Seattle Schools Board Meeting Oct.12, 2022

Okay, welcome everyone.

Good afternoon.

We will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

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

All right, this is President Hersey.

I'm now calling the October 12th, 2022 regular board meeting to order at 4.15 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

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

Ms. Wilson-Jones, the roll call, please.

Vice President Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Present.

Director Rankin.

I believe Director Rankin may be joining us remotely, but I do not yet see Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sarju.

Present.

Director Song Maritz.

Who's walking in now.

That was a present.

President Hersey.

Here.

And our school board student member Nasira Hassan.

I would like to welcome the school board student member Nasir Hassan to tonight's meeting.

During these meetings we will be addressing the student members as director.

Thank you for joining us Director Hassan and welcome.

Thank you and good afternoon everyone.

I am student board member Nasira Hassan and I am a student at Chief Sealth International High School.

As we know today was PSAT or SAT testing for some of our high school students in the SPS district and firstly I'd like to say that I hope it went well for everyone who did take it.

Me and the other student board members applaud you all for getting through such a difficult test.

Moving on, I would like to give a quick update on the newsletter that student board member Jenna gave at one of our previous board meetings.

We are currently working on the template structure of how the newsletter will look and be formatted and are hoping to get it out to the public as soon as possible.

With that, I'd like to raise another idea of communication, the idea of me and the fellow student board members having an Instagram account as a source of communication between us members and the students within the SPS district.

We find it extremely important that while being on the board and having our roles as student representation, we are in fact representing every student the best we can.

And one way we discussed doing this was by having a source that's easily accessible to many students to directly contact us with any questions, concerns, comments, or ideas that students may have that they want to share with us.

We hope that with these communication resources we can get better engagement with our fellow students while also keeping them updated with any new information that we have to share.

We find it important that we remind everyone that student voice that is being included within the board is more than just me and the other student board members, it is the entirety of all students that reside in the Seattle Public Schools area.

That being said, we strongly encourage students to use these resources when available.

Alongside the newsletter, the Instagram account is currently in the works of being made and we plan to have this Instagram account up and going as soon as possible.

To conclude my student comments, I'd like to talk shortly about student voice within being a student board member.

Mine and my fellow members' responsibility is to serve as student representation for the students throughout the district.

This is a difficult role and something that requires a lot of bravery as we are fairly young.

This being the first experience for us, we feel as if the importance of having support from other board members at these meetings is shown.

I understand that sometimes our thoughts may not align, but that is what comes with including student perspectives.

Our experiences are often different, and if we are working together to include student voice, let's work to genuinely do so and encourage so.

That concludes my student comments.

Thank you everyone for listening.

Thank you very much Director Hassan.

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

Thank you President Hersey and board members.

I want to talk about student outcome focused governance and we've been on a journey to bring that forward.

If you recall last summer the board adopted three academic goals for the district.

and adopted five guardrails to guide our behavior.

Since August of 21, my staff and I have developed interim metrics for those academic goals and behavioral guardrails so that we can monitor what's working and our progress.

At today's meeting, the board will consider a revised set of goals and guardrails, particularly guardrail number two we'll focus on.

All of these goals and guardrails and metrics are geared towards one thing, improving student outcomes.

This school board and our district are united in our focus to again improve student outcomes.

I appreciate the clarity of these academic goals and these behavioral guardrails.

To that end, I also want to acknowledge the work of the School Board's Ad Hoc Governance Committee, a new temporary committee of three who worked throughout the summer to create a roadmap to governance that's focused on student outcomes.

Today, they will introduce the recommendations in our meeting today.

And the beauty of this is that I can see how all these work streams are coming together, again, to better serve our students and the governance that our district needs to support that work.

So I appreciate the diligence of board members in guiding our district toward greater accountability and improving student outcomes.

Later in this meeting, we will have a work session on budget that will give us a context of our current financial state.

We'll need to turn our attention quickly to the upcoming budget challenges that are before us.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Thank you, Superintendent Jones.

We are about to enter the public testimony portion of today's agenda, but it is not yet 4.30 p.m.

To keep the meeting going, we will begin committee reports now and we will then begin testimony at 4.30 p.m.

and we'll come back to committee reports after testimony.

So we will begin with chair of the Audit and Finance Committee if you are prepared to give remarks.

If not just let me know.

I don't believe we've met.

Yeah we are we are committied out but we.

There might have been a meeting for the Ad Hoc Committee since the last time we had a full board meeting.

Am I thinking incorrectly?

Yeah we We did meet.

We had met twice.

We will talk about that extensively coming up.

Sounds great.

I don't know that that would be worth going into.

We might be able to go to introduction items then.

Is that possible?

All right.

Let's see.

I think we might have time to get through one introduction item.

President Hersey?

Yes.

Would it be all right if I gave a brief legislative update?

Sure.

That would be great.

By all means.

Okay.

I had mentioned in a work session that the WASDA legislative process, resolutions and positions process has been in progress.

And so the latest that we have is that I've been collecting top 10 priorities from our board, from board directors, so that I can compile and submit on our behalf to WASDA our top 10 issues.

And I have, thank you to the four, I think four out of seven that I've gotten them from.

There are some, you know, obviously clear consistencies, so it should be pretty easy for me to put together our top 10 and send them on.

and then I will also be using that to start the process for our board specific our own legislative priorities if we because we will also adopt our own platform in addition to the one that WASDA adopts and so WASDA will be once they get their top 10 preferences from all the districts in the state they will compile those look for commonalities they don't rank them it's just top it's just in the top 10 not not one through 10. and then once they have those, they will create talking points and kind of a top 10 one pager to inform advocacy across our state.

And so I'll be submitting our top 10 on Friday this week.

Anyone who would like to get me anything else, please do it as soon as possible so I can incorporate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Okay, looking at our introduction items, I don't think that any of these would actually be well served to begin with five minutes before we start public testimony.

So, in the interest of making sure that our meeting is concise.

Go ahead.

What?

Oh, yeah, by all means, please.

I wasn't planning to do this update until the next board meeting but Superintendent this is a tribal liaison update.

I was able to meet with chairman from Suquamish, Leonard Forestman at the affiliated tribes of Northwest Indians meeting a couple of weeks ago to shore up the agenda for the things that we need to talk about with both Suquamish and Muckleshoot as the two federally recognized tribes on whose lands we are situated.

And so Superintendent Jones and I have that scheduled for November 15th.

I'd love to bring any other directors that would like to attend along with us.

I also have had the opportunity to speak to the staff for the Muckleshoot Tribal Council and about moving forward with them.

Again, this is all in the area of tribal consultation.

There are a number of state required areas, not that that's the exclusive purpose or rationale for doing tribal consultation.

It is absolutely the right thing to do from everything from grant funds that we receive to our capital projects these however also cover specific policies that are in state law around specifically around tribal consultation communication between the school board and tribes which is now required that passed this last year training for principals in tribal governance which is also new this year as well as tribal consultation around our policies relative to building and school names and logos and mascots is also something that requires tribal consultation when there if there's any imagery or anything that references historical tribal members or art or place names and then the last bit of the existing since time immemorial curriculum and then of course our title, our requirements under state law to provide consultation and our implementation of that and the existing Title VI dollars that we receive.

So a lot, there are a lot of pieces to that.

Before we bring any of these documents to the board for review, it's appropriate to get first input from the tribes.

And so I know Superintendent Jones, we had originally scheduled that in June, but I got COVID.

we had to cancel so we're looking forward to meeting that obligation in November and then hopefully by early next year being able to bring the policies around specifically tribal consultation and then naming of school buildings and mascots and logos to back to the board to review once we've received that input from the tribes.

And then it will become our interactions with the tribes as a board will become an annual requirement.

And so when I talked to Muckleshoot today we talked about hopefully they're going to let their attorneys look at those documents initially and then we'll try to schedule something in the early winter and again I would really encourage any directors that want to accompany Superintendent Jones and myself to please come with us in visiting them directly and honoring their governance since time immemorial over these lands and their presence as really powerful forces for good governance and good stewardship of lands and peoples in these unceded areas.

If anybody has any questions, feel free to check in with me.

Again, November 15th, if anybody wants to join me, I'll add you to the invite.

Thank you very much, Director Hampson.

Perfect timing.

We have now reached 4.30, so we will begin the public testimony portion of today's agenda.

Give me just a moment to orient myself.

All right.

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

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

I will summarize some important parts for this procedure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Koo will read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you President Hersey.

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

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

Each speaker will have a two minute speaking time.

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

The first speaker on the list is Chandra Allen.

Chandra Allen, if you're on the line, please press star six to unmute.

The next speaker on the list is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins.

Box eight four zero six three Seattle nine eight one two four.

On the personnel report two points number one under separations the report lists Ashley Davies executive director of operations.

I wish to thank Miss Davies for her service to the district.

Number two administrators are leaving along with some 22 employees from major preventive maintenance.

On the Mercer ed specs and the resolution on racial imbalance.

two points number one the district should have chosen modernization of the school instead of replacement which destroys community history.

Number two aspects of the project are aimed at quote higher needs unquote students.

This would attract more such students which is likely to aggravate racial imbalance.

Please vote no.

On the redistricting plan the figures for the population size of the entire district before and after redistricting don't match.

See pages four and six refusing to provide an explanation raises doubts about the process.

on school district construction projects.

Three points.

Number one the district is shrinking playgrounds locating giant projects where they don't belong and degrading the quality of life in neighborhoods.

Number two please vote no on tens of millions of dollars of cost increases at Alki John Rogers and Montlake.

Number three, please halt the Madison Field Project where public school funds are being used not primarily for children or the neighborhood, but mostly for adult league night field use.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker on the list is Mimi DeBoerle.

Mimi DeBoerle.

Mimi, if you're on the line, please press star six to unmute.

The next speaker on the list is Jessica Whitsitt.

Jessica Whitsitt?

Yes.

Hello?

go ahead Jessica we can hear you okay okay great great good afternoon my name is Jessica Witsett and I am a Montlake resident here today to request a reconsideration of the current plans for the Montlake elementary school renovation project I'd like to start by saying that I'm in favor of this project and while I'm not excited about living so close to a construction site for the next few years I have three young boys who cannot wait to watch the bulldozers and excavators work for hours on end building their new school While my children are currently too young to attend Montlake Elementary we spent a lot of time on school grounds after hours and have already formed some special memories there.

We love Montlake and we love living in Montlake.

The main concern that brings me here today is that I'd like the board to reconsider why a standardized 500 student building is necessary for a smaller neighborhood school.

Montlake Elementary sits on one of the smaller school land parcels in the city and a huge reason why we chose to settle in Montlake is a public elementary school.

In order to accommodate 500 students, the design proposed is a 65,000 square foot building that covers 57% of the lot.

This is a massive increase from the current building that covers one third of the lot.

The outdoor play area will shrink by half and the building will extend to nearly every corner of the lot.

The standard required setbacks of 15 feet is offensively ignored shrinking it to three to six feet setbacks with a facade that rises 60 feet above the current grade which is 15 feet taller than the current historically landmark structure.

I'm also disappointed by the city's level of community engagement and neighborhood input that has been involved in this design process.

Signs that were posted in writing public comment were posted during the summer months when there was little to no traffic by the school and was difficult to identify on the school fences.

I do not understand why there has not been an environmental impact study done on a construction project at this scale.

Seattle Pride itself has been one of the most sustainable and greenest cities in the country.

Yet there has been no there has been no consideration as to what this building project will have on the environment and surrounding areas.

The project is oversized over budget and an excessive addition to the current Montlake Elementary School.

I urge you to reconsider why we need to build the biggest school possible on the tidy quality plan.

Does it need to be three stories, 60 feet high plus a mechanical penthouse in order to fit 500 students?

Or is there a way that it can be built smarter and more efficiently to be right-sized at 300 to 400 students?

Is there a way that we can maintain a sizable playground and outdoor space?

Rather than signing off on a $15 million budget increase to triple the size of a neighborhood school that is unwarranted and unjustified, please take a moment to make sure what you're approving makes sense.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker on the list is Robin Reed.

Robin Reed.

My name is Robin Reed and I'm the parent of an Eckstein Middle School eighth grader and a Roosevelt High School 10th grader.

I'm speaking today to urge you to vote no on the proposed revisions to the 2022-23 school calendar.

This revised calendar takes the school year far too late into June and possibly even into July.

This is harmful to students and to families in several ways.

First, end of year high-stakes exams, including International Baccalaureate and AP exams, begin on a set date.

It's late April for IB, it's May 1st for AP, and that happens regardless of how many days school has been in session by then.

Other standardized testing at every grade level also doesn't move just because we started the year late.

Scheduling those extra four days after the exams does these students no good.

They need those days of opportunity to learn before the exams begin.

Secondly, by late June, or God forbid July, it's obvious kids and teachers will be exhausted.

It's hard to imagine any meaningful work getting done that late in the year.

It's also hard to imagine there won't be high levels of absenteeism for that final week.

After all, July is when families finally relax and travel and reconnect with their loved ones.

Some families have already made plans.

Nobody should be in school then.

I urge you to return to the drawing board and solve this problem another way.

That could be deducting days from the February break or the April break.

It could be finding them somewhere else.

But changing the schedule this way means that though there may be 180 days on the calendar, Seattle Public Schools will not be providing kids with 180 days of excellence.

Finally, I urge you and SEA to consider starting school a week earlier going forward.

Even by September 7th, the scheduled first day of school, almost all my kids' peers, even locally, were already in school and my kids were just antsy.

They'll be miserable in late June when all their peers have been on vacation for weeks and they're still doing low-yield, end-of-year, run-out-the-clock activities in school.

But for today, it would just be enough to vote no and get back to the drawing board.

These extra days this year should be made up in the winter or spring and not in the summer.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Laura Marie Rivera.

Laura Marie Rivera.

Hello, hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, go ahead.

Hi, can you hear me now?

Hello?

Hi, we can hear you.

Super, thanks.

I'm Laura Marie Rivera and I'm guessing that you all are aware that students and families are not liking this latest calendar proposal.

And I'd like to acknowledge that at this point there really are no good options.

Nobody likes the idea of going to school after the 4th of July.

That's just wild.

And I know that a lot of people are not happy about the idea of giving up midwinter break either.

But the reality is that someone is going to end up unhappy.

But hopefully you all are thinking the same thing I'm thinking.

We need to do better about the calendar, negotiations, supporting our teachers, engaging early and engaging often.

This truly should have been voided but here we are.

One thing I haven't heard a lot about in these discussions is the students and their education, especially high school students, their graduations, their futures and a little thing called the AP test.

Like the speaker before me said, students all across the country who are in AP classes all take the AP test on the same day.

I feel it's important to point out our old school district started school four and a half weeks ahead of Seattle Public School.

That's 22 more days of instruction that absolutely translate to better test preparation.

These things do make a difference.

And adding extra days a month after AP exams will not help our students at all.

And further closing off employment and internship opportunities will also not help our students at all.

And even though I've come here to express my disappointment in the current proposal, I'd also like to share something else.

I would like to say thank you I hope that our friends and the students and families that are disappointed will also listen I'd like to remind everyone that our school board directors are volunteers volunteers these women and one black man thank you Brandon Hersey give hours of their time each week to support our Seattle Public Schools and it's not an easy job or an insignificant job and sometimes people are downright rude so I'd just like to say that we see you and we thank you

The next speaker on the list is Karen Murphy.

Karen Murphy.

I'm sorry can you hear me?

Yes we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

I came here today with the intention of advocating for another teacher for Sacagawea Elementary School.

when spring estimates were done our school is estimated to start with 162 students which is already under where we were at in August it was clear that that number would be closer to 200 an increase of 38 students or 23 percent our principal reached out to get additional staffing and was denied our third grade class had one teacher and 40 students but we were told we had to wait we were assured multiple times our principal was also assured that it would be rectified at October counts it was not we were told that we should instead do grade level splits to even out the students and this would also not work as we are already at the WFF or above for all classes including 34 kids in grade five and one teacher splits would impact all learners this is not child-centered nor is it a trauma-informed solution Weighted staffing standards showed Sacagawea at 8.77 but we were still allocated eight FTE classroom teachers.

Parents have rallied.

We've emailed.

We've had conversations with school board members.

You know who you are and we appreciate and thank you.

And we've also had conversations with SPS administrators.

Today we've been allocated another teacher.

But what if we weren't so engaged and enraged and able to communicate and advocate?

with STS have continued to overburden our school students and teachers.

We have been provided no information into the process of denying our school's initial request and also not for not using the WSS nor do we have information about what changed and what led to the reallocation.

We have no information on why these estimates were so far off or why through three rounds of adjustments we still were not provided another teacher absent our parent campaign.

This allocation process should work, but it isn't.

Families should be able to trust that STF is truly committed to high-quality, world-class education, and that starts with having the correct number of teachers in the building.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Roxanne Clavin.

Roxanne Clavin.

Roxanne, can you try pressing star six to unmute?

Roxanne, can you press star six to unmute?

We can move on to the list and come back.

I did that.

Okay, we can hear you now.

Oh, okay.

I live right by Madison Middle School, and I went to Madison Middle School in the ninth grade, and what they're going to do is the natural grass where they play soccer or football or whatever.

It should be just natural grass.

It shouldn't be anything else.

And the other thing that I don't like is the lights that go up and, you know, they are lighting into my house, you know, and they're very high up and I just don't like the those lights.

So, okay, well, thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Alex Zimmerman, Alex Zimmerman.

The next speaker on the list is Jason Juha, Jason Juha.

Before we end today's testimony, I want to check on those who have missed their turn.

The first is Chandra Allen.

Chandra Allen.

The next is Mimi Deverell.

Mimi Deverell.

The next is Alex Zimmerman.

and the last is Jason Juha.

That concludes today's testimony.

