Seattle Schools Board Special Meeting Aug. 26, 2025

All right, good afternoon.

We will start here in just a moment.

So Joe, Sarah, and Brandon are online.

I believe Director Sarju is somewhere.

Oh, OK.

All right.

Well this is president top.

I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 433 p.m.

Please note that this meeting is being recorded.

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

For the record I will call the roll.

This is president top vice president Briggs.

Here.

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

I'm back.

Director Mizrahi.

Present.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Sarge is currently not here, but it sounds like she will be joining us shortly.

So tonight's meeting is sort of broken up into three parts.

We're going to start with a presentation from HYA, our search firm for superintendent.

They'll walk us through the leadership profile.

Then we will move to part two, which is a presentation on civics education in our district.

This comes from a request from Director Rankin.

And then we will move into part three, which is an enrollment update.

Enrollment has been a major topic this year and an area we, I think, know we need to see some changes and do a little bit better.

So we'll get an update there.

So we're gonna jump right in and I'm gonna pass it off to Julia here to start our presentation on the engagement portion of our, that we just wrapped up on our superintendent search.

Great.

Excuse me.

Thank you, President Toppin.

Apologies for the froggy voice.

You have a summer cold.

The board office partnered with HYA to support the community engagement process for the superintendent search.

Can I have the?

Yes.

Thank you.

The process included multiple modes of engagement, including in-person sessions, virtual sessions, focus groups, single language sessions, the online survey, and then individual comments that community members provided via email, let's talk, and phone calls.

To inform our Seattle Public Schools and greater Seattle community of the engagement opportunities over the spring and summer, we utilized email, social media, text message via talking points, robocalls, and individual outreach by community leaders, as well as the district website, and then Seattle Times also very graciously advertised the community engagement sessions for us.

I do want to thank our community partners and leaders for their insights into what our community needed to be able to fully participate in this process.

It allowed us to pivot mid-process and tailor to ensure that we were reaching the voices that needed to be heard.

I also want to thank our community partners for their support and leadership in then facilitating, organizing and recruiting participants.

Without them, we would not have been able to reach the diverse voices that you will see represented in the leadership profile.

In total, HYA facilitated 36 engagement sessions.

There were seven general community and parent sessions, a combination of virtual and in-person.

Three of those meetings were co-facilitated and led by a community partner.

So a special thank you to the Seattle Council PTSA and the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition for their partnership and facilitation of those general meetings.

interpretation at all seven of these sessions was provided in American Sign Language and our top five spoken languages in the district in addition to the language specific sessions that were held in the focus groups to ensure that community members could participate in multiple sessions 29 focus group sessions were held.

I'm not going to go over this list.

It also is in the leadership profile report.

But the focus groups did focus on communities and voices that are not always well represented in our engagements.

We held multiple sessions for some communities where initial participation was low.

And this is where we really relied on our community partners and leaders to help recruit and help us organize for those sessions.

Groups with an asterisk are the ones that we partnered with a community leader to organize, facilitate, and spread the word about both the engagement session and the online survey to increase participation there.

I want to thank HYA and Mr. Ali for their leadership and partnership in this effort.

and for allowing us to tailor the process to what we heard from our community leaders that our sps community needed including extending the timeline and then partnering with community leader and partners to make sure that we were reaching everyone who needed to be heard from i will now pass it over to mr ali to present the leadership profile report

so real quick before we do that sorry mr. Ali I just want to make a note that we one of the things that we said to some of these community groups that we would go back out to present the leadership profile report to them so the board will bring the the final report back out to community and staff is working on details for that soon and board directors should be be hopefully willing to participate in that process as well so we'll share You should be seeing more information soon on those next steps.

All right, thank you.

Mr. Ali.

Thank you, Madam President.

I would most certainly be remiss if I did not thank Ms. Warth, Ms. Redmond, Chief Redmond, as well as the HYA team.

I tell you, this was a Herculean effort.

TO WORK ACROSS THE SUMMER.

WE BEGAN BEFORE THE SCHOOL YEAR CONCLUDED AND WE LITERALLY WORKED THROUGH THE SUMMER AND WERE ABLE TO ACCOMMODATE EACH AND EVERY INDIVIDUAL GROUPS WHETHER IT BE CHALLENGES AND OR WORK AROUND THEIR VARYING schedules, and so it most certainly would not have been able to be accomplished had we not put our collective efforts together.

And so, again, you're thanking me, but I want to thank you immensely, as well as the other individuals within the Seattle public school system who were instrumental in assisting in this vein.

Also, I'd be slipshod if I did not uplift the community partners.

They double downed, whether it was the indigenous Native American community, the black community.

Each and every community, they had something going on during this process and they were able to work with us and we were able to work with them very collegially to make sure their voice was captured as well as heard.

And so again, that shows the type of individuals who are in this community who truly care about public education as well as the students within the school system.

One last group of individuals I want to uplift, your parents.

Your parents as well as your teachers and your students really responded to this survey.

The parental involvement underscores the fact that the voices are significantly important.

In addition to that, they want to see a better Seattle Public Schools, and they want to make sure that the individual who leads this system understands the challenges and the intricacies of this community.

This is a very unique, very diverse community, which is also very inclusive.

And that is indeed reflected in this report.

And so without any further ado, I'll move right into it.

So the profile.

The development of the profile report.

We collected data from multiple sources to develop what we call the leadership profile.

We've arrived to a set of desired characteristics for recruitment.

This report will be shared with the community in addition to all of the aspirants.

Again, it's one thing to apply for a job, but it's another thing to actually read a voluminous document that's been extracted from a community to make sure that you align with the community's values and what the community desires to see and a leader leaning forward.

As you can see to the left, district data was collected, board interviews, individual interviews, focus groups and community forums.

All of that data has been very integral to driving the leadership profile report, but also delivering that which we'll discuss in the succeeding slides.

The focus groups, next, focus groups and protocols.

So the structure of the focus groups open, very open, allowing individuals to share exactly what they desire to share, free of any prohibition, or encumbrance.

Participants will ask the following questions.

What do you as a stakeholder slash constituent value regarding the schools?

What strengths of the district do you desire to retain and build upon?

What are the issues this district currently faces and as importantly will be facing in the next three to five years?

What are the personal and professional characteristics you and your community expect a superintendent to possess?

And I would tell you, folks were very candid in the sessions.

That data is included in the leadership profile report.

Individuals also expressed the ups, as well as the downs, the highs and lows, they expressed their cynicism.

Many folks were incredulous.

We captured all of that because our objective was to hear and listen and make sure that we captured not just the essence, but the voice and articulation of the community.

When you look at the survey, We had 3,526 respondents for nearly 52,000 students.

Not bad.

Not bad.

Is there a specific rubric we can say?

Can we compare Seattle with another district?

Well, I wouldn't necessarily compare and contrast because each system is unique.

We did the superintendent search in Clark County, Nevada, Las Vegas.

300,000 students, roughly 14,000 respondents.

We did the superintendent search in Atlanta, Atlanta Public Schools.

Nearly 50,000 students, roughly 1,600 responses.

So just think of a survey, and the best example would be in politics.

10% of the people said that they love Makai Ali in America.

Out of 350 million people, 10% said we love him, so guess what?

The whole entire country loves him.

It's a sampling.

And generally, you're on.

Sometimes you could be off.

We've seen it off.

But if one parent has an issue with the school bus system, buses are chronically late.

Generally, that's a sentiment shared by many.

If parents have an IEP and they feel that the district has not been very responsive, well, I'm very confident others will feel the same.

So you could take that statistical sampling and draw a conclusion, and we've done just that with respect to the development of this profile.

So when you look at 3,526 respondents, I wouldn't say, oh my goodness, it should have been 20,000 parents.

Had we conducted the survey for a year, we would have received more responses, and I would dare say that may be indeed true, but we're looking at the content and not just simply looking at this from a quantitative perspective.

So looking at the survey, the common desires of responding groups.

Respondents were asked to choose the single most important focus for the next superintendent.

62% of the respondents stated preparing students to be ready for the next grade and ultimately college and career ready.

If 62% of the respondents stated this, I'm very confident that 100% of the parents within Seattle Public Schools are interested in their child being college and career ready.

I'm very confident no parent is sending their child to school to fail.

62% stated hiring and retaining quality teachers and administrators.

55% providing a safe environment for students and employees.

35% ensuring a well-rounded experience for all students.

33% addressing students' social and emotional needs.

What conclusion can we draw?

The families, the communities within the school district are interested in seeing the next superintendent drive systemic change within the system and break through barriers.

In addition, retaining and training administrators as well as teachers high on the list.

Safe learning environments, extremely important.

in addition to ensuring that student voice is uplifted as well as the overall student experience.

And then when we look at addressing social and emotional needs, what I'm drawing from this and based upon some of the comments made in the sessions, parents are not simply interested in the school system hashtagging or bumper stickering as it were, colloquial statements or idioms, and more interested in the delivery of systems that are scalable and can meet the needs of each and every child.

The priority consensus.

Now, these are reported from the focus groups.

Ensuring fiscal health, there's been a tremendous amount of discussion in the community as well as in the media with respect to the district's fiscal status.

Parents are keenly aware of that and are interested in the district being very fiscally strong and fiscally sound because of course that then impacts the instructional program.

Providing prioritized instruction for students and then addressing the achievement gaps of all students.

In particular, students who've chronically underperformed some of your lowest performing percentiles.

We don't have to necessarily delve deep into that.

But that's definitely an area of concern based upon a consensus from the focus groups.

Okay, I'll touch it.

I'll touch it.

When you're talking about achievement and opportunity gaps, specifically on black and brown boys, and the data's clear.

The data's clear.

So this is not...

And so parents are interested, and again, I go back to that term systemic change.

Systemic change.

The system bending to provide support to students as opposed to the...

system bending to support adults and adults' needs and desires.

Developing the desired characteristics.

We were able to triangulate data, again, multiple sources, in order to arrive to the desired characteristics of the next superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools.

When you look at this, the next slide, This underscores exactly what was stated based upon focus groups as well as surveys.

One, equity driven and student focused.

Two, financial and operational expertise.

Three, communicative, relational, and authentic.

Four, visionary and courageous change maker.

And then the last is experienced and accountable.

When we talk about the last bullet there, experienced and accountable, there was indeed a push in many of the groups for someone who has seated experience.

