School Board Meeting 1/4/2017 Part 2

Okay I would like to resume our meeting and at this point we have come to the action portion of the meeting.

And the first item item 1 is naming of Ingram high school gymnasium court in honor of Walt Milroy.

May I hear from the chair of the ops committee?

Oh may I hear a motion?

I move that the school board approve the naming of the Ingram high school basketball court.

In honor of Walt Milroy do I have a second?

Second.

Okay and now hear from the chair of the Ops committee please.

This item was heard by the Ops committee on November the 17th and moved forward for approval.

Okay thank you.

Hi Tom Redmond, Capital Communications with Principal Flow.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

I was just curious if we had any more clarity on the participation of the Governor in the naming ceremony.

Governor Inslee has been invited yes.

Great thank you.

Do you have a question?

Has anything changed since introduction on this item?

No.

Director Burke.

I was wondering if you could describe kind of date venue for the naming ceremony for the public record and anyone interested.

Right now we are trying to establish a home game coming up here soon but we haven't firmed up the specific date.

If you could share with the board since maybe some of us Ingram families might be interested in participating.

All right are there any other questions or comments?

All right Ms. Ritchie may have the role.

Director Geary aye.

Director Harris aye Director Patu aye Director Pinkham aye Director Blanford aye Director Burke aye Director Peters aye This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

We now move on to item 2 amending policy number 4237 advertising and commercial activities.

Do I have a motion?

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to amend board policy 4237 advertising and commercial activities as attached to the board action report.

And I second the motion.

This item was heard by the operations committee also on November 17th and moved forward for approval.

All right Mr. Boy has anything changed since introduction on this item?

Yes Director Peters there were some changes as a result of the board comments and introduction.

The main changes further clarify where advertising can be and that it is of temporary nature when it is within a school building.

You can see on paragraph 2 the change indicates change languages advertising will only be permitted on high school athletic venues which are locations where interscholastic athletic competitions are held.

That was as a result of a board comment asking for more clarity on what an athletic venue is and then further with the exception of advertising placed on athletic venue scoreboards advertising on athletic venues in school buildings, gymnasiums is only permitted to be visible during interscholastic athletic competitions.

So that would indicate that it will only be in place during the time of the competition which I feel should rectify the concerns as far as subjecting our students to advertising during the educational day.

Further, I made additional changes just to provide a better read as far as the policy.

There was some awkward language in the former policy and I further refined the language just to make sure that it was exceedingly clear and that it read appropriately.

Thank you.

Are there any questions or comments?

Director Patu.

So I guess for clarity.

So you are telling me then that advertisement will only happen when there is a game competition actually within the gym.

Yes so within the gym advertising is allowed on our scoreboards.

Often scoreboards are sponsored by soft drink companies is most common.

So that would be the one location where advertising would be permanent and visible at all times.

Other than that the expectation would be that any advertising would only be visible during the game and not visible at any other time.

So when they also have games outside of the field you know the gate around, can the advertisement go around the gates?

Sorry I don't know if I.

You know when they are playing outside of the field like for football.

For outside.

Yes.

Yes so advertising would be allowed on athletic venues that are outside of school buildings so fields that's acceptable.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

So it sounds like these new advertisements would be on like temporary facilities of boards, banners and then are we going to have to provide storage for those then or is that something the advertising company would oh hey here's a game we'll bring our banner or billboard to the game.

You know it would depend on the situation and you know we would look at that you know depending on the scenario we honestly don't have a lot of people asking to advertise at our athletic venues so at this point it isn't a concern but that is something that I will be sure to address in the refinements to the procedure.

Any other questions?

Director Burke.

I just want to understand the line of authority on this.

The revised policy indicates that the superintendent or designee shall consider the foregoing.

So this is what is the delegate process, you know I looked at the procedure that's attached to this and it looks like that's not covered explicitly in there.

Is that something that is established somewhere else or will that be built out in a future procedure?

That will be built out in the procedure and again I would imagine that we would likely go towards someone like Director Deputy Superintendent Herndon.

Associate Superintendent Flip Herndon would probably be the direction that we would go for the delegate but that will be decided

Thank you.

I have a couple questions.

Does this policy expand the areas where advertising can be permitted or does it just redefine it or am I splitting hairs?

I would say that it does expand a little bit.

At the previous policy the way that it read it would not allow advertising to take place in a gymnasium or say a tennis court.

and the reason why we looked at this policy was we had a request for advertising to take place during basketball games and the request wouldn't have worked under our policy and we decided that it just seemed really unfair because we said if the same request came in for a football game it would have been completely fine but because it's a basketball game it doesn't work.

and it was a request to place some advertising at the entrance to the gymnasium.

So at this point we determined that it was appropriate to relook at the policy and make sure that it provided equitable access to all of our teams to receive the benefits that advertising could bring in.

So you're saying the difference was indoors versus outdoors and without these changes the indoor venues were not able to have advertising displayed?

It's not necessarily indoor versus outdoor.

The previous policy said high school fields, stadiums and scoreboards.

So it did allow advertising in an indoor area if it was on a scoreboard but it didn't allow any other type of advertising within an indoor facility like a gymnasium other than the scoreboard and it also didn't allow on outdoor facilities that were not fields or stadiums.

And we talked about cross country venues, tennis courts, can't really think of any others potentially a pool if there was a swim meet those facilities would have been excluded and it just didn't seem to make sense that we would exclude some and not others and it was basically the same sort of a scenario.

So it seems like you are just trying to equalize which sports can have advertising because they have different venues that you needed to change the wording on this.

Exactly.

It will effectively expand the locations where this is available where advertising is allowed to be done.

All right and so what we are changing here really is we are not really changing the policy per se.

The policy still stands.

It allows us to sell advertising at sports events where our students participate.

So what we are voting on tonight is just these changes.

So my own sense is I have always been concerned about exposing our students to advertising and so I actually am not a fan of this policy but a vote tonight would not end this policy it would just be a vote against these changes is that correct?

That's very correct.

All right I just wanted to clarify that.

Director Blanford did you have something to say?

We had a rich conversation in the operations committee about the impact of this policy and the way it was explained to me was at present in some ways we discriminate against some teams versus other teams and this just opens the opportunity for other teams beyond our football teams and our basketball teams to have the opportunity to benefit from revenues derived from commercials from ads, ad space.

And whereas I share your concerns about over exposure to ads but I'm also sensitive to the equity argument which is that some teams are unfairly penalized as a result of the current policy that there is an effort made to try to equalize that.

I think it is worthy of conversation at some point in the future for us to talk about the appropriateness of advertising but I think it needs to be framed in the language of the impacts that it will have on our ASB's and our teams that are competing so.

Director Burke.

I would like to maybe a little better understand what those impacts might be.

Do we have a dollar amount that advertising revenues yield for our schools or our ASBs?

I am not aware that we get a significant amount.

I know that Philip.

Philip Hernan associate superintendent of facilities and operations.

I don't have that figure on hand.

but I do know that advertising revenue is something that schools have looked at.

You would probably hear the lament from many high school principals about the loss of ASB revenue through other streams which I totally understand and so this is trying to create some opportunity to help support the teams basically that are competing at that time does take a little bit of pressure off of the budget clearly but I don't know what the total number is on that.

I think in a future discussion around this topic I would like to have that dollar figure as part of sort of central to it because that's what we are were essentially trading off advertising exposure for a certain dollar amount.

And then the policy indicates that revenues from athletic venue advertising will first and foremost enable equitable funding of ASB accounts.

How is equitable funding of ASB accounts determined?

Is that building discretion or is it per sport?

Yes so the ASB dollars are dollars that are derived basically from student activities so they then are governed by the processes under the ASB functions.

So again this just allows different teams the opportunity to be able to raise some additional funds in those areas related to their sports.

I guess is the revenue stream team specific or school specific or is it part of the general district wide?

Yeah I think you would have to take a look at each one of them.

I don't know that right off hand but in general usually there might be a line item for each particular sport and it might go into a general ASB fund but I don't want to say that for sure because that's not my strength.

I won't pin you down on this.

I think maybe this would be a good conversation to have a deeper dive on.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

Yeah I just want to kind of also echo Director Burke's comments that it would be nice to know exactly where are these funds going?

Are they going to go to a particular team, a particular school or just to a general fund?

Because then I think we are going to look at the challenging issues now that Nathan Hale has a number of basketball teams and boom that's where all that advertisement is going to go to and then other schools are going to suffer.

So we need to see how we can be equitable that if this policy goes through that we are not penalizing schools because they don't have a good sports team and another school is getting bigger and bigger that we end up with a Bellevue high school situation where it's almost become a booster situation.

So I think we definitely need to look at what these numbers are doing to us as far as generating revenue for individual schools and individual teams.

Yeah so just my experiences in most of those cases are that the revenue generally generated by the team goes to support that particular team and of course the advantage of if you have a team that's drawing a large audience they tend to draw a large audience even on the road so it ends up benefiting that team too as they play around the district.

Director Blanford.

Let me get clarification on that.

Did you say that or did you mean that a popular team that travels around the revenue that is generated from them playing away games benefits the home team or the away team?

Usually benefits the team where that athletic activity is happening.

What I heard was different than that so that's why I asked for clarification.

That the home team is the beneficiary of whatever ads happen in their building.

Correct.

Thank you.

My final comment on this is I appreciate the effort to make this policy more fair in terms of access for other activities and I am mindful of the fact that we look for ways to get revenue for our district when we are cash strapped and we are still dealing with an unfunded Cleary situation.

I just regret that this is moving in the direction of expanding advertising in our schools and so I am hoping for us to have a conversation perhaps this is not the year for it when we are looking at budget crunch but a conversation about what it means to be exposing our kids and selling them as a captive audience to advertisers.

Thank you.

Ms. Ritchie roll call.

Director Harris.

Abstain.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

No.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Peters.

This vote passed 4, 2, 1.

Okay the next item is item number 3. Approval of a contract to Audio Eye Inc. for web and technology accessibility.

Do I hear a motion?

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute a contract with Audio Eye Inc. in the amount of $287,298 for web and technology accessibility in the form of the draft agreement dated October 25, 2016 and presented to the school board with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement said contract.

I second the motion.

May I hear from the chair of operations please.

This item was heard by the operations committee on November 17th and moved forward for approval.

I am Michael Miller I am the accessibility coordinator.

There has been one change to both the action report and to the attachments to it and that change was to clarify the language around the indemnification in the contract that came up at the last meeting.

and if you look at page 3 of the board statement it was changed to read that audio I would have indemnified the district for any errors that cause us to be out of compliance that are directly attributable to the work that they are performing under this contract.