Thank you Ms. Ku.

All right that concludes our public testimony for the meeting.

Thank you for your comments and before we move on I'll note that board directors This, that is an unnecessary part of the comments.

If we could just get that part stricken for talking points next time that'd be super helpful.

Thank you.

All right.

We have now come to the board committee report section of the agenda which we already completed because there were very few committees that met previously.

So unless any of my colleagues indicate that they have a surprise committee report that they would like to give at this time we will be moving on.

All right.

All right we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

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

Okay, fantastic.

Okay, so all those in favor of the Consent Agenda, please signify by saying aye.

All those opposed?

Aye, by the way.

All right, this passes unanimously.

Though an item on tonight's consent agenda, or rather through an item we had on tonight's consent agenda, we had the honor of naming our District Records and Archives Center for Seattle Public Schools First District Archivist, Eleanor Towes.

Before we move on, I want to pause for us to recognize Ms. Towes for her service to the district and its students as a district employee from 1979 through 2011 and continuing today as an active volunteer with the Seattle School Scholarship Committee.

I'll invite the manager of records and archives Melinda Goodleaf to the podium now to introduce Ms. Toast.

Am I too short?

Thank you for inviting me up here to introduce Eleanor.

She really is a valuable member of our team.

She is not an employee of the district, but I think she will always be a part of the district.

So please welcome Eleanor and yeah.

Thank you, Melinda and the whole team for this incredible honor.

It was my pleasure with the help of many who supported me and encouraged me to do my job.

That's what it was.

It was a job and it was a very good job, one I enjoyed doing.

I had mentors all along the way and now I can't quite stay away from the archives.

They will tell me when I've been there too long.

In the meantime, thank you again all of you for your support and for this incredible honor.

And my name, Taves, rhymes with saves.

Please forgive me for that.

That's all right.

I always told people my last name rhymes with saves because that's what I did and do.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

What a great opportunity.

It's very rare that we are able to give folks their flowers while they are still around to appreciate them.

So I hope that we can continue to do that in the future.

OK.

Before we move on to our business action items tonight we have a budget work session directors will be moving over to the tables right over there for this portion.

I will pass it on to Superintendent Jones to introduce tonight's presenting staff once we arrive at the tables and then they will they will take it from there.

So directors if you are so inclined please join us at the other side of the room.

soon as we get seated we'll go ahead and get started.

We're losing people.

work.

So I have some opening comments and then we'll pass it over to my colleagues to walk us through our budget work session.

So to set the context, with the SEA bargaining agreement now fully approved and schools off to a very smooth start, we'll be turning our attention to addressing the budget challenges that our district will face here in the near term.

Now our board, you all are focused on governance issues as it should be, but a notable portion of our attention should also be turned to fiscal matters.

Our projected budget shortfalls are significant and cannot be corrected with easy actions or simple decisions.

Next year could be difficult for SPS, at least budgetarily, and the amount of time and attention required will surely create distractions, potentially taking us away from implementing the strategic plan, but we will try to guard against that.

We'll try to do everything possible to keep our focus on students, and we know our district and community has potential to be unsettled by the possible budget reductions, making our work even more challenging.

We have an upcoming legislative session and that will be critical and our collective work may be able to secure us necessary funding and legislation that would allow us to stabilize the district's financial outlook.

It will take sizable adjustments to special education, a transportation funding formula, but we cannot wait until late April to see what relief the legislative session may bring.

While it could bring forward necessary resources, it could also leave us with nothing new.

So we can't create a plan in May, we must begin to prepare now.

So I wanted to just set the context for how my colleagues here, Amy, Rob, Linda, and Marnie, will walk us through our current context as we go forward.

In this area, feel free to ask any clarifying questions, okay?

Good late afternoon directors, Deputy Superintendent Rob Gannon and I'm joined by several colleagues.

I will give some introductory remarks about our presentation and as we move through the agenda each of my colleagues will jump in on different slides.

so we'll try to move through briskly.

And President Hersey, if you are in agreement, my suggestion is that we pause on each slide to entertain questions rather than holding them all to the end.

I think the work session will be richer as a result and it will also allow us to answer questions in a timely manner but also record where we need to come back to directors with additional information.

As you can see, we have seven different items.

What I'd like to say at the outset is our intention here this afternoon is to provide you with baseline information about our current status, how we understand the budget as it is today, some of the preparations we need to consider for the upcoming year.

What we will not be doing today is suggesting solutions or means to address the different issues that we do face.

This is really just level setting so we all begin with the same information.

And also some of this will reflect what I and others have verbally presented in prior meetings.

So this is an attempt to bring some of that detail forward for all of your consideration.

So we will talk briefly about the calendar.

We'll hear from Dr. Campbell about an enrollment update.

We'll lay some current and background information about the fiscal situation.

We'll display our best and current understanding of our ESSER expenditures, our federal dollars that came during the pandemic.

we'll look at some ending fund balance projections, we'll evaluate the impact of the agreement that Seattle Public Schools reached with Seattle Education Association, and under potential solutions, we'll look at the categories that could bring some relief, but again, there will be no solutions presented this evening.

So I'll move to the next slide if I could.

So this is a high level outline of the budget development calendar.

This is the budget that we will be developing for fiscal year 23-24.

Obviously we're in a current budget year and we're executing that budget.

This calendar outline is roughly analogous to prior years.

So what you'll see here is a layout of critical dates, some of which involve board activity or board action.

Others are highlights of things that are necessary for us to understand as we move through the calendar year.

I'd like to highlight a couple of points.

So as we do each year, at least during Dr. Jones tenure, we try to begin with a budget work session.

This is our first effort, so we're here located at October 12th, We have three opportunities before the close of the year and more importantly before the legislative session begins to come together in a work session format and continue to develop information that is necessary for the board to understand our current situation as well as to begin to evaluate potential solutions.

Those can then carry into the start of the new year when the legislature is in session.

A lot of what you see between January 9th and April 23rd includes both opportunities to engage as well as some of the milestones that the organization needs to attend to as we prepare the technical requirements of the budget.

we can forecast that the legislative session will end at the end of April and then we have just a short period of time to move to final consideration of a budget developing whatever adjustments that the district deems appropriate as well as incorporate any legislative adjustments or changes that may come.

By May 1st, we need to be in a state of near readiness to lock our budget into place so that we can produce the necessary documents.

Also communicate budgets out to our organization as we enter the year or prepare to enter the next fiscal year.

And then finally by July 5th, we will seek formal adoption by the school board of whatever it is that we are able to bring together as a proposed budget.

So I will pause here.

This is again just a high level overview of the year that sits in front of us or at least the nine months or so that sits in front of us, but we will try to make as best use as possible of the work sessions that are scattered through that calendar so that we can engage the board in an interactive fashion to really understand where we are and how we proceed to address some of the challenges that we'll begin to talk about.

So President Hersey, I'll pause here and see if there are any questions.

My question is about the timing of April 3rd and April 23rd.

So how much information do we have about what is likely will end up with the legislative session before the official end?

I'm just wondering about communication to staff about possible displacement when the legislative session actually ends after that.

So I'll try to answer that in two parts.

So first to bring some clarity to the April 3rd date and I'll invite Director Sebring and Director Fleming to inject information here.

The April 3rd date where HR begins displacement process for SEA staff, that is an annual occurrence.

That is to rebalance and redistribute our educational staff through the buildings.

based on different needs, based on enrollment, based on the forecast for the coming year.

So what that should not be interpreted as is the end of employment for specific teachers or other staff.

It is an annual process.

So that said, it does proceed the end of the legislative session and in any given year we may have very clear information where the legislature is heading.

but more likely than not, we don't find out where the legislature will end until the very near final day and sometimes even after that when they extend the session.

But that's not meant to be a harbinger of proactive layoffs or anything like that.

That is our internal target date and it's also driven a lot by what is embedded in the different collective bargaining agreements.

Question is, are there any enrollment projecting milestones that should be included in this timeline that we should be aware of?

Director Sebring answered that question and then maybe we could flow into an enrollment update so that that would have some additional context to that.

So Linda Sebring, budget director.

Yes, enrollment gives projections to the budget office towards the middle to end of February.

Basically it's usually midwinter break.

And we take those projections and that drives the school funding formula.

So the key date you see on the calendar here is February 28th.

so we basically get the enrollment projections about a week before that in order to run the model and get the information out to the schools so they can start their process which basically runs through the month of March.

Thank you, Director Song Moritz took my first question.

My second question is, we oftentimes, after we see our initial enrollment during open enrollment, are disappointed and distressed.

My question is, what are we going to do differently this year in terms of talking about our extraordinary programs and offerings?

how are we going to uplift some of our smaller schools?

How are we going to do professional development for the enrollment office with respect to potentially a roadmap about each school's specialties?

And we've said this before, but I am more than willing to go to parking lots and put flyers under windshield wipers.

to tell folks that we have extraordinary offerings so that we can communicate to our community, we can communicate to our voters that we are willing to do our level best and then some to recruit back into this district folks that we have left and to newly arrived folks.

Thank you.

That's a question.

Director Harris, we are on the same page.

I was at the Alliance for Education luncheon the other day talking about we are value add to this community.

I think we have been timid in telling our story.

I have a meeting with Assistant Superintendent Redmond on Monday to talk about how are we going to start putting out our value proposition?

How are we gonna start telling the story about why Seattle Public Schools is such a good investment of time and families wanting to send their students here.

So that's part of it.

That's not gonna solve the entire problem, but in terms of your inference that we need to do more to tell our story, absolutely.

So that's in motion.

See Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I have a question about related to Director Song-Maritz's first question about displacement.

Is displacement a legal term or industry term?

LINDA SEBRING BUDGET DIRECTOR.

Hi this is Linda Sebring Budget Director.

It's an internal description of our process, that's probably the best way to describe it.

So after the schools go through their budget process of aligning staff and identifying people who are retiring or who may wanna be moving or coming into the organization or making changes with their funding decisions, they come up with a, Human Resources comes up with a list of here's the positions we have as an organization that may have been open in the past and now are no longer available.

and so part of our agreement with our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers union is that staff have certain rights to other positions.

So displaced means my position has ended but my employment with Seattle Public Schools is probably continuing and I have the right to look at other open positions throughout the organization.

and as Deputy Gannon mentioned, we sometimes have fluxes back and forth of enrollment maybe growing in one area of the district or declining in another area of the district and it's just an opportunity for staff to evaluate where they might want to shift their employment within the district.

So it is not a reduction in force necessarily, it is a staff movement for different positions.

Thank you.

I think I mean that's that's my understanding but I know that the word displacement comes with a lot of negative connotations in the same way as when staffing is reallocated based on enrollment it comes up as being cuts and it's not actually a cut it's a reallocation.

I'm wondering if if displacement is just the word that it sort of arrived at and this doesn't have to get answered right now or if there is a different way that we can think about describing that that is less deficit based because it sounds negative and scary and I think people hear displaced and it's always hard to leave a community that you're part of of course but really the reality is there is another school out there that really needs you.

and needs this person.

And so I'm just sort of thinking about the ways in which we talk about these necessary processes and how they become deficit-based just in our language and knowing that we are moving deeper into a budget situation that that is negative and scary.

I'm just wondering if there has been consideration or I'm asking that there be consideration into our language and how it impacts people.

as we're moving through this process not to not to put a you know fake veneer over something but you know a displacement doesn't mean that anybody's done anything wrong or is being kicked out of their community.

It's just a matter of you know the staff that we have and the need that we have and those don't always align perfectly.

So I guess I'm just kind of throwing out an ask for some thoughts around and again not right this second but thoughts around more student-centered and kind of human-centered language to make these conversations less punitive sounding when they're really not.

They're just sort of the facts of of the situation that that we are in and are in you know all the time even when there's not deficit ahead of us.

So I can take that off liner but I just wanted to throw out that out for consideration.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Director Hampson.

I know we are now required to report actual expenditures on a building basis correct for ESSA.

Every sorry Every Student Succeeds Act.

When in this process might we be able to start that's relatively new I think we're two years into that is that correct.

uh, when might we be able to start looking at that to sort of, not sort of, but to pair up the outcomes that we're seeing for students and how that matches up with the spending at the building level so that that also becomes part of our decision making process.

I know it's obviously not historically been part of the cycle but I'm just curious in the timeframe when would that fall?

I know we're about to go into the auditing process.

I was just trying to confirm when we're, data is due to the state for that reporting, but their site is down.

So maybe you can help me.

Well and I will probably hand this off to Director Fleming because what we're talking about here is the budget calendar and what you're discussing is the actual expenditures which is something that we definitely should evaluate and is not something we've spent a lot of time with at a higher level so once accounting closes the books that would be adding a different process so I'll hand it off to Amy to discuss how that might look.

Hi, Amy Fleming, Director of Accounting.

So yes, we are in the final stages of closing our books.

You are correct, it's been about two years now where we've had to report school level expenditures to the state.

It can become a little bit difficult because some of our expenditures are held centrally, so allocating those out takes a bit of time and work.

In addition, sometimes we just can't tie those out specifically, so there's a formula-driven way that OSPI will then allocate expenditures down to a school level if we can't identify those directly.

The second part is our final OSPI certification is November 5th, so our financial reporting is due.

That is our final drop dead date where all signatures have to be on file with OSPI.

Okay and that's very helpful and I'm asking tentatively because I know it's a big ask to then start to move to okay how do we take that data which were square peg round holeing for the purposes of giving the state data which I think is also there's really good intent behind all of this right is so we can start to see a bigger picture a better picture based on not just what we budget but actual dollars that are spent but especially as we head into this period of possibly needing to make some very hard decisions to the extent that we can glean anything from from that data to help us crystallize our knowledge base about where we can make cuts without negatively impacting student outcomes will be really helpful.

So if you know maybe next time as you look into it to let us know when we might be able to see some threads of that data starting to come through and it sounds like it would be at you know earliest early in the start of the calendar year.

Thank you so much.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi, thank you.

Thank you, good to see you guys.

I'm wondering what were our enrollment projections accuracy for this fall?

Do we have those?

Do we know what that is?

Director Rivera-Smith, if we could use that as a segue and go to the next three slides, I think it'll give some information along the way.

We're happy to entertain questions you may have about the calendar, but I think the enrollment update will answer your questions specifically.

Gotcha, okay, yeah, and then I have a follow-up question to that, so should I ask that now or later?

Not knowing what your follow-up question is, I suggest maybe you ask it after the next three slides.

Yes, later, okay, got it.

Do you want me to go ahead?

Board directors and colleagues, it's nice to be with you tonight.

I'm Marnie Campbell, interim executive director of operations.

So if you look at the next slide, you will see where those two, the red line and the blue line intersect, indicates that we actually, our predictions almost quite closely aligned with our actual head count at this point.

So I've given a lot of, and kudos to the team, the enrollment planning team because they actually did a great job of predicting our potential enrollment and that's good news for us and good news for the team and they do really great work.

So that's the response to that question.

Thank you, so my follow up to that was gonna be assuming that the accuracy was not 100% which, was it 100%?

I mean, no, okay, I can't.

couple hundred students, yeah.

So assuming it wasn't, which is not, what are we, is there, what are the, what are we going to do to improve it to get it more accurate?

Yeah, that's a pretty, I mean, of course, we would prefer that it were on the nose.

I think that, again, we anticipated, given the pattern, so there are a number of different ways that we look at this statistically.

Given the patterns, we expected a minus 1.3 percentage point declined, we actually declined less than that, about 0.7.

So especially coming off of our two COVID years, I think working to understand what is that pattern is a little trickier when you're using those big data sets.

But this is actually a pretty good, I think a pretty good outcome in terms of our predictions.

But certainly we're always looking to be more accurate.

we can work with, we know which students are moving up the pipeline.

So there are key transition points at kindergarten, sixth and ninth, where we know that it's gonna be a little bit more attrition, a little bit of attrition year to year, but we can usually predict pretty well where we're gonna go grade to grade because we know that the students are staying with us except for those transition points.

Great, and I feel like I ask this every year, but if something's new, how do we go about making those predictions?

What are our tools and what are we using to do that?

Well we have, we work with demographers.

We have an enrollment planning team that does analysis that again looks at a number of different factors.

So there are quite a few formulas and factors that we look at in different ways.

So this chart is a product of our enrollment planning and analysis team.

So there's a lot of different things and I could provide more information maybe if we wanna have a different work session where we talk about how we do that kind of work.

But we look at existing students, we look at birth rates, we can predict out five years from that, that helps us have a sense of how many kids we think are coming into the district.

we also look at historical patterns again of attrition at sixth and ninth grade which is where we tend to see some shifting and use all of that data and then model it out.

There are statisticians and economists that know how to build out these models.

Yeah that'd be great, even just a memo.

I mean it doesn't have to be a whole work session but just to be able to see and share with the community when they're wondering how this is happening and we can say this is how it's done.

So thank you.

Go ahead, Director Harris.

It was my recollection that we don't have an on-staff demographer.

When did that change?

And given the fact that our belated colleague, Ashley Davies, the human computer is no longer here, who is leading the charge on this?

So that would be me.

I'm the interim executive director right now, so that means I oversee and lead and manage the enrollment planning team.

While we don't have a demographer on staff, we work with demographers on making these predictions and models.

So that's, we still do work with demographers in order to collect this data.

And right now, I mean, these models are being created.

We have a lot of processes that we've been doing long enough that they're continuing.

But yes, I'm the one who's overseeing the team right now.

Lucky you.

Absolutely, it's a fantastic team, yeah.

It's an honor to work with them.

So the headline here is that we have come in very close to, in terms of actual, our October headcount.

So the next slide shows you a little bit of a different view.

There's a difference between, if we can advance the slide, there we go, headcount and then what we call annual averaged FTE.

So the AA-FTE factor accounts for the fact that throughout the course of the year, those numbers change.