The community's not interested in someone who is cutting their teeth, as it were.

Untested, untested.

Walk into the role with understanding the accountability metrics and metrics that exist.

There's been a tremendous amount of talk about someone having an understanding of the community and being able to communicate the vision of the district.

Again, we harp back on fiscal and operational expertise because that's what the community's heard a lot of over the past few years.

And then, of course, combing through media articles, you've had a chance to affirm what the community's also stated.

And then when we look at equity and student-focused, it's interesting how those two are inextricably connected.

Again, we go back to looking at equity as ethics, doing the right thing for all students, black, brown, white, Asian, indigenous, et cetera, students with IEPs, but doing the right thing by students, raising that level of student achievement And doing it in short order, the community is not necessarily interested in waiting three to five years for curriculum to take root.

They're interested in someone who can move the system, push the system.

And so that concludes my review of the Leadership Profile Report.

Again, it's in draft mode.

We've given you top level, if members of the board are interested in providing any comments and or anything in writing that we can then take and envelop into the leadership profile report, we'll do just that.

Thank you.

I know it came in our email today, and I might have missed it.

What has been posted publicly?

Because we have the more detailed draft.

Is that also?

The full detailed draft has been posted.

Okay, great, thank you.

Yeah, I had a chance to look through that and based on my knowledge of our community and just being a parent and an advocate for the last 10 years, this is completely unsurprising to me, which is not bad at all.

There's nothing that I was like, oh, I had no idea that was a thing.

This is very much in line with my experience as a parent, my experience out in community, what I hear from people all the time, not in this room, but actually out in community.

And what we heard also in our vision and values, because a lot of this is not necessarily what is the one magical person that will solve all these problems, but just what are the things that are top priority?

And this is very much in line with what we heard when we did a year ago, our vision and values engagement.

And so what's important about that to me to note right now is that We're looking for a person who will bring this experience and focus, but that is also on the board to support a person doing that and to not back off and get derailed and spend four months talking about 10% of our students.

on an operational issue that should be handled at a staff level and not in the boardroom.

And so I guess I'm echoing support for this and kind of pledging in a way that when I'm looking at candidates, I'm not necessarily expecting some magical unicorn person who's gonna come in and save us we need to help that person we need to support that person and we need to be really clear what we expect of that person and then follow through on what we say we're going to we can't demand all these things and then back off and say oh actually we really want to talk about I don't know, wait list, some other thing that's not actually germane to these things that our community is telling us, our community as a whole are telling us are important.

And like you said, Mr. Ali, they don't want to wait.

Oh my gosh, we've been waiting for so long.

People, I mean, my kids, I've gone my whole kid's educational lifetime listening to people say they want these things and then watching their behavior be completely in opposition to it and actually fight against these things.

And it's really incumbent upon us, the board, as the representatives of the community to keep this in mind and support a person who's going to do hard things and make people uncomfortable because disrupting a system that doesn't serve all children is gonna be uncomfortable for people for whom it does serve.

And so thank you for this work.

It's really important to see the detail in the broken out version and also just the high level.

And it's incumbent upon us, the board, to remember that this is representative of the full community, not just the people who can come down here on a Wednesday at five o'clock.

so that it's for the superintendents but this is also a mandate i feel like to ask the board director mizorahi did you say me i'm sorry sorry i said director mizorahi director hersey will get to you right after director mizorahi

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Brendan.

So I'm curious, from HYA, I know you've done these type of engagement around the country.

And when I look at the list, obviously, agreeing with Director Rankin, there's a lot to agree with in here.

But I imagine community members aren't ever going to say we don't want someone who's communicative or we don't want someone who's a visionary.

I'm curious.

things that stuck out to you all that are very specific to Seattle, things that you heard that are maybe unique and different to other places.

I heard you lift up the idea of like people wanting an experienced leader, which I suppose is probably different than other places where they may say like, we want someone with fresh new ideas or whatever, you know, but were there other things that felt different to you about the wants of our community versus others that you've seen around the country?

That's a phenomenal question, and yes, the one thing that all would agree upon is respect, the uniqueness of each community.

While as an outsider, I see a Seattle, but once you get into Seattle, there are many communities that are represented under one flag, Seattle, right?

Someone has to understand Not just the uniqueness of the respective cultures and subcultures, but the needs of those particular communities.

I'll give an example of what I've learned my short time of being here.

There's a nomenclature that exists.

There are words and phrases used in SPS and in this community that one has to quickly incalcate themselves.

A new superintendent coming in has to respect that.

They have to respect that uniqueness and also respect the will and desires of individuals.

Now, is that the same across the country?

To your point, sir, you're 100% correct.

Some individuals want someone to come into a school system with brand new ideas.

They want someone to come into a school system and completely reconstitute the system.

That is not what folks are saying here.

What individuals have continuously advocated is for someone to have experience, understand the challenges, and bring forth remedies.

Now I will say, I will say there's been a tremendous push for an outsider.

I would definitely say that.

And that's no disrespect to anybody who would apply as an internal applicant.

I'm simply reporting what the community stated.

They're interested in new ideas.

They're interested in new concepts.

They want there to be a different discussion, a different dialogue.

Look at the challenges.

Let's find some palatable solutions.

And to your point, yes, the board is part and parcel to that.

The board is part and parcel to that.

However, however, the superintendent has a very distinct role as the instructional leader of the system.

And if parents are feeling that their child or their children might need a little bit more instructional support and they're not getting it, that's kind of where the issue of disrespect comes into play.

Director Hersey.

Director Hersey, if you're talking, I think you're still on mute.

I am tripping, sorry.

You would figure after like 18 years in COVID that I would have that down.

Again, I just said that I don't know what's going on with my camera.

I just had it on a moment ago, but now it's white, but I will try to sort whatever that is.

My question was related to what you were just sharing.

Part one of my question was related to what you were just sharing, Makai.

Could you talk a little bit more about from the perspective of receiving the information?

Because I've heard the same thing in terms of needing someone from outside.

Could you share any more insights around or any specifics as folks were sharing that kind of information with you?

Phenomenal question again.

I'll tell you, there's one community, DHH.

Deaf and hard at hearing.

Yes.

That's actually linked to my second part.

I'd love to hear what you're saying.

That term is not used everywhere in that manner.

But that particular community was very emphatic in their desire of more supports and a dedicated appropriation of resources in order to address the needs of that population.

That's a clear example.

I want to go back to equity and then I want to go back to ethics.

The community is saying we wanted appropriations.

Put equity in the parking lot.

That's the right thing to do for students per the community.

And exactly, you're right, doing the right thing for all students.

But they want a superintendent to see that, look at the data, and then make decisions.

The data must drive the discourse.

If children within a particular percentile are failing, then we're appropriate resources.

That's equity, right?

That's ethics.

So at the end of the day, many of these families They're crying out for enhanced and augmented support for their child and believe that a new superintendent, particularly as one from the outside, can deliver that.

That's super helpful, which kind of leads into my second question.

And I could have missed this in your presentation, but was there any specific mention?

I mean, I'm sure there was, but could you just talk to the necessity of having someone who has navigated a metropolitan system in relationship to special education in disability and accessibility.

And if you've already went over that, forgive me, but it would be interesting to hear if there was any specifics like the example that you just gave around those issues.

in special education.

Yes, and I'll underscore the point.

Experience, and when you juxtapose that with SPS's SPED data, significant concerns, the percentage of special education students, the percentage of open IEPs, the percentage of IEPs being implemented with fidelity, EL data for SPED, math data for SPED, and overall graduation data for SPED.

Those concerns were uplifted from parents.

Now, as I said before in a previous presentation, the children with special needs, well, there's a little uniqueness.

They come with an advocate, and that advocate is called an attorney.

So they're gonna have their demands met.

The objective is to make sure Before we get to that point, before we get to the 504, we've been able to address based upon Child Find.

This is what the community is saying, especially that particular group within SPS.

Someone with experience will understand that.

And be in a position, according to what a couple of folks stated in the sessions, be in a position to answer the question as opposed to saying, Mr. Ali, I'll call on Ms. Rankin.

Ms. Rankin is the director.

She can answer that question.

No.

Understand the issues because you have a level of experience.

It's almost akin to one of the most important roles in the school system.

We never think about this person.

But this person is the most important person in the school system.

The fulcrum of the system is a school principal.

That's the official representative of the system in the community.

That person has a greater level of touch point with families than anybody.

Folks are saying principals need additional support.

This is what the community is saying.

These are involved individuals with a vested interest.

The majority of the respondents to your survey, parents.

Parents.

Not employees.

Parents.

Which means they want the system to move.

They want to bend the system in a direction to where it delivers on its commitment of providing a free and free access public education to all students.

Thank you.

To Director Sarju and then we're going to go to Director Clark and then Director Briggs.

First of all, thank you for this detailed presentation and what my observations were of your care and concern in doing real, authentic community engagement, which is not something we experience here at Seattle Public Schools very often.

I am absolutely not surprised by the finding.

What it says to me is a call to action, and that action is to start doing right by the communities that we have historically failed, and that includes the DHH community.

It shouldn't have taken what it took to get them interpretation right what that's a sign of to me is that equity is only in word here and not in action and what parents are asking for is action this this is a call and not just to the loudest voices right like the people who are the loudest voices are the ones who have the privilege and ability to come down here at five o'clock and do this on a regular basis.

It doesn't mean, I'm just going to state it, that black parents aren't interested.

I attended the Black Family Summit.

Not a single other board director was there.

So y'all don't know what those black families said because you weren't there.

And what I heard is they are just as engaged.

They want the best for their children.

How they're able to go about getting what they need is different because of their life circumstances.

But nonetheless, they actually care about their children and they fundamentally understand.

The 66% came up.

And my commitment to them was to just keep daylighting it.

And at some point, I'm going to ask for a public verbal commitment from every single board director that you're not going to continue the status quo of allowing black boys to fail in this environment.

So when we talk about an outsider, it's not just that families are saying we want an outsider, right?

What they're saying is we want somebody different.

who is not connected to the dysfunction, the historical dysfunction, which is in the Moss Adams report.

I don't know how many other reports with data do we need to actually believe what has been written historically and supported through data.

And so I don't want us to get lost in this quote unquote outsider idea because there are some, as I was told recently, there There is a belief that a certain group of people have already decided who the superintendent is going to be, that they had a meeting, and that this person who is not connected with the school district knows who the superintendent is going to be.