They would not be on the hook to identify us for content that the school puts up or any issues that arise from the content management system that is handled by a different vendor.

Director Blanford?

So am I to take it that the nature of those clarifications improved our position relative to audio I?

Yes it did.

Thank you for that.

Director Patu?

Can you refresh my memory again and tell me what audio I is?

They are a technology company and what they will be doing for the district is taking over the testing of our website and making sure that it is in compliance with all of the applicable federal regulations and they will be doing a mediation on the website so that we come into compliance with all of the tenants of the consent decree that we signed in October 2015.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

Director Patu if you remember we were party to a lawsuit as a result of not having accessibility on our website a year ago, two years ago?

2014.

2014. I'm sure that refreshes your memory because I remember long discussions about that particular issue and so I will state again for the record that I am particularly pleased that we are at this point where we are able to mitigate a deficiency that has been identified that prevents our parents from being able, some of our parents from being able to access our web content.

My understanding is this action will help to resolve that issue and for that I am grateful and thank you for your work.

Director Geary.

Having sat through the Ops Committee as well I do think that this is an important function.

The cost of it makes me and knowing that this function has been being delivered in house up to this date to some extent this amount of money is a large amount of money and so it makes me wonder can we find cost savings then in other places to make up for it because obviously we aren't going to have to be doing this function any longer and that's what it raises to me and if you could again explain what the trade-off is and will we be seeing any internal savings by contracting this function out?

Does it mean that we have people within this department that become in terms of budget cuts something to look at because their time isn't going to be spent doing this any longer?

So under the consent decree the only position that was established was my position and we have to have that position as part of it.

The other people myself and staff from communications and staff from the department of technology services have been working to try to immediate these issues in the last year.

These are additional duties that those staff members and those other two departments have taken on.

So this will free them up to go back to concentrating specifically on what they are supposed to be doing.

And I can't speak to how their workloads are affected.

to say something to that.

She's in thoughts.

But it's just freeing those people to go back to what they're supposed to be doing.

Also this is within the dollar amount that the board identified for remediation under the consent decree.

Good evening Director Stephen Nielsen, Deputy Superintendent.

The prime advantage of this action provides compliance with the law so the savings is more in risk aversion than it is in staff savings.

I think it would be fair to say that trying to do this work on our own creates some higher liability and sense of risk for us than going with a source that is used to doing this and has the guidelines built into their process and procedure.

So another way to look at it, it is a cost of operating our business, it's a cost of operating a school district and from what we've seen this is the most efficient way to do that.

Does that answer your question?

It does and it doesn't in that somehow we have been satisfying this function and now we are paying $287,000 to satisfy it and so but I understand that if it was pulled if people were pulled in to do something and away from other tasks I assume those tasks have also been deemed valuable and I just wondered because it seems like we are replacing.

Yes.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Seeing none Ms. Ritchie the roll please.

Director Patu?

Aye.

Director Pinkham?

Aye.

Director Blanford?

Aye.

Director Burke?

Aye.

Director Geary?

Aye.

Director Harris?

Aye.

Director Peters?

Aye.

This motion passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right we now move on to item number 4 approval of the student assignment transition plan for 2017-18.

So I actually would like to put forth a motion to postpone it.

Second the motion.

Okay and here is the motion.

I move that the school board hold discussion on the proposed student assignment transition plan tonight but postpone action on the plan to a special meeting of the board to be held on January 11, 2017. So we already had a second.

Do we discuss the motion at this time or do we vote on the motion?

I am asking legal counsel.

So now you have got the motion to discuss the student assignment plan but postpone action until a special meeting next week.

So now you discuss that motion first before moving on to more substantive discussion.

You discuss that motion, you vote on that motion and then assuming it passes you can move to discussion of the student assignment plan followed by then action next week at the special meeting.

Okay thank you.

Are there any questions or comments?

Point of order.

Do we not have to read the original motion into the record before we?

No you don't.

You are not making the original motion.

This is a motion essentially not to bring that motion to the body.

So if you are bringing the motion to postpone you don't have to first read another motion.

You are essentially amending the agenda tonight saying normally this would be queued up for action tonight but we are not going to do that.

We are going to move to postpone that.

Okay I will take your word for it.

Director Geary did you have a question or comment?

I am just assuming that all the amendments are wrapped into this as well or do we need to move them make a motion to delay vote on the amendments because I did specifically hear people in the audience asking that the grandfathering amendment in particular be voted on tonight so I just wanted that point of clarification.

I am going to redirect that question to general counsel.

That is a good question and no I don't think you specifically have to call out the amendments at this point.

You are moving You are moving now to postpone consideration or approval of a vote on the student assignment plan so at the point where you come back assuming this does pass when you come back at the special meeting next week and there is a motion made to approve the student assignment plan the amendments are then made to that motion and then you will go through the amendment process so you don't have to separately do anything with the amendments tonight.

Those will carry forward to be proposed at the time you have the plan in front of you next week presumably for action.

Yes.

Are there any questions or comments?

Can we do that?

It's not your normal practice, no.

Can I take a question?

You can, it's not the normal part of the process to have the audience participate in your deliberation but you are the chair and you can make that decision.

I would be willing to take a question.

Could you clarify if in fact you do postpone the vote until next week that will be a meeting without public comment at which the decision will be made?

That is a good question.

That is up to the board.

Generally at your special meetings or your work sessions you don't have public testimony but you do have the discretion to allow it if you should so choose.

Okay all right so that at this point that's to be determined but that was a good question.

All right is there any other questions or comments from the board about this motion?

By way of background the thinking is that at this point directors felt the need to have a little bit more information, a little bit more time in order to make an informed decision about a pretty significant plan and the holiday schedule worked against all of us.

It was hard to stay on track with all of this.

It was hard to do the community outreach we wanted to do and we want to make sure we put as much thought and facts behind our votes and so this allows us to do that at least one more week.

I understand a week is not a whole lot but we do have a lot of other things attached to this riding on this because after this we also vote on the transportation standards and then we have open enrollment coming up really quickly so we do need to move forward but we also need to do it in a way where board directors feel they are fully informed on the ramifications of this plan and ramifications of the various amendments.

Director Burke.

I was hoping we could hear from staff on what are the potential gating items that are being deferred or could be deferred and what's the potential impact.

the potential impact of?

Of a one week delay.

Okay.

I'll take a stab at that and then we'll get more information from others.

We did discuss this with Chairman Peters earlier in the day to try to work through that.

We are concerned about the potential of a delay partly because so many things hinge on this.

The budget hinges on this.

Our staffing process hinges on this, the transportation bid coming up timing wise depends on it.

However that said, for the reasons that President Peters mentioned, we certainly want the boards to be well informed.

after we get through the vote on this part and get into the discussion on the other part I'm hopeful that we fully daylight the costs given our $74 million deficit and I know that last time around there were some questions after the fact from the board in terms of us not having daylighted that.

So for all of those reasons I mean my term radical middle We can delay a week.

We don't want to delay two weeks.

We do want as much daylighting and information as possible on all parts of it both public concerns that have been raised as well as the budget costs.

Thank you Superintendent Nyland.

Director Blanford?

So is it my understanding that we will cast a vote during a work session next week?

Not exactly.

Normally we would have a work session and it might be advertised as a special session but we would not take action.

We did this recently and somebody will remember what we did.

So it's not highly and well it's probably unusual but it's certainly legal.

I mean we would advertise it as a special meeting, we would daylight it, we would post all of that information and we would have kind of the more still pretty formal but informal conversations from a work session prior to getting into the more formal parts where we would move to take action and take the motion and move it second it, take the amendments and all of those kinds of things.

Yeah just to emphasize you are allowed to take action at a special meeting which is what this would be posted as as long as the item that you are going to take action on is on the posted agenda so you would be able to do that.

And I was just asking for clarification on that primarily because it is irregular as compared to how we normally do business so I wanted to daylight that for anyone that's listening.

Are there any other questions or comments about this motion?

Alright then I guess the roll call Ms. Ritchie.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Abstain.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Patu aye Director Peters aye This motion passed 5-0-1.

Thank you so now we move on to the discussion of the of the plan what I don't fully understand is what the parameters are of the discussion.

How much of a discussion we are being asked to participate in at this point.

I might defer to Noel I think you have a couple of prerogatives here.

One you as chair could set a time limit on the amount of discussion since we won't come to a normal ending in the sense that somebody is going to make a motion and ask for a vote.

Second I think we have essentially moved into a committee of the whole so there is a little bit more freedom for give and take among board members.

I guess speaking personally I guess I hope that we have an opportunity to daylight some of the issues, pros, cons and particularly anything that the board needs by way of additional information so that we can understand where the board is coming from and we can either respond tonight or respond before next Wednesday with as much complete information posted as possible.

I completely agree with the superintendent on that.

Really it's at your complete discretion at this point kind of how you want to approach this discussion.

It is more like a work session now in this environment and mainly trying to get information out that you think other board members need to hear that the audience may want to hear, ask questions of staff or questions about the amendments just so that it's clear what all is on the table and what other work might need to be done for you and for the public leading into next week's session.

Okay well then I am going to be ambitious and say how about 15 minutes and see where we are at in 15 minutes and if it seems like we need more time then we can add it from there.

So are there any, I know there have been a number of questions and issues of clarity that directors had even before this meeting and then I know that the public brought forth some issues and questions.

would anybody like to begin with asking I guess Ashley would probably be a great person to direct some of these questions.

Happy New Year.

For the record I am Ashley Davies director of enrollment planning and yeah so if you want to ask questions we can do that and for any questions that I can answer we will make sure that we can have them and answers so that they are ready for discussion when we meet again next week.

There were a few changes since intro and so If that was okay I maybe thought I could just highlight those quickly for the record just so that everyone is on the same page about the document that we are talking about today.

This is literally like two slides.

So just really quickly just wanted to highlight again some of the changes that have been made to the student assignment plan document.

The document that is posted on the website with the agenda has a clean version of this most up to date document, has the original version that was introduced on December 7th and then has the track changes of the final version that we are talking about here tonight.

So with that we have added transition back to the title that was from our discussion last time.

We have also made reference to the 2009 student assignment plan and how it relates back to this transition plan to tie that back in.

We have also added a small section just to talk about the boundary changes that were just approved and make reference to the fact that there are going to be additional changes across the north end as we have some new capacity coming online with Loyal Heights, Magnolia and Lincoln.

So again just highlighting making people aware that these discussions will be happening.

and then we have some additional language in our special education section that we have worked really closely with the special education department around to provide a little bit more clarity.