So we averaged that out for a variety of reasons.

so that's the view that you see here.

And it's how we get funded on our AAFDE.

Thank you for pointing that out.

So this is what we're funded on.

So we're constantly doing our headcounts.

Our headcounts then inform ultimately the way that we're funded because we want to be funded on actual project, you know, the state wants to fund us on those projected numbers.

We don't want to just take a snapshot on a particular day and say this is who we are because it's a little more nuanced than that.

And the final slide, the third slide, if we can move forward.

Yes, thank you.

Just to speak to this fall's enrollment, it suggests a continuing trend of declines.

We are stabilizing, that is, we had some pretty precipitous drops during the years of COVID, but we're back on a track where we're not having those sudden drops.

And we expect that by 2025, we will have fewer students overall.

So part of that is that 2012 and 2013, and 2014 really, we had really significantly large kindergarten classes, over 5,000.

that if you do your math really quickly, those kids are now matriculating through high school.

So that bubble, as we call it, or a watermelon and a snake is one of the metaphors my team has used, has sort of moved through the system.

And we've not seen those numbers since then.

There could be a number of factors for that.

It could be what we speak to, how well are we communicating our mission and vision to the community.

The reality is there are also declining birth rates and other things that are leading to an overall decline in enrollment.

So we're always thinking and really what we're looking to project is about 10 years out so that we can really do smart planning in all aspects, both budgeting and in capital and all these other areas that are really critical and that these systems work together.

I've got a question.

So we've had this conversation around where are students going and then are those students actually students given the fact that birth rate is lower.

I don't think that any of us have the data necessary to be able to make that call and it's likely a combination of many things.

I think what would be helpful for me is to be able to see by grade band what the attrition looks like.

So like year over year, being able to see, okay, in 2015 we had X amount of 10th graders and in 2016 we had X amount of 11th graders, right?

And being able to see, okay, are the biggest differences due to birth rate, right, like kindergarten classes?

Or are we actually seeing a huge exodus, as some might argue, for other schooling options?

The reason that that would be important, not saying that I have an opinion either way, will at least give us an understanding, because we have limited resources, about who we should be targeting, right?

Like, should we be looking for instances to communicate specifically with families that have school aged children that are no longer with the district or should we be allocating resources to new parents to ensure them that Seattle Public Schools is a meaningful option as they're making their decisions for their children who may not be school age yet.

So having those numbers would be really helpful from a data perspective in order to understand as a board director where should we be focusing those resources.

Director Harris.

Thank you for asking that question.

I guess I would like to lay atop of that or segue there.

What about the increasing gentrification in this city that is making it so difficult for families to continue to live within the city limits?

And is there a way that we can track that from the OSPI numbers, et cetera, the folks that have left the city limits and attribute that to the gentrification and the unaffordability of this city, increasingly so.

Thank you, directors.

First of all, I have a chart very much like what you're describing right here that I've been studying.

It's a terrible copy, but I brought it here just so that I could have it for reference.

So what we can do is take it, we have a really good sense of what this attrition rate looks like.

Again, as I said, sixth grade and ninth grade we know is where we tend to lose students just because they're transitioning to either moving elsewhere to get a bigger house, right, the family's growing, that's certainly something that we're keeping track of, or they're deciding, come middle school, we see a big drop.

As a former middle school principal, we know that middle school feels really daunting to a lot of families, so moving from that cozy elementary environment to that middle school environment for some people is just not a choice they're gonna make.

but we also are attentive to these other things like you're describing, housing trends.

So first of all, who is now our acting director of enrollment planning and currently enrollment services as well, and I have been working, we do, when families leave the district, we ask them to reply to a survey to let us know why is it that you're leaving.

One of those questions is moving, one of the questions is going to different educational opportunities.

That's data we wanna continue to gather and maybe even up and maybe even do some exit interviews with families so that we're getting a really good sense of where families are going.

It's gonna help us do exactly what you're talking about, be really strategic and effective in the ways that we just connect with families and know where they're going and why.

If there's something we can remedy, we want to do it.

so collecting that data is really critical and what we can do is put that together with also looking at our overall picture of where we're losing students so that you have a good sense of where we can best utilize our energy and time and talents to just make sure that we're doing the best to address it.

Absolutely and whenever that's in a more accessible format would love to just take a look at that.

I think that that would inform a lot of the decisions that we make as a board specifically not only around community engagement but also like so many other decisions that we have to make.

I think the other question that I would have is if we are conducting the exit surveys where does that live and how would directors not necessarily I'm not saying that I need that but I would love to look at it just to see if there are any trends that we could identify.

Because it's likely going to be a question especially as we start coming up closer to school board elections.

Thank you, so that currently lives in enrollment services and enrollment planning, but that's data that we can pull together, like I say, maybe a briefing paper or a white paper for you, that you can really see that information.

The other thing I wanted to mention is my proposal, at this point, I'm still interim, but I would love to be able to work more closely with the Seattle group, that's Seattle City of Seattle, working on the Seattle Comprehensive Plan.

because I think to your point about gentrification and housing, we want to be able to be using each other's strengths and Seattle Public Schools is a critical part of our city.

It is what makes our city a place where folks want to be and we owe it to the city and to our students to work together.

So to take a look at some of those housing patterns so that we're not operating distinct from the city of Seattle.

Director San Maritz.

I have two questions.

The first question is what is how do what is the process for coming up with enrollment projections on a per school basis.

Do we do the overall enrollment projections first with the schools and then roll it up or do we come up with a total number and then roll it back down.

That's a great question and the answer is it's fairly complex.

So each school we have historical data that shows us both based on current students and based on what we know of kindergartners coming in where we think they're going to be.

But we also have data that shows year over year between day seven of school when we tend to do our head counts and the end of October, what's the historical decline?

For some schools that's a bigger factor so we actually create a factor that we apply when we look at that projected enrollment.

Sometimes that's not correct and one of the, I say one of the X factor wild cards in there is that we're not always enrolling people in schools where people actually live, if you know what I'm saying.

People sometimes, there are some high demand schools where folks will find ways to get into those schools and so that becomes a little harder for us to anticipate where pockets of folks going to be coming.

But we have a lot, so school by school we have individual data with historical patterns of enrollment.

Again, we can look at where do we think those incoming kinders are.

Looking at a middle school, what are the feeder schools?

So what do the fifth grade groups look like?

And same with high schools.

But we also look at patterns for schools in terms of the attrition that tends to happen.

So that's how we come up with those projections.

A comment to that is that those projections on a per school basis have really significant consequences for school budgets.

And I would be curious to know how accurate we are in terms of projecting individual school enrollments over time.

My second question is the slide mentions were above projections for grades one through five and six through eight.

Do we have a sense for how kindergarten came out relative to our expectations?

Yeah, thank you.

It's up and down a little bit, but it's looking like just slightly above what we predicted.

So that's good news in so far as those kindreds are the ones that are gonna roll up through our system.

And yes, I mean, having lived the principal role of budgeting a school, I'm aware of how much those projections matter.

There have been times when I have argued with the enrollment planning office and more often than not they've been correct.

So I will say I now I'm in the position of saying, oh yeah, I was that principal, but it's a partnership really, so it's really critical that we work together on those things.

Do you also incorporate or weave through these projections wait lists historically for each individual school?

Yeah, that's all part of the calculations that we look at.

There's a school by school, seat by seat analysis.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If we can have the next slide, we'll jump into the next section of our presentation or the information that we're providing that engenders subsequent discussion.

So two things that we want to cover here is a brief update on our ESSER plan, our use of federal dollars that came about during the pandemic, and also to give some explanation to how we use our ending fund balance, what constitutes that number and how it can be better understood and explained both for the benefit of the board and the benefit of the public.

So I'll turn to Director Fleming who will walk us through the ESSER update.

Amy Fleming, accounting director.

So this slide should look fairly familiar.

I believe it's been presented in previous board work sessions.

So this is the updated expenditures and forecasted budgets for the next two fiscal years.

Expenditures from the beginning of pandemic, so March 2020 through August 31st, 2022, with the caveat that we are continuing to close the books so these numbers aren't quite finalized.

They will most likely change slightly as we finalize for fiscal year end.

So as you can see, the categories have not changed.

We have been spending as planned as we go through, these are considered one-time expenditures.

So the intent from the federal government when we developed the budgets that were approved by OSPI is that these would be one-time.

That does create some challenges though in the future because as we roll out of this pandemic and into normal operations there's always opportunities or requests to continue certain aspects and so that is a conversation and we will have to look at this very closely.

Another thing I do want to point out is initially when we received federal funds, the end of the spending period was supposed to be September of 2023. The federal government recently came out and extended the expenditure timeline to September of 2024. So we have an additional year to spend these funds.

With the expenditures and the planned budgets, we are sitting, you can't see the number very well on that screen, but about 140.1 million is planned to be expended.

Our total award is 145.1, which leaves us about a $5 million capacity as of today.

I didn't get this question to you in advance so if you don't have it you can send it to the full board later.

I was just curious I know as you mentioned that some of these expenditures I'm looking specifically at the social worker counseling the way that we're paying for some of these items with one-time dollars but that are either our continuation or prospectively continuation based on our contract, right?

So some items may, we may have done one-time expenditures and then the state's ultimately gonna, you know, that funding's gonna come from the state, right?

Like that's one bucket.

But what percent of the total dollars is one time, or did we, is actually not one time funds, but where we expect to have to continue those particular operations or staffing of the total amount.

And I know that we tried very hard not to do that, and that was the specific, there's a lot of requests for that, but strongly advised otherwise from all the feds and all best practice so I'm just curious where we are on that relative to other districts or just our expectations for ourselves.

So I'll look into that and respond to the entire board and get you that percentage.

Thank you.

Linda Sebring, budget director.

I can probably give you a little bit more specifics on some of this stuff and these are decisions the district has not yet fully evaluated.

The social workers, yes, that was part of our contract and we were looking for opportunities to help us fund the items we wanted to in advance of the state's funding of the prototypical model increase there.

One of the costs I think you're talking about is the first line, which is student and staff PPE enhanced cleaning HVAC.

That's $2 million and that's something that is not sitting in the 23-24 budget yet, but is a conversation we're gonna have about the MERV filters and the air systems that we have that are standalone in a lot of our schools.

in order to continue to maintain those, there's an ongoing cost and we need to determine, as you mentioned, our original conversations about ESSER were to try to use it as a transfer process to get us from one point to another, but that is a cost that may need to move back into the general fund if we want to continue that at some level.

So that's one of the items, the social workers as you mentioned, you'll see the special education inclusion program is a transition cost in there.

But most of the other costs that you're seeing are all transition costs.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

So sorry for our small numbers.

We try to put a lot of details on a page.

So what you're seeing now is during our bargaining conversations and sometimes with our community, we've had a lot of conversations about the district has a lot of money.

And at the same time, we're having these conversations that we have some difficult financial times coming ahead of us.

one of the pieces of conversation is what's on the board here which is our anticipated ending fund balance so think of that as when you finish with all of our revenues and all of our expenses and accounting is done when the music stops how much money do we have left and what categories is it cat placed into.

So what you'll see here is it's 160 million, almost 161 million.

This was what we budgeted to have as an ending fund balance for the school year that just ended.

We have made some adjustments to these numbers, mostly what we think we'll have of unspent funds that we'll talk about in a couple of slides, but I just wanted to bring to people's attention, and we had this conversation with our labor partners as well, the items highlighted in yellow.

are funds that we pushed through the fund balance.

So this is money, most of these are monies that were saved, not last school year, but the school year before when we were basically shut down for COVID.

So you'll see $55 million ending fund balance for 2021. That was a creation of a lot of things that did not happen in 2021. We did not run a transportation program, so we did not have a major deficit for transportation.

We did not run a nutrition services program with a deficit either.

The federal government was paying us a significant amount of revenue there.

So we had several programs that typically are high deficits that did not have deficits.

So we saved money.

we saw this working with the previous assistant superintendent and we said we need to save that money because we know we have some challenges ahead so we put it into the ending fund balance, that 55 million.

This is similar to the number right below it, 10 million six is early on in ESSER.

The state strongly encouraged us to keep employees on our rolls and to not put people on unemployment and they said as a result you can move people onto the ESSER federal funding to compensate them for the fact that if we did not have the money we would have had to lay people off because they weren't doing work when we were at remote process.

So that again took people that we had budgeted and planned to fund in the general fund and moved them onto the ESSER fund freeing up money.

Similar thing with the other yellow right underneath it is capital funds.

We transferred capital funds in 21-22 that we said we're gonna be funding 22-23.

So just to summarize, everything in yellow is money that we used to balance 22-23.

That is $82 million.

of money going through a fund balance, a savings account that is funding our basic operations.

This is the heart of our structural deficit and it is why we have a challenge in that unless we can find a way to repeat that 82 million every year, again it's one time money, we will continue to have a structural deficit.

So I know our conversation is, how can we fund our basic operations on ongoing revenues?

So get off of the one-time money, which this is an anomaly that's coming through right now, and move into sustainable funding.

So that's a large portion of the 161 million is that 82 million of one-time money.

The items in green are restricted funds.

So those are required to maintain, the first one I'm sorry I cut off as we tried to make it a little bit bigger, but it says grants, grant revenue and other restricted funds.

Think of that as like the learning assistant program from the state.

They give us revenues and we need to identify eligible expenditures in order to earn those revenues.

If we haven't given them eligible expenses, then we have to put those funds in a reserve until we've identified expenditures to go against those revenues.

So those are typically grants where they pass in advance.

Federal funds like Title I and ESSER, they reimburse us, meaning we generate the expense, we send in our expense report, then they give us money.

So those don't show up.

Any underspends in ESSER or Title I or Title II or any of the titles would not show up on the ending fund balance.

So the other items, the other big dollar amount there is the Board's Economic Stabilization Fund, the 39 million, which as we've discussed is 4% of the 2021 total expenditures.

Again, once the Board, or once accounting closes the books, that number will be reset and it's based on the total expenses that we incurred in 21-22.

So if we increase that dollar amount, it takes away from money that might be in the very bottom line which says anticipated FY2122 additional underspend.

So when we have finished with the fund amounts and we say we gotta put all these things in the restrictions and these other categories, what we have left goes into underspend unless it's required to add to that economic stabilization fund.

so happy to answer any other questions on the fund balance.

Director Submarins.

The line that's labeled 2021 underspend for 22-23 enrollment, why is that not a yellow category?

Excellent question because it was a, placeholder in case we did not hit our enrollment target.

So in consultation with the previous Assistant Superintendent of Finance, we said should we put all this into our underspend to balance 22-23 and at the time we did not have a need and we did not have any other reason to put it in there?

So he said, why don't we put it in a place and hold on to it?

The last two years we've lost significant enrollment and we've needed something to buffer that.

Now 2.9 million was not gonna buffer 25 million, but it was what we had available.

So to your point, it's still available and we will have a further conversation about using it as we talk about balancing the 23-24 budget.

And directors just for the record when director Sebring refers to the former assistant superintendent it is the beloved and desperately missed JoLynn Berge.

So if she's out there we wish she would come back.

Saying that we also know she's not listening to this meeting tonight.

So if I could, directors, I'd like to give you one more moment to ask Dr. Campbell any questions.

She had a prior obligation.

All right, she'll stick around for the whole presentation.

That said, we're going to leave some of this level setting detail work.

We've harvested a lot of your questions and we'll continue to bring forward information, likely looking to a dedicated enrollment session or some component of a work session dedicated to enrollment in the future.

But I'd like to bring us out to a higher level if I could, just so we can begin to understand the magnitude of the challenge that we face.

So with that, I'll jump to the next slide.

These next two slides, if we could toggle back and forth, so, oh, not quite, such a quick toggle, there we go, thank you.

This is a repeat of a slide that we presented in a work session last fall, September 29th, 2021, and we've included it here both for ease of reference but also to showcase that what we're beginning to discuss now for the upcoming budget year projected shortfalls is not a new piece of information.

We have worked to bring this information forward to the board.

We have tried to show all of our work in overcoming those shortfalls and as Director Sebring just described, some of that was very important work, how we carefully stewarded money and brought it forward to address these shortfalls using one-time resources to mask what we have commonly referred to as a structural shortfall.

So what you'll see here about a year ago is we portrayed figures of a shortfall of 77.6 million if you look at the top line, the resource gap, and then each of the subsequent years.

Now if I could get the toggle to the next slide, Earlier this spring we updated those figures based on enrollment and known expenditure and what you see here is those numbers have stayed roughly consistent.

So you see 78 million in the 22-23 year, 96.5 in the 23-24 year and then the 24-25 you continue to see a shortfall that grows into the nine figure range.

So again, these are just brought forward for ease of reference and to remind us all that we have had the great benefit of a number of one-time dollars, especially the federal funds that have helped us mask the shortfall.

And now we need to turn attention to how we address those shortfalls or how we find ongoing resource or one-time dollars to continue to operate the district at the high level.

So I'll pause here, just in the event that there are any questions about how those numbers are derived, but we have an updated slide that will bring us current to our present challenge.

All right, if we can then jump to the next slide.

So this is also brought forward as a point of reference and ease of reference and it's included here not to highlight necessarily the additional expenditure that we are bringing into our budget but to say that we have the reality of a collective bargaining agreement that the board has now approved that the district and our educators union have agreed to and now we begin to assess how do we cover the anticipated additional expenditure as a result.

I want to make the point here if I may that at this point we have a collective bargaining agreement.

It has been ratified by the Educators Union.

The board has affirmed that and we now have this as our district's contract.

So I just wanna make clear that we are not trying to say that there are additional costs coming to the district because of the agreement.

We are saying that we as a district collectively have made these choices and now we incorporate them into our budgeting process and determine how we can resource them as we go into each of these years.

