And so things have been omitted from being presented to us as a board for even for consideration because I mean consideration as a board right because oh we don't want to touch it because it's in the CBA even if it's not required and it's not a working condition right it's just something that's in there.

That has happened on many occasions where we have said well why didn't we do this oh we can't touch that because it's in the CBA.

I get it.

You're saying we don't want to open the CBA right now to address this thing even though it could save us millions of dollars and otherwise the impacts are not necessarily impactful on the other side in a way that students will benefit, but because it is a hard road to go down to Suggest that we reopen that.

But I'm saying for transparency's sake, we have to at least consider those things.

We can't have them omitted from the discussion.

We're going to have lots more conversation about that one, too.

Because, yeah, my question then would be like, well, is this going to violate the collective bargaining agreement if they brought something like that forward?

Because that is a document we have to respect and honor and consider.

I hear you, because I want to be able to talk about things, too, that we're not allowed to so far.

But I also don't want us to be getting any legal jeopardy because of that one.

And I don't know enough.

Maybe it's great.

Maybe it's fine.

But I don't know right now.

Yeah.

And I want to be really clear.

There is no, like, we will know, right?

This is the perfection is the enemy of the good.

I'm not saying this is perfect.

It's not meant to be perfect, and in fact, it's meant to be reviewed in June, which is less than a year away.

to look at and consider again.

So just in terms of like talking about when this will be looked at again, this district needs time to spend with these types of requirements and processes.

That is why the, so unless like somehow, it doesn't go into cement, right?

I mean that's what we keep, this is an attempt to get folks At minimum with this particular policy you've got to review it every year and that means you've got to consider really carefully.

Why would the superintendent bring something forward that we can't legally do?

I don't see that happening.

Have we been clear that we expect to see everything even if it means if children will benefit and our budget will benefit and it means we have to open the CBA, we have the fiduciary responsibility.

We literally have the fiduciary responsibility of having that conversation and not doing it out of fear of who it will piss off.

I don't want to go on longer if we're not trying to go on longer.

But I mean then maybe it could just be clear it clarified a little more in this that it's with the intention of looking towards opening the CBA you know like it's so it's not I don't I don't want to.

No no no that's not what I'm saying.

I misheard you then I'm sorry.

No I'm saying that the superintendent can't omit that from the budget presentation as options.

Omit what?

changes that would mitigate risk or be fiscally responsible.

Yeah.

Then why do we even have anything about the collective bargaining agreement in there?

I mean, I got your example.

It sounds like you're saying, again, I'm probably misunderstanding you.

I'm sorry.

But I don't want to give the impression we are, you know, Asking, giving the superintendent direction contrary to, you know, our agreements with our labor partners in the CBAs.

So again, this is longer conversation probably, and I'm not clear enough then on maybe what you're trying to say here.

So I'll let us move on if someone else has another comment.

I just, yeah, again, I'm just trying to make sure that we're not giving guidance that is going to, you know, I do see here you say, for which there is no legal requirement, and so that's very important.

And maybe that's enough.

I'm assuming Greg's looked at this.

I think that what this is getting at, and it sounds like we just need more information, is that already in state law, CBA outweighs policy.

So if we have policy that says these things should happen and there's an agreement in the CBA that says, no, that shouldn't happen, these things should happen, it doesn't matter what the policy says.

By state law, CBA overrides it.

I don't know.

I want more information about this to understand.

That's all the information.

There's no more information.

Do we want to consider when we're doing budget planning, do we want to consider something that might It would cause us to open the CBA if it were to be recommended and we were to accept that recommendation that yes, we have to make this change or we have to do this and it means we're going to have to open the CBA to do it.

It's not directing anybody to open the CBA.

It's discussing it and talking about the possibility of it.

I know we're not...

The budget change.

But if we're recommending a budget change that would require reopening the CBA, is that what you're saying then?

Yes, to not omit that.

Yeah.

That is information we should have.

And we can't guarantee that, okay, so then we run the risk of recommending something, asking for something that we can't guarantee can't happen then because we can't, obviously, it's not up to us alone if we open it.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, okay.

I mean, as long as we're going to that eyes wide open with that possibility.

But it's just part of creating transparency.

Yeah.

All for that.

Yeah and I guess I would ask folks to you know back to the beginning think about representing the values this is Any conversation with community is about what values do you see that need to be represented by this, and then how we communicate those values, not whether or not you want this or not.

That is not what it's about.

It's not about what anybody wants.

Just listening.

Well let me just let me just finish.