And I'm like, well, how can that be?

We haven't seen anything.

What that tells me is that there is a desire to not change the status quo because it's working for a certain group of people, right?

So this is affirming and confirming to me.

It is time to get moving.

It is time for action.

Director Rankin, a superintendent, should be able to come in here and bring their own cabinet.

It shouldn't take the board to bolster up that.

They should be able to bring in leadership that actually will support what the parents, you know, people who can do it.

Maybe that's some of the people here, maybe not.

But the parents have spoken.

The question is, what are we going to do?

It's not about, and I mean we collectively, I'm talking about seven board directors If some of you already think you know, well, then put it on the table.

Let's talk about it.

Let's not do it in secret meetings, right?

And I'm not making ...

I won't do an FCC violation here.

I'm not making up stuff.

I'm speaking the truth.

I'm speaking the truth here.

And so we have a call.

Like that meeting that happened before this was released, y'all need to let that go.

We need to follow what the parents are saying because at the end of the day, it's their children's lives that we're messing with.

And so I wanna see us do the hard work, right, of selecting, there is no perfect person.

I don't ascribe to the concept of perfection.

I ascribe to good enough.

Are they good enough to get the needle moving in the direction that we know it needs to go so that we are not failing 66% of black boys in this district?

That's what the data says.

That's not Michelle's number.

That's what the data says.

What are we going to do about it?

We can talk about equity all we want, but President Ali, your statement around DHH, that is equity.

They deserve to be able to participate just like those of us who are able hearing, right?

Their children should not have to interpret for them, period.

Full stop, period.

So let's get to work.

Let's use this.

This is good work.

And I think it's, I don't think I've seen anything like this before in previous superintendent searches.

I mean, I've been in this district a long time.

And this has not been my experience.

And so I just want to thank the HYA team, because I was a little skeptical going in.

You know, I told you.

I called you up and told you I was skeptical.

And I'm still a little skeptical, but I'm more optimistic now.

Not hopeful, but more optimistic based on you actually gathering the data and reporting it as the parents stated.

That's also important that their voices be heard in this.

Director Clark.

Yeah, thank you.

Sorry, let me just get back to my notes.

A lot has been said by my colleagues and I'm getting a little distracted.

Mr. Ali, thank you and thank you to staff for all the work that you all did this summer to help us keep our commitment to engage our community.

I really appreciate your efforts.

you know, as I was reviewing the report, a couple of things stood out to me.

One of them being that I feel that I'm reading some contradictory desires, I guess, like, and I'll give you an example, but just as someone who spent the last decade working in, you know, community engagement and policy advocacy, You know, when I see, you know, characteristics like being a systems thinker, I think that's great.

But I also feel that that can be a contradictory to being action oriented.

You know, we, you know, or moving at a fast pace.

And I'm thinking specifically about the last or the first ad hoc budget committee meeting that we had where we were talking about some of the operational timelines that we have in Seattle public schools that either are integral to our budget development process and that if we are thinking about how we can reallocate resources that really we're going to have to redevelop these timelines and that the process of redeveloping the timelines in the middle of developing a budget, right, would delay the work or the outcome of any resource reallocation for a full school year.

And so I'm just curious from your vantage point, you know, as we move forward, how do we navigate some of the complexity of some of these I guess, not just the characteristics, but the desired outcomes, I think, that I'm hearing that community has and that we all have, which is that we want change and that change is going to take time.

And we're at kind of this focal point, I would say, at least I'm feeling this from community that I've met with, And I can relate to it and understand of just frustration and feeling like a tipping point, like it's boiling over.

And yet, you know, we're not going to just be able to turn on a light switch of really fast change once we onboard someone.

Did you catch my question in that?

I hope you did.

Absolutely, I did.

Okay, thank you.

I was taking on a few notes.

With respect to the term systems thinker, what the community is, and again, this is, we're using top level adjectives, top level nouns.

So let me give the verb aspect.

A problem solver.

someone who is very adapt at being proactive to address solutions, and then someone who understands modeling.

And the next superintendent is not just enough to have someone who's a supervisor of the system, but someone who's an actual leader of the system, who can model instruction, who understands facilities, who understands student nutrition services, all of the other ancillary components which assist with ensuring that instruction is deliberate.

That's the system's thinker.

The community is interested in ensuring is hired by this board in order to serve as the next leader of this system.

The other component to that is understanding the interconnectedness of the system from a holistic perspective, not just that of an individual.

And so when we talk about whether it's the deaf and hard of hearing community, whether it's other communities within the system, the interconnectedness, if there's a need for funding, then the superintendent is not just looking to the chief financial officer for a solution.

The superintendent's capable of sitting down and coming up with a comprehensive plan, and then, of course, the staff is working that plan, and then the plan comes to fruition.

This is not an elected office.

You're not directing individuals through fiat or edicts.

You want somebody who understands how each and every gear works.

And many in your community have expressed not the fact that We're going to castigate any previous superintendent.

We understand what got us through the point where we are today, but we want to move forward.

And we want somebody to take us into a different direction.

And that kind of sums up what the members of the community articulated around systems thinkers and any of the other terms that you might see listed when you talk about somebody being communicative.

Well, there needs to be somebody to communicate the true vision of the system.

The board sets the overall vision, the superintendent carries that vision out.

But there has to be this symbiosis where the superintendent is able to engage the media.

Now, the moment we're sitting down one-on-one with print or television media to walk through significant challenges or barriers, why don't we be honest and put everything out on the table up front?

Hey, we're going to have some fiscal issues five years from now.

Let's talk about what we can do.

Let's not get up to the fourth and a half year and then say, oh, my goodness, it's Armageddon, right?

This is what individuals are desirous of seeing, a different focus, a different strategic perspective that can help to move this very complex system forward.

Can't see me, but I'm nodding my head.

Thank you, Mr. Ali, for breaking that down for me.

No, and thank you for the question.

Director Briggs.

Okay, I think this is pretty quick.

My first question is just very technical.

On the page about the survey with the bar graph, it says the survey was developed by the advisory committee.

Who was the advisory committee?

You said that.

The internal H.Y.A. committee in working with, working with your staff and making sure that we had the appropriate questions loaded into the survey.

Okay, so basically advisory committee is H.Y.A. staff?

Yes.

Okay.

And then, My second question was actually related a little bit to what Director Clark just said, but what jumped out at me was the line, and I'm on the page, developing the desired characteristics.

even when conflicting, contrasting, inconsistent, and contradictory desires are reported, which is normal when surveying and talking to disparate groups.

So the disparate groups is the part that jumped out at me and made me curious to know what were the, if you had any examples off the top of your head.

I haven't had a chance to read all the way through the draft report, but I'm curious what, some of the contradictory desires from different groups were?

Very good question.

Excellent question.

Oftentimes when you're surveying and doing focus groups of communities, we did general focus groups, we also did some very specific focus groups.

Those specific communities have very distinct desires.

And sometimes the system cannot exceed their desire.

Perhaps it can meet it.

That becomes a challenge.

There ought to be more focus on English language learners.

The system responds, we're doing that.

Not enough.

We want more.

What does that more look like?

There needs to be respect and appreciation and value for the indigenous native population.

What does that look like?

What would culturally relevant pedagogy look like for that community versus a different community in a very diverse system?

Another point I feel is appropriate.

When you look at black student achievement, that particular community believes that More ought to be appropriated, not just instructionally, but also other supportive services.

Now, my counter would be all of those children ought to be on par, and we ought to be providing all the resources that we have in our arsenal to assist each and every student.

That's where you find the overarching theme.

Once you begin to drill down, there's varying levels of specificity.

Common, very common.

Perhaps a child has a dietary restriction.

Well, you're going to accommodate that maybe 1% of the population.

But in some systems, it's not enough.

So you find these perspectives, they contradict, but then the overall theme is, well, we have to have somebody who understands that, and they can assuage my particular issue or concern.

And we can go on down the line with respect to whether it's school consolidation or new school construction, some parts of the community.

Let's say it's growing faster.

Let's hypothetically say that Seattle had this vast land mass that's going to be redeveloped and new homes.

There's nothing there now but farmland, right?

Well, you probably get a few new schools.

But there'll be communities that say, well, what about my schools?

My schools are 100 years old.

And they're getting brand new schools.

How, as a superintendent, do you take your capital improvement dollars and ensure that the resources are spent equitably?

in addition to, or notwithstanding, providing school housing in a particular area.

That becomes a huge challenge, especially in communities where there's been historical polarization.

Now, again, you're not looking for a unicorn.

Let me be very clear.

Somebody with experience understands that.

If you've dealt with that level of complexity, you understand it.

You take a superintendent from a small system or a medium-sized system in the US where they've never dealt with such a high percentage of SPED, it's going to be a challenge.

Or they've never dealt with very strong unions.

We know very well Seattle has very strong unions.

If you've never dealt with that, then how are you gonna function in this system?

You've never ever dealt with collective bargaining in your entire superintendency, in your career, but then you come to Seattle, well, why can't they just take the 2% and walk?

Well, that's not how it works, okay?

There's a way things are done.

There's a culture established, so superintendents Must understand that, but your community also understand the need to have someone who's going to view their concerns equally and not necessarily prioritize one community over the other.

Thank you, Mr. Alley.

So that wraps up the engagement section of this search, and I just want to echo what you started saying at the beginning.

Thank you.

Thank you to our Chief of Staff at Redmond and to our board office who really pulled together of that engagement work it was on their their shoulders and also for all those who participated I look forward to going back out to many of those communities and continuing the conversation but would you before we let you off the hook here go through a little bit of what the next steps are and what board directors should be expecting next okay as a matter of fact

I have that teed up.

Let's go right to my note here.

The next step will be the board should expect Well, we're going to consummate the leadership profile report.

So if there are any edits, members of the board will get the edits or desired edits to me.

Then we'll, of course, finalize that document and make sure that the community has it.

The next step will be interview protocols.

Interview protocols will be sent to the board.

Walking through exactly how the interview process We'll go.

Because after that, then there'll be the presentation of the slate.

We'll present the slate of candidates.

Before interviews, isn't there a reviewing applications step?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

But I want to make sure we have all of the documentation up front so you get the protocols first, and then we'll review the slate.