This is the same table that was presented in the bar that the board considered and ultimately approved two weeks ago in your last regular meeting.

So there is no new information presented in this slide.

It is simply brought forward for point of reference.

Okay, so here we are.

I think we're now looking at a three-year outlook as of September 28th.

This was a slide that I had in hand that our budget team had developed and we used it to begin to understand the updated figures for the current fiscal year and the two out years that we're looking at.

So again you see the updated figures in the resource gap line which shifts slightly and we can answer questions about that but what you also begin to see is how we are anticipating being able to move through the 22-23 fiscal year with a zero resource or zero as the total remaining gap.

So we can explain that.

We'll also walk you through some of the information in the 23-24 line.

and then we'll spend a little bit of time worrying about the 24-25 line but really be focused on the current year and the upcoming year, the 23-24 fiscal year budget which we have to begin to develop.

As I had indicated in a prior work session embedded in a board meeting as we were evaluating the updated shortfall projections coming into the fiscal year and as a result of having settled our contract we anticipated that there were net additional $12.5 million of cost or expenditure to incur.

So you see that represented there in the CBA cost increase, the 17.6 million offset by some of the ESSA resources we were able to bring to bear and that nets to the $12.5 million you saw in the prior slide in the table that was presented in the bar.

The two bottom lines that you see the FY223 budget capacity and the FY223 contingency funds.

These are the $12 million of resources within our current budgeted amounts that we are able forgive the metaphor to scrape out of different areas and bring to bear on that the additional costs incurred as a result of the district reaching agreement with SEA.

so I'm gonna pause here and I'm gonna allow Director Sebring to either answer questions or give some additional insight into that budget capacity and the contingency fund as well as anything else associated with the 22-23 line and then we'll transition to a brief discussion on the 23-24 line if that meets Director's approval and curiosity.

Go ahead.

So the question is, where did we get the 12 million?

Well, couch cushions.

So when we were building the 22-23 budget, we did not have a lot of appetite for carving out or making deeper cuts to put money into a reserve for a bargained agreement that we knew was coming.

So we didn't.

But what we do do when we build a budget and we contract and expand a little bit is we start the year, which is right now, with a budget development reserve for unforeseen things, which is there's an increase in insurance, there's an increase in election costs, the state auditor fee comes in higher, we added square footage and we need more custodians.

So once we put a dollar amount there, nobody likes to change it, even though things start to change as we dig deeper into building the technical pieces of the central budget.

budget, so when we were building the 22-23 budget, that budget development reserve ranges from five to seven million dollars, and as we built 22-23, we did not have a lot of unforeseen things that came in late, so we were very thankful.

We held onto that budget development reserve, and it is part of that $9.3 million, but the biggest portion of that, about $6 million, is a reserve we have for paying for medical costs for part-time staff.

So when the State Education Board, the SEB, came through and changed the rules on us as to we need to provide medical coverage for our part-time staff, our system has a real challenge with this.

it's great at prorating things, but if I have a person who's working a 0.6 position, they get full medical and our financial system is not necessarily very good at how to handle that.

So we developed a reserve that has been in place for like the last three years when we moved to the SEB that is the SEB reserve for the fractional staff who get full medical benefits.

So what we proposed is, well, there aren't any costs going against it right now, so why don't we use that to pay for costs that we know?

Now, you would say, well, if that's free money, great.

Well, where that shows up in is the ending fund balance.

So when we look at 2324 and we've got 30 million there, which is a very big number, and there's some reasons for the 30 million placeholder, but the 20 million in 2425 is more common.

So if we were to remove that sub-reserve going forward, that $20 million would start moving towards 14 million.

And other factors that, this is a billion dollar organization.

Costs go up, costs go down throughout the organization.

When we start getting closer to that not having a little surplus at the end, some of us stay awake at night.

So that's sub-reserve, we said, okay, we can drop it now, we're at the beginning of the school year, we know we have vacant positions, I've got a boss that's missing, and we're saving that money.

we can use that to pay for this cost instead.

So it's kind of a one-time strategy of use that reserve to fund things like additional positions that we committed to and the part of the budget development reserve.

We can have further conversations about how close we want to or how aggressive we wanna get to budgeting as we move forward.

Well, we will have conversations about that.

I'm not sure how close we wanna go.

I'm willing to get close, but don't wanna fall off the cliff.

The other item there, the FY22-23 contingency fund, the 3.234 million.

So when the district is, when we build our operating budget, we put in a contingency for things that come up during the year that we did not anticipate.

Typically this is somebody calls me and says, oh, this contract's coming in a lot more than we thought.

Oh, these particular student service costs are coming in and there's no funding for it.

Or, oh, we've got this many more kids who need fill in the blank.

This is not school adjustment funds.

This is central operation costs.

And what we discussed was if we, empty the piggy bank and give the contingency fund towards this as well, then if somebody comes between now and when we can run what we call salary equalization in November 1, I don't have any budget to give them.

It's not a good place to be, but we thought we can be here for a little bit of time.

So although both of these strategies work to cover the 12 million, they're what I would call aggressive budget strategies.

so I hope I haven't made them too complicated.

They won't be repeating in 23-24 because we will want to start a school year with some contingency funds because things happen.

Okay, thank you Director Sebring.

So I will give a brief overview on Vice President Hampson.

Sorry, just thought of, so the contingency fund is kind of like a massive petty cash, right?

closely guarded by the finance division.

And we have a process we are reinstituting, which is a request for contingency funds, which is please exhaust every other opportunity before you come to ask the superintendent and the deputy to go into this fund.

right and I only use that sorry imperfect analogy to give the sense of like stuff does come up and you need to like something there ready accessible that you can use to for emergencies so I don't mean to under under value that and the importance of it.

I didn't do the percentage.

Do we set it by percentage each year in general?

Is there kind of a generalized, I know for construction contingency is always like 10% so is.

No.

No?

No.

Okay.

Is there an industry standard?

No, I mean basically what we do is we look at what have we used over the last several years.

So one of the things the budget office does to help inform our forecasting and make improvements in areas throughout the organization is we do what I call an autopsy.

We evaluate the entire budget.

As soon as accounting gets done, that's when our work starts.

We go through everything and try to figure out, okay, where were underspends, where were overspends?

Are the overspends something where we missed something?

A contract cost increased and we didn't see it.

Was it, you know, have an underspend?

We had an underspend in some payroll taxes.

It's like, why?

What is causing that?

How can we adjust the budget going forward knowing there's always a two-year lag?

Because we've already got a budget we're working on when we learn new information and then we adjust the following year's budget with that information.

So the contingency fund is just its amount set on based on what we've seen in the past of needs.

if we were to reduce the dollar amount internally and things were coming up during the year, we would either have to say, I'm sorry, you'll have to cut somewhere else to fund it, or not do something.

And some of these activities that come through here, maybe a special education contract costs that we need to fund, our other option is to take the controls off of the system and spend money without any backed budget, which is something we- Please don't.

is against board policy, I believe.

No, yeah, don't do that.

Okay, thank you.

The $10 million of capital funds extended, I know that that was added language into the budget proviso, but is that only through the 23, 24 school year?

We will not be able to do that going forward?

That is a $10 million question.

So what that $10 million is, is our, sorry, gotta add some humor to this, guys.

This is a very dry subject.

So what the $10 million is, is right now in the state's biennium budget.

Remember they have a biennium budget, which covers two years.

And in the biennium budget language, they have an exception to the state law.

So they have to write it into the budget in order to, basically overwrite the law.

The law right now says that operating costs for maintenance must be borne by the general fund.

The exception that's in the budget language is that we can be reimbursed by the capital fund.

We are going into a biennium budget.

If the language is not in the biennium budget, that means going forward, we would not have that opportunity.

So what you're seeing here is the proposal for 23-24 would be to take advantage of that rule in 22-23 because we know we have the language now, we know we can do it in the current year if we have the capacity in our capital program and if that's a direction that the superintendent and the board want to go.

We don't know what might happen in 23-24.

I would be hesitant to bank on having extra funding in the capital projects fund knowing the pace of inflation and the growing construction costs.

I don't know if that would be an issue.

It is just some preliminary information that's on the board that, I mean, that whole 2324 column is, we're just starting that conversation now.

Hi, thanks.

On the Economic Stabilization Fund, if you have the 39 million under 2324, is that the entirety of it or is that, because there's no more in the next year.

So if we use the 39 that year, that's the entirety.

Yeah, Director Rivera-Smith, I'll try and give a quick overview of 2324, but the answer to that question is yes.

So what we have presented here, at the outset I said we're not suggesting solutions at this point, but what we are attempting to estimate here is what is the total amount of resource that we need to pursue in order to bring 2324 into full balance.

So first the three highlighted areas are not yet finalized figures as of October 12th but by our next work session we should have all but final figures to plug into revenue and expenditure and also our ending fund balance.

What I will say is based on conversations with staff that these numbers may shift a modest amount but it won't be a material amount so we're not going to see revenue and expenditure shift to change from $93.7 million all of a sudden down to 80 million or 100 million.

That's a pretty stable figure.

As well, the ending fund balance should carry forward to about $30 million.

so we know that that is available as a likely offset to the resource gap.

The reason the Economic Stabilization Fund one time has been presented here is to show what it could have by way of impact on that shortfall.

Another way to present this would be to take it out and continue to hold it in reserve.

That makes the bottom line figure 88 million or 87.3 million which is, a more startling figure but we would have to consider what we were holding the economic stabilization in reserve for.

Director Sebring did a eloquent job of explaining the use of capital funds and so we're presenting this as a possibility for the current or the upcoming fiscal year and then we see the additional costs that we take on as a result of our agreement in the collective bargaining process with the educators union.

as well as the dwindling ESSER resources that can be brought to bear against those additional costs.

So what we see in 23-24 is a target amount of $48 million that has yet to be resolved, right?

So there could well be unanticipated savings, there could be small amounts of contingency ultimately that would be brought forward.

but as Dr. Jones alluded to in his opening remarks, there are no simple solutions to resolving a $48 million shortfall.

Director Rivera-Smith, to the second part of your question, were the board to authorize the full use of the Economic Stabilization Fund for the upcoming fiscal year, that fund would be completely exhausted and thus not available in the 24-25 year.

What we are not accounting for in that short presentation of the 24-25 year is the obligation that we would have as a district to replenish that fund.

So that arguably could be represented as another $40 million that would need to be accounted for in the 24-25 school year.

So again, this is substantially to show the magnitude of the shortfall that we need to begin planning for and it is a very early preliminary reduction to get from 93 netting out those different costs to the bottom line of 48 million as the challenge for our 23-24 school year.

President Hersey, I'll pause here again.

This may be an opportunity for additional questions or clarification.

President Hersey, at first glance, and I am no one's economic or economist expert by any stretch, I would like, however, to see the 2425 replenishment number in there because I think that tells a more cogent story, and with that being blank, I don't know that it tells a story that we absolutely need to tell.

My next question, and that's a comment, my next, and I wonder if there's any reason not to put it in for transparency and accountability purposes.

but Director Harris, there's no reason not to put it in.

Again, this is very, very preliminary.

And very scary.

And very scary.

And also, I want to be clear that neither Dr. Jones or the district's budgeting staff are making the full assumption that the board is interested in authorizing a depletion of the reserve.

It's merely as.

an illustration of what could be used to reduce the number down.

But yes, we should include that.

And maybe we could put footnotes next to it that say this is a projection, this has not been voted on, et cetera, et cetera, to show that continuum for clarity.

My next question is, I think when we last met, I asked you how many students the numbers were based on, and if I recall correctly, and I can go look it up, but I hope you don't make me, was 47,500.

And we've got more students than that, so where is the revenue in between those numbers that we heard about earlier tonight in terms of our enrollment counts and the 47,500 projection?

Where's the gray area there and where do we find the numbers in between?

So on slide six, sorry we lost its page number there.

We said that we're anticipating right now having 48.955 AAFTE, so that's what we get funded on.

That's what the numbers projected on, 48,955.

So we adjust our projection numbers.

But back to the slide 14, please.

So as Deputy Gannon said, the items that are highlighted in yellow are still in flux.

So Amy and her team are rapidly making that $30 million number real.

Is it 30 million?

Is it 25?

Is it 36?

I mean, what is it?

While her team's working on that, which is a lot of work closing out the books, my team is working rapidly on the numbers at the top, which is revenue and expenditures.

So just this last week, we're changing levy calculation numbers based on consumer price indexes.

We're changing levies based on enrollment because of what happened to the new enrollment.

So as Deputy Gannon said, on November 2nd, when those numbers lose their yellow highlight, we're gonna have a much more sophisticated number.

And what will be in the 23-24 will be updated estimates.

We'll be asking enrollment planning to give us an update based on what enrollment came in this year.

What do they think it's gonna be next year?

Has it moved substantially from our four-year forecast?

They will give us preliminary numbers.

We'll put in revenue for that and expenditures.

But what, What we don't know until we get into the school funding formula at the end of February is how close to all those estimates align.

And we've been doing this for a while, so fortunately we're pretty good at it.

But if a few more kids go in one school and we add an assistant principal, that is a cost.

if they go to a different school and we add a secretary or something, that is a cost.

So the numbers, there's a lot of numbers moving.

Over 50% of our budget goes out with that school funding formula and is based on our enrollment counts and how big our schools are and where the kids end up.

So what you're going to see at the November 2nd is you're going to see our best guess of what those numbers are.

and they might shift by a million or two when we get into the actual student modeling, but it doesn't shift by much.

And if it's a positive shift, it goes into the budget development reserve.

If it's a negative shift, it comes out of the budget development reserve.

So does that mean that the 47,500 projection and then what we've got now, the difference would be in the budget reserve, is that what you're saying at the end of the day here?

No, what I'm trying to articulate is we have updated our numbers based on what enrollment planning's preliminary numbers are, so we take that, and it's a very complicated formula.

OSPI sometimes calls us and asks us to double check their numbers, because it also affects special education, career and technical education, it goes throughout the whole system.

We run revenues on that, and then we put a placeholder in for what do we think that's gonna do for our expenditures that are going out to the schools.

Director Harris if I may, when I provided that figure of 47,500 that was from memory and I was simply incorrect so I'm pleased that Director Sebring has been able to give an updated and correct figure to that.

Oh, I just, Director Sebring, wanted to make sure I understood that accurately.

So historically speaking, shifts in enrollment would traditionally only impact that revenue expenses, those projections by one to $2 million.

No, I'm sorry, that is not what I meant.

What I mean is we take that enrollment and the types of students.

It is a very complicated formula that the state has generated.

So our kindergarten through third grade students generate more revenue and they expect us to meet a standard of class size that is richer at kindergarten through third grade than at fourth and fifth or other grades.

So we roll in an estimate, we get this from enrollment planning, we call enrollment planning, which we'll be sending the email out shortly, and we say, hey, we know, have a pretty good idea where we're at this year, what do you think that's gonna do to next year?

We take that enrollment, which is number of students by grade level, and we run it through our formula.

And our formula sits there and says, okay, the state is going to give us this much revenue if those kids show up in those grade space.

And then we look at, okay, what do we think that's gonna do with the school funding formula?

The difference I was mentioning of the one to two million is that variability of where the kids go.

So when we're starting this early planning, we're looking at a district-wide numbers, because that's how we get revenue.

We don't get revenue for one particular school or another particular school.

We give staffing to individual schools, but the revenue comes into the district in a lump sum, if you will, based on the enrollment.

Does that?

I'm curious if you've done analysis on how much that can swing the revenues and expenses depending on how far off the projections for enrollment.

I understand that it's tricky because now you've got to get into this math of like which mix of students but I'm just trying to get like how much risk is implicit in those revenue and expense projections?

Probably to give an order of magnitude, we were looking at, after open enrollment, at where we thought we were gonna land on enrollment this fall, and we thought we were gonna be down about 742 kids.

And we thought it was looking like it was gonna be in the low grades, so the ones that come with a higher formula.

And we've already put teachers out and staffed on this, we were a little concerned.

If that number had held down 742, again, based on the characteristics that we were getting from open enrollment, it would have cost us almost $10 million of loss of revenue.

Last year when we were down almost 2,000, it cost us about 25 million.

So as you said, it's very complicated.

The formula is based on the student characteristics.

It rolls through everything in the prototypical school model, so it also goes to how we get funded classified staff, our custodians, our nursing, everything that comes through the state is based on our students.

and that's how we get our funding.

So is there a risk involved?

Of course there is.

But as Dr. Campbell mentioned, we have an excellent team in enrollment planning.

They did an amazing job.

I mean this is probably the closest we've been on enrollment at a district level in the last five or six years if you look at those charts.

The challenge of course is at the school level.

We've got a lot of mobility still happening at the school level which causes the disruptions.

And when we try to staff and build master schedules, whether it's in elementary schools or at secondary schools and the kids are at a different school, that's where we have some challenges and we don't have the funds necessarily to put teachers at the schools where the kids are and where the kids aren't.

And the challenge of disrupting master schedules this late.

So directors, this is the last of our two slides, our last, this is the second to last, this is the penultimate slide, sorry.

We pulled this information together because we wanted to bring forward again a table that depicted where we receive our revenue against some of the choices that we have made collectively as a district, the board, the district staff in prioritizing different work and reflecting also commitments that are made through various collective bargaining agreements.

Again, this is simply to illustrate where the district's choices are different than the state allocation.

so there's nothing implicit here, there's nothing to say that we should go after this or that but it is a preliminary tool that we're presenting to the board for their consideration and we're happy to in subsequent work sessions bring forward additional detail on this.

By way of brief explanation, you see five major categories here where there are notable discrepancies between the district's choices and how we expend our funds versus the revenue that we collect.

I will note that one area that we did not include but can for a subsequent presentation is a line that shows classified staff and how we have chosen to hire and deploy our staff compared to the revenue or the allocation that we receive from the state.