They are also working on a parent guide, a really family friendly document that will outline for individuals who need that service and more about how to navigate the process.

So that will be available shortly and there is reference in the student assignment plan for where families can access that document when it is available.

and then the last is adding an additional appendix for our alternative learning experience schools ALEs and so those have been moved from the service school category into the ALE category.

It doesn't change anything about the offerings at the schools the way those schools are serving students it just basically puts them in a different category.

and then some just additional changes to the actual bar itself.

So there is some more information in the fiscal impact section that really outlines all the specific costs before we had some of the costs and typically we don't go into an extensive cost analysis in the student assignment plan but given where we are we have broken that out with greater detail.

We have also made a modification for the recommendation to do a geo split for the current Cascadia community.

Initially we had spoke about retaining that small area of Green Lake with Decatur and moving Wedgwood into Cascadia and so based on feedback from the community as well as the fact we had mentioned our option schools and schools such as Cascadia and Decatur if it did become an HCC site would be able to have class sizes to 26 for K3 that gives us a little bit more capacity.

So we are now recommending Wedgwood would stay to Decatur and so again a lot of that feedback was that they are very close so we are recommending that stay and then all of Green Lake would go to Cascadia.

The original recommendation was that part of Green Lake would go to Cascadia and then the other part that was split in Eckstein would go to Decatur.

And then the last piece is just adding grandfathering for those students who would be impacted by that slight cleanup we talked about last time so total of 15 students impacted by the cleanup of those attendance areas those elementary attendance areas that we wanted to make sure are fed into just one middle school and so we have added language to say that those students would be grandfathered as well with transportation.

Director Patu you had a question.

I am just wondering Ms. Davies if you are willing to share that presentation with us.

Yes I can share that immediately after.

It will be helpful for I don't think we haven't gotten it yet.

The one that I just went over.

It's on the agenda.

I can send it directly to you as well.

That's fine.

I didn't see it.

I was going through all of the fiscal notes and all the rest and I didn't see that.

It will be very helpful as I am doing review.

So thank you.

Yes.

We just put this together today just so that we could have something to just clearly highlight the changes from introduction.

All right.

Is there any other questions?

Director Patu?

I just need clarification.

When you talk about Lickton spring we are looking at seven classes that have actually been assigned to that particular school.

I mean is that it?

Seven classes?

So we had talked about seven classrooms in particular for the space that they have within Eagle Staff.

But they will have access to other classroom space.

So the particular design that we have in there is I think there are a total of nine rooms between the two particular floors.

Some of those are classrooms, most of those are classrooms and some of them are spaces that are used for other uses that you could use for educational uses.

There's also the space that's the third floor above which is kind of a mirror of the second space.

The modifications done on the first floor were really for the elementary use like a kindergarten classroom which would be a little bit different of a classroom space than what's the typical ed spec of either a general education classroom at the elementary level or middle school level.

They're both about 900 square feet.

So really the conversation there is between the two schools and how they use the building themselves depending on the population of students in each one of those schools.

So presently exactly how many rooms are we actually allocating because I know I saw seven.

So it's two floors right now.

and there were maybe seven actual classrooms but there's nine rooms between those two particular buildings or between those levels.

I don't think we're counting the science classrooms as a classroom.

That's a separate space because students will be coming in and out.

The others are kind of more designated classroom space.

That's what I was checking on a little bit earlier as well talking with the design folks.

So what I can do is also send to you what the latest design of those two particular levels are so you can see what those classrooms are designated as use.

But again if the need arises for more space they can always use the third floor.

That's a whole other wing of I think six or seven, nine, I don't know how many classrooms are on the third floor.

Okay thank you.

If I can add to that we are again looking for the radical middle here in that we what Licton Springs is doing is similar to what we do in all of our schools in that we want to take advantage of every space that we have and utilize it to the fullest.

On the other side is issues of capacity and so when we run out of space then we have to conserve space and we have to make tougher decisions about how we use space.

I think I'm correct.

What Dr. Herndon just indicated is that we have sufficient space at Robert Eagle Staff for the foreseeable future, maybe two years, kind of unknown.

New schools do tend to create their own growth.

people move into that neighborhood with kids and then if we put the highly capable pathway there that's been a growth industry for us and so I think the concern rightly spoken from the Licton Springs parents and staff is will we have a secure future there so A can we grow and yes we want them to have the opportunity to grow.

That benefits all of us.

It provides a more robust program and a more cost-effective program.

and we don't want them to be squeezed out as we create these competing needs down the road and so I think that's kind of the quandary that Director Burke has tried to address is to say great we want you to grow go for it do everything you can to grow over the next two years we won't constrain you and then as we get closer to being full then I don't know we'll still have to grapple with that issue about where everybody fits and I think that's part of Director Burke's amendment as well is should we change the boundaries to provide a little bit more safety and security for a future which is somewhat well largely unknown for us.

Dr. Pinkham

So I'd also like some more clarification on Licton Springs as it currently is and then as it moves into the Eagle Staff site.

As far as the regulations what classrooms levels can be on the first floor which ones can be on the second floor because I know that's one issue that even though we get three floors not all like K through three can go up to the second floor or above.

If we did expand would we have to also then expand on the first floor?

I think we would have to take a look at what we have available for the space that's being there.

Like I said the current design has the kindergarten room on the first floor also because that allows access I think outside quickly.

but I believe there are five classrooms on that particular level that we are looking at.

So when you are thinking about the whole K-8 spectrum depending on where the growth of the school is and the particular grade levels then we would take a look at what we have there.

As the wings go at some point we can take you on a tour there but it's really kind of a triple stacked like E formation so the classroom corridors are on top of each other and then there is a hallway until you get to the middle corridor of classes so when you're looking at that expansion it really is more vertical than it is horizontal across the building so that's what we would be looking at is probably the vertical.

When we talk about some of the access to the entire building especially for middle school students then clearly that's not as much of an issue because anywhere around the building is fine for the middle school students.

I have a process question or request I am wondering with Ashley having gone through the transition plan as proposed if we could discuss the amendments individually and then following that up go with any other unanswered questions to try to create a menu.

It's actually remaining one minute.

We could extend it from 15 minutes but I don't know how much farther we would like to extend it.

I mean so you want to do some sort of overview so we can gather up all the outstanding questions.

Is that okay?

That's a sensible idea.

I am willing to give us more time to do that.

So you would like to go through the amendments and

I think it would be interesting or possibly insightful if we go through it as if it were a motion the person who is promoting or sponsoring an amendment could speak a little bit to it and then questions around that amendment either from directors or staff could be raised.

that doesn't fit really in the time that we have so I am trying to be sensitive to that.

Right.

I would like to propose we do a variation on that where we can put the amendments in front of us and say does anybody have any questions and cut straight to the chase of the questions and then see what we come up with there.

Because some of these amendments we have already sort of discussed not all of them but some of them we have.

I agree with where you are headed and agree that it would be good to daylight each one of them.

I prefer to make my comments generally and not make them about every one of these.

I want to go back to the comments that I made at the beginning about our budget being extremely tight.

So as it turns out you will have the opportunity to talk about this item specifically in the same context of how we are filling that $74 million hole in our bucket.

So two of the amendments are low or no cost, two of the amendments are higher cost and I just want to kind of draw your attention to the fact that on the budget side as we come forward with the budget we are talking about taking away virtually all of the mitigation funds that we have traditionally provided.

So typically for a small K-8 we would provide a minimum number of staff way over and above staffing guidelines recognizing that you need a certain number of staff to make a school function fairly well.

So we've got these two trains on different pathways that don't seem to have anything to do with each other but they have a lot to do with one another depending on the size of any of these K-8 schools going forward.

We've done our best in the cost factors to recognize that so it's kind of a trade-off.

We've got a lot of people here, well maybe not right at the moment but we had a lot of people here earlier tonight and in the emails that have a lot of concern about what this impact is on their particular eighth graders mainly today or rising eighth graders and we're trading that off versus what may very well happen in the fall.

when we open school and say, Well no we don't have enough kids and we don't have the staffing to provide the staff that we've come to expect.

So I won't say any more about that I think tonight but I do encourage you to ask lots of questions about what does that mean because we don't want to sell something on you know whatever good merits it is tonight and then find out in the fall oh you didn't tell us that there might be other impacts.

I really appreciate that segue because one of the big questions that I have and that came out tonight was what commitment can we make to the new schools that we are opening in terms of funding and resources because there is a lot of insecurity out there about what we are able to promise.

Now my understanding is we typically do budget a certain amount of money whenever we open a school but is this year different and what is it we can assure these parents they will get in the way of a comprehensive middle school whether we are talking about Eagle Staff or Meany.

Do we have a budget?

What are we going to be able to offer?

Do we know that yet?

Because I think families would greatly appreciate hearing more details about what we are going to offer their students.

and we might be able to answer that in a moment.

We can certainly answer it by next week.

I can't answer it fully so yes for certain schools we have a tradition and we have a plan and hopefully well often times we have an enrollment plan.

So Meany, yes we have plans to move forward with them for a traditional opening and so you ask a good question.

are we doing a lot for Meany and are we doing as much for Robert Eaglesaff and then it gets to the next question should we be doing more and that's the uncertain part when we don't know the enrollment it's harder to have a standard answer that says oh we always do this and we do if we have the money.

Stephen Nielsen deputy I will try to answer your question at the macro level.

So the 70 plus million dollar deficit is predicated on a rollover budget and having to then retract costs that come up to the 74 or so million dollars today that would make us a balanced budget a year from now and included in the planning to meet the 74 million as noted by Dr. Nyland earlier this afternoon we are having to dip into everywhere and anything that is flexible the current worst case budget that you have seen in work sessions prior and that you will see continue until the legislature changes anything for us which may be a while.

if at all depending upon how things went in Olympia today they did not go well.

There isn't a lot of hope in my heart that would say that they are planning on simple relief in the very near future.

That is my opinion only based on watching legislative hearing this afternoon.

At any rate to specifically address your question there are no contingency dollars that are equating to anything that we've had in the past this last few years.

and if you think about our support for schools in the last couple of years we have added dollars in a number of categories.

We have had mitigations that we take in the spring based on enrollment projections.

We have added mitigations that we take in the summer and mitigations that we take in the fall and this last year as an example those were considerably above the WSS.

So next year's planning not only scales the WSS back but it also reduces those mitigation dollars from what this year were amounted to about seven and a half million to two million.

and if you think about what that looks like for all of our schools it's considerable and specifically to your question what does this mean for the opening of new schools there would be no added staffing for any of the new schools in our current plan based on our legislative problem that would add staff above and beyond any other WSS allocation for any of our option schools, for any of the opening of new schools, for any school that says we need this because and they would have a long list of reasons why it's important to them we simply don't have the money.