The slate.

Yes, the slate.

So let's go with nomenclature.

So yes, to your point, we're reviewing the applications.

We say review, present the slate.

But to your point, yes, we will review the applications after we send the interview protocols.

And the we is the board and?

Yes, the board and H-Y-A, yes.

Okay, and I want to confirm because I had originally asked to have the names redacted.

Oh, absolutely, unequivocally.

Okay, great, great.

And I want to be clear, that's an edict.

and a request that the board agreed to.

So this search will most certainly underscore equity.

Everybody will walk in based upon sheer content, and the character will emanate from the papers.

So we have the presentation of the slate, and then after that, we'll move into final interviews.

The objective is to have a special meeting in the middle of October in order to vote on a new superintendent, then the superintendent will begin tentatively November 1st.

And we all have calendar invites, board directors have calendar invites sent for all of these different sessions properly labeled with a nomenclature that Mr. Ali used on in their board calendars and i think if you have any questions there since i know we're having a little bit of issues with some of our calendar invites please see carrie oh brandon oh director hersey i'm sorry no problem at all let me see if my camera is working now still no okay um so my question would be along the lines of

whatever we're calling it, the blind process.

In addition to the names, is there any type of review on y'all's end that would also be able to strip any identifying information, because I would imagine that like as you get deeper in there, a candidate might say my experience as an insert racial demographic here or during my time at such and such school district, blah, blah, blah.

I think I already know the answer to that, but just wanted to put a put a pin there that there could be some not necessarily even nefarious, but just like unintended opportunities to identify candidates that I want to make sure we are taking into consideration.

The other piece is when we are accepting applications, are we also informing the candidates that this is a blind process and they should they should submit an application with that in mind?

I'm just wondering what the actual nuts and bolts of that will look like.

So director, I'll answer your question.

I'll actually take it in three parts.

The first part is, and these are excellent questions, I did not pay him.

We did not talk before this meeting, so I want to be very clear on the record.

The leadership profile, we're rating and ranking and measuring applicants against the leadership profile report.

meaning the internal team within HYA.

Okay, I want to be clear.

Once we're done today, Madam President, we walk out of here, while I love the staff, I love them immensely, they will not be a part of the review process.

No one in SPS will be a part of the review process, so we're crystal clear.

There's no one who's been selected There's no one who's been selected, no one has been privy to any of the portfolios.

That's number one, so we're gonna, again, utilize the leadership profile report as the rubric, okay?

That's number one.

Number two, the blind process was the lure.

Knowing that individual's information would not be floating all around the US, well, that's encouraged such a diverse pool of applicants.

And I commend the school board for being courageous and for trusting the search firm with that process.

The third part to your question, director, Once we've notified individuals that they will be slated, all of their information will be presented in a way where there'll be no identifiable characteristics.

If someone put that they were an AKA, which is generally a black female fraternity, that will not be on the application.

We will, because instantaneously, no, hold on, we can draw a deductive conclusion that she's black.

She could be white.

Some white alphas.

There's some white alphas.

I know some white alphas.

I'm very good friends with them, all right?

You know, I know some white omegas, too.

But needless to say, the point here is that there would not be inidentifiable characteristics.

So she says, you know, the mother of a child, comma, who recently had his bar mitzvah, we can draw a conclusion.

That would not be included.

We respect and value all of that, folly aside, but there will be no identifiable characteristics.

So that we're gonna make sure that the process is clean and fair all the way around.

Now let me also say this.

When the board receives a slate, no board member has been privy to any names or the slate.

Not the least of which includes the president.

I wanna say that on the record.

So there's no ambiguity.

The president has not been privy nor has she asked to see any of the information or any names.

I want to be clear, when you guys receive the information you receive it at the same time.

Now I will say I've had to talk to a couple of applicants for contacting board members and explain to them this is a blind process.

We want to respect the process as outlined and laid out by the governing authority.

And we want to respect the community because none of us are above the community.

They're expecting this to be a very fair process.

They're not expecting to see Makayali's mother slide in here as a superintendent, okay?

Let's be clear now.

And she's retired, by the way, okay?

Director, I hope I answered your question.

Certainly did.

Thank you.

And Director Briggs has a question as well.

Really fast.

I'm just curious, how many applicants did we get total?

I know we're not going to see everybody, that you guys will give us a slate, but I'm just curious how many people applied.

Well over 20.

And the process is still going on.

It hasn't closed.

The vetting is going on.

I thought the application window closed.

Right?

No, the application...

September 15th.

Yeah, yes.

Did we extend it?

Or was it always that?

I believe it was always September 15th.

Well, we extended it when we extended engagement.

Yes.

Okay, okay.

So the application closed to September 15th.

I think the suggestion from you, Mr. Ali, was that we wanted the leadership profile complete and applicants an opportunity to really see if they aligned with the leadership profile report.

All right, thank you again, Mr. Ali.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Board directors, do we wanna break now or do we wanna break after the civics update?

I'm good either way.

All right, I'm hearing a five minute break, so we'll come back together at 5.45.

Alright.

I think folks are back.

And we are moving into part two of our three-part day today.

This is the civics, civic engagement update.

And this is, again, as I said, a request that has come from Director Rankin.

I appreciate the request.

I look forward to what we're going to learn and remind colleagues any directors can bring forward topics for future study sessions.

But with that, I think I'm passing it over to Dr. Well, nice stuff, Fred.

Acting Superintendent Podesta, sorry.

I just want to thank the board for this time.

I want to thank Director Rankin for the interest and the community interest in this issue.

And just note that I'm joined by Dr. Stroski.

Assistant Superintendent for Academics.

And Kathleen Vasquez, who is a Program Manager for Literacy and Social Studies, has forgotten more on this subject than I'll ever know.

But we're excited to bring this to you.

We think this is a unique point in time where we should remind ourselves that public education is a civic asset that is important to everyone.

We understandably focus on parents and students, but the whole community invests in this.

because we need a public education system to make democracy work.

And so, reminding ourselves of that, we also appreciate that talking to you as players in civic processes and elected officials, I would really like to hear your perspective, is something that most of us staff don't have that experience for.

And we'd also like to circle back.

We're trying to be disciplined about the goals that we recently established and make sure we're on the same wavelength of how this fits in potentially to a life ready goal.

I'm not sure that the language and the metrics that we've been talking about exactly map to this, but that's something we'd like to think about as we progress.

I will turn it over to Dr. Strauski.

Good evening.

Welcome back from summer, wherever you've been.

We are excited to be able to share, and for some it's in the space for our public is a reminder, and for some it's new information about what we do in Seattle Public Schools around civics education.

And we're really proud of the people that came before us in this room, past board directors, principals, teachers, but most importantly our students who continually remind us of the power of being involved politically.

and for us as adults to be responsive to encourage the opportunities for our students to be actively engaged.

As a public school system, as Mr. Podesta spoke to, it's our moral imperative.

And so we want to share some of the things that we do in Seattle Public Schools.

And so we'd like to share, I think first and foremost, just an overview of what we do and what the supports look like for our educators in our system.

And note that this critical role is a K-12 endeavor.

Oftentimes when people are thinking about civics education, we're thinking it's just a secondary experience, something that happens in high school.

And we'll be demonstrating and showing you some of the things that happened with our students that happened in a K-5 setting, middle school setting, and then for our high schoolers as well.

And so if you think of the major areas that we're focusing on is that in Seattle Public Schools, we have direction from the state, from OSPI, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, that provides us direction K-12, and we have our interpretation of what that looks like in our system but it's mainly focused and required in these three areas civic virtues democratic principles rights and responsibilities of our citizens and then the preparation of a for an active citizenship in a diverse society which means a lot of things and we'd like to share some of of that what that looks like for Seattle Public Schools and our professional educators in service of our students.

Okay, there I am.

All right, I'm going to start, and what I'd like to do is give you an overview of some of our resources and not dive in too deeply, and certainly I can answer questions about them, but my goal is to give you a baseline understanding of what we do around civics education.

And the first one we're starting with is one that I found very interesting around right before the 2016 presidential election.

We were also getting a lot of concern around civic engagement of our youth.

And we partnered with King County Elections to bring K-12 educators to their space and create civics lessons.

And the whole goal was, how do we get kids from kindergarten through to 12th grade interested in elections.

And we spent a day together, all standards aligned, and at the end we heard from kindergarten to 12 how we would do that.

And all of those lessons are housed inside our learning management system available for our teachers, and we remind them every time an election's coming up about those lessons.

We also make our teachers known, aware every year, our school leaders as well, about the statewide mock elections.

So every year, the Office of the Secretary of State, in concert with OSPI, releases a toolkit of resources, lessons, ideas to support a mock election.

statewide.

And we encourage all of our teachers to take part in this process.

And I'll give you just a little taste of it.

So you can see that the statewide election provides a mimicked voter pamphlet that is written for in kid friendly language.

You'll see a ballot on one side and on the other side of the slide are three lessons that are designed again for the same purpose is to teach into election information, one at the elementary, one at the middle, and one at the high.

This voter pamphlet has a lot of resources.

It has nonpartisan bios, it has information on measures, it has information on how to vote, who's eligible to vote, all kinds of resources.

And we do get many of our teachers participating in this opportunity.

Over the past few elections, as you all know, elections have changed in our nation, and as a result, some teachers have expressed concerns.

How do I teach about elections now when things are so polarized.

And so every year we've been putting out resources to support our teachers and hopefully so that they can have healthy, respectful dialogue about election, about candidates, about measures, about diverse opinions.

And this has become very popular and requested year after year because of the sensitive nature of elections now.

We also have every year Temperance Day resources, also supported by the Office of the Secretary of State and OSPI.

And these are put out again to our teachers every January, right before temperance and good citizenship day.

And again, the resources are pretty healthy.

They have lesson plans for teachers, but it's geared more at getting students information about voting, why they should vote, how to vote, eligibility, and the like.

And one of the...

The slide on the left is kind of what happens to a ballot.

It's just educating kids.

What happens to a ballot?

And it travels all around until it's counted and documented.

And then the right side is just what's in the toolkit.

Teachers get all kinds of resources.

They get stickers, they get posters, and all kinds of resources to make that learning experience really interesting and viable.

And the other thing, I think another thing we're most proud of is our K-5 civics units, K-5.