I'll point out that that is different than the line you see that says admin staff at schools.

That is a specific state line that refers to principals and assistant principals.

There are no custodians, nurses, and other classified staff embedded in that line.

So we'll bring that forward in an updated slide for our next presentation.

What you do see is that the district has historically made choices that we have put into our programs and put into our bargaining agreements and put into our practice that leave us distinctly out of line with how we receive revenue from the state.

So again, this is for illustration and to give you all some grounds to think about where you'd like to see some additional detail and if we can transition to the final slide here.

I hope it will help prompt some thinking collectively not just with the superintendent staff but with the board and as well with other groups that we may choose to engage with on how we bring forward potential solutions.

Director Harris I'm gonna head off a potential question that I think you've asked me in the past.

and I want to say that right now we do not have any plans or solutions to address the shortfall that we see.

So what we're laying out here is the categories of options.

We can seek enhancements to revenue or increases in the allocation that we receive from the state.

that obviously could occur during the legislative session that could come by way of direct funding, it could come by changes in law and legislation that allow us to do things and not do other things.

So this session I hope is adequately timed for us all to begin thinking about what our legislative agenda is. the second category is one-time resources and we've described how we have been cobbling together year over year different approaches that took advantage of one-time resources we could choose to use some modest amount of the capital fund as I mentioned earlier we could look to using some or all of the economic stabilization fund recognizing that we have to then and replenish that fund.

ESSER funds are included here because we'll continue to find ways to use them to the maximum extent possible while those federal dollars are available and viable for use.

The last category and this is where we do not have a secret plan where we have not begun to develop approaches, what that is we may ultimately need to look at program reductions and I think when we collectively look at a figure that shows $47.5 million or if we don't use the stabilization reserve, something higher in the $80 million figures, that it is going to take some combination of enhanced allocation or revenue, one-time resources, and some reductions to programs.

There are some places where we can turn to again.

As you may recall, we made some reductions in central office for the current fiscal year.

We could continue to look at program reductions there.

We start with a presumption under Dr. Jones' guidance and leadership that we want to preserve the learning environments that are in the schools.

So we are not yet thinking about anything that would directly impact our ability to fund and support schools.

that's not to say however that we may face that reality either in the coming year or some subsequent year.

So again we have no solutions yet planned.

Dr. Jones has given guidance for us all to begin thinking about how to approach that and in the weeks ahead internal staff will begin to outline potential solutions which we hope to bring forward in upcoming work sessions for the board to consider or at least to give us feedback and guidance on.

on how those could be implemented the timing the engagement and the impact it could have on our overall services.

So with that I think Dr. Jones has a couple of closing remarks he may want to add but we could either entertain questions now or hear from Dr. Jones and then take any follow up questions from the board.

I've got a question that I am almost certain Dr. Jones is going to want to follow with something more upbeat than this question is about to be.

So I've got a few strings of questions just so that everybody in the room can understand a lot of things.

What happens if we don't figure this out?

The technical process is we apply for a loan from the state against next year's funds.

So if we're trying to put together a 23-24 budget and we're unable to do it, we're borrowing money against 24-25.

At the same time, Shoreline did this a while back, I think.

The state comes in and confers with us about how we might have some opportunities to realign some of our programs.

Could you say that one more time?

The state comes in and talks with us about how we can realign our revenue and expenditures.

And where does board director decision making fall within that process?

I have not gone through this process and would rather not.

But I'm not sure exactly how much it's going to depend on how much we're able to generate ourself of ideas.

I'm sure the state would love for us to solve our challenges without their input.

But if we need assistance, they might also identify some areas we're out of alignment with some of our revenues significantly.

Yeah, for sure.

And so looking at that, right, because I am a contingency planner, so looking at that, a lot of the bigger things that, can we go back to the slide that shows the allocation that the state provides versus what we actually spend?

so I'm trying to piece together the calculus and the chess that comes along with the state coming in and seeing what we're actually overspending for which would be special education, transportation, looks like Yeah, admin and staff in schools and whatnot.

But the big ones, 100 million, 30 million, and just basic education in general.

Here's my thing.

and what I think a lot about is that, you know, we can sit here and have these conversations around like, oh, state need money now, you know?

They're not watching this.

So my question is, state comes in and they say, we're overspending on special education, what are they gonna tell us to do?

We're overspending on transportation, what are they gonna tell us to do?

Not serve kids, not get kids to school?

I have some serious questions around, you know, and I use this as an aside.

I'm from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which has had a lot of money problems lately.

Thanks, Brett Favre.

But also, like, if you look at the Jackson Water Crisis, they have been crying and pleading for years.

And the governor didn't do anything about it, tater tot.

for years, all the way back to Haley Barber, you know what I'm saying?

And so my question is, I don't know what, from our perspective, in understanding the wide scope of the very serious problem, there is no amount of reduction that we are going to be able to make that is going to be palatable to folks that is going to assist us in solving this issue.

And the only person that I've heard that's actually doing anything about it is Representative Pellet this year with his special education bill, which I've yet to read, so I don't know.

The big question that I have and we really do need to start like figuring out and like I don't know if that means that like you and I chat with Chris Reichdahl or whoever the state is that comes in and does this but it's A, this can't just beat us but in some ways it likely is because we're the biggest and the most urban and we have all these challenges but it's not just us.

Is the state prepared to like come into Seattle and see that the reason that we're struggling is actually because they're not fully funding special education and transportation?

It's not like we're out here throwing money away to serve our students in special education.

It's not like we're throwing money away trying to get our kids to school.

I don't know where that leaves us because when they come in and what are they gonna suggest to us?

to do less in terms of serving our students in these critical areas.

So that's kind of my question, is if they're going to come in, there's no, I'm really struggling to the chest that comes after that to fully understand.

And so that would be a good, and I think it's gonna be sobering for a lot of folks, the 20 people that are watching this meeting.

I think that it's gonna be sobering for our communities to be able to know this is a very real possibility.

Like I'm not sitting here thinking about you know a ton of ways that we're going to be able to balance this budget and I don't want to paint a rosy picture for anybody and we haven't been doing that for a number of years.

But I do think that like going even further beyond saying like yes there is a pathway that we can figure out that's going to help us get as close to balance as possible.

We also need to be including in these budget sessions like what is the outcome if we don't and start figuring out like what are those conversations going to look like at least from my perspective because a lot of us aren't going to be here when that number comes up real close to time.

and I think that like I want to make sure that we're leaving everybody who's going to be sitting around this table in three years in a better position as possible and I don't know if we're fully doing that if we don't have a very open and public conversation around the nature of this deficit and what lies on the other end of it if we don't figure that out because likely there's going to be some very new board directors.

I can't speak for Superintendent Jones but or track record for keeping superintendents for more than like 20 minutes ain't great.

And so I'm just trying to be really thoughtful around what plate are we handing to people and not only here, but in our buildings?

Because if we're really gonna be going to Director Harris's point around really selling the message of what is Seattle Public Schools, we ain't gonna have much to sell because we're gonna have to reduce what we're already offering.

So it feels as though a vicious cycle that's headed in a place that people really aren't willing to have a conversation about quite yet.

and I'm really struggling as president of the board to understand what impact that we realistically have and like I need more knowledge about what is the state process actually look like in the event that we're not able to figure this out.

And I think that the public deserves that level of honesty in these conversations that we and I just don't think that we've gotten there quite yet.

Director Harris.

Thank you for that.

Thank you very very much for that because that's what lays me awake at night as well.

Our former Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen was dropped in to Shoreline when the state took it over and he spent a lot of time learning me up on that issue and it might be appropriate to bring him back to learn all of us up.

I know that he is extraordinarily generous with his time, especially in terms of the coaching and learning folks up.

Not gonna speak for him, obviously, but history's a bitch.

Excuse my French.

And as much as I and beyond frustrated with the legislature and with our state Supreme Court because McCleary is in fact fake news and I leaned over to Dr. Campbell here and I said, what prototypical model?

good luck on that.

I agree with you we owe honesty we owe learning up to those of us that are at this table and those that we pass the baton to and Brent Jones better be here three years from now because we have got to have you succeed and especially and this fright, I'm terrified, I admit it, I am terrified and I'm nobody's weenie.

This is not acceptable, it is systemic, it's been coming for 20, 25 years and I hope that we can do things like pie charts for these kinds of numbers and that we can make them almost, what's the word I wanna say, interactive.

You know, I remember 15, 20 years ago, the Seattle Times had a program where you said, okay, here's the budget, what are you gonna cut, where's it come from?

Comes from here, goes here, tell us what you want to bind people.

And again, I would like us to be talking to some of the other 295 school districts and our partners in labor about filing McCleary 2 because we're not getting out of this without really substantial change.

And I'll stop there, thank you.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

DIRECTOR RANKIN Thank you.

I want to say it's absolutely 100% not just us.

Districts around the state are having this exact conversation.

It's at a different scale of course.

But I mean when you look at the prototypical school model that the state uses to fund and it is the formula that provides nine nurses for all of Seattle Public Schools.

By design, from the beginning, there's just no way anybody can reasonably think that that is fulfilling the needs of school districts.

Like, just that in and of itself says this formula does not fulfill the needs of school districts, and it's not just because we're big.

There are 295 districts in this state.

Whether or not that's too many or whatever is a whole other conversation, but if the largest district in the state is getting nine nurses think about a district that has one school.

They don't have enough students to have to generate any kind of support like that.

There are districts in eastern Washington that have a nurse that somehow travels miles and miles and miles and miles between multiple districts less than one day a week.

and then when you look at it in the context of Seattle that prototypical school model is generates a certain amount of money per student.

That amount per student is the same across the state.

So our students in Seattle generate the same amount of funding as students in Yelm and Walla Walla and Concrete and it's easy to think well you know students are students it's not more expensive to educate some students but actually it is because the biggest expense as you can see in our budget is to pay for staff that educates our students.

And in order to loop back to the enrollment and gentrification question it costs a lot of money to live in Seattle.

And so for us to be able to even hire and maintain staff we have to pay more than other districts do and we're not even the top paying district in the state we should be we're the largest and we live I believe in the most expensive area maybe there's some east side communities that are higher costs of living but when you look at all the layers of underfunding there is just like you said President Hersey what's the state gonna say I mean the state's gonna say spend less money on staff okay so we reduce salaries and that means nobody can afford to live here and we can't afford to hire people.

Like that's not a realistic solution.

So here's the kind of end of this and my ask as a legislative liaison in particular is in my experience limited though it may be compared with the fight and conversations about funding have been in the state for many many many years.

There is a shift.

People have gone to the legislature and said fully fund education fully fund special education without really knowing what that means and without really being clear about what they're asking for and what's shifting and what I even see in just the slide that's up here is what is actually the ask to the legislature and so the more clear that and I'm happy to speak with President Hersey and the superintendent and budget about what kind of information would be really helpful and how that information is presented to not only support board directors and others in advocating towards legislators but to support our our broader community and understanding these issues and how they can advocate because as we just saw a lot of the issues on and around the picket lines were you know the strike was a work stoppage within our district but a lot of those issues go much beyond that to just the general state of education in our state and how limited we are in providing support to students and the staff that serve them.

And so I think it's pretty it's easy for in the immediate sense for the general public to say oh the district XYZ and not to say that we're off the hook because in some ways things that the district has done also make it easy to say oh the district.

the the the budgeting school funding and you know state taxation and all these issues are so complex and involve so much time and energy to understand all of the different issues at play.

We need to make it and this is my goal make it as easy as possible to help community understand what the issues really are so that they're armed with information so that they can go advocate and know what they're advocating for instead of just saying, we need to fully fund education.

Because fully fund basically means, to me anyway, that the state needs to fully cover the cost of providing education in Seattle Public Schools.

But when people say fully fund, they don't know what that means.

I think they imagine that fully funding means that we will have the funding to do everything we want.

but everything that everybody wants isn't all the same thing.

So it gets all very confusing.

So the more specific and clear we can be about the ways in which the state is underfunding not just us but districts across the state the better.

And go and we can go with you know and to be back again to to WASDA you know our I know that those top top 10 positions are going to come from you know the state organization that represents school board directors they're going to come in an alignment with this because I hear from my colleagues across the state about how much these things are impacting them also.

This is not unique to Seattle.

You know we have different issues in terms of how much it costs to be in Seattle.

But you know other small districts in in areas that the cost of living is not as high are also having issues with funding to provide adequate, to meet the needs of their students receiving special education services, to meet their transportation needs, all these things.

It's not unique to us.

And so the more clear we can get about the type of thing like this slide in front of us, the better.

And it's just 100% definitely not just us.

and we really need the community behind us.

The other one other thing I want to say is that there's there was a fairly decent turnover in the state legislature this year and education funding is already not the top thing that a lot of legislators want to talk about or even really know very much about.

And we have lost a number of legislators who had that understanding and interest and so we need to do some work to actually bring up some of our legislators to speed on for them understanding how education funding works and so that again the clearer and more specific information we can point to about where the shortages are the better and they will need that education from us as well as efficacy.

Yeah.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Go ahead, Director Hampson.

All really, really important things.

I know Superintendent Jones has comments, so I just want to be really quick and make sure that we also take this opportunity to uphold our own responsibility here, which is to not perpetuate additional structural deficit to the extent, if at all possible.

There are many things that we commit to and agree to that we can't afford and I believe it makes it harder for us to make that argument to the state because they do then hand that back to us.

I think the more that we can understand as we're talking about being advocates, the extent to which this is the component that we need to commit to, that we need to be brave about in terms of having a balanced budget.

And then these are the things that we need to legitimately ask the state for in helping us understand those differences you know particularly with things like special education which I know we don't really have a handle on that right now of how do we get to that place of much greater efficiency we definitely need more flexibility in how we assign staff to schools and in that and in other and connect that to where are the actual expenditures demonstrating outcomes for kids?

Are we spending our money in the wisest way as possible?

So just to bring it back to the fact that we still have our own responsibility in spite of the obvious obligations that this state has.

You all stole all of my thunder.

And frankly, I'm pleased that there's clarity around what our challenge is in front of us.

It's obvious that they did some great teaching and you all did some great learning and listening and I think we have shared understanding of where we need to go.

The structural deficit, we own it, it's ours, how we approach it is where we have to spend our time.

How intentional are we gonna be?

Are we going to look at program reductions or are we gonna look at how we're gonna approach the legislature fund us correctly so that we can move forward.

But it's really up to us.

I and my team, we're looking for guidance for what are the parameters?

Where do we want to go?

How do we want to approach this?

I think we can do it as a team, but we have to be intentional about how we approach it.

That's the short and long of it, and I just am appreciative of what we're going to do together.

I'm gonna claim a victory at the end, but it will be difficult, and we know that.

And so how we do our community engagement, how we represent the vision and values of the community, all that's gonna need to be planful how we go forward.

So we are willing partners to this board to move us through this, we know gonna be difficult time, but we also have legislator advocates with us.

We have community advocates with us.

It's just a matter of us choosing which path we're gonna take.

So I'll leave you at that.

And I think we gotta get back to the board meeting, the other part of the board meeting.

Thank you so much.

Dr. Campbell, thank you.

Linda, thank you.

Rob, thank you.

Amy, appreciate it.

Thank you.

So just for context, we are not at recess, but we do not have a quorum.

So if folks could return as soon as they take care of themselves, that would be much appreciated.

All right.

Moving on to section C, our action items for tonight's agenda.

Thank you for a very robust budget work session, one of many to come.

We will now move to the action items on today's agenda.

Of which I believe we only have one.

Would you like a motion, President Hersey?

Yes.

I am supposed to read the title first.

Go ahead.

So approval of the school board.

No, that's the intro, excuse me.

Approval of the revised 2022-2023 school year calendar.

May I have a motion for this item?

Yes.

I move that the school board approve the revised 2022-2023 school year calendar as attached to the board action report with any minor non-substantive additions, deletions, and modification deemed necessary by the superintendent.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

This is moved and properly seconded.

I believe it is coming to us via Dr. Pedroza, so please take it away.

I'm here as a stand-in for Interim Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, Dr. Sarah Pritchett, who could not be available tonight.

So I'm here to present to you the bar for the approval of the revised 2022-23 school year calendar.

I just want to remind the community at large and the board that the calendar negotiations that the parties agree to negotiate all calendars during the negotiation process and that the parties agree that on or about October 1 but before December 1 of the final year of the agreement, they will commence negotiations regarding the school calendar for the subsequent school year.

And the parties also agree that the tentatively agreed upon calendars resulting from these negotiations are to be ready for presentation and recommended adoption to the board in SE membership by no later than January 31. Reminder that that process happened and so this is the amendment, sort of revised amendment to that process based on the bargaining process that happened over the summer.

And we are here to just present to you the bar for the shifts which actually adjust at the end of the school year dates as noted in the calendars attached and I'm here for questions as is Executive Director Misa Garmo, also available for questions from the board.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Dr. Pedroza.

Board Directors, Director Rivera-Smith.

Good evening.

Thank you for being here, Dr. Pedroza.

Sending in for Dr. Pritchett.

who, I'm sorry it's not here.

Yeah, I'm so sorry Dr. Pritchard isn't here.

I wanted to thank her because we had a good conversation regarding this item.

And I guess I'll start with the million dollar question is why didn't we use midwinter break?

Yes, I was expecting that question.

Yeah, well, and so just...

Why didn't we what?

She asked the question, why didn't we use the adjustment for midwinter break?

Why didn't we use midwinter break as the fill-in date to make up the 180 days?

So that was the question that Director Rivera-Smith asked, correct?

So when talking about negotiations, we did talk with SCA.

We have to also assess a lot of impacts in terms of substitute shortages, personnel leaves, all of those considerations.

and we discussed it, so I just wanna let everyone know we did discuss it.