Director Burke.

Can you in a concise elevator speech just describe or share the distinction between the operating budget for funding and what we do for capital budgets to start up new schools and how those capital budgets you know furniture and what not.

What that means to a school that is trying to start up in a budget strapped.

Thank you for that.

So the capital budget has very specific parameters around what it can be used to accomplish.

Capital can be used obviously to build the building.

It can also be used to help plan the building so say example planning principle can participate using capital resources.

Capital resources are also used at a very small amount for moving into the new building and they certainly are used for buying certain level of supplies and materials.

They cannot I want to stress cannot be used for regular staffing once the building is operational.

Thanks for the high level.

Now to go to deep dive.

Some specific examples.

Could capital dollars be used to fund a textbook in a new building?

Maybe.

It depends.

That's fine.

We can go deeper on it.

Could capital funding be used for furniture?

Yes.

Could capital funding be used for outfitting a science lab?

Yes.

Could capital funding be used for buying musical instruments?

Probably not but again maybe and it's the same answer as curriculum.

This is a public record so I want to be clear and our viewers I don't want to offer faint hope.

So curriculum let's go there for a moment.

Curriculum can be paid for with capital resources only for a brand new school to provide for those materials for that building not to be used in case anyone is going there to say we are going to use capital money for curriculum across the district.

Same with musical instruments.

I really appreciate that because I know that was kind of a bunch of spot questions but I wanted people to understand that there is money out there but it is super nuanced on how it can be used.

Yes and it is confusing so it is a very good question.

Thank you.

Alright well let's move on to our quick overview of the amendments and any questions that might arise from those but we can go into greater depth next week.

The first one is the grandfathering proposal that I have sponsored and that again would apply to the 8th graders only and That's a total of 233 students at Eagle Staff roughly and is it a hundred and?

About 136 at meeting.

136 at meeting so that's how many students.

Does anybody have any questions about?

Director Patu?

What happens if we don't grandfather these 8th graders?

What happens if we don't?

What happens if we don't grandfather the 8th graders?

So the current plan is not to grandfather those students.

Building off the conversation we just had about funding for start of school if we think about me in particular we had talked about the fact that their projected enrollment when they open is right around 500 and so to grandfather those students would put in a situation where we had a mitigation fund we would need that to be able to ensure that Meany would be able to have all the comprehensive offerings of one of our comprehensive middle schools and so not grandfathering for Meany would be able to help ensure that they have the enrollment needed to be able to offer that wide variety of curriculum and offerings for those students who are going to be there.

Additionally, a lot of our plans do also have to do with reducing portable usage that would likely reduce the need for the portables at Washington.

I believe they have 14 right now.

and then for Eagle staff a number of those students who are moving particularly in that cohort are coming from Hamilton and so given the capacity issues at Hamilton that would help alleviate some of the overcrowding at Hamilton as well as ensure that the 8th grade cohort could be sufficient to offer the wide variety of programming for all the students there.

So the 8th graders that are actually that you are recommending the grandfather out of Hamilton.

So this is a director amendment.

So the recommendation as part of the student assignment plan is to open both Nini and Eagle staff with a geo split meaning that students who live within those boundaries who are currently in 6th and 7th grade at their respective middle school would go to Eagle Staff and Meany next year in 7th and 8th grade and then rising new 6th graders who live in those areas would be assigned to Eagle Staff and Meany.

This was Director Peter's amendment.

So I guess the question that I ask is if these kids want to stay at the eighth grade school they are at in Hamilton why are we grandfathering them?

Well no right now they can't stay they are going to be moved to Eagle Staff and Meany and so my proposal is one that would allow the 8th graders who are supposed to be moved the option to stay if they chose.

And so right now because of capacity reasons that would keep Hamilton and Washington in particular those two schools would still be pretty full.

which if you don't mind I would like to segue to another related point and ask Ashley this question.

My understanding is that students who are slated to be moved can through open enrollment apply to stay at their existing school on a capacity availability basis.

but that won't be a possibility for Hamilton or Washington because they will still be quite full but it will be a possibility for Whitman and possibly other schools.

Can you speak to that?

I mean if students choose through open enrollment to stay will there be room at Eckstein, Jams and Whitman for them to stay through open enrollment?

So just to clarify any student can apply to any school they are eligible for through open enrollment.

We don't say a school is off limits.

If a school is above their capacity we are not going to have seats for students who don't live in the attendance area because based on our neighborhood school model schools have to have space for the students who live in that neighborhood and so we have to ensure that schools have space today and we also have to be thinking in the future and not overloading schools now such that in the future we are not putting schools in a position where they are over capacity.

So any comment about Hamilton or Washington not being available, I mean technically families can apply just again given capacity wise where a school like Hamilton is. there is likely not going to be space.

Washington there is potentially could be some space.

Whitman we would still anticipate there would be space.

You know right now we are in the process of going through our annual resident projections preparing for pre-open enrollment school projections which will be finalized in the beginning of February.

So I don't want to speak specifically about where we will and will not definitely have seats.

We will know a little bit more clarity over the next month where we do anticipate seats but again our priority is to ensure that there are seats available for students who live in the attendance area.

but we do anticipate that there will be middle schools that have space that families can opt in through during open enrollment.

I just want to point out for the record of the students who are slated in 8th grade to move to the new schools there is only 8 from Eckstein, 10 from Jane Adams and 21 from McClure and so I am just wondering whether there is any possibility through open enrollment for such small numbers to still be able to find space.

but you are saying we don't know that at this point.

So I am saying for a school like Hamilton there is I can say pretty confidently there is probably not going to be space.

Eckstein is there may be a little space but for schools like Whitman we've said before that there will be space somewhere like Washington you know there potentially would be space and again we will have to think about how we balance that with the portable usage so it's you know are we going to fill the space are we going to remove the portables it will just be again based on who applies and what we're seeing with the actual residents in that area.

So one of the dilemmas for me and I know Director Blampard would like to speak is because of this we don't it's really hard for us to predict who's actually going to show up ultimately in these schools and so it's hard for us to predict what the final numbers are going to be and I think this is leading into a sort of nervousness for a lot of parents and understandably so.

and I think anything we can do to assure families that no matter who shows up we are going to do our best to provide a comprehensive experience for them.

You know I think we need to do that but I am worried when I hear about we might not be able to have all, we won't have all the funds we had last year that's just a given but we need to give our families some assurances that we are going to be able to offer their students wherever they land you know as full educational environment as possible.

So I just wanted to clarify in terms of the predictability I think so that does become more challenging when we are talking about grandfathering because we don't know who will stay and who will not.

So that's actually where the predictability becomes really challenging.

I understand that.

So my amendment would add an element of unpredictability but I am also saying though is we already have that here because through open enrollment any of these students who are slated to move could apply to stay through open enrollment.

and we won't know who will until after open enrollment.

So there is already unpredictability built into this scenario even without my amendment.

But that's all based on space.

So if there is not space then you know because the planning is all based on how much space we have as well as making sure that we can balance the needs of all the schools.

So we are not going to deplete one school so that another school and have another school over capacity.

No I know that's what we want to avoid.

Okay Director Blanford.

Thank you.

I'm curious about what our time constraints are now on this item.

I thought we had 15 minutes but several of us have not had the opportunity to share any thoughts about.

Go right ahead and like to share something.

Okay great thank you.

As you were giving your presentation I was trying to write down and I'm not sure if I got it right but the three challenges that you have to amendment one are the overcrowding, the potential for overcrowding, the financial impact and I thought the third one was we are trying to move away from portables and you believe that as a result of amendment one we may end up with a greater number of portables is that correct?

So we wouldn't necessarily have to add portables but with some of the I mean both Whitman and Washington have portables Whitman in particular has some very old portables and so with the Washington has very many of them I represent that area and hear frequently from parents who are very frustrated with that fact.

You know so we want to be mindful of the fact that our city is growing and we are not necessarily going to just but to the extent that we can do things like build new schools and have students in long term facilities rather than have them in portables we want to transition to that so doing things like with the opening of both me and Engelstaff that reduces the need for some of the portables that we have at both Washington and Whitman and so grandfathering would continue the use of those portables.

I am not saying that it would add more it would just continue the use.

So I am sensitive as to the amount of work that you and your staff did in preparing the assignment plan and so I am always curious to know why why I make the assumption that you have looked at all the options and you did not recommend the language of amendment one and so I am curious if you can articulate why that is the case.

If it is anything beyond what you just shared with me around the issues around the portables and the financial cost and the overcrowding issues.

Yeah so I think those three things largely capture the rationale behind that and not to say that the transition for students is not difficult I don't want to minimize that at all but you know we do have really strong leaders who have been being really thoughtful with that planning along with just the teaching and learning staff here to make sure that students are supported in that transition so as again as we think about students now and students in the future you know that recommendation was what we felt was best for again students now and in the future.

And my last I know there were lots of emails flying back and forth today but the last email that I saw that had the fiscal impact of amendment one it added up to if I am correct $766,900 is that Is that your understanding?

It was three numbers added up.

The cost of transportation, the cost of portables and some other factor.

Additional staffing.

So I don't have that off hand.

Did you have a particular question about you just wanted to confirm that that was the fiscal impact?

I wanted to confirm that number because I'm very sensitive as to adding to the deficit particularly a large number like that.

I just added the numbers

Key Assistant Superintendent for Finance.

So you are correct when we had $432,000 as a set aside for mitigation.

That's correct.

Transportation was $154,900 for two additional buses and then there was $180,000 for a portable.

Now the portable would be paid for out of capital not operating.

Correct.

So and thank you for that clarification because that that last number doesn't actually add to our deficit because it comes from capital.

That's correct.

But the other I can't do mental math very fast but the 766,900 minus the 180 whatever that last number was is the fiscal impact of this amendment on our operating costs given the fact that we have a budget deficit that is at 74 I've heard different numbers but 70 million dollars plus or minus.

that causes me great concern.

My final question is when we received the board action report it had a section on the equity analysis.

I'm wondering who was the author of that piece?

About the amendment?

Yes.

So the amendments are owned by the directors so that equity analysis I believe Director Peters you put that together with maybe some support from Nate.

That is correct.

Director Burke.

Just sort of cutting to the chase, looking forward at a work session I had three specific questions for future review.

One of them relates to I would like to have a deeper discussion on the language immersion pathway that's going to Chief Self.

I understand that there was some concern around whether that should route to Franklin or whether that should go to Chief Self and there was a justification around it.

I'd like to have a little bit deeper discussion around that, the sustainability of it, how many students we would serve and that's one of the topics that's lingering in my brain as a discomfort.