And during the pandemic, when all of a sudden our teachers had no resources, you know, they left one day and they couldn't come back to school, we also had some outdated social studies materials.

So we...

my team created civics units, and we have them K-5, and they are designed on a developmental spectrum from kindergarten to five, leaning into civics topics.

starting with are all rules fair, really in the kindergarten level, making rules really important to them in their classroom, their community, and then branching out into cultural diversity and perspectives by the third grade.

In the fourth grade, they're already leaning into different kinds of governance, tribal law, state law, local law, By the time they get to fifth grade, they are looking at the Declaration of Independence and documents such as that.

So we've created these units.

They're inquiry-based, and they are four to six weeks in length.

So they're pretty healthy in terms of size.

And then we also have classroom-based civics assessments.

And this is a state mandate.

So from fourth grade on to 12th grade, students at various grade levels are required to take a classroom-based civics assessment.

They happen in either fourth or fifth.

so our teachers can decide, 7th or 8th, 11th or 12th.

And they spend a good length of time studying a topic, and then they write to the topic, all civics, centered.

And here you can see some data.

And I'm going to explain why we don't see 2425. So you're seeing the last two years of classroom based civics assessment data compiled by our office and reported to OSPI.

And remember, in 21, 22, fourth or fifth grade took the civics.

So at one school, they might have done that civics assessment in fourth grade.

At another, they might have done it at fifth grade.

So when you look at those numbers, they're actually very healthy numbers because you take it in either grade.

And so in 21-22, 22-23, we were asked to report those numbers.

This year, OSPI changed our reporting structure and asked us only to indicate yes or no as to whether our students participated in the assessment.

So you see no data for 24-25.

Yes.

What are these numbers?

I actually just don't know what the numbers mean.

I mean, are they not like.

Let me go back.

So let's just take in 2021, 2022. In fourth grade, 3,230 students took the classroom-based assessment in civics.

Okay.

So it's number of students who took the assessment.

Yes.

My apologies.

Okay.

I wasn't clear about that.

So one of the things that, building off of some of the themes that Kathleen's already described, is what it looks like in Seattle Public Schools for our special populations, our communities.

And since time in memoriam is something that is required K-12, it fits in nicely with what we're doing for civics education and so for our students it shows up in K-5 in the curriculum and it's just not because it's a mandate, it's something that we're not only compelled to do but it's aligned with our values.

And where it shows up in middle school is specifically, some folks were saying, well, do we need to create these classes for civics?

They're embedded in classes that already exist in Seattle Public Schools and that are required.

And so for middle school students, That would look like in sixth grade, world history.

Seventh grade, Washington state history.

And eighth grade would be US history.

And also for us, being able to think about, well, if Washington state history is a requirement upon graduation, It's a really important space for our students to be able to get those valued perspectives.

And for our high school students, that it's going from learning from world history, U.S. history, Washington state history, now seeing it showing up in 9th and 10th grade in world history, 11th grade U.S. history, and 12th grade, we have a number of classes where it shows up into, including U.S. government.

And so one of the common narratives that is out there is that civics has to be a standalone class and that it only happens traditionally in secondary and usually people are envisioning high school.

It's K-12 and it's in classes and subjects that are already existing.

And again, a common theme is for us that the tribal sovereignty as being a focus area doesn't go away when our students are in secondary as well.

It just doesn't happen and end at seventh grade.

It's continuing on in those other classes that I've mentioned for nine through 12.

And lastly, I think we we'd all say that when we talk about civics in the classroom, we do center on real world experiences.

It's often not let's look at the past.

We are trying to make the learning rich relevant, talking about students' present lives, their communities, their cultures.

We'd like them interacting, acting on the principles that we hope to embed and instill inside of them.

We also believe in a lot of dialogue and fostering rich discussions about topics and differences and opinions that might not be like their own in order to make our world a richer, more robust place to be and a safe place.

All of our resources are often inside our learning management system called Schoology, where teachers come to come, look at a particular grade level, and we'll find a host of resources, some created by teachers and some created by curriculum makers.

And that's about it, I think, for us.

What do you have?

Yeah, so, you know, in closing, what we want to make sure is that as we're moving forward into our next strategic plan and we're being very explicit about what we're supporting, what we're focusing on, what we're reporting back to for our public, and back into this space is when we're talking about our life ready goal, I think civics education fits into that space in a great way for preparing our students for college, career, and life.

And I think one of the things that we would like to ask all of you, the folks who have a unique position as being elected board members, Knowing your experience and your positions and your perspectives, this first question just to start us in a dialogue and we're happy to answer any questions that you might have.

But what do you believe is most important for Seattle Public Schools, our district, and our city to consider in regards to civics education given our current state but also ideal what you would like to see?

Response to the question and our questions in general.

Director Briggs.

Yeah, it's not really a direct response to the question, but...

So I have heard, I understand that since time immemorial was mandated since 2015, but I have heard repeatedly from members of the native community that it has not been implemented across the district.

So while I have no doubt that it is happening in some schools, it's definitely not happening in a lot of schools.

So I'm wondering what the plan is for making sure that that is actually widely implemented.

Well, I think we would have a disagreement on that it's not happening.

Just in the last two years, we had 693 teachers in 23-24 trained in STI.

Last year, we had 799 teachers in instructional assistants.

But what we will be doing is we are meeting with our native education manager who was newly hired.

We are meeting with community to see what we can do better.

That's Dr. Bandone, who is new to the position.

Also, we have a report that we're working up to share with folks this week showing what we've been doing internally for our training, the amount of trainings we've had, who's been impacted, and then also a plan moving forward.

So with our new Native Education Manager, We're very excited and hopeful that we're going to be able to work together to make sure that we actualize what's been put out before us.

So we haven't been ignoring it, and we can definitely do a better job, and we're going to do that through engagement.

Director Hersey.

Hi.

So I guess one question that I have in relation to this is what is our philosophy around positioning our students to share their education with others, right?

We have a lot of students who choose to go to UW, but we have a large number of students who choose to go elsewhere throughout the United States.

And being from Mississippi, the ideology and discussions that we have here in Seattle are wildly different.

And so the reason that I ask about our philosophy around, like, how are we preparing our students to share their education with others is there is...

education in one sense to where we are preparing students to make decisions for themselves but then there's another one or then there's education in the sense to where i think about my own personal debate background right uh it had a profound impact on my ability to not only have empathy for others points and really try to see things from their point of view, but it also gave me a great skill in being able to talk across differences and in some cases, you know, help change folks' minds for things that I find great conviction in.

The reason that I bring that up is a couple of times through the engagement, that we did concerning the strategic plan, it came up that our students don't always necessarily have the language necessary, even when we're talking exclusively about identity work, right?

Like to be able to stand up for themselves when they are experiencing a situation that could be racist or that could at the minimum be felt as discriminatory or othering of some kind.

And I'm wondering, Is there space in this curriculum to also have a conversation about what does it look like to have courageous conversations?

crucial conversations.

I was reading an article very recently that basically said that in order to change a person's mind, the only real way to do that is through what's called decandvasing, which boils down to spending no less than 12 hard hours with a person.

The reason that I also bring that up is because as I work with children, whether it be through scouts or whatever other methods, what I see is that folks, or rather kids, at this point in time, just like, in order to avoid conflict, don't even engage with the conversation.

And I think a big part of civics is engaging with the conversation with the people around you.

And given the politics of the place that we all call home, we don't necessarily share the same ideologies with places that are outside of Washington.

And so what I'm wondering is how are we preparing our students not only to understand the separate responsibilities for themselves, but also engage in conversations with others that might have differences of opinions from them?

I'll start and then turn it over.

I think that for the past several years, we've been engaged in ourselves as a district in culturally responsive practices.

And many of those practices are require us to lean in to those very conversations that you are bringing up.

I think about Goldie Muhammad's work often, and she talks about educating students, and she calls it criticality, which is really looking at the social construct of things and leaning into it, not shying away from it.

So our civics units that that I talked about in K-5, those are all designed with Dr. Muhammad's work inside of them.

So they all have a critical component and they're all based on open-ended questions.

I love open-ended questions because kids can come with their authentic selves in response to open-ended questions with no answer in mind.

And because of this, kids do come and share who they are, how they are processing the same information that others are processing, because they come from different cultures and backgrounds.

So I actually think we are trying to do what you're saying.

But it comes with teacher know-how.

How do teachers approach difficult conversations?

We also created a a series of, actually it was activities and lessons called how to engage in racially and socially sensitive history.

and it did what you are saying to do, which is have difficult conversations, but do them in a way that's respectful.

It also says teachers have to begin with themselves.

They have to confront their own stereotypes, their own concerns, their own differences, and lean into those two.

So it's twofold.

It's supporting teachers to do it, and then teachers training students.

And I think we've tapped into some of that.

Well, and I can think of a very specific example that we see here on a monthly basis is when our students come in and give public testimony.

Oftentimes, there'll be a staff member who is shepherding them through it, like how to do it, and giving them feedback, coaching them through it.

And so we see that, but also I've seen powerful examples of students teaching each other how to do it, too, in this space.

But the big, I think, A topic that, Director Hersey, you spoke to is cynicism, can be very contagious, and how that trickles down into students being, or I'd say adults as well, being politically active.

is why we need to double down on our efforts with our students so that they can navigate the current system and create the system that they want to see happen.

And we have a moral obligation to do that.

So I think there's, Ultimately at the classroom level what's happening, what's happening in the school level, how it trickles up in many different spaces, but also we see our students when there's something that's on fire for them, they lead the charge on how to mobilize and activate their social networks.

And their social networks are maybe not the same ways that we might look at a voter's pamphlet, but they'll get on Insta.

They'll look at other places to get their information about what they think is important.

And we need to be evolving and changing alongside with them and learning from them as well so anytime we can open up the spaces but I just think director Hersey as you were talking it just makes me think about what we see here in action at in this space on a monthly basis our students are doing that make a connection there just so to remind folks that tomorrow at 3 30 we do have the swearing in of our new student board directors

And they are actually the ones working and leading the revision on their policy 1250 as well that hopefully we will all get to vote on here shortly.

Director Rankin.

Sorry, Director Sarju.

Thanks.

So yeah, thanks for allowing us this time to bring this up.

And I had a couple reasons for the request.

One was we had a lot of community interest in just what the scope is, what we are or aren't doing, or ideas about what could be done.