The teams did talk in length.

We also had to talk about the impacts on PASS and other labor groups in that process.

And then at the end of the discussion, it was decided that we would go with putting the dates at the end of the school year.

So it was discussed, we had to look at all the impacts, and I'm very empathetic for the people who called in who have seniors, because I myself have a senior myself this year as well, so very empathetic, but we are, when we're doing those graduation adjustments and all of those things, we're gonna consider all the impacts on families in relation to that.

So that's the work that we're doing internally to look at those adjustments as well.

Okay, so can you be specific about what was the roadblocks to using midwinter break days?

If it sounds like both parties were considering it and...

Yeah.

There was some disagreement on the usage of personal leave and vacation days, just some, it was just with the two parties.

I don't wanna go into specifics because I wasn't there, but my understanding that there was some discussion about that, the usage of substitutes, all of those components and so that was one of the reasons why we could not come to agreement on some of those components for that timeframe.

I know I'm one of the players in this and one of the reasons the families are concerned is as well because if we have snow days those could potentially get added onto the end also the school year prolonging our school year passively into July but can you tell me what the other conversations about how to mitigate for snow days should they happen?

Yeah, we actually are talking about snow days, so there's some conversations.

One thing to just remember with the board is that we actually get emergency waiver days from the state up to two, I believe, days that we get to have to waiver.

Those are usually for emergency situations.

We're also talking about remote learning.

We're talking about other options for snow days as well.

expression that the waivers for snow days were only available if we used first vacation days.

Is that not the case?

There's some rules around that, and that's what we're gonna explore with that.

I mean, we did have some impactful calendaring this year on our district, and we also don't wanna impact, we're gonna reshift extended learning as well for summer school, but we're gonna work with the state on that.

We can't use it.

We can't use the waiver days for the strike days.

I just want to be really clear.

Yes, yes, yes.

We learned that.

That's why we're doing this, right?

And so I guess, you know, we're parents and we're hearing from a lot of parents and families.

And actually, I'd love to hear from students, too.

If you want to tell us a student perspective on this, I'd love to hear that about the choice of the days that have been selected here.

Because, you know, it seems to be pretty...

agreed upon that these are not the ideal days.

Depending on the school year is not ideal.

And there's lots of different arguments and I won't go into the myriad of all those.

But that is just a concern, a big, big concern.

And I know some other people share it, but and one of those things, I guess one of the first ones I thought of was how livable are our schools when it's in summer, basically right into the heat of summer.

We get into it a little bit already, but possibly if it's longer.

You probably don't know what percentage of our schools are air conditioned.

I don't even know.

that information, but I can find out, and I can definitely give you the information on the exact requirements for waiver days.

I don't have that information, but I just remind the school board that we do have extended learning all throughout the summer in the majority of high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools.

And I thought about how is this gonna affect that too?

Is it gonna push that?

We will make adjustments to that.

There's lots of dominoes, right?

I get it.

We have to.

I mean, we have to.

We can't have schools overlapping each other and we also wanna make sure there's a break between them.

So we're looking at all of those things as well.

Yeah, gotcha.

And I'll just end by saying my concern, overall concern, and I did express this to Dr. Pritchett, is that this negotiation didn't follow policy 5020. There's a number I don't have in front of me.

The collective bargaining agreement, which specifies that the negotiation should be done according to parameters set by the board.

I don't recall us having an official talk about that.

I don't know if some board members were consulted, but I know I had never been consulted.

So I'm very concerned that this went forward without that.

And I'll chalk it up to just an oversight.

I don't know, I don't wanna get into but I do feel like if that's our lever, if that's our thing is policy, we need to be strongly adhering to that and expecting things to play out with the staff in the district according to policy as well.

So I have serious concerns about that that didn't happen.

And I wanna be consistent.

I mean, Dr. Fisher rightly asked me when I talked to her about this, well, would I be saying, would I be worried about that if I agreed with the dates that got chosen?

and you know, and I told her, well, I think, yeah, I would love if I favored the dates, but I also would definitely want to get it on record that this did not follow that policy.

And that's something that I as a board member expect all of us to...

I was gonna say that my understanding that this was an amendment to the agreed upon timeframe, but if that's incorrect, I don't wanna speak out of turn, so I just wanna make sure, thank you for noting that information, and I'll make sure and carry that back to our team.

Okay, yeah, she didn't tell me that when we spoke, so I don't know, but I was reading the policy, my interpretation of it was that this fell into that, so maybe that's a legal question, but either way.

Let's find out.

I think that's an important piece we should find out.

Yeah, thank you.

Director Hampson did you have something?

I do and Director Rankin has her hand up as well.

I just wanted to the calendar has always been something about which I don't think we have clarity with respect to how the board and the superintendent make come to this decision around it given that it's in the collective bargaining agreement.

and so we once again as a board, we did actually have conversations about, that was one of my concerns because of prior frustrations and I did ask, is the calendar in this bargain?

And it is.

And so it's, unfortunate that that's where we are now.

I don't believe that we as a board have been as clear as we need to be in our communication with the superintendent, probably via policy.

that would clearly state the things that are not, that we don't have the expectation, that we wanna reserve the right, because that's how the state law works, is what we reserve for ourselves.

Otherwise, if we don't explicitly reserve that, then, and in this case, because there is, the choice would be to then reject the bargain but we've already accepted the collective bargaining agreement and by virtue of that we've accepted this process of the calendar.

So I just want to acknowledge the frustration and that it sets with where it is, I mean how that works.

I don't believe that there's a good answer in this situation in terms of what days that we use.

There's a lot of reasons to expect that students are really gonna need that break.

And I think it's, somebody said it in public comment that it's just a difficult, it's a no-win situation.

I do think that we need to take upon ourselves the responsibility to provide clear instruction about how the decision regarding the school calendar is made in Seattle Public Schools and that's on us and I hope we can get to that this coming year and provide also clear guidelines about bargaining.

I think it's what I'm hearing is that we all agree it's really important.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I sorry if I might have missed it I had a child interruption.

Does this impact graduation dates?

We actually are working on that right now.

It may, a few of the dates it may because there is a requirement with OSPI for seniors.

It's a little different in terms of 180 days where we can actually have students actually miss a few days in terms of the graduation dates.

That's why some of the seniors after they graduate, they're done.

but it's allowable through the state.

So there is a gray area about the number of days so we're reviewing all of the graduation dates currently to just see where we're in alignment with that.

I will say this last year the state was generous with us and because it was more of a COVID year and they did not, we didn't adjust any dates last year so we're hoping we're gonna have some flexibility this year as well.

Okay, thank you.

and in in line with what Dr. Hampson was mentioning and also Director Vera Smith and the bargaining you know I understand and it says in the bar that this is a mandatory item in negotiation which I totally understand because it you know the negotiation with our labor partners Seattle Education Association should obviously be around anything that impacts their members and the calendar of course is going to impact their members where I think we and the district broader have gotten into a trap and this actually leads us into our next item on the agenda.

This is an item that reinforces to me how important it is that we shift our governance and our focus into student outcomes because just because this decision is a mandatory piece of bargaining doesn't mean that bargaining can start with no grounding in anything centered on students.

For me in the system that I desperately hope we are moving towards this would have come about by the district doing I don't know a survey or something or providing research about the impact on students of when these days were or even just asking families what their preference is and have done that work prior to entering into a discussion around bargaining.

So that you're, you know, the district is informed with, well, here is, from our, from the students we serve, this is our starting point for the negotiations.

And I think that Seattle Public Schools has gotten into, I don't know if it's gotten into the habit, but we find ourselves at a place where often where because management and governance have gotten very confused and the roles of the superintendent and the board and other entities have gotten confused, it's easy to get kind of entangled into whose decision is what.

But really something like the calendar, I don't know the history of how that got into being negotiated as part of the labor agreement as opposed to the impact of the calendar.

But it did.

And so as Director Hampson said it's our it's our job to create the conditions for better decision making around this type of thing coming forward.

The actual dates you know I think like the public speaker said we heard from the people who don't want the calendar days at the end of the year because that's what the proposal is so we're not gonna we're gonna hear from the people who don't like that if we if the item had gone out with the proposal for that to be over midwinter break we would have heard from all the people that didn't want them to be during midwinter break so if there's not really a win the broader win is in making sure that we have centered students and put their needs as the focus on the forefront before entering into any conversation with what the impact of that is on other adults in the system.

Personally, it's all kind of inconvenient for somebody, right, making up days that were intended to be served at a different time.

So I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but what's missing for me is what the impact is of this on our students.

And so I'm just really hoping that we're moving to a place where we start with what's gonna support the best outcomes for students and then we bargain around, or not we, you, the district, bargain around the impacts of those things.

And that's just something with Cadence and with you know becoming proactive instead of reactive that we all have to learn to do and it's our job as the board to support that and the broader our the the school board is authorized by the state or state law that the school board sets the calendar and so at some point that decision making authority must have been sort of given to the bargaining process with the school board approving it in Seattle Public Schools but it's our job to set the calendar and I would like to see us have broader conversations around the calendar in general because again centering on students and student outcomes there's a lot of research out there to support the calendar with a shorter summer and with extended breaks throughout the year that's obviously a totally different conversation but speaks to the need to put the levers of governance work in the governors and administrative levers in administrative hands.

And all that to say this is just one of those moments that I'm like, oh yeah, our governance structure.

So the AP question is another question that I have, but I don't know if anyone's prepared to answer that right now or if there's really anything we can do about it.

The different number of instructional days that our students are going to have as compared to other students if that's something that was considered that would be my last question.

Have an answer for you right now on that but I can I'm going to write it down.

but I will.

And so I don't know if there's anything that we can do to mitigate that.

But I just will note, and this is just something to note for community, is our first day of school, if it was originally intended, was still behind a lot of other districts in our region.

So I just wanna state that for the record that we were still gonna be behind.

Sorry.

Which I think is important for us to talk about, you know, just in the broader sense.

Yeah, for sure.

Any other questions on this item?

Yeah so as myself being a full IB student I know that you just said that you might not have any answers on that but with this proposal of the new calendar since this really affects students and the teachers of course where in this proposal was student input involved?

That's a curious question that I have, because I feel like we are directly involved in this, and I am very curious, and I'm sure that many other students are as well, as to where any student input, family input was included in this proposal, and if there was, what was that?

I'm sorry, Nasida, just to let you know, I wasn't involved in the negotiations process.

I'm standing in for the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, but I will talk to them about the conversation around that work.

Typically, though, I will just state in bargaining, bargaining happens between the district and the SCA, teams and so that's typically how a bargain works.

It's a labor negotiation process between two entities and typically students aren't directly involved.

However, a lot of teachers and community members do have voice throughout the process in different various ways and teachers, AP teachers are actually part of the SCA membership in that entity.

So just letting you know where they situate themselves within that.

but I will try to find out specifically the question that you have, all right?

Can I also include that, how with, you know, we are aware that the school year was already supposed to start later than other districts, putting some of the AP and IB kids at more of a disadvantage, but with the strike we are gonna be, you know, adding the days to the end of the school year instead of a break, which we know both sides are, some sides gonna be unhappy with this decision.

Not saying that I'm on either side, but I'm saying that how are we going to, when you do bring this topic back to them, how are we going to reassure parents and students that they're not gonna be at a disadvantage?

that adding days to the end of the day, at the end of the year instead of the break, how is this going to help them?

Because I know as a senior taking like six or five to six exams, that all happens in May and April.

and having days at the end of the year in July is not gonna help us at all if those exams are already done and taken.

So how are we putting our Seattle public students on a pathway to success?

Yeah, thank you.

So I actually have the Executive Director of College and Career who oversees the advanced placement process in our district, works under Dr. Scarlett who works for me.

So like I said, we will get that information out to you, okay?

Thank you.

And we will actually have to do the broader communication with community about that as well.

So thank you.

So if I may jump in, I'm appreciative of Dr. Pedrosa stepping in here, and this is an advantage to us because she's the one who provides that oversight for how we can ensure student interests are ultimately honored.

But I also wanna just mention that there are multiple layers to what we're dealing with today, and I think it's an opportunity for us to step back and say, how do we honor several values at the same time?

So one is, oversight over the calendar and what's the board's role in that?

How do we honor that?

How do we honor the different roles in terms of governance versus ends and means?

How do we make sure that student interests always stay in the forefront of our decision making?

And we have to make assumptions that SCA and the district have thought about those things.

But at the same time, how do we really center student voice in our deliberations ongoing going forward as we're maturing in that space.

How do we also ensure the impact on families has been honored as we walk through this as well.

And then lastly, we're growing in our respect for community engagement, how do we continue to insert that in the structures that we have and how do we front load that and how do we keep that all the way through?

And lastly, I'm sorry, one more lastly, how do we honor and respect the bargaining process?

And so all of those things are coming to, are what we're dealing with right now and I think we have a situation where we don't have great choices on either end, but I do think we are tasked and we are obligated to make the best out of a difficult situation.

and we will make sure students' interests are ultimately met at the end and we'll make the best of this situation.

So I just want to thank you, Dr. Pedrosa, for stepping in.

We had a little emergency crisis and she stepped in beautifully like she always does.

We're one team, we'll get to the end of this, and I know our families, it's difficult for families to not have that clarity, but what we honored was trying to get information to them as soon as possible, try to make some decisions as soon as possible.

Maybe not the best at the end of the day, but I think what we value the most was trying to have families have, excuse me, clarity at the end of the day.

So, President Hersey, thank you.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

This feels like a very polarized decision.

And I'm wondering if there is an opportunity to shave a couple of days off of breaks to bring the calendar back to ending in June to give some more time for students.

And I wonder if those opportunities to discuss that have in fact been discussed.

And I'm also extraordinarily curious about the survey that SEA recently set out post the strike for what their members want.

Has that information been shared with SPS staff?

And if not, why not?

because that would seem to me to be a point of collaboration and certainly I'll be the last person on the planet to talk about representation in a labor union because that belongs to them but I am truly confused about how we got to this point and whether there is any collaborative process forward and when we talk about students furthest from educational justice, I know that there is a lot of baggage attached to AP classes.

I would like to suggest that the IB diploma is one of the shining lights of Chief Sealth International High School and Rainier Beach High School.

so when we're talking about students farthest from educational justice or student-centered decisions, I would like that very much taken into account and I would respectfully suggest that the 400 or 500 emails I think I've seen in social media and I so appreciate that is but one slice and snapshot, but it's been about even.

about midwinter break or going to school in July and opportunities for internships and summer camp and jobs that our students may lose because they'll be still in school potentially in July are extraordinarily concerning to me.

I probably will abstain and I would like to see us do something in the next month.

to really get our arms around this so that we can meet somewhere in the middle because we are in fact capable of collaboration should we so choose.

And my last piece is the comments that have been made that school boards have in fact given away a great deal of policy issues to collective bargaining.

which doesn't mean I agree or disagree, it depends on which element it is, but at some point, and that would be year three from now, we need to untangle all of this, take a look at our history, put students first, put clarity first, and put accountability first.

And we are truly capable of it, but we have to start in year two, early and often.

and I'm just gutted by we're sitting here with this Hobson's Choice.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments, concerns on this particular item?

Thank you Dr. Petrozza.

Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rivera-Smith.

No Director Sarju Aye Director Song Moritz No Vice President Hampson Aye Director Harris Can I get a clarification on that?

Do I have the opportunity to pass and come back to my vote?

I would look to the board president to speak on that.

Can you explain to me your desired outcome by passing?

Are you trying to see how the other directors will vote before you cast yours?

I'm trying to decide between a no and an abstain.

Then we'll give you the time necessary to make that decision.

So I think take as much time as you need to consider your vote.

But I don't think that, I think you should vote when your name is called to vote.

So take as much time as you need to consider the implications.

I think one of the questions that wasn't answered is before we well we've already called for the vote sorry.

So yeah take the time.

And you do appreciate President Hersey that you've allowed people to pass in the past.

On votes have I?

Yes you have sir.

Okay then let it pass.

I don't think that I've done that but yeah I don't believe in my tenure.

I'm not trying to call you out on this certainly I'm not.

I'm very much struggling with my vote.

Okay so Allow Director Harris to pass.

That's fine.

Let's go ahead and continue to the next vote.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Abstain.

This motion has passed for the vote of four yes to two no and one abstention.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson-Jones.

That was the only action item on tonight's agenda, so we will now be moving to the introduction items.

Give me a moment because we have some unique...

President, we have sort of the hybrid section coming up before the intro items.

Oh, intro and action.

Sorry, I read the first word.

I did not indicate.

On the amendments.

On the amendments.

So to be clear, the section that we are about to tackle is introduction and action on amendments to the school board director proposed district redistricting plan introduced in September 28th, 2022.

All right.

Okay, we will now move on to discussion and voting on amendments to the proposed school board director district redistricting plan introduced on September the 28th.

I will begin first with some background on this process and for those who have not been following the redistricting process, we are required by law to redraw the boundaries of existing school board directors to have nearly even population every 10 years after the census.

This process will not affect where students go to school.

Director districts relate solely to where the seven directors who run for the positions on the board must live and who participates in the primary election.

Voters vote within their director districts in the primary election, but voters across the school district vote for all director positions in the general election.

We received an initial presentation on the redistricting process during our August 31st regular board meeting.

Then executive committee received a board action report with three potential redistricting scenarios for the committee's consideration last month.

The executive committee moved forward The bar introduced to us on September 28th and linked from tonight's agenda which would approve scenario one as our redistricting plan.

The board is scheduled to adopt a final director district redistricting plan at our next regular board meeting on October the 26th.

Oh, nope, I think I'm missing a page, maybe page 10?

They might have gotten under here, give me one second.

Okay, here we go, yep.