So it's our it's the board's direction to the superintendent about the community value of transparency and alignment with goals.

So the conversations I've had with staff in terms of communicating with them, like, am I getting the right tone or heading the right direction of what you need to hear in order to move in this direction?

And so far, it's been yes.

But obviously, We all have to be on the same relative page as to whether or not that's how the value is represented.

But that's the nature of the engagement, right?

It's not meant to in this environment.

May go back out to the community.

We will go back out.

The board will go back out and say, reassess goals and vision and values.

This has been a clear value.

If we disagree about the values, that's another thing.

I think that's what I'm not necessarily hearing is a disagreement about the values.

And that's what would cause something to be eliminated is like this doesn't represent the values.

If it's wordsmithing, you know, that's fine.

If it's clarity, if it's a duplication, there's already been some things that have been duplicated.

If somehow it's not, you know, like I said, number 10 is really not about, you know, we could let that go.

It's not.

I think also what we have to remember is that this is new and we're trying to we as a board are trying to write a super messy ship and this actually has like when I look at financial guardrail policies from other districts they're not this lengthy because There has been more consistency and clarity in terms of where different decisions get made.

We're not in that position.

We're in the position where there's a lot of questions that have come up again and again and again, and we want the clarity.

So ideally, we wouldn't have all of these different things and say all of these different things of like, oh, you also need to look at this.

Oh, you also need to look at that.

You also need to look at that.

Because that would be happening regularly, and it hasn't been.

When people are talking about transparency and not understanding, let's get it.

Let's get that transparency.

What does it take to go into a budget?

What do we need to know?

Where are the decisions that we can actually make around how money gets spent?

And I think that's why folks sit through budget work sessions and then go, you know, it's public.

We talk about it.

But then we still get, well, that didn't feel transparent.

And the information's there, but it's not straightforward because we haven't, I think, explored, like, well, where is the barrier to this happening?

Is it a state law thing?

Is it something else?

Where is it?

So anyway, I feel like we could keep kind of having the same conversation, and we should probably

So in part I prompted this.

This time next week I'll be bringing forward to you all buckets of consideration for the next budget.

A month after that I'll be bringing to you a resolution with all the pieces in it.

And so with this reconciliation of this dialogue it gives Myself, staff, you all, kind of the parameters for what we're talking about.

And so we are going to get there collectively whether we default into it or whether we come to some conclusion.

And so I pushed a little further for this for this conversation to continue just so we can get that clarity because going forward we already know it's going to be difficult.

At best we saw a tip of the iceberg today and without the collective understanding without us having clarity around where we want to go and wind up we're going to be continuing to disappoint it.

We're not we're going to have unmet expectations.

The demands are going to be.

It's forthcoming and we may not as a collective know how to respond.

And so this dialogue, that's why I claimed it to be rich.

It's something that I'm listening to, my team is listening to around, what's the temperature of the board?

How are they representing vision and value?

So I don't want to discount this dialogue.

I think it's been really helpful for me and we can continue to push.

Like I said, next week I'm bringing you forward something that you all are going to start to make real decisions on.

And then after that, it is the package.

And so I'm affirming kind of where we're going.

And the further we can get to some conclusion on ideas like this, whether it become a policy or not, At least directionally, I think there's some opportunity here.

So thank you for extending this.

Madam Chair, I'm putting it back on you on how to proceed regarding the rest of the agenda because I have team here waiting and you might poll your team to see where we want to go.

Thank you.

I would say connected to your comments, Superintendent Jones, this is a All of the things that are in this conversation and all of the discomfort and challenges is something that Seattle Public Schools has needed to reckon with for a long time and there have been reasons for it to be pushed out and because of the financial situation we're kind of being forced to have it.

If not us, who?

So we have here scheduled on the agenda a progress monitoring session.

I am sensing we may not have the stamina for that right now.

Can I have feedback from my board directors here on whether we want to do the progress monitoring now or let everybody go home and schedule it?

Family survey said.

I couldn't totally read all of the handwriting on it.

How are we feeling?

Do we want to pack it in?

Seriously, I could go either way.

I can power through or we can call it.

It's up to you guys.

OK so let's I will connect with President Hersey and so that he and Dr. Jones can reschedule this time and also connect with him on next next opportunity for the Gardner policy.

So there being no further business on the agenda.

Oh, sorry.

Yes.

Sorry.

There's sorry.

Okay.

So we're going to skip the reschedule progress monitoring.

Quickly, we have board self-evaluation, and we have under informational items, I have nothing to read.