This moment in time where democracy and social agreements that we may have all assumed or a thing that will always happen are it's not necessarily true we actually have to participate in our democracy to keep it alive and connected to it's a societal agreement and it turns out If you don't want to follow the rules that everyone's established like it can have a pretty big impact.

So helping, wanting students and families to understand more about kind of the social contracts that exist and why and how they got there.

And then also because you know part of our responsibility as a board is to make sure that the district is complying with state requirements and civics because it's not a standalone class it's much harder to tell you know like we know that high schools are providing geometry because there's a geometry class civics it's like what does it what does it look like for you know to be able to assure ourselves in the community that yes we are we are meeting this requirement So I don't know that this is necessarily the best way for us to go about that and it would be good to talk about kind of our oversight role and what kind of report or information available to the board of the public might be more appropriate on a regular basis.

But this seemed like a good time since it came up in the national climate to kind of just take a peek.

So thank you for that.

I think what's important to note about the goals is that they're not intended to be prescriptive.

They're evaluative.

And so just because civics might not specifically be mentioned doesn't mean that we don't care about it or we don't do it.

It's but when it happens, is it happening in a way that is honoring our guardrails and making some progress toward the goals?

That being said, I think there are actually a lot of opportunities to tie civics into safe and welcoming environments.

What does it mean to make commitments to each other as a classroom community that honor everybody in it and what does it mean to participate what does it look like to participate in creating that a lot of schools do that through ruler they have the classroom charters I think that's sort of a built-in civics lesson about you know what kind of communities do we want and how do I as an individual participate in in building that critical thinking understanding you know recognizing misinformation from fact recognizing opinion from I don't know statute or whatever the case may be upholding civil rights which is pretty important especially right now and what does it mean that it's like no actually that's not up for discussion, we've all agreed that it is important to protect people's identity.

And you may have your own system of values at home, but at school, this is what we're doing in creating.

So it goes to the safe and welcoming environment.

I could see civics being part of that.

Reading and literacy goals too.

Understanding how to recognize and interact with historical documents and policy and what that means.

But the other thing that we heard a lot during our vision and values engagement, this goes back to what Brandon was saying.

We heard across a lot of groups that some of how they would define a successful graduate of Seattle Public Schools as somebody who understood how to be a full participant in their community.

And that came up a lot of times.

I don't think we have a specific measure in it.

So that might be something we want to revisit.

But also just that that sentiment was very much there that part of being a part of being life ready is knowing how to be part of a community having the tools to participate knowing where you're how to make your voice heard knowing how to have difficult conversations that's something that I thought was really important to our full community and that civics goes goes right into I think too about student rights and responsibilities Just that's really how can we make that an opportunity for civic engagement of students of these are the basic rules.

that we have as an expectation of students in Seattle Public Schools, what does that mean for you as an individual?

What would it look like to have high schools especially craft their own sort of community code of conduct based on the student's rights and responsibilities that meets the legal requirements but also has their own values and priorities and commitments to each other in it so I am really excited about this and I know that there's a ton of good work that happens and I see a lot of ways it could be part of our overall vision the one last thing I want to ask is the state requirements I guess and then this maybe goes back to what I was saying earlier is what kind of mechanism or what kind of reporting could we maybe work together to look at to report out where things are happening going well what plate what schools might need more support and there's the difference to between something being available from the district versus being required at the building level so that's kind of a That's more of the oversight question, I guess, is what's the appropriate level of insight for us as a board to have on that?

And really, I expect the superintendent to make sure that it's consistent.

That's also a value that was expressed by our community in the guardrails is that your access to basic education isn't, that where you're assigned to school isn't the variable in having access to Guardrail one.

All this education, yeah.

So, anyway.

Yeah, thank you.

I think that's something that we're looking forward to co-constructing what that might look like.

There's, we have bits and pieces of it, but I think also when we're thinking about even the connections you were making, Director Rankin, to beyond the library goal, to the culture and climate, you know, it gives us opportunity for alignment, but also some specificity and saying, here's some mile markers we can say.

And we're doing a lot for second to third, fifth to sixth, eighth to ninth for transitions.

We can think about, well, how does that fit in for transitions too?

But our students should be beyond just saying it's available doesn't mean that it's necessarily happening.

But we have to hit that expectation so that when they are 12th graders and 18 and have the opportunity to vote, but also be engaged in community, being able to have discourse and the skills to do that, that they've been doing that all along the way.

So we can be explicit about that.

But we look forward to doing that along with community to decide that.

And I agree with you, Director Rankin.

What we heard a lot in the vision and values is how do we, as a school district, prepare students to be full participants in their community?

And I think this goes directly towards that.

Director Sarju.

I want to revisit the question that Director Briggs asked because I'm not sure I understood your answer or I'm not sure I heard you correctly.

What I thought I heard you say in the answer, you describe the training that teachers do, like how many people you trained over the last, I don't know, was it a couple years?

Two years.

Okay.

So, what I thought I heard Director Briggs ask was something like, and I'm going to paraphrase because I actually don't remember exactly what you said, but my question is, okay, so training is step one, but what we know about training is if it's never implemented, then it's just training.

So, what I thought I was understanding in Director Briggs' question is more about how is the district, and I guess, Super Assistant Superintendent Storoski, this would be in your wheelhouse.

How are you actually ensuring that it's happening?

Because I know for a fact I've heard from students and parents that they're not, that they haven't gotten this in their high school classrooms.

or that they hadn't gotten it at all.

And so I know that they're not just making that up.

It's actually not happening fully across the board.

And if that's what is supposed to be happening, then as a district, Assistant Acting Superintendent Podesta, I'm sick and tired of these silly labels.

Superintendent Podesta, how are you ensuring right now that it's happening?

Or how will you ensure that it's happening?

Because it actually isn't.

And I think that's important for people online.

particularly people who are online have actually told you know I don't know if we've been told by the same people but it's not it's not happening across the board and I don't think that's something to disagree about I think it's something to actually investigate interrogate and ensure where it's not happening how can we make it happen

Yes.

And I think that the answer is exactly where you put that at the end, Director Sarju, is that we need to investigate and find it out.

Because we were out without a manager last year for the entire year.

We're doing an onboarding.

We have a curriculum specialist.

involved, but she can't do it by herself.

And she needs the support of our district, my department entirely.

But what we're going to try to do, not try to do, but we are committed to doing starting this Friday is being able to find out What's the current state?

Beyond just how many teachers have been trained, but what have they been doing?

Where does it land in the curriculum specifically?

And then what we can commit to doing is coming back and say, this is what we found out.

But I'm not disagreeing with that at all, that we can't be doing a better job and shouldn't be doing a better job of that.

So just a quick follow.

Thank you for that.

And I don't think this needs to be that difficult.

Like, there needs to be a logical, implementable mechanism that actually measures for this.

We do it for lots of other things.

And I don't think it's different.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Oh.

I was looking at the Chief of Staff.

Sorry.

We were communicating because she and I went to a training together and I think that we all, board directors at our last meeting were shared with the pamphlet of fidelity for what this looked like in Seattle Public Schools and I think we were like at 33% after 10 years or whatever.

And she's shaking her head yes, so I'll hand it over here to Acting Superintendent Podesta.

So, yeah, I just want to go back because I just, as a board director whose last day is the first Tuesday in December, and then I get to be at the podium, which is actually a very dangerous position to be in having served on the board.

I'm not asking for something difficult.

I think we owe it to students and parents that we actually can measure if these things are happening or not.

And so I just want to be real clear.

Mr. Starosky, that I'm not actually asking for something complicated.

I'm actually asking for a simple way to measure if we're doing what we say we're doing and if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

And right now, we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing.

Yeah.

And I don't disagree.

And I think we can have that, actually, that information and data fairly quickly.

I read something this afternoon on just what we've been doing the last two years specifically.

But I think we can get that for you.

And happy to do so.

I guess I would add, and this was strategic to have Kathleen between Mike and I since he has long legs, so it's harder for him to kick me under the table.

As we're doing the strategic plan and we're talking about other goals, it does seem to me that we have some challenges around quantification and accountability towards delivering adopted curriculum in our system, whether it's this or other things.

So that's kind of a general problem-solve, I think.

It's just, what's our strategy?

You know, we've had a history of a certain amount of site-based decision-making and autonomy, and we just have to decide where we're going to land, and that's a little bit broader topic.

It would certainly apply here, but it would apply elsewhere, and as we think of our strategies for some of the specific academic goals, we've established, then we're going to have to think, so how are we sure this is actually going to happen?

How this is going to actually land in school buildings is one of the things I think we're working with.

And, you know, I will give Dr. Strausky's two-minute rebuttal if I didn't say that correctly.

But I think we have some general work.

to do as a system.

And I am far enough outside my lane to be a little dangerous on this topic, but that's the fun of being the acting superintendent.

If we can wrap up, because we are at ending time, but we have part three here that we're going to move into.

So thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

And I think maybe the next step is some of these unanswered questions.

We can come back.

back to the board here and have another update in the study session thank you thank you all right next is an update on enrollment so at our retreat we talked a little bit about the enrollment process and we said that we would have another update in the fall well it's pretty much fall so here we are and we will Let staff get seated here and then I will pass it over to Dr. Campbell.

And really, board directors, it's a different time tomorrow for 3.30, not 4.30 because of the oath of office of 3.30.

Just a reminder.

And Dr. Campbell, I'd just say...

Yeah, thank you.

I was going to turn it over to you.

One observation I have on this topic, we've talked about, hey, is this an operations issue?

Is it a policy issue?

I think...

As we're looking at our strategic plan and some of the challenges we face, there are things embedded in this that we are going to leap into both enrollment, declining enrollment or, you know, whatever we're expecting for enrollment coming forward, school choice and how we, not so much how we do school choice, we'll have a little bit of discussion about how we do it, but why we do it and what you know, what is it we're trying to achieve and what's our kind of future vision.

So a little grounding even though these are operational topics in the mechanics will probably be a good entree into some of those policy decisions that I think we're going to get to, or at least certainly we'll be talking to the community about.

We've been very clear that major decisions require more discourse for the community, and so we'll be talking to a lot of people about this.

So I think this is time well spent, even if some of it is just grounding and, hey, what happened in the last six months?

just to remind ourselves how this works.

And it leaves me with a lot of questions in terms of, so what are we trying to accomplish?