Because of the statutory requirements for posting and accepting comment on redistricting plan within the prescribed timeliness prior to action, it is important that we review and take action tonight on any amendments to the proposed redistricting plan.

Should one of the amendments before us tonight carry, the redistricting plan submitted through that amendment will become our new proposed redistricting plan and will be published on the redistricting webpage for further comment and for us to then take up for final approval following a public hearing on October the 26th.

For members of the public who may wish to learn more about our redistricting process, please go to the school board homepage and click the link to the school board district redistricting for more information about the statutory requirements, links to meeting materials and opportunities to provide comment.

We are going to move now into the proposed director amendments.

There are four amendments posted to tonight's agenda and all operate the same way in that they would substitute an alternative scenario in for the one that is currently before the board from the executive committee.

The item that the Executive Committee advanced was for the approval of scenario one as our redistricting plan.

And the amendments we will be reviewing would substitute in either scenario four, five, six, or seven as our proposed redistricting plan.

For each amendment, I will ask the sponsoring director or directors to speak to their amendment, speaking to their intent and how their proposed plan will relate to what is currently before the board and the feedback that we have received.

Flow Analytics, our redistricting consultant, is with us remotely if there are technical questions related to the scenarios or if directors need support in reviewing the scenarios on screen.

Outside legal counsel, Noel Treat is also available if we come to a question on the statutory requirements for redistricting or parliamentary process tonight.

After all amendments are presented by their sponsors and discussed, I will ask for motions on any amendments as some directors are sponsoring more than one amendment and may wish to offer just one of their amendments based on our discussion.

We will then vote on any amendments that are moved.

If more than one amendment is moved, voted on and approved by a majority of these voting yes or no, then it will be a final amendment that carries that will be substituted in as our proposed redistricting plan.

Beginning now with Amendment 1 sponsored by Director Sam Moritz and myself, it is built off of scenario one with Chinatown International District and Little Saigon incorporated into District 7 to keep these communities of interest together.

Okay, so Director Samaritz, would you, I have just spent like the last 10 years speaking, so would you like to take it away in giving some background on this amendment?

Yes, we received community feedback from the Asian American AAPI community leaders that the scenario that we previously put forward was going to split the Chinatown International District and Little Saigon into three different director districts.

So the first amendment would consolidate these into one single director district, which would be District 7. We also received additional feedback that that a lot of the families that attend school in District 7 use community services in the Chinatown International District area and so there was a request to consolidate those communities into District 7 as well.

and if you have opportunity to use the online map tool one of the layers that you can add is COIs that means communities of interest and Chinatown International District is the community of interest in purple.

The Little Saigon community of interest is the one in green.

Thank you Director Samaritz.

We will now move to Amendment 2. This amendment again is sponsored by Director Samaritz and myself.

It is built off of the scenario that we discussed in Amendment 1 and would additionally make adjustments to keep the central district community of interest together and retain additional schools in District 5. I believe that pretty clearly sums up the purpose of Amendment 2 but if you have anything to add please do.

To clarify, the lines used for the Central District were drawn from a document that is used by the Design Review Board that makes decisions on development in the Central District, and that was based on community input.

And again, if you use the online tool, that community of interest is represented with a red line around that.

and particularly we got feedback from a director that in previous iterations of the map district five did not have any of the standalone middle schools represented and so this was an effort to balance the schools that are in each director district.

Thank you.

We will now move to Amendment 3 sponsored by Vice President Hampson.

It is built off of the proposed City Council map developed by the Redistricting Justice Seattle with adjustments to account for our boundaries, incorporate the CID in Little Saigon into District 7 and the Central District in District 5 with further adjustments to then bring down the overall deviation.

Director Hampson, would you like to speak to this particular amendment?

Sure this is something that came up in our last meeting and so after our last discussion about the overarching social justice approach that we it was clear that we the five of us were in the executive committee meeting it definitely left out at least two of our directors not to mention all of our students and so I wanted to take a look at the way in which a very well researched very well engaged continuing to be engaged at the city level and that we're, the city council districts, I realized that our maps are different and yet we're both dividing the city seven ways.

And so I thought it was really important to look at somebody who had specifically taken a social justice approach to the redistricting and they've been very much lauded for their approach, for the level of engagement and their ongoing, the city of Seattle redistricting map is based off of their map and took the time to attend some of their sessions where those things were discussed.

It does include the changes that are in the prior amendments around the international district as well as one of the things that thanks to Director Song Ritz we now are able to look at the COIs relative to schools.

and how those are maintained in each of these different scenarios and one thing that I noticed just today is that it does actually maintain and COIs are communities of interest and so you if you look at page and by the way this is scenario there's a difference between amendment three but it's scenario six Is that correct?

Yes.

So if you look at page, I don't know, 10 of that, it shows the communities of interest that are not preserved, the percent of, sorry, I can't talk when other people are talking.

Do you guys need to find something?

No, she'll help me.

Go ahead.

Communities of interest not preserved in the minimum number of districts includes any geographic entity that is divided even minimally by a district boundary.

So this is the community of interest is not preserved in the minimum number of districts.

Help me out, Director .

This is the

Yes, I actually may need some clarification from Flo as well.

It's using the student attendance boundaries for elementary, middle, and high school, and looking at how many of them cross over into more than one director district.

Now, what I'm not sure about is the number that is between two director districts or more, or is it a relative change from what we have currently?

That I'm not sure about.

My understanding is that it is the percent that are preserved, but you're right, when you look at the definition, it's then confusing.

So that was just one thing that I noted about this.

It was something that I felt we should have the opportunity to talk about and to look not because I felt so strongly about this because I also was fine with what we came out of executive committee with but it was clear when we had our next meeting that there was a lot of concerns that we hadn't formally addressed and so this is one of the ways I wanted to bring forward our ability to talk about that without going into, although there's massive amounts of information about redistricting Justice Washington and redistricting Justice Seattle and why these are meant to be pretty all inclusive.

They are originally designed for the city, but again, we're still dividing in seven parts.

So is Flo on?

Is the redistricting preservation of geographic integrity criteria, is that the percent that is not divided up into different districts in these scenarios or is that the percent that is disrupted in the additional data?

That's the percent that's not divided up.

Okay so a higher number means greater preservation of school boundaries.

Thank you.

Okay so I did note that was new information as of today and I don't really have anything else to add unless somebody else wants to speak to it.

I think we all have the same level of information about it but wanted to make sure we had the opportunity to look at it.

Thank you Director Hampson.

The final amendment before us is Amendment 4 sponsored by Director Sam Moritz, Hampson and myself.

This amendment is similar to Amendment 3 but is built off the current draft City Council redistricting plan as its base rather than the map developed by redistricting Justice Seattle.

Would anybody like to speak to this particular amendment?

but there is one additional difference between the, so what I wanted to say about the city council maps, that is we will never be able to exactly match the city council maps and there's two reasons for that.

One is that the overall, are actually different and second, they are also in their process and they will be concluding their process after we conclude our process and so we have no assurance that we will land on the exact same maps if that was a preferred strategy for us.

The other, but this is, this amendment is based on the current version that the commissioners are deliberating on with one crucial difference is that I, asked Flo to change some of the lines slightly so that it would shift Lincoln High School into District 4, otherwise District 4 would not have a comprehensive high school in it.

Would you like to add anything to that explanation?

Yeah I mean I think that overall I would just really just say thank you to all of the community folks that have reached out.

Largely in this process what I was really hopeful for is that by moving forward scenario one which is a map with the least amount of deviation we would then at least have a starting point to where we would be able to have a conversation and ultimately end up with where we have arrived with what I believe is likely going to be the best we are gonna do an amendment for.

So again, just a huge thank you to everybody who took the time, looked at the maps, provided feedback, went to CVS and got a pair of reading glasses so you could actually see the darn thing.

And just, I think that as we build these districts out that they're going to not only tell the story of how folks are moving throughout our city, but also making sure that we're honoring all of the various histories that have created Seattle as it stands today.

With that being said, we are now going to move into director discussion and then I will call for motions on amendments and then we will move to voting.

So do we have any discussion that we would like to hear on any of these scenarios?

By all means, Director Harris.

Thank you, President Hersey.

Appreciate that.

Do any of these four amendments displace a current sitting board member?

I believe Amendment 4 did, but no, no, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Amendment 3 does, sorry, I'm getting the scenarios and the amendments missed.

But I think, right, but I think that was resolved in Amendment 4. So to answer your question, yes, Amendment 3 does.

But what is the displacement?

The displacement, I believe, would move Director Rivera-Smith out of her district.

District Two.

Would it be appropriate at this time, President Hersey, to ask outside counsel Noel Treat to give us advice?

I asked about this specifically to.

Sure.

Outside counsel Noel Treat, I forwarded that to you, sir.

Yeah.

Is Mr. Treat available and can he read his legal opinion?

by all means.

Yes, good evening, everyone.

Noel Treat Legal Counsel.

It's a pleasure to be here tonight to help support this important work.

I think the question here is in deciding upon a proposed plan and a final plan, could the board consider something like the impact on a sitting director or other factors that are outside the statutory criteria?

And I think that you do have the latitude to do that.

Ultimately, of course, the plan that you adopt needs to be consistent with the five statutory criteria that I think you're all familiar with now.

But the statute doesn't preclude you from considering other factors.

And when courts have looked at challenges to redistricting plans, they're really only looking at, you know, does the plan adopted is it consistent with the statute?

And the court will give you a lot of discretion in that.

And so I think you can look at other factors, such as effects on current districts and their communities, and that's a valid factor to consider, should you so choose.

Appreciate the feedback and the opinion and the direction.

Thank you, sir.

Additionally, for clarity, we do not need to move more than one of these amendments forward.

So if there is a reconciliation amendment that most folks think would do the job, we do not have to entertain more than one.

So just because the amendments have been submitted does not necessarily mean that the director who submitted it or another director has to bring them forward.

Any other discussion needed?

By all means, Director Rivera-Smith, take it away.

Sorry, it might be a kind of a weird question, but I'm wondering, I'm wondering what, so I get that, so four replaces kind of three in a way, is that kind of what I'm hearing?

Yes.

Okay, so we can kind of, I'm gonna ignore three now.

Yes.

For that reason.

Then I'm looking still at one and two, and I get why two became the replacement sort of for one, I guess, because we wanted to get Washington Middle School into district five.

Is that what happened with two?

You're referencing by amendment and not scenario.

Amendment 2, yeah.

I'm not going to use their own names.

So there was amendment 1, amendment 2, the adjustment was to bring Washington Middle School into 5. That's correct, I believe.

So I'm going to ignore 1 now then.

Okay, that's fine.

We're looking at 2 and 4 at this point.

and I'm trying to, I would love to hear from the sponsors of those, you know, you know, which you want to stand behind because you have more, I think, are you all on these ones?

I think you're all on two and four.

I think the only one that we are all on is amendment number four.

Oh, okay.

Who's on two?

Is that?

Me and Director Salmeritz.

Okay, gotcha.

And looking at them,

Can I just also add that amendment to keeps central district intact as defined by the design review board for the central district.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards two just because of the, it maintains.

Four does too.

So four does, does that say what you said?

Okay, well that's good.

I feel like number four has this weird little blip of, I guess it's Fremont.

It just seems really non-contiguous as we're trying to keep that going here.

Because all things considered, I mean, I know they're not drastically different.

I guess also six eats up some more land there on four.

which is surprising because I guess how does that throw off its balance of population, but it must be, I mean, I guess you can look at flows.

They have that number there.

Because in my mind right now, I'm looking at two or four, right?

I mean, I feel like that's what we're playing with here.

And I, yeah, so any strains of those two that the sponsors can throw out I think is helpful.

Yeah, the only thing that I will say is that I believe after discussion within OPMA that scenario number four accomplishes, in my opinion, all of the requests that not only came from community but also the interests of making sure that there are comprehensive high schools and middle schools as much as possible within director districts, making sure that all directors continue to live in their districts, but also has a very low amount of deviation.

So I think for a culmination of those reasons is why if I were to make a decision as one of the sponsors, I would only be presenting number four.

The way I would characterize Amendment 2 versus Amendment 4 is Amendment 4, the primary difference is that Amendment 4 more parallel, it captures a lot of the feedback we've gotten.

It is also more similar to the City Council proposed maps.

Amendment 2 is going to feel more familiar to the people because it's less of a change from our current district.

So I would say that my relative comfort is towards Amendment 2 because it's less of a significant change.

OK.

I yeah I so my my only concern with four is the is the Fremont piece and and that was one of the concerns in the the redistricting discussions for the city that it's this leap across.

As soon as we start accommodating communities of interest we start creating these fingers right as you saw from scenario one in which most of that was eliminated.

to then when we start to claw into areas to create continuity.

And geographically, looking at a flat map, it doesn't make sense, right?

But then also when you're, I mean, the whole coming down and getting Lowell, or what used to be Lowell, sorry.

How did I go back to Lowell?

It's not Lowell anymore.

Help me out, Les.

Huh?

No, it used to be.

Oh, no, it is Lowell.

It is Lowell.

Sorry.

Something else used to be Lowell.

That that was like a cut out of District 3 for some strange reason.

So I feel like we've, on the negative side, we've created a few more of those scenarios.

And at the same time, I do think scenario four is the city council map is very much based on the Seattle redistricting map.

So a lot of that is very similar.

And then with those changes that Director Song and Rhodes talked about.

And I feel not great about the Fremont piece.

At the end of the day, I also go back to the fact that we have districts in which we are also elected as a I mean we have a scenario where we're elected by the whole city as well and so it's not as straightforward as the city and I like the idea of approximating as close as we can to the Seattle justice redistricting map and solving some of those other issues I think we cut up to some of the school districts a little bit but again we are elected by the entire city, not just by our individual districts, so.

Correct.

Yeah, take it away.

I was, I found what I was looking for regarding the difference between two and four regarding the population deviation.

Two seems like, amendment two has like perfect, it's zero.

There's no deviation from ideal.

They're all pretty, that's like the most, Equal you can get I guess because all their deviations are zeros whereas four has some deviation they're not no one's got huge none of these have like over one percent like none of them even I don't think any of them go to one percent they're all point something percents but two does have all zeros in that regard so I don't again I don't know if there's like a hierarchy to what we're going for I know we're going to stop things and

Everything is on the table and everything is fair game.

I think that for me, I'm not wedded to either option specifically.

I mean, there's not a significant difference between in my opinion effective outcome between two and four.

So I think that where we are trying to be is presenting y'all with a number of options that some have obviously other benefits than others.

I think that one of the things that I do really like about the consideration for four is that it does have a level of community engagement that was done that we can't afford nor have the capacity to do.

So that's something to be considered when it's basically like open source data.

Like, if you've got it, why not use it?

So that is really kind of where I'm at.

I'm perfectly fine bringing both forward, and people can vote.

And just to clarify, Noel, I don't know what your title is now, but awesome guy Noel Treat.

We don't, this isn't necessarily the end-all be-all for the process, right?

Like, is it, Ms. Wilson-Jones, I'm trying to, because we're not voting on this yet.

This is still in process.

That's why I asked the question, y'all.

I'm trying to figure it out.

And I see Director Rankin's hand, so if somebody could just answer my question, I'll call on Director Rankin.

Noel, do you want to take that one?

Yeah, I'm sorry if I understood the question.

You don't have to pick.

There isn't one that one is better than the other.

All you have to do in the end is pick a plan that is consistent with the criteria and the statute.

Yeah, let me ask my question again one more time.

So if we were to pick one to move forward for action on the 26th, is there any opportunity for further massaging after this point?

there would be sort of a last minute opportunity.

You've got a state law deadline of adopting a final plan by November 15th.

You would, because of the state requirement to post and accept public comment on the proposed plan.

If you made further amendments after tonight, you would have to resubmit that for public comment and then you'd need to schedule an additional board meeting after the 26th probably to make sure you met your deadlines.

No, that makes a ton of sense.

I appreciate that.

So if there was a catastrophic situation in being identified something that we missed, there is still an opportunity to do what we need to do as elected officials in this process.

OK.

So with that being said, I believe we are now at a point.

Do you have something you want to add, please?

sort of to that point I just wanted to clarify one technical place that we are at in this process because of this the pace at which these amendments needed to be developed there are some they are in varying states of King County elections GIS staff review and so based on the reviews that have already taken place any feedback we would expect would be incredibly minor like move your line here, there actually aren't any people who live in that area, so it doesn't change anything.

And so you'll see that each of the amendments includes language in the motion that minor updates may be made between now and action.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson-Jones.

I think that that is a sign that we need to pick up the pace.

So with that being said, I believe now we are at a place...

Wait.

I'm sorry.

Don't forget.

Don't forget me.

Y'all, I promise I got it.

I literally just said Director Rankin like two seconds ago.

Director Rankin, please.

Thank you.

First of all I've never been on this side of the screen to see the arm wavy thing when the lights go off and that was really entertaining.

I just I guess question reminder question about the various amendments where these borders go have nothing to do with where schools are or where school attendance are areas are.

So I don't know if that's if I just keep that to myself or sit with that or whatever or if any directors that put forth amendments want to help me understand why that's an important consideration because this again does not have anything to do with where students go to school.

And the the schools as distributed throughout the districts are not part of the rules that we have to follow and have no bearing really on where these are.

This is about ensuring representation for voters across the city in the primary and about ensuring that the board is made up of seven individuals that come from communities across the city.

in a relatively representative way.

So where the schools are I understand that people feel certain ways about it and the public feel certain ways about it but I guess it's just like that doesn't matter.

Quite honestly what really matters is for me anyway is keeping the central district from being split up and keeping the ID from being split up.

As far as where current directors live, this is the plan that's going to be in place for a decade.

We have to do this by matter of law every 10 years.

So, I mean, directors can move.

Like, lots of different things can happen in 10 years, so I also don't think that our personal addresses should have really, I mean, I don't know.