One of the others, there is a potential split in the Olympic view region that is dividing students between Jane Adams and Robert Eagle Staff that has been a point raised by the community as a cost neutral way of cleaning up the lines and I am not clear whether that has been incorporated or whether that is something that should be considered.

Those are the easy ones.

The third one is that I would around the idea of grandfathering I feel a lingering need to see a best case worst case projection that goes out for more than one year and I huge thank you for the work you have done to try to try to project what we think could happen but if we had a best case worst case multi-year prediction so that we could see which of our schools would likely be over enrolled, which of our schools would likely be under enrolled and at what magnitude I think that would be really helpful to evaluate some of the longer term effects of the grandfathering discussion.

So just super quickly on the pathway, again we'll talk more about these on Wednesday, but I just wanted to highlight the fact that you talked about sustainability and we've provided kind of some information on how we got there and even the International Schools Task Force would say that This is the 17-18 pathway but they are still working to identify a more suitable pathway long term.

So the idea is not that this would necessarily be long term but given where we are today this would be the pathway for 17-18.

The Olympic view split, that is not something that was addressed in the cleanup that I spoke about earlier.

That is a result of the boundary decisions that were made back on November 16th.

But we can provide a little bit more analysis on the impact if there was interest in doing some cleanup to that area.

Again, the total number in those areas are not large.

and then the long-term best case, worst case.

We'll talk a little bit more about the best way to visualize some of that.

Director Geary.

I just want to say that last piece from Director Burke is the one that grabs me.

I look at these amendments and I wonder if if people opt to stay at Whitman and we put those schools back at Whitman and we allow families to stay at Hamilton then do we really have sufficient students to start the eighth grade at Robert Eaglestaff and then do we just force a non-starting of the eighth grade in that school and what impact would that have on the sixth and seventh graders that are then forced to go in terms of the teachers who teach multiple grades.

I would like to know that because it seems to me that if all these amendments go through I am not sure what we are starting at Robert Eagle Staff in terms of a viable 8th grade or middle school at all.

Are there any other questions about specific amendments?

Well I thought Director Burke wanted to talk about all the amendments so anybody could ask questions about amendment 2, 4 and 5. I am just trying to move us along so we can stay within our 15 minutes.

Well we may have to save some of these questions for next week.

What we could do what directors could do between now and then is to gather their questions and email them to Ashley and so you can have a list and so you know what our outstanding questions are.

Would that be helpful?

That would be very helpful.

Okay.

Can I put a cap on the number of questions you can ask me?

and that way you can also consolidate because some of us might ask similar questions.

Director Blanford.

What might be more helpful would be to know by when you need to receive those questions in order to give us a valid response back.

So for a meeting on Wednesday if you could get me questions by Friday that would be excellent.

Thank you Ms. Davies.

and then what I can do is I will send you if I can get them by Friday I will send a list of all the questions back to everyone just so that if there are overlapping we can see that they are overlapping and it will be addressed.

Okay are there any other questions or comments?

All right thank you very much.

Thank you.

So now we will move on to the rest of our agenda.

Thank you.

All right this actually brings us to our introduction items.

and number one is the annual approval of schools per WAC 180-16-220.

Our vice president had to leave early because she was not feeling well.

So as far as reading the motion we don't need to read the motion.

Okay.

All right so the committee recommendation.

All right great.

So this went to CNI.

On November 14th and December 12th.

So this came to CNI twice, November 14th and then December 12th and was moved forward for consideration.

It came forward and CNI asked for a little bit deeper work on that and I want to thank on behalf of the committee Michael Stone, Michael Strausky for their work because I know this has been a long term work in process.

Alright.

Good evening directors.

Mike Swarovski chief of schools.

So we are bringing before you our recommendation for the approval of our CSIPs and one of the things I think is really important for all of you to know is that if you go back a year ago that you were asking some very good questions of us in our CSIP process and we are asking and requesting very specific improvements of the CSIPS and I can say with a lot of positivity that our staff working with directors specifically Director Burke looked at the CSIPS in general and looked at ways that we could improve them.

And I would also recognize our executive directors of schools of having been in the middle of the process with our principals giving feedback and review to our principals.

in ways that in years past may have not been done.

And so one of the things I think you can see if you are looking at our CSIPs this year is we asked for our CSIPs to be turned in November 15th.

100% of all those were turned in.

We said and we were committed to having those posted to the public by November 30th and those were posted to the public by November 30th and so those have been up publicly for over six weeks and when I look at some of the things that if I were thinking about some of the high level improvements one of the things that people were really looking forward and asking for were where are the BLTs in the approval of these plans.

If you look in the first paragraph of all of our plans throughout their system you will see the date that they were approved by their BLTs.

there is consistency in language, there is consistency in being aligned to our district goals, there is consistency when we are doing our cycles of inquiry of actually embedding those into our questions and so there are Specifically I would say SMART goal 1 is very prominent throughout our CSIPs and so while they are not perfect and when I can say perfection is what we are trying to strive for but what we are trying to make our CSIPs be really active documents that are working for our buildings and understanding the unique needs of our buildings, holding our folks accountable for what they are saying that they are going to do Our EDS's have been instrumental in reviewing and giving feedback to all of the schools in their regions on their CSIPS.

There's been Michael Stoneman and I have come back to the curriculum and instruction committee.

twice and both times we have been given some very fair and honest feedback from directors and we have gone back to our executive directors who have gone back to their principals to make adjustments.

We have done that twice now and even yesterday we had a person in the community saying hey so what is going on with advanced learners you have 42 schools haven't said anything about advanced learners and that pulled our executive directors yesterday for three or four hours and we went over those schools that were identified.

We sent out an email to those schools and those principals to respond and most of it was that there was language that was embedded in their CSIP but one of the things of an area of improvement for us is getting out of the educational language that we tend to use in house and how we take a public facing document and put it out there doesn't always translate to our public.

And so one of the things that feedback that we were getting was when you say differentiated instruction and common core state standards doesn't say anything what you're doing for advanced learners.

And what's assumed in that is and I am just being proactive about this about some of the concerns is that for example a fourth grade student who is an advanced learner is meeting standards at fourth grade and then it's assuming that the school or the teacher or a department is just going to keep the fourth grade standard and that's it that they are not going up to fifth grade standards or sixth grade standards.

and so on the outside looking in it might appear that there is nothing being done for advanced learners but one of the things that we are very specific about how our plans have changed from last year to this year is we know that there was a lot of concern by directors expressed about the inconsistency about how they look so different and what are you doing and who is doing and following up with them and our executive directors and our central office leaders are trying to make these authentic relevant alive documents and I would say that we are looking for improvement over time.

If we look from one year to this year I think we have seen some significant improvements.

What we are being asked to do tonight is really a very basic thing is for me as the chief of schools being able to say with confidence that we have looked at all the plans that the principals all in schools all have school improvement plans based on data that they have responded to our questions that we have asked in a very authentic way.

and there has been involvement with communities that is documented in years past that was inconsistent and I would say with assurance that from the feedback that we got from the very beginning last year in January meeting with Director Burke about how we could improve it that we have been very responsive internally in that regard.

So I appreciate that contextualizing of where we are versus where we have been particularly on the issue of CSIPs because I have listened to a lot of information and a lot of passionate belief that the CSIP can be a leverage point for our efforts to improve instruction in our schools.

I guess I have a philosophical question for you and you might be the person to answer it though if not then tell me who would be the right person.

Do you see the CSIPS as an accountability document or do you see it more as a guidance document something if you had to choose one where do you see its greatest leverage?

so if you are asking me personally I see it as a little bit of both.

It should be a guidance document but also we have to be publicly accountable if we are saying we are going to do something that we are going to do it and so I see it as being both but as far as guidance it should be a direction.

You should be able to read a CSIP.

Excuse me.

You should be able to read a CSIP and really know something very specific about what's important to that school and that community about how they are addressing the specific learning needs, how they go about structuring their day, how they go about the electives that they offer, how they block, if they block it's a guidance it tells you and it gives buildings and leaders really leveraging the ability to make very strong instructional decisions one decision over another and so on the compliance side say historically if you look at our own board policy you read the A02-00 that's about school improvement and within the first paragraph it says schools will be essentially punished you know there will be consequences for not meeting.

and I don't think that's a good way of motivating people.

I don't think that's how we get the best out of people.

And so I would say for us it should be a balance of both.

It should be a guidance that any of us and our public included should be able to look and read into our CSIPs to see what are the schools doing.

And then also I would also put out since our public is listening and watching is that if anyone ever has questions about what's going on at a school that they should be able to directly call and contact the building principal and leadership there who should be able to answer and respond appropriately to these questions.

They know this work.

I would echo all of those things and I would add there is a conundrum in that what we know about school improvement from the research is that you have very few goals and you change the document fairly regularly.

So, in fact, there's an inverse relationship between the beauty of the document and the success in student growth and improved learning.

That said, the things that Mike said are true in that we do have an obligation to follow through on what board policy is, we have an obligation to communicate with the public and then the radical middle balance is can you check all of those boxes and the truthful in terms of moving them ahead while at the same time focusing in on the two or three things that matter the most and doing the inquiry and collecting the data and coming back and saying well we missed the target by a little bit, not waiting until the end of the year finding out in the first quarter, second quarter we missed the target and we are going to come back and we are going to tweak our plan and we are going to do better.

We are not going to wait for the kids to fail this round and try to make it better for the kids next year.

We are going to try to make it better for the kids that we have this year.

Director Patu.

I am really happy that actually you are talking about this because I know in the past CSIPS were not any document that actually any principal would go back and look at.

It was done may need to be done but in terms of following through with whatever is that they wrote on the CSAP it was not follow through and so I'm really happy to hear that you're actually you know making sure that these are done and are actually carrying through to make sure that everything they put in there is actually something they're implementing within their schools and they're following it.

so I hope that we continue on to see that because I really believe those documents should be what actually what's happening in schools and you know as Dr. Nalanda said if there's something that we wanted to find out whether it was ongoing that document would be something I would actually would go look for because that tells us supposedly tell you exactly what's been followed through in those schools.

So I'm really glad that we are following through with that because I think it's a very important document and it's also to keep the administrator in that particular school accountable in terms of what they're doing with the kids in that school.

If I can add one negative comment to what Director Patu just said.

Back when I worked for the district and then when I was in school and studying the district I had the opportunity to review the CSIPS with the person who was in your position before several iterations back.

and I heard that person make a speech to the board basically saying that our CSIPs are solid now.

and I remember this very clearly because I remember sitting in the audience and thinking to myself he knows that's not true, I know that's not true and I would bet that most of the principals who were responsible for writing the CSIPs know that that's not true.