And that I think will be a governance discussion.

So with that, I'll turn it over to the team.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, and I appreciate that introduction, and I will turn the time over to Pfau.

But I'm always very mindful of the work that Pfau and the team in admissions and enrollment planning do, and what they don't do.

So this time of year, and we'll share some data with you about August enrollment or sorry assignment versus enrollment numbers and that's very important so for example right now school leaders teachers are seeing bigger numbers and that's and we'll talk about why that is the case our enrollment team often gets calls saying can you give me an extra teacher and and so there's you know even though enrollment is tied to things like staffing that's not our enrollment department in fact we'll talk a little bit about some of the ways in which we intersect, but as Fred said, we are both engaged in a team that we're calling the geographic equity team, where we really are looking at the broader picture because so much of this has to do with choices we make.

If you look at the history of enrollment in Seattle, it has so much to do with political climate, with commitments, with vision and values, We have a Supreme Court decision that impacted enrollment.

We have other things that have gone on.

And so enrollment is complex.

And we sit at the heart of a lot of things.

And FAO is the right leader for the time and grateful for FAO, Director Manu.

And I will turn the time over for her and bear in mind that we tried to keep this at a pretty clean, clear update of where we're at right now relative to some key issues.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, directors.

Nice to see you again.

I think the last time we chatted it was back in May.

And we learned a lot.

And I just want to share with you our journey as a district.

I know some of you have been here the last five years, but it has been tumultuous at times with COVID.

And so I just wanted to provide some context around our enrollment and our journey where we were.

and what's happening today and how we are entering into the new school year.

Next slide.

Oh, sorry.

We are all about that.

I can do that.

Self-sufficient.

Okay.

Okay, so we will be discussing our enrollment milestones, providing you some enrollment projections, and also, again, like I said, where we were and where we are today.

We're also going to update you on our school choice and decision to expand and those outcomes.

And then, finally, the support for children of deaf adults and CODA enrollment that we've been working on, and so I wanted to provide a progress report on that.

Next slide.

So year over year, this is just a snapshot of the last four years really entering into our 25-26 school year.

As you can see, we started out in 2020 at 52,300 students.

And since 2024, we've lost over 3,200 students, about 6% decline.

So this is not unique to SPS.

As you can see, our surrounding districts, our neighboring districts are going through this same challenge as well.

Most of that decline is showing up in our kindergarten enrollment, just low births means low entry into next five years into kindergarten.

We are anticipating a projection of 49,080 students.

We're highly confident given the trends that we're seeing and we may even come a little bit higher than this projection.

And if I may just add, if we were to look at the past 20, 25 years of enrollment in Seattle, this is actually higher than where we were about 25 years ago.

So this is, we sometimes express that there's been a precipitous or calamitous drop.

This certainly is not the direction we want to see.

We want Seattle to feel like the place where you would love your children to go to school, but bear in mind that this is actually not a hugely dramatic drop from the past 20, 25 years or so.

In the last three years, you can kind of see we are stabilizing and we're flattening out, so that's a good leading indicator that at least our sixth to twelfth graders are staying.

The migration out has lessened, so it's helped, and so the new enrollment for our higher grades is making up that gap in our enrollment, in our K enrollment.

So the enrollment projections, this is just kind of context of how we project.

We're always looking at the expected numbers of students for the following school year, and so we have a myriad of data that we look at that helps us determine from historical and even current trends, and so this is looking at our grade progression rates, our show rates, the incoming kindergarten dates, and our birth rates, and then also we are talking with our city planning projects to look at housing information, and then looking at also major employees who are actually leaving the state or coming in to make this a residency for us to see if there's any school-age children that will be coming with those moves.

Really the goal here is to ensure that with these projections that we are informing and helping our district plan for not just this following school year, but also in the next six to five or ten years.

And so we wanted just to make sure that we have the resources and the staffing that each of our schools needs before the start of every school.

And we've added a link to the explainer video for folks at home that are engaging with this.

Thao is featured in that video and does a really great job of breaking down some of the technical pieces of enrollment projections.

So just people watching at home, it's a really great resource.

Yeah, I was going to tell you just to click on the link, but thank you, Dr. Campbell.

You want me to click on the link?

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

I was just letting people know, instructing them.

Okay.

Next slide.

So this is just to give you an idea of our enrollment cycle year over year.

We start projections initially in February.

Obviously, after October 1st, we start doing the back work to get prepped for the following February so that we can provide our timely projections to our budget office.

And so the initial projection starts in February.

In June, we start to review all of the activities that happened between February and June, and we start revising those projections based on kindergarten enrollment projections, either falling lower or higher, for example.

Some in and out migration that we see were higher than what we projected, and also transfers.

In August is when we start looking at the summer attrition.

As you know, when schools are out for the summer, the admissions office is still open and processing those registrations.

So there's an inflated number that schools, when they come back mid-August, they will see those inflated enrollment numbers because those records have not yet been reconciled.

Once those records have been reconciled, then September, we go into September with all of that activity that has already been baked into our projections and that we will start seeing drops that were already projected to make a final projections at the end of September.

And then October is when we do the final count and submit that to OSPI.

So this is a graph just to show you assignment versus enrollment.

So this is a distinction here that people don't understand, so we just wanted to provide what we meant through the summer attrition.

As you can see, the enrollment will peak right at June, July, and then there's a huge what we call internally a cliff.

and it just drops off through the month of September, and that's when the records are being reconciled, and so you will see up to a thousand drops on average year over year, which is also considered into the projections.

Yes, the kids that don't show up or who are enrolled and decided to go somewhere else to private school, so those are all reconciled.

Students that withdraw, those records are all done at the school level.

And that's pretty, oh, sorry, that's.

That's a pretty consistent pattern, that people might assign, you know, do the paperwork, get assigned, and then make a different decision, move.

Yeah.

So that between August, we actually formally enroll them when school starts, and the school staff have to actually enroll them in the school.

I mean, it's pretty natural if you think about it.

There is an incentive to enroll and tell us you're coming.

There's less of an incentive to say, oh, but never mind.

And so there's a draw there.

Yeah.

So this is a summary of our school choice application.

Again, I think I shared this back in May, pending some more data.

But since the decision, as you can see, we had an increase of extended wait list options at 64% in comparison to our average 50% year over year the last 10 years.

This year we received a total of 4,055 applications, and we assigned almost 2,600 students to their first choice assignments, and that's a percentage of 14% above that of 64%.

This is a significant improvement from last year and then obviously from year over year.

And our whole goal is to see if we can increase that year over year to offer more choice and expand that for families in those high demand schools.

As we look forward, we are planning for open enrollment to begin in January 26 for the 26-27 school year.

The families will have their assignments finalized by or earlier and will be notified earlier of their assignments.

And our projections will be provided earlier for budget and staffing.

We will also be looking at, like I said, increasing our first choice assignment to expand that wait list as we continue to look at space, but that is a goal for next year that we would like to really start implementing right now with right sizing our systems to be able to do that.

Could you just tell me how that compares to what we did this previous year?

So each year enrollment begins in February, and so we're moving it up a month early.

And then finally, our children of deaf adults update.

We're happy to report that as of September 1st, the systems are ready to accept new registration and also current requests for any CODA-identified students to be transferred to the DHH program.

K-8 is at TOPS K-8 and 9-12 Roosevelt.

And so this is an assignment that's guaranteed and we will be processing this at the time of enrollment at their request.

The system has been updated so if the The family has identified themselves through the registration process that they will be coded and then prioritized for assignment.

We will collaborate with the special education team and also our ML team because this is considered, the process is going to go through the home language survey where the ML team oversees and so that screening is going to be done collaboratively with the special education team as well.

Kudos to you, Director Rankin, for raising this and also Dr. Torres Morales for his team and really steering this work so that the systems are ready and we were able to prepare a communication for our DHH families and CODA families.

What you see right now is in draft, but this is just a snapshot of our policy that we are gonna be getting, it's getting routed right now for superintendent approval.

And I would add that families will have the option.

They may want to stay in their attendance area, their assigned school.

So alongside this at work, we still need to make sure that children who are children of deaf adults still need to have access to the supports that they and their families need.

So that's also parallel work that we're doing to make sure that families can fully engage in the learning process without having to ask their children to be their interpreters, without having to ask to miss out on opportunities.

So that will continue to be work, but we did want to make the pathway if students and families still wish to attend a school where there is that language being used to teach and to learn.

Okay.

All right.

Any questions?

Questions?

Director Rankin?

Thank you so much for the children of deaf adults.

That, I mean, it's, you know, this is, what, my sixth year on the board, and I don't know why it took that many years for that to really be elevated, but when it was, it was like this is, seems so obvious that that's the right thing to do for those students, and that it is a language and cultural need, and not, not a preference in the way that something else might be.

So I'm really grateful and excited that that's something that we'll be able to tell those families.

And then the next step would be to make TOPS a dual language immersion school, but that's a whole other...

That would be pretty cool.

Having visited TOPS many times, hearing kids are so excited to learn ASL and they want to communicate with their DHH classmates and see that as you know a real benefit to being there and they want to be one community they don't want to be separated by who can communicate to who so that's just anyway I'm just thrilled and thank you for doing that and to the families too because all I did was elevate it and provide a possible pathway but it was families that didn't give up Shouldn't have had to work quite so hard probably, but you know, didn't give up.

So going back to the enrollment stuff, I don't want to get too much into wait lists.

That for me is an example of something that is completely a customer service issue in terms of how the mechanics of that work.

Our job is to make sure that it's being carried out in a way that aligns with the values of the system and isn't going to impact resources in a way that cause harm to other students.

That's my interest.

I mean, I want people to have their kids go to school where they want to go to school, but I also don't think that's something that can be figured out.

We don't have to divert so much time at the board level to do that.

I also just that there's lots of, kind of talk that choice is being limited and families don't have access and we've got now the highest number of students in the last 10 years that do have a place at their number one choice school.

So, my, wonder about that is how many of those are new students to the district that would have gone somewhere else had they not gotten their first choice and how many are students that were moving from one school to another within the system that's just a curiosity don't need to know that now but that's also I think an easy trying to say this without being Students are not revenue.

They are our purpose.

And so when families choose to go elsewhere that is totally up to them.

And the idea that we would craft our system around giving people what they want even if it hurts other children is not something that I'm going to support.