It is just the questions from directors and responses from staff that you can find online and are linked to.

Board self-evaluation, Director Rivera-Smith did that this time around, meaning, oh, no, it skips Director Hampson because you actually started, so one, two, so Director Song, you, I know.

I'm just saying you'll be next for a time use evaluation.

Yes.

And work session.

So we're not doing committee meetings, but we're doing work session.

I thought we were doing it by month.

Oh, is it by month?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Oh, so I'm still doing the rest of the month?

So ignore me.

I'll ask.

I did September, I guess.

I don't know what's going on.

Which did you do?

I did September 27th.

Okay.

That's all I did.

The board meeting from September 27th.

That's what I just did.

You were supposed to do all of September.

I did all of August.

I did for the last meeting.

I did a September meeting.

So it's not by month.

Anyway, I'll check in with Director Hersey.

Okay.

I think we're supposed to each do it for a full month.

I think that's the idea.

Otherwise, it's...

Say again?

I think we're supposed to each do it for a full month.

No?

I don't know.

I'll check with Brenda.

I don't know.

Yeah, I was not understanding that direction.

Go ahead and what did you...

Well, I found that you spend the most part time on Other.

98% of our time was on the other category of Superintendent Commons, Board Commons, Laws and Reports, Public Testimony, Introduction Items, Budget Status Report, and the Policy Manual Review Work Session was also put under Other.

That could arguably have gone under a different category, but it was recommended to be Other.

I'm wondering if we're the best people to fill these out.

I don't even remember who, I'm not going to name names, but somebody recommended that perhaps we ask AJ to do these for us since He's paid to do this.

We pay him something.

I don't even know what.

He doesn't have time to do that.

Yeah, or someone else because, again, we're kind of guessing at a lot of this, I think, and then getting feedback.

Is he on cue to give us feedback on these eventually at some point?

Otherwise, we're just looking at them very briefly and not.

You mean feedback on whether or not we tracked our time accurately?

On how we're using our time.

No, we have targets for moving towards more student outcomes time.

To try to get to 50%.

Goals, okay.

But until we check goal, there's no discussion with him on this?

Nope, it's up to us.

Okay, well, that seems like maybe a missing element, because I would be great to get some feedback on how we get to that goal, because I don't know that we're getting there.

We have, like, again, it was very little time spent on the stuff that we're theoretically supposed to be spending it on, which, again, I'm not trying to poo-poo on what we did spend our time on, because all the comments and public testimony is incredibly valuable.

Even the policy manual review sessions where I'm like, is that really other?

Because that does seem in line with student outcomes.

You know, work.

But I wasn't sure where to put it.

Which one?

The policy manual review work session.

That was 71 minutes.

There's a training component?

There's a training.

Yeah, and I think Dr. Rankin kind of recommended other, which, again, we were both kind of just trying to figure it out.

No, for the policy manual, for the work session that we did, that wasn't a training.

We were talking about the tools.

So that would be other.

I guess it's other.

I mean, it's important.

Like, being other doesn't mean it's bad.

Yeah, no, no, that's what I'm saying.

I'm not trying to poo-poo on others.

But that was where the majority of our time was spent.

Yeah.

AJ, I guess, is watching our meeting because he just texted me, yes, do it for each month as a whole.

So he does have time to watch our meetings.

You and I should talk maybe because I think I just...

No, I did September.

Oh, yeah, before the work session maybe.

I did August.

Okay, we'll figure out the timeline because I did...

I wonder if we did the same.

Anyway.

We did the September pieces of it, so yeah.

So yes, we do do it as a month at a time.

But we report it in between.

But I think it's a valuable exercise for us each to go through is actually documenting the time.

What I think we could probably use some administrative help with is the compilation because just an Excel spreadsheet going through a bunch of people tends to get screwed up.

So.

Can I make one.

This is about the time use evaluation that when our time use evaluation gets bad as it will be for a meeting like this because we're doing this and we're not getting to progress monitoring which is why like AG's on the phone to do progress monitoring.

Oh crap.

That's why he's on.

Yep.

Because we are behind in our implementation and so The more that we're behind on implementation, the more we'll continue to use the old models of operation So the sooner that we can get through implementation which also by the way is the number one item on the teaching and learning audit that was done however many years ago that we can't check off yet because we haven't had full implementation we're going to continue to struggle with our with our time use.

The more that we move towards monitoring towards student outcomes the better it will get.

Yep.

Developing approving and monitoring outcomes and setting goals and guardrails and evaluating the superintendent.

OK.

There being no further business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 8 16 p.m.