In that there were times where we could see that language had been copied and pasted from one CSIP to another that was in no way relevant to that individual school.

and so I appreciate what you've said and I want to believe very strongly that what you've said is actually the case but I think what's the Russian saying, trust but verify right?

And so it will be important to not only make that statement to us but to have your staff revisit the CSIPs on a regular basis track changes, track progress made, track obstacles encountered and then revise on a regular basis so that we have some semblance when we are going out into the community that there is a document that is both a guiding document as well as an accountability document.

Yeah and just to build off your thinking Director Blanford is that that's how you make it an active document a living, breathing document is you have to have it changing, revising on a continual basis and not just something that we do once or twice a year because it's due.

Okay Director Patu.

So you are actually assuring me that this is actually happening at schools on an ongoing basis and how many times do you actually go in and ask them to look at their CSEBs?

So I would say it shouldn't be just me that's doing it.

I'd say any one of us who go into a school should be able to ask.

What the ed directors isn't that their job?

Yes, yes and so if your question is are people looking at the CSIPs besides me or besides you the executive directors absolutely.

When they are setting their goals with their principals the executive directors are meeting with their principals and talking about their CSIP as a guiding document to help them with their professional goal setting.

and so I would say it's not if we are trying to improve the process it's not just the executive director's responsibility to be able to call out a building CSIP it's central office leadership it's teaching and learning it's all of our role and responsibility to help us narrow our focus when we are going in and talking to schools and if they have a literacy focus and someone is going to talk about math we should know that before we go in there but that's how we help keep our leaders and the buildings accountable for that and also our executive directors are central to that accountability.

Well my main focus is accountability that's you know I don't care who goes in there and checks it's just we need to find out whether there's accountability in those CSIPs that are written on those you know that they have written up for their schools.

Thank you.

I will take this opportunity to remind everybody that we have 10 more introduction items to discuss.

So I would like to encourage us to move along.

Thank you gentlemen.

And we are now going to move on to the oh is there another question?

I am sorry.

Please go ahead Director Geary.

I am glad that you brought up the advanced learning piece because thinking about this it is an outward facing document.

and facing a decision through the student assignment plan to have to create another self-contained school is really creating a real problem for me and I think it stems the burgeoning of the highly capable cohort in part stems from the fact that people don't have faith that their needs of their students are going to be met and so it's going to be important that while advanced learning of course is a piece of differentiated learning embedded in MTSS that this is a population that's going to be very specifically looking because they have an opportunity to make a choice that that is part of our system and if it says nothing in the school that they are facing then of course they will choose the one that has the mission in a self-contained environment to serve their student.

So it's very important to me and to the extent that we want consistency and we want to hold people accountable with regard to the services provided as advanced learning opportunities for any student really not just ones that are tested or designated or pointed to because we want to try and close the opportunity gap as well.

that we make sure that if you need it then you need to be working with the other members of this district to come up with what we can provide as assurances through our advanced learning and I know this is something that's an ongoing piece of work but it's got to keep wrapping around and as that advanced learning piece is developed for a district wide approach that we are as quickly as possible making sure that is known within our schools what the expectation is and then it is showing up in our CSIPs because I personally do not want any more self-contained schools in this district.

I think that they are a form of institutional and structural racism that I simply cannot support.

So let's try to really focus in on what it is that is causing that problem and try to untangle it each little place we can.

Thank you.

Thanks for the work again.

I want to emphasize that the strength of a CSIP is its use and if it is the wrong vehicle or the wrong document or the wrong format the way we will find that out is by using it.

And so we have to accept the adequate as compared to the perfect, strive for perfection and I ask my colleagues as well when you are going to visit a school print the CSIP out, take it out there, just ask a couple of questions.

If everyone in leadership positions starts using it and also starts asking relevant questions about it the CSIPs will continue to improve and that's just a systemic improvement thing that has to become a habit.

And I want to be really explicit that in my mind one of our measures of success is that our principals are saying wow the last couple of years of CSIPS that was really terrible but you know what it's a painful process but once we go through it it's really helping me out and when I start hearing you say that I'll know that we've got a win here.

So whatever format they shape up to and whatever elements are in them I'd like to think that we'll start hearing from our building leaders and our BLTs that they are a tool to drive a building towards a cohesive mission and provide continuity as Superintendent Nyland said on a small subset of goals that help change a building from where it is to where it wants to be.

And it isn't like we're doing this everything for everything, it has a subset of goals.

and then I also wanted to build on what Jill said that we need to have in my mind an unwavering commitment to serving advanced learners in every school, every neighborhood school and that we need to build it in as a non-negotiable as part of our MTSS structure and that that also needs to be part of our institutional culture.

And the last question to you is this could be for later but if you can advise us as a board do you have enough guidance on what CSIPS need to be to do that work?

I think I will save that one for later but I would love to come back to that and specifically talk about tools.

Tools that should be embedded into CSIPS of how we can improve them.

Alright thank you everybody this is a very rich and important topic.

So on to the next item exercising option to extend the contract for middle school and high school yearbooks with Herff Jones for an additional year.

May I hear from the chair of CNI on this item?

This came before the CNI committee on December 12 and was moved forward for approval.

I am presenting this evening on behalf of Dr. Kinoshita who is not available for a family emergency.

So I am going to make this brief.

This board action would extend the district's contract with its current yearbook vendor for one more year and that would be to provide yearbooks for middle school and high school students.

In November 2015 a committee was gathered to select the vendor that was selected back in 2015. That contract then was approved and there is some language in there that says we can come back to the board given mutual agreement with the vendor and the schools given their satisfaction.

So we surveyed the schools this year, asked them about their satisfaction with the current vendor.

They responded and they would like to go forward with this contract.

Dr. Blanford?

You may not be able to answer this question.

Director Kenoshto may not be able to either but I seem to remember that this item in the past has gone through operations as opposed to curriculum and instruction.

Do you have any knowledge of that?

That's not my understanding but I can check for you and let you know if that has happened.

So I was just wondering why it would have gone through curriculum and instruction this time instead of operations if that's the case.

It sounds like I'll ask that question at a later time.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments about this item?

All right thank you very much.

Okay moving on to item number 3 motion to accept funds for head start duration that came to audit and finance committee on December 8th and it was advanced to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

Good evening, thank you and special thanks to Director Geary, our liaison between the Board and Head Start and the Audit and Finance Committee which both of you supported us through this process which started last spring.

We are seeking approval of a grant from the Federal Government of $322,808 to extend Head Start services for two Seattle Public Schools Head Start classes from the current 476 hours to 1,020 hours which I will henceforth refer to as full day.

New Head Start performance standards require that all Head Start classes across the country will serve children in a full day capacity by 2021. Currently we have 20 Head Start classes.

They're all part day.

We applied for funding for four classes and were told that funding wasn't available for that much.

We resubmitted for the amount that was available which will enable us to extend the hours for two Head Start classrooms.

We involve the Head Start community, parents at all sites as well as policy council in the development of the proposal and identifying recommended sites.

We use the racial equity analysis tool to identify access to quality full day services as our primary goal.

and then mapped full day quality services across the city to give us some guidance about where to recommend placement of the two classrooms, the two initial classrooms.

that turned out to be the north end and the southwest part of the city.

With a new classroom opening at Olympic Hills next year dedicated to Head Start services and a classroom available at Roxhill in the southwest, we recommend those two sites for full day services.

Our next steps, presuming approval, include determining selection criteria for children and families to get into the full day programs and then also doing that internally for us in terms of establishing staffing of those programs as well as ensuring program wide capacity to support full day services.

Any questions or comments?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Alright the next item is another significant topic usually and that is the approval of transportation service standards for 2017-18 and this came to the Ops Committee.

Which heard it on December the 15th and moved it forward for consideration.

Thank you very much Peggy McEvoy assistant superintendent for operations.

Annually we bring the transportation service standards before the board for adoption.

Some years we have big changes that we bring forward to other years they're pretty minimal changes.

This year is sort of in between.

There's three parts to the transportation service standards.

there is what I call the base plan and it's what we look at for all of our general guidelines.

Then there is an appendix A which talks about the exceptions that the board has agreed to or that has been recommended by staff.

And then the third part is the arrival departure times that also include the bell times.

This year we spent a lot of time with the board trying to establish what this should look like and I want to thank you for that additional time.

I know that you all did additional community outreach so that you could provide us guidance on what this should look like.

so thank you for that.

I'm going to introduce Kathy Katterhagen who is the director of logistics and she's going to go through some of the details.

I would also like to let you know that because we have not adopted the student assignment plan yet and we usually build our transportation service standards on what's in that document.

I can guarantee you what you're seeing here at introduction will be redlined and changed based on what we hear at the Wednesday meeting next time.

So just know that we're presenting what we have right now.

We know that we have some additional work based on that Wednesday meeting.

And with that Kathy.

Thank you.

I'm Kathy Katterhagen and I'm the Director of Logistics and as Peggy said the transportation standards for next year generally remain the same except for three areas and the first area was the Appendix A other exceptions that relate to the growth boundaries and any of the approved board amendments that may come about during approval of the student assignment plan.

I'm going to say that the two items that are affected financially with the student assignment plan were the The first two items that were approved in November 16, 2016 growth boundaries amendments and those required four buses and those have already been approved.

The second were the items three through nine and the other exceptions that are related to the amendment one proposed by Director Peters and that's for the eighth grade risers and those would require two buses.

So those are the ones that are financially impacting.

The other amendments are not impacting the transportation standards.

The second area of change would be in the transportation standards in the BAR we're asking for flexibility for the district to seek additional funds to support a two-tier system.

Currently the district runs on the three-tier transportation system and we acknowledge that there's a forecasted $74 million shortfall in the budget.

Moving to a two tier system would require approximately $2.3 million in additional funding for buses and drivers.

This action seeks approval for the district to pursue external funding to cover the increased cost of the two tier system.

If external funding becomes available by May 1st, 2017, the district may change to that two tier system.

Appendix B1 attached to the standards presents a three tier system arrival and departure times with 50 minutes between routes and all tiers that start 20 minutes earlier and 10 minutes later to support the additional 20 minute instructional times.

and then Appendix B2 presents a two-tier system with the 60 minutes between routes and all tiers ending 20 minutes later.

So you'll see that at the end of the packet attached to the transportation service standards.

The third item includes a clarification statement in section P of the standards which confirms the arrival and departure times for special needs students is the same as general education students unless specified by the student's individual education plan.