So I just want more clarity around the idea of who participates in choice and that I know that there are schools that lost staff because they were diverted to these choice assignments.

That is essentially a public voucher system is where we're headed.

And so, and I can hear the pearls clutch already because good Democrats don't do that.

But I mean, if you're diverting public dollars from disadvantaged children to serve your own and you're doing it but you're staying in the public system, the impact's no different to the disadvantaged children.

I want people to have access to the programs that work for them, but I'm not about to give up on the idea.

We cannot allow a small group to essentially hold hostage the rest of the system if they don't get what they want.

That's on us.

We allowed it.

We allowed it.

most of this year go by talking about something that's solvable and I think would have been solvable without board intervention maybe it wouldn't have been solved in the way that it was I don't know but our expectations should be that that is done in a manner that doesn't harm other students that is transparent that is fair that aligns with our policies and other than that we really shouldn't be spending a lot of board time talking about who's going to those schools.

We have them.

their options we want that to be fair and transparent and for people to have their kid go to school in a place that they're the most comfortable and it can't be because we're throwing some other kids under the bus so that being said the larger picture of that is because I'm working on policy stuff for the ad hoc policy committee something I'm noticing and that goes back to what you said Fred about, what is our intent?

Because I think that's the thing that's missing the most is when we're not clear about our larger picture expectation, staff does their best to meet the demands of families, to accommodate what the board's saying, but if they're conflicting or if we even are conflicting with something we've said before, it gets really, really hard.

to do any of that in a way that feels good to people even the people that do get what they want and so something I noticed is that we have various policies that address enrollment but in the WASDA model policy book enrollment as a standalone policy is designated as critical, and we don't have a standalone just, this is our policy about enrollment.

Not that there's no policy, there's plenty, but I'm wondering if that is a good, if that's an opportunity for us to kind of, what is our intent?

What is...

you know, the bigger picture of what we want this to do and make sure that that is in policy so that later somebody can't come say, well, I don't see choice schools anywhere in policy, so I'm going to get rid of them and have everybody go, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We all agreed this was going to happen.

starting with that big picture of like, this is what we want to do, I think could be a place for some clarification and just making a little bit simpler and more accessible.

The other thing I noticed is the policy on alternative learning experiences.

The procedure hasn't been updated in over 10 years.

So it related.

Yeah.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I did too many things at once.

But I was trying to get to a board place.

I appreciate the question and ask your acting policy advisor.

I think the board has been clear on outcomes that you want for students and that there's equity across the system.

What we haven't been clear on is, well, how does choice and emphasis or not on neighborhood schools, how does that move the needle on the goals you set?

So I guess before I would say, oh, what we need is enrollment policy, I think you need to hear more from us as part of the strategic plan is because I don't know why we do some of the choices.

They're historical artifacts and I haven't perceived what is the strategy behind this.

what is the purpose of K-AIDS and elementary and middle schools and how does what we're delivering at K-AIDS, for example, help us meet our middle school goals that we have when we know the middle school experience in a K-AIDS is different than in the middle school.

and how many flavors of this can we actually support?

So I think we'd like to get in a little bit deeper on, so how are we gonna move the needle on the things you've asked us to do and is this helping us or is this getting in the way?

And also how do we resource?

So if we identify a K-8 is really important for the type of student who XYZ, I don't know, we need to then make sure that that K-8 is not struggling for survival every year.

If we agree this is a need that we have, this is something that families want, we're gonna support this school, what we have right now is just people fighting for survival every year, and small schools just getting smaller, and it's not sustainable, and we have students assigned to schools that don't provide everything that we want kids to survive, and for staff too, staff's very stretched thin, but also if we're committed to saying, this is important that we provide this alternative experience for students who need it.

How do we make sure that that will still be there in a year or two?

And that it's in our staffing, it's in the WSS, it's in our budgeting.

Because right now there's not really different factors for that.

They just don't get as many staff.

And that's not aligned with not only our goals, but even just making sure that there's access to basic education everywhere.

And what is that need?

So that's where the development planning team is so important is, well, have we scaled this appropriately?

Do we have the right assignment plan?

Do we have the right boundaries?

And what is it we're trying to do?

We've kind of made these incremental changes over the years and one layer of paint over the last coat of paint.

But We need to step back, I think, as part of this next draft strategic plan.

I think we would recommend it's important to the incoming administration and superintendent is we have some catching up to do and we need to align our student assignment plan with our strategies.

both to achieve the goals we're trying to achieve and to embrace and deliver on the equity guardrail that Dr. Campbell referred to geographic equity.

There are many other dimensions as well, but we need to there will require a bit of a system reset, and some of that will, it's change, and to individual students, some of that change will feel as significant as even our discussion about closing schools, because at the heart of that it was, well, maybe this is going to be worse.

I mean, to a student who's changing schools, it doesn't matter to them if 20 are changing or only theirs is changing, because for them, they're the one moving.

Absolutely.

So this is a very big topic, and that's why I think it's good to ground ourselves on, hey, how is this working?

Because we're going to come back, someone's going to come back to you with some pretty heavy questions.

I think something really important that you said that I want to kind of echo is what is it we actually want?

Because if we can't figure out And I don't mean all the technical answers and everything, but if we want, which I think from the leadership profile, from our vision and values, we've heard very clearly that our community wants a school district with strong neighborhood schools and access to alternative and option programs, and we need to do it within our budget and under the reality of the current enrollment.

So that's not impossible.

But we have to say, here's kind of the, catalogs not the portfolio of schools and some of these details are going to fluctuate as buildings live past their lifetime as whatever but if we can paint like yes we all agree or not maybe all agree but that what we want is a robust neighborhood system that doesn't rely on individuals or it's not a luck of the draw you get access to something good plus some alternatives we can work towards making that a reality as opposed to everybody freaking out and clinging to fighting over scraps basically.

So however, and I know that's a longer term thing, so we need to talk about what we can do with you now and how we support the transition too for an incoming superintendent.

I just want to make sure.

Yeah.

I heard we have 60 days.

Yeah.

Shouldn't be a problem.

So I'm just going to ground us just from what families have shared with me.

And we've been out to the communities, and we've heard a lot of noise from emails.

And so I think we have to understand the position that we're in.

We're talking about all students who they get to thrive.

And so we need to create and build that community.

And families are saying that you're freezing these wait lists and you're forcing me to stay at a school that's severely under enrolled.

And so the investment piece of this as we look into these conversations, I feel it goes back to not to disagree with you, Dr. Rankin, but it is a governance question.

because enrollment can't shoulder all of this, because decisions that weren't made that should have been made, critical decisions, and so we're having to now, and not being burdened, but we were very carefully, prior to 25, 26, we were actually protecting those under-enrolled schools.

We were doing that, and so that's why it's important that we understand If we are going to ensure that children can thrive in anywhere, and we have ample space at an option school, But we're freezing the wait list because we're saying we're going to impact severely this other school.

So that's the balance and imbalance and challenge that enrollment faces every day, not just through wait lists.

We have transfer appeals.

We see them.

We hear them.

They're at the counter.

So I just want to make sure that I bring voice to those families.

Whether it's privilege or entitlement, they have a right to share that I'm not going to debate their children's academic needs.

That's not up for debate.

If they feel that that is something they need and we have space, that is the conundrum.

And so I would love for this board to provide some governance around that.

And so how do we do that in reality and on the ground?

Because what we say doesn't land.

And so it's a difficult challenge.

So I just wanted to be very honest in that and understanding where with families and how that sounds like when they're in front of you and saying, you know.

And we did shift a lot of these wait lists.

But keep in mind, those that were 33, 43 are now 10 on the wait list, and they're saying, what about me?

So just kind of put it in perspective.

Appreciate that.

And I think we are in agreement that this lands in our strategic plan and how do we get to where we want to go and trying to answer that question there.

Is that Director Sarju?

Yes.

No, that's it.

I was ready to adjourn, so go for it.

I also want to extend praise for this work, particularly the work for the children of deaf adults.

I think the solution represents what was always possible.

And it should serve as a lesson that it shouldn't take what it took to get to that point when we're talking about marginalized students and families.

This is huge for that community.

And we'll likely, we won't see just how impactful and huge it is.

We will likely hear from families, but we won't see it every day.

And so sometimes when we can't see something every day, we just don't even recognize that it's there.

And so I just, I wanna give praise because a lot of times that's not what's happening here.

And I know that the families are grateful.

I know that they're grateful and they're likely to come and testify that they're thankful that they were finally seen and heard.

And then my last little shameless plug is for sign language is a language.

We need to stop talking about it as if it's just something that only deaf people care about, right?

It is a second language.

and we should treat it as such.

And so my plug is in addition to Liza's, but I will share a very quick personal story, very quick personal story.

My kids went to TOPS.

I watched the kids navigate together on the playground with their little student colleagues who were not hearing.

And it was a beautiful thing because kids work it out.

Like, go there, go to TOPS.

If you want to see what I'm talking about, go observe for yourself.

Because kids work it out.

It's the adults who are not working it out.

And so it is beneficial to support something like this.

And my son, who's now 35, my kids went to TOPS.

He took a gap semester his sophomore year.

And he ended up, during that gap semester, working for the Technology Access Foundation classroom down south, except he was in a classroom where the teacher was deaf.

He came home after the first day of being in that classroom and signed up for sign language classes at Seattle Central Community College so he could communicate with the teacher that he'd been assigned to work with.

That's the power of creating an environment for our children.

I don't believe he gets there without having had that experience at TOPS and having kids come to our house to play and trying to figure it out like they'd have to come with their hearing parent.

So that there could be sign language interpretation because nobody in our house spoke sign language.

And so let's not stifle this momentum.

We have this resource.

The resource is our deaf and hard of hearing community.

They're an asset and they're a resource.

It's up to us whether we choose to engage.

with that asset and a resource.

And I think for the betterment of society, it's well worth our investment to consider it.

Thank you.

I'll thank you everyone for the three part work session the leadership profile report for the superintendent and we're off and running ending the engagement session and moving forward there the civic education lesson and then the enrollment update schools right around the corner staff is busy at work staff and families preparing to welcome nearly 49,000 students back to school.

And for many of you, we will see you tomorrow night for our regular board session.

But there being no further business on the agenda, this meeting stands adjourned at 7.09 PM.

29,200.

Is that your guess?