This was a statement that keeps us in compliance with the voluntary resolution agreement with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights that Dr. Nyland signed on December 16, 2016 and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Director Blanford.

Given the lateness of the hour I don't think it is appropriate to go too far into depth on this topic.

So I'm curious if you will be prepared to talk to us about the efforts that are being made to secure the additional funds and the likelihood of success.

It seems like that is a point that much of this hinges on and if it's not a viable idea then it would be better to know that upfront than later in the game.

So as you are well aware we do not have a development office in the Seattle Public Schools.

That means that we don't have somebody there trying to secure additional discretionary funds for us.

so in order to be able to do this we are working with some of our partners that actually helped us with the bell time so we have reached out to the sleep experts and the physicians to see if they can help secure some discretionary funding and the thought process related to that is that because we have done some state of the art changes that no other large urban district has done.

They believe that there may be a chance to get some funding through some grantors in order to be able to do this work.

In particular they're also looking at not just our high school students but also the change for our elementary students.

So we're working on that.

we started those conversations just in December and so I can't really tell you how feasible they are at this point.

I'm hoping that they're continuing those conversations and that we'll have more to report soon but I don't have a final answer for you on that.

Can I ask one follow-up question and that would be is feasibility is sustainability built into that model because my understanding of a third party going out to seek funds for operating expenses for us in order to study the effect wouldn't be long lasting it wouldn't be a longitudinal study it would be in and out pretty quickly.

And what we need is one year funding that 2.3 is a one year funding because remember we do get reimbursed from the state so it would be probably a study for an extended period of time but the operational cost that we need will only be for one year.

Director Burke.

Is there date certain by which we need to have that funding in hand to decide which fork in the road we take?

So that's I think that we have set a deadline of May 1st that if we don't have either the commitment, the formal commitment for the following year then we believe that's our drop dead date for being able to convert to a two tier system.

So Peggy as you know I have always been concerned about the three tiers especially for the schools that are in the third tier and so I have been interested along with many others in doing what we can to get to the second tier and now that we are talking a two tier system.

and now that we are talking about having to add 20 minutes to our school day and I think the latest decision or direction has been to add 10 minutes, start the day 10 minutes earlier, finish the day 10 minutes later.

What that means is our students who are already in the third tier who are going home at 4 o'clock or later in the dark, we are now asking them to go home even later.

and we've already heard from some other schools that they're having a hard enough time getting their kids to school at the early hour they currently are at and if we make them come to school 10 minutes earlier than that it's going to be a hardship.

So there's a lot of hardships that are building up now with the three tier system with all these other mandates we have.

and so I am just wondering at what point these hardships cost a certain amount of money so that balances out the value of getting the 2.3 million that we need just this one time to carry us through this year before we are reimbursed by the state.

I think it could be a very worthwhile investment if it can bring us to the two tiers and solve a lot of the problems that we are hearing about some of the costs that are coming with the three tier system.

and I just also want to clarify some of these costs are coming from are being borne by our parents, our families.

They're the ones paying for the extra before or after school care.

They're missing out on whatever events their students normally do whether it's pinching in on the athletics schedule or anything else students typically do after school.

they are bearing the brunt of those costs right now.

So really our current system is not cost neutral for our families even if it might be cost neutral for us.

I would agree and I would add to that that because we're such a large urban district that is very long when we talk about being in a three tier we have 50 minutes between tiers.

We have a lot of other districts that have three tiers but they may only have 15, 20 minutes between tiers because they don't have those same issues so their bail times are stacked a lot closer than ours.

So that's part of the challenges that we're trying to work through in support of our families and and we've heard that loud and clear both through our surveys as well as in our community meetings and that's what we're trying to address.

Thank you.

Dr. Geary.

I just want to say thank you for your continued efforts to get out there and find the dollars if you can to make a two tier system possible.

That's awesome.

Thank you very much.

And I appreciate the board's support in helping us do that also.

All right thank you.

So let me move on to item 5. Approval of interlocal agreement with state of Washington department of enterprise services for the design and construction of four classrooms using cross laminated timber at Maple elementary school.

This came to the operations committee.

This item was heard by the ops committee on December 15th and moved forward for approval.

Good evening Richard Best, Director of Capital Projects and Planning for Seattle Public Schools.

Happy New Year to you all.

This is a good news story.

The state of Washington is requiring that we enter into an interlocal service agreement with the Department of Enterprise Services for the state of Washington to fund design and construction of a four classroom addition at Maple Elementary School.

The addition will be cross laminated timber.

It will be a separate structure from Maple Elementary School.

We have been working with the state of Washington in the selection of the architect and the contractor but this for all intents and purposes is a design build project being implemented by the state of Washington.

It is a turnkey project essentially they are overseeing all of the design portion, all of the construction portion and what we will need to fund at the end of the day is the purchase of furniture technology and curriculum.

So the fiscal impact does say purchase of furnishings and maintenance of the operating costs and I guess what I am doing is trying to clarify furnishings is broader than that it is also technology and curriculum.

So I would open this up to questions.

Director Patu.

So can you tell me what makes this cross laminated timber, is that a special kind of a lamber?

That's a new type of wood engineered product that the state of Washington is trying to promote with forestry products developed here in the state of Washington for our timber industry.

So this is a project that they are actually a product that they are promoting the use of and they are wanting to show school districts its flexibility and so we are one of the recipients of this grant.

Are we saving any money from using it?

We will be analyzing that.

We will definitely be analyzing that when this project is complete and I am sure the state of Washington will be as well.

So that was a great article.

It actually provided the visual as well on CLT in the paper last week so if you look that up in the Seattle Times it's pressing the wood together at cross grains so that the grain the tension within the grains against each other create a much stronger wood product for the weight and it can be so strong according to this article that you could actually build skyscrapers with it it can be a replacement for steel because of that internal tension but if you want to read more about it there is an article that was recently printed in it was very helpful to me to finally see what the product was.

It was very interesting and it's just very recent.

I'd also add this is a product and a structural system that's been used in Canada for some time.

It's not new to the marketplace per se but it is new to the state of Washington and our legislators are helping to promote the use of this material.

Okay are there any other questions or comments?

All right thank you.

Okay the next item is the approval of the 2016-2019 agreement for the joint use of facilities with the city of Seattle Parks and Recreation division.

This also came to the operations committee.

This item was also heard by the operations committee on December the 15th and moved forward for approval.

Good evening, Bruce Scowra, Director of Facilities.

Just a quick note, we just lost our first pipe so we've only lost one so far so that's good.

So I'm here tonight to request school board approval of a new joint use of facilities agreement with the Seattle Parks and Recreation.

This is a three-year agreement which will expire August 31st, 2019. Some highlights of the new agreement is it includes some updated scheduling with parks to reflect our updated bell times and increases our overall scheduled time with parks.

The agreement also includes an updated revenue model and an updated fee schedule so our fees will match parks fees which is a little easier for the end users as far as fees.

and we will also be transitioning the monitoring of events at district assets from park staff to district staff.

So that and just a whole bunch of updated language because the existing agreement was five years old and there's been quite a few changes in the last five years.

Director Patu.

So with this change over who is controlling the books in terms of scheduling the fields and because I know in the past there have been a lot of complaint where our kids actually have not gotten the time that they need in order for them to play their sports so I'm really kind of concerned about that to see whether who's doing the books this year.

So parks is going to maintain the field scheduling at this point but the times have changed significantly so like on our fields the time for our use has changed from 5 o'clock to 6.45 so we've got more time on our fields.

the revenue is changing so the revenue from parks is going to be they're going to send us the revenue quarterly they're going to send us all revenues versus having hold backs and then we'll meet with parks and go over their booking fees and booking costs and they'll actually invoice us and we'll pay them versus having hold backs.

So I think this is much more transparent.

This kind of came out of an audit that the state did a couple of years ago.

So I think that's much better for everybody as far as how the revenues are.

Does that also include our gyms?

It does.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Burke?

Does this agreement make Flip Herndon smile?

It gets me partially there.

One of the aspects that Director Patu just mentioned as far as scheduling of the fields go we would of course love to be able to do that ourselves but currently we're waiting for our point of sale system to come online and once we're able to do that then we'll have much more control over that which will be I think better for us and our students.

The other aspect of that is we also shorten the timeframe for this particular agreement in the past they've been five year agreements but knowing that we're going to be hopefully implementing the point of sale system sooner rather than later it gave us enough time to make sure that one we were able to implement the system, use it, try it out rather than transition to us booking another 50 to 75,000 events on top of the 200 plus thousand events that happen within our schools right now and then not having that system work the way that we were planning to.

So it builds in a little buffer time for us to be able to have that.

Yeah I'm kind of smiling on this one but it's like a lot of negotiations we don't get everything that we wanted and parks I'm sure would have wanted more things from us as well.

Director Pinkham.

Given that we just also voted on this possible advertisement for our sports venues when the city uses some of our venues do they possibly sell some of that space for advertising like if they have a basketball tournament or a baseball tournament on one of our fields and they make a deal with a company to put up some of their signs on the fields.

that seems like then they're generating money off of some of our fields and are we able to then recover any costs from that?

So they're not able to advertise or do anything like that on district facilities and one of the benefits to this is that we're actually going to have district staff monitoring those events versus having park staff do it which was a big change and I think is going to benefit us greatly.

I just want to say thank you to FLIP because I know this has been a problem ongoing problem with the city but I know that your negotiation and your hard to you know that hammer not allowing them to do whatever it is that they want to do I appreciate that.

I'm glad that we have at least some control over what we should have had control quite a few years back but at least we're under the understanding that they are going to work together with us and making sure that everything is fairly distributed hopefully anyway.

Well thank you and it's obviously a very big team effort.

Bruce has got a lot of historical knowledge which was instrumental in our conversations with parks and our conversations with parks were for the most part very positive.

It was a big change for them as well.

The change in bell times put a serious kind of contraction on the amount of time available for community users and not students but my first priority is always for the students of Seattle Public Schools.

That's what I lead with.

That's what I feel my job is and so I fight as hard as I can in there and Unfortunately it does have an impact on some other users but we have a couple of other things.

The last thing that I'll mention on this that Bruce didn't get to but I'm sure he would have if someone had asked him is we're also looking at trying to expand some field lighting working with parks on that because then that allows community groups to use more of the fields to not just our fields but parks fields as well.

Great.

Dr. Burke?

And this agreement as structured incorporates the extra time that ten minutes after it is elastic enough to accommodate that?

We'll have to take a look at that in the conversations.

There has been as Bruce was mentioning the time on our field is 6.45 with consideration of 7 but when we're taking a look at that additional time part of this was also figuring out where it's going to land.

I mean clearly we're getting an indication from the board but until that designation is made it would have been hard for us to engage in the conversation with parks to then change that but clearly once we know what that is we'll have the conversation about scheduling in time.

And we do have something in this agreement where we will sit down with parks annually for a program review and we can make that change.

I have a couple questions so what you just said actually perhaps answers my question and that is when we do finally get point of sale and so many roads seem to lead to that goal can we renegotiate this contract at that point?

Well I think the main piece on the review is that we take a look to see what the implications are going to be for the year after.

So certainly we can look at a transitioning time and have that conversation with parks.

That's another reason again why we shorten the period from five years to now about two and a half years.

was that it would allow us that change in conversation and then any changes in our booking to be implemented sooner rather than later without having to renegotiate a whole new deal.

That's great.

So now tell me if I understand this correctly.

So these are district owned fields and gymnasiums but the city rents them out and then the city pays the district the fees that it charges for these is that correct?

That is correct.

And it used to have a hold back?

Maybe we shouldn't get into that right now.

That's been a very big part of the discussion.

Alright so and do they fully reimburse the district or do they take a certain processing fee or a certain percentage?

So that's A big part of the negotiation is that they were withholding revenues without kind of district knowledge.

They weren't providing us the feedback and the backup for the revenues so we weren't sure what they were.

So with this new contract, this new process is they'll give us all revenues and all backup and actually our accounting folks will meet with their accounting folks to verify everything and we'll do that quarterly.

And then any cost that they have associated with doing our bookings you know the time involved to do those bookings credit card fees that type of thing they will invoice us for and we will pay them for it.

Okay so what advantage is there in this for the city?

Why does the city, how does it benefit from this?

Well the advantage, one of the bigger advantages is to the end users, the adult sports leagues where they're having to book their leagues and their tournaments with just one entity even though they're cross fields with parks fields and district fields.

That's probably the the background for how this has evolved that way is they are doing a lot of leagues and that those leagues can book with one organization.

And are you anticipating that as a result of this new negotiated contract that the district will see greater revenue from this?

Yes.

Do you have any kind of percentage sense of how much more revenue we will see?

I think it's a little hard to tell just because I'm not sure the accuracy of the revenues in the past.

I mean I know how much money we received in the past but the accounting and data to back that up is a little bit more elusive so we're hoping that this process again as Bruce mentioned brings much more transparency to that.

Okay great thank you.

Okay are there any other questions or comments?

All right we'll move on to the next item and that is item number 7 BEX 3 BEX 4 distress school grant board acceptance of the building commissioning report for Cedar Park elementary school renovation project.

This also came to ops.

We heard it on October the 20th and moved it forward for consideration.

Thank you.

Yes again Richard Best director of capital projects and planning.

This was moved forward for consideration because not all of the commissioning items were complete at the time that it went to the operations committee.

Senior project manager Mike Skutak asked that this be placed on hold until all of the commissioning activities were complete.

we have verified and you have in your attachments a document from Keithley Barber noting that they had identified 113 issues.

This is on page 1 of 4 on the conclusion.

that they had identified 113 issues they had verified that 107 of those were complete and then our mechanical electrical coordinator Mike McBee confirmed to the capital projects office that the last six also have been completed and so that's why we are moving this forward tonight for well for introduction tonight and two weeks later for approval.

Any questions or comments?

All right.

I have a feeling this next one is yours as well.

It is.

So this is item 8, BEX 3, BEX 4. Oh it's very similar.

Is it?

This is the final acceptance?

Oh I see.

Distressed school grant final acceptance of the public works contract P5042 with Bailey Construction Incorporated for the Cedar Park Elementary School renovation project.

It also came to ops.

which heard it on December the 15th and moved it forward for consideration.

And this has required your approval for Seattle Public Schools to file a close out document with three state agencies.

This is very typical for every public works project that we complete and so we are again introducing it tonight.

We will be requesting approval two weeks from now.

I would note that there is one change that I am going to be making to this board action report.

In the second paragraph in background it notes that the project budget not this construction contract but the project budget was over 2.5% or approximately $240,000.

The exact amount is $239,412 and it's one of the attachments but it says that that is being funded through BTA 3 underspend.

It is actually being funded from BEX IV program contingency and I just saw that tonight.

So I just want to draw that to your attention and we will be making that revision to the bar.

Any questions or comments?

Alright thank you.

So the next item is item number 9 that is BEX for approval of the general contractor construction manager services negotiated total contract costs for the Loyal Heights elementary school modernization and addition project.

This came to ops.

Which also heard it on December 15th and moved it forward for consideration.

Yes so I draw the attention to the board we are presenting two scenarios and the items that we have highlighted in bold on both scenarios are the items that you the financial amounts that you will input into the recommended motion depending on which scenario the board ultimately selects.

The first scenario is to construct Loyal Heights Elementary School without the childcare wing.

That's a two classroom wing and additional support spaces for childcare.

and childcare is both before and after school childcare and preschool.

And then the second scenario is to construct those two items, those two spaces in the final project.

So the first number that would go into the motion is the revised TCC amount in either scenario and then the second number is the requested budget increase.

and again we have bolded those numbers for the board to make a determination.

We do know that the community has requested expanded playground space and so we are providing the board with this information.

We have also provided you with a site plan showing where that additional community space would be provided both for scenario one and then also for scenario two.

I would note that I did hear in the on public comments tonight that designing this school for 550 would provide more square footage.

That is not an accurate statement.

Gymnasium and multipurpose space would all still remain on that first floor and there would be those four classrooms added to get to that first floor space, the music.

So the real flexibility the board has is concerning the childcare space.

and that's why we're proposing that the rest of the spaces that are shown on the first floor would stay in a 500 student scenario as well.

Any questions or comments?

So do you have something that kind of outlines what you just said to show that if it was that the first floor plan would still remain the same

Sure I can provide that in the final in the next bar.

I can provide and provide those outlines showing floor plan one for both scenarios.

Okay yeah because again that's kind of the clarification to get as far as what regulations what classrooms must stay on the first floor and that would help.

Thank you.

I was wondering if you could speak a little to the justification for increased cost at the bid level on this round and if that's been typical on other projects and also how that fits into kind of our contingency percentages which I think for renovation it's 10% or 15?

No this is actually increase in the construction costs.

We have provided some additional This will be providing additional funding in that amount is a construction contingency amount included but it really is a reflection Director Burke on the current market conditions and when I say current market conditions I want to be clear in that we are talking about labor and not commodity pricing.

I don't think we have seen an escalation in commodity pricing.

I do think we are seeing an escalation in labor and I do think we are seeing an escalation in contractor profit and overhead.

and you just need to look around the city of Seattle skyline and you'll recognize there's lots of construction opportunities and so contractors are being very selective of the projects they go after.

It's one reason we are pursuing GCCM construction but some subcontractors are also being very selective.

So I want to make sure I understand.

So there's a construction contingency, but then this is essentially a bid

This is a program contingency expenditure to increase the overall project budget for Loyal Heights Elementary School.

But it is driven not by a construction overage but by a bid overage.

Correct.

It is driven by the fact that these bids came over what we had anticipated our cost estimator and the general contractor's cost estimator had anticipated at bid date.

Right, okay and so for some of our historical, like in the last year, do we see the same sort of trends at the bid level of people essentially 10% over, 11% over on a bid?

We have seen that on some projects, not all.

I could say I think with this project in its proximity in Ballard it's difficult to get to.

Some subcontractors are going to weigh that into their bids.

This is not an easy site in which to get to.

It's not immediately off I-5.

So it's going to take additional time.

In a competitive bid market we wouldn't see that cost.

In a highly overactive climate you're going to see those costs.

Thanks.

How many bids did you get on this project?

We had I'm going to have to punt to the project manager Steve Ward to ask him how many bid packages and then I'm going to say that it did vary.

We set this up so that it had numerous bid packages so 20 bid packages and then on some of those bid packages we only had one bidder.

Generally I am going to say we had anywhere between three to five bidders.

When you say some how many of them only had one bidder?

Four bid packages.

4 out of 20 had only one bidder.

Could that have contributed to these increased costs?

Definitely.

Especially if they knew they were the only bidder.

Most times you don't know that you are the only bidder but if they knew they were the only bidder it would definitely add to these increased costs.

And why do we think they were the only bidder?

Again I would say it is a very active market Director Peters.

Alright thank you.

All right there's no more questions on this item we'll move on to the next one and that is item 10 BTA 3 final acceptance of contract K5060 Bailey construction incorporated for the North Queen Anne school modernization project.

That also went to ops.

December 15th moved forward for approval.

and again this is similar to the Cedar Park final acceptance your acceptance of this will allow us to file close out documents with the state of Washington and then receive free documents from those state agencies and then put this project in archives.

Are there any questions about this item?

Did this one also experience the same sort of increase in bids?

This was a relatively small project.

It was a roofing project implemented in the summer of 2015. In addition there was some minor seismic improvements, some mechanical improvements, electrical and fire alarm was implemented by Bailey Construction and the smaller projects were not seeing as much of an increase as we are on the large volume projects and I think it's because there's more contractors so you do have more competition on the $1 million to $5 million range.

Are there any other questions or comments about this item?

All right thank you then we'll move on to item 11 our last item for the evening BTA 4 again this is Magnolia I'm sorry this is Magnolia elementary school renovation in addition approval of budget increase this came to ops.

Which also heard it on December the 15th and moved it forward for approval.

So this is, I'm going to draw your attention to exhibit A, one of the attachments because I think the project manager Jeanette Imanishi has done a very good job of articulating what this budget increase is for.

construction you'll see three items additional renovations to meet the ed specs 2.5 million and I'm going to use round numbers.

Energy conservation strategies 600,000 which will reduce annual operating costs and then off-site and site development costs of approximately a million dollars.

In addition she's identified 1.3 million for needed curriculum, furniture, fixtures and equipment and we will be providing one year's worth of annual supplies.

You are allowed to provide that from the capital fund in lieu of the general fund and so we have made sure to take pressure off the general fund that we provide that one year's supplies for the new schools.

you cannot provide one year supplies for existing schools that we relocate.

So example Genesee Hill that went from Schmitz Park to Genesee Hill because it's an existing school we cannot provide supplies but for new schools we can provide one year's worth of supplies.

Any questions or comments about this?

on that point you just made, what is Meany considered?

Is it considered a new school?

Meany is considered a new school and so is Robert Eagle Staff middle school.

So we will be providing one year's worth of supplies for those.

Fantastic.

I don't see any more comments or questions about this item.

Thank you for tonight and I call this meeting adjourned at 9.49 p.m.