What am I missing, I guess?

So here's the thing.

Both of those things.

Yep.

So here's the thing.

And I totally understand and agree with your line of questioning.

I think that there are two things at play here, right?

There's what we need to do per state statute.

And then anything beyond that, as long as it doesn't put us into a dangerous deviation, is really up to us as a board.

And so with these options here, and if y'all want to complicate the process, y'all can bring forward whatever option you want.

I think that what we are looking at is a scenario where we have been able to accomplish many things with a very little amount of deviation.

I think that your vote is your vote and whatever criteria you build into what you decide on these maps is completely up to you.

but I think that the primary consideration and the consideration that was achieved in the vast majority of the options that you see before you are ensuring that communities of interest were kept together and ensuring that there is not necessarily one district that is over a specific size and compared to the other.

I think that everything else that you described in terms of where school buildings are, where directors live, I agree, definitely should be brought into question and not necessarily impact this particular process, but I think that overall we have arrived at a place with the decisions before you that most folks would be happy with.

Things will change.

And this is a really big and intense process.

There are obviously going to be deviations from within, you know, the state statute again.

But yeah, I think your questions are 100% legitimate and I think every director will have the option to make whatever decision with whatever map they so choose that is brought forward.

So with that being said, are there any other questions before I move on?

Y'all sure?

Cool.

Okay, for those sponsoring the amendments, could you please move any amendments that you wish to put forward based on tonight's discussion?

Once we have all the motions before us, we will vote on amendments sequentially by number.

For each amendment, we will also need a second.

So, would any directors like to move amendments forward for consideration?

Yes I'd like to move that the school board approve amendment 2 to the board action report titled approval of school board director district redistricting plan which substitutes scenario 5 as attached to this amendment of any minor technical additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary prior to final action October 26th for the proposed redistricting plan scenario 1 attached to this underlying board action report.

to the extent this amendment conflicts with the information presented in the underlying board action report and attachments, this amendment shall control when engrossed.

Immediate action on this amendment is in the best interest of the district.

I move the, oh, I'm sorry, I second.

And just for clarity, which amendment was that?

Amendment number two, okay.

I move that the school board approve amendment 4 to the board action report titled approval of school board director district redistricting plan which substitutes scenario 7 as attached to this amendment with any minor technical additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary prior to final action on October 26th for the proposed redistricting plan scenario 1. attached to this underlying board action report.

To the extent this amendment conflicts with the information presented in the underlying board action report and attachments this amendment shall control when engrossed.

Immediate action on this amendment is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

You're good.

Okay.

If there's any further discussion before we move into voting.

All right.

Sorry, wait, there were two motions.

Are we voting on both of them together or one and then the other?

That is a really good question.

One and the other.

Yes, so Noel Treat here.

You will vote on them sequentially, but I just want to be clear that the last voted amendment will be the one that will be the proposed plan going forward.

So if you vote yes on both of them, Amendment 4 would then be the ultimate plan that the board moves forward into the next phase.

I don't really understand that.

Okay, so here's the deal.

Wait, what?

Yeah, I got you, I got you, I got you.

It replaces the other action.

I got you.

Yes, your last action is the final action.

So if you have a preference of what you want to see versus Amendment 2 or Amendment 4, if you are looking at Amendment 2 but you really like Amendment 4, vote no on 2. because if we then go back, if somebody says, I like both of them, that is going to put us into a situation to where regardless of what you intended, you are going to move forward the last amendment that we vote on.

Does that align with your explanation and understanding, Noel?

Yes, exactly.

Thank you.

Yep.

Second grade teacher.

All right, so with that being said, Ms. Wilson-Jones.

I am calling the roll on Amendment 2, which I'm not going to say which scenario it is because I'll mix them up, but Amendment 2 is what I am calling the roll on right now.

This will be followed by a vote on Amendment 4, and that is all the votes we have teed up.

Yep.

So Amendment 2, Vice President Hampson.

No.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Rankin.

No.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Yes.

Director Sarju.

No.

Director Song Moritz.

Yes.

President Hersey.

No.

This motion does not pass with a vote of two yes to five no.

Moving to the vote on amendment four.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Rivera-Smith?

No.

Can you repeat that?

I'm sorry.

No.

Did that come through?

No.

Yes, no.

I mean, no, no.

Director Sarju?

Yes.

Director Song Moritz.

No.

Vice President Hampson.

Yes.

Director Harris.

Yes.

President Hersey.

Yes.

This motion has passed with a vote of five yes to two no.

Go ahead.

You gonna click it?

What does it mean though?

Oh no.

Yes.

Yes.

We haven't voted on it.

Nothing has passed.

Nothing has passed.

So with the contingency that everything squares with the county, that will be the one that we have recommended to move forward.

The final vote will take place on October 26th, barring any catastrophes.

Okay, amendment number four has been approved and will be submitted as our proposal redistricting plan.

We will vote on this proposed redistricting plan on October the 26th.

Cool, I said everything that I needed to without even looking at my notes.

Okay, now we will move into intro items.

I'm gonna get my agenda, sorry.

of which we have just a few.

All right, so introduction item number one, approval of the revised student outcomes focused governance goals and guardrails.

Approval of this item would be, would approve the revised goals and guardrails as attached to the board action report.

I believe that we are going to be hearing from a combination of Director Samaritz and Superintendent Jones.

Which one of you would like to begin?

Thank you, President Hersey.

This board action report will revise the goals and guardrails that were previously adopted by the board.

At our work session in June, we discussed what, if any, revisions were needed to the goals and guardrails after seeing our proposed interim metrics for progress monitoring from staff.

And so with this bar, we've identified a number of language tweaks to clarify our intent and the community values.

I'd like to highlight that we had the addition of reference to policy 0030 in our language.

We also identified the need to include an operations guardrail.

So we discussed replacing guardrail 2 with an operations focused guardrail.

after determining that our previous guardrail two was already sufficiently reflected in our other guardrails and that operations was a community value expressed in our Seattle Excellence strategic plan that was not present in our guardrails.

So over the summer I worked with Dr. Jones and our consultant A.J.

Crable to create this new guardrail two and the proposed guardrail language is that the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service.

I think this reflects the board and community's values around reliable operations such as transportation and the staff are working on interim metrics and the guidance we will receive.

that about sums it up.

And I just, I do wanna just give a signal that as we look at the interim guardrails, once we get the finalized language approved, we're gonna probably be talking about transportation technology and or human resources as the interim measures.

And when we talk about transportation, we're talking about perhaps bus reliability and on-time performance.

When we talk about technology, we're referencing system availability and tech ticket response time and resolution time.

And then for human resources, we'll probably be talking about vacancy fuel rates and substitute availability.

The other piece that we really want to emphasize, are there any other areas that have the largest impact on student outcomes?

And so we won't have four interim measures, but we'll have one, We'll have one or two or three in those categories.

Okay.

Director, do we have any questions here?

Nope.

All right.

Sorry, I do.

Everything's the same.

There's mostly clarification.

So you have a question about the fifth part?

Yes, now's the time for questions.

Thank you.

So it's changed to the superintendent will not allow any district department, school building, or classroom to not provide unwelcome environments as defined in Board Policy 0030 that reflect and support the diversity of the district's student population, their families, community, or sense of belonging.

I'm just trying to follow this carefully to Can you explain what you did there and why?

So this is actually our guardrail.

So we wrote this.

I know it was a long time ago.

It was in June that we did all this work.

they were only, we gave them the guidelines to work on finalizing the new operational guardrail rather than, because we ran out of time.

Somebody remind me about this one.

So just for further context, we sat out right here and this is where I introduced the interim guardrails and then I talked about the superintendent's interpretation of each one of the guardrails and the goals.

And then you all refined the language to make it more consistent with what your intent was.

And that just for reference to go back three or four months ago when we did that.

I think it was Dr. Petrozza who mentioned that there was a definition and it was 0030. So I do, I'm trying to bring it all back because just in reading it, I get a little lost, but are the metrics gonna change for that one then?

will not change in 0030, which we should have a poster of it here.

I'm not sure what happened.

But nonetheless, there's a definition and a welcoming environment that's embedded within that policy.

And so that's the, that was the reference that Dr. Redrosa had going back.

Okay.

Any additional questions?

Comments?

Concerns?

Director Rankin.

DIRECTOR RANKIN I am wondering on guardrail 2. It who who how do we how are we defining unreliable.

I mean is that just what we'll see in.

Do we wait for the interim measures to see?

Yes, it'll be more clear in the interim measures, but when we talk about unreliable, we're talking about customers.

I mean, we say, how do our customers have reliability, what does that look like?

And so when we start talking about technology, transportation, human resources, there's elements of reliability that the board is expecting the superintendent to uphold going forward.

And so when I listed off those items, those were examples that would be consistent with what might be a definition of reliable.

And if that's not sufficient, I'll endeavor to come up with a more complete definition of reliable.

Or in this case, as a guardrail's written, unreliable.

Yeah, well, this is an introduction item, so are we going to then vote on this official adoption at the next board meeting?

Yes.

Okay.

I just don't know how much conversation we want to have right now or if I should just make sure I understand and then go offline.

It feels really unspecific to me as opposed to the other ones, but I don't want to sit and have a conversation about that right now necessarily.

So, purpose of introduction, if you have questions, concerns, I think that it would be 100% germane to send them or to communicate with Director San Maritz and Dr. Jones.

I think that's probably going to be the best way to do it because then they have time to actually sit with your questions and provide you the answers in an intelligible way.

That's my question, what we were expecting to do right now, so that's...

President Hersey, my take away from this is that I will provide Director Song Moritz a definition of unreliable for her to validate and give to the rest of the board if that's acceptable to the board.

That sounds fine to me.

Okay.

Hold on.

Director Rankin, does that work for you?

Yeah, I just said thanks, sorry.

Perfect, just want to make sure I heard you.

I see Director Rivera-Smith's hand.

Give me one second.

Did you have something you wanted to share, Director?

Oh, I was just going to read, just so it helps us all get it in our heads.

A guardrail is an operational action or class of actions, usually strategic, not tactical.

The superintendent may not use or allow in pursuit of the school system's student outcome goals.

Guardrails are based on the community's values and should not undermine the school system's ability to meet the goals.

Just so we know we're talking about values and strategic and not tactical.

Super helpful.

Director Mayor Smith.

You can tell me then how it plays into my question here, because what I was looking at too, again, I know we talked about this at that, I recall, it's all coming back, at the work session, we went through this.

Number one, the superintendent will not allow school and district initiatives.

We talked about what is that?

And I recall, I think Dr. Jones, you said you had in mind like five or seven, some specific something.

So I'm wondering because then how do we know then, how is it codified that that's it?

If I decide why call this an initiative too, where is that kind of written out?

That's a good question.

Yeah, so since then, we've developed five strategic initiatives that flow from the goals and guardrails, and I will list them off the top of my head.

Culturally responsive, diverse workforce, inclusion, third grade reading, seventh grade math, and college and career readiness.

And those are the strategic initiatives that are aligned with guardrail number one.

So then again, where is that gonna be in some sub-document, something that we can always refer to, along with the definition for reliable?

I think those things should live somewhere.

Just so there's no ambiguity later, because if it's not me, someone else could be like, well, I think this is an initiative, and we should hold you to that for this also.

So noted.

I will provide that documentation.

Okay, thanks.

Any other questions on this item before we move on to the next introduction item?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Introduction item number two.

Acceptance of the board ad hoc governance committee recommendations for implementation of student outcomes focused governance.

approval of this item would accept the recommendations of the board ad hoc governance committee for implementation of student outcomes focused governance as summarized in the board action report with attached supporting documentation during implementation the board president and superintendent will adjust or modify the plan timeline as needed.

So I believe the committee members in some various capacity will be presenting this item.

Yeah.

The Ad Hoc Governance Committee was charged by President Hersey with creating recommendations for the board's implementation of student outcomes focused governance.

This board action report includes the recommended plan and timeline for aligning the board structures and work with student outcomes focused governance.

The board has already completed a number of important steps reflected in the implementation timeline in the packet, including adopting goals and guardrails and training in student outcomes progress monitoring.

This board action creates the plan for the remaining steps in the board's transition.

The recommendations of the committee are divided into eight areas, implementation timeline, board committees, policy manual, board meeting agenda and meeting types, board superintendent relationship, board accountability, board action reports, and community engagement.

Acceptance of the committee's recommendations will provide direction for the work in these areas to begin, including the creation of an additional of additional ad hoc committees and staff work necessary to support the board's transition.

The board action accepts the committee's recommendations, the specific steps and approach provided in more detail in the bar attachments and can be modified during implementation as needed.

Feedback and questions between introduction today and action on 1026 should be sent to me as chair of the committee, President Hersey and Ms. Worth on staff.

other than what we talk about today.

So you'll have questions now and then the questions in between need to be sent to the three of us to review.

Again, this is about creating a culture of continuous improvement and I want to be clear the intent in this process is not to obfuscate or diminish accountability but rather to create that culture of a learning organization so that we too are lifelong learners and learn how to better be laser focused on accountability and support of outcomes for students.

Any of the other committee members have anything they'd like to add before we move to director questions in general?

Okay.

Fantastic.

Liza does not have her hand up.

So I'm assuming that's no.

No, I'm good.

All right.

Okay.

So directors any questions on this item?

That's genuinely surprising.

I was about to say, go ahead.

Go ahead, Director Harris.

I thought you were going to fall off your chair.

Let me be real clear here.

This is not personal.

This is a difference of philosophy.

I won't be voting in favor of this.

I agree that we need different systems.

I agree that we historically have had issues.

I do however believe that our voters did not vote us in to make these kinds of wholesale changes.

And it's not personal but I strongly believe that we are sitting here at this dais to make sure that we are fundamentally accountable to the voters and the families and the students of this city.

I well appreciate that this will probably pass.

I can count votes.

I can read, but I won't be joining in on that.

Thank you.

Any other comments from directors?

Yeah.

Can I speak?

Sorry, I can't totally hear you.

Yes, Director Rankin.

Yes, okay.

I just wanted to respond to Director Harris that I genuinely believe that so many of the things that, and I can't see Director Harris at all on my screen, but genuinely believe that so many of the issues that she has brought forward over the years are addressed by what's in these recommendations and truly hope that the comment is coming from just that and not I really hope that you had time to read the packet I guess I'm saying not to imply that you don't do your homework but I really and I would be happy to have any conversation with you that you want because I do so truly and deeply believe that the issues with engagement, the issues with lack of accountability and confusion about clarity about what should be under the purview of the superintendent, what's the role of the board, what's the role in bargaining, so many of those things are solved by all of us embarking on this work and I believe that's exactly what we were elected to do is to not just continue to do things the same way when we know it's not working but to make it better and to focus on governance and so I guess I'm just extending that to say any any time between now and action I will make time for any kind of conversation with you that you would like.

Not to try to convince you or tell you that you should think something differently, but because I truly believe that this meets a lot of your needs and things I've heard you express, so I would just love to talk with you about that if you would like to.

Director Rankin, I love you like a sister.

These are philosophical differences.

They are not personal.

And I have read every page and read all of the minutes.

But thanks for the offer.

I doubt that I will be taking you up on it.

And I respect your position greatly.

And I respect you as a director even more greatly.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks, Les.

Any others?

I don't want to talk too much about the holistic.

My specific question is regarding trying to find it again.

members will board member number two under board committee recommendation in the second paragraph board members will not introduce new policy work outside of what is legally required and which drives the effective completion of student outcomes focused governance model implementation while standing committees are suspended so and they're suspended until July of 2023. Am I reading that right?

So between now and July, whenever this would get adopted, and July 2023, no policy work can be done except what is legally required.

Is it and or which drives effective completion?

Because then right underneath it says create a new policy.

And that's not legally required.

If it's related to student outcomes focused governance so including the entire policy manual development and review then we can bring it forward just not random policy things that don't need to be updated because of new laws or aren't specifically geared towards the work of what the policy diet, if there's a policy diet committee, ad hoc committee, is doing to update and refine our policy manual and our policies.

And there's a whole process explained in the packet about how you go through and determine which policies there's a tool that's used to look at and evaluate all of our policies.

So as part of that process policy review will be happening but not something random coming forward.

So this is and or, because it says and, so it had to be legally required and drives the effective completion of the SOFG.

That should be and or then?

I think it's just or.

It says and, but it should just be or, because it doesn't make a big difference, right?

I mean, having to fill both those things is one thing and one of those is another.

So I'm trying to, I want to make sure I understand it.

It should be required or which drives effective completion.

Yes, that's what I should say.

Okay, so that helps a lot, thank you very much.

Because I do, and this is very specific to me, I guess, because I have been speaking already with our student board members regarding the student voice policy that I've been, it's been in the wings for like a year because I was waiting for student board members to be here to run it by them and see if it's something they're interested in, and they are very interested in that.

So I would need to know if this stops that work.

because it's a student voice policy.

I feel like it's very much related to student outcomes.

Yeah, I mean, I feel weird being told I can't work on policy as a director because that's kind of like what we do, right?

I would never think to tell any of you that you shouldn't work on a policy that you feel is important because ultimately we get to vote on it.

And if I don't agree with it, I'll just vote no.

Same with you guys.

So I feel like that's a really, I don't know.

I think that's almost inappropriate to ask that nobody does that since that is part of our work.

So the rationale for that is that in order for us to do the intensive work of reviewing all of our policies, time has to be focused.

we've talked before about you know that this is all about units of energy and we don't spend time doing community engagement as a group for example having two-way conversations with community here because we are so caught up in doing all of the other things that we do and so as one example of ways in which we're trying to create that opportunity and so in order to be able to get this work done together we want to make sure that we're not, we can't have staff running parallel processes with us, continuing to run our existing governance system and creating a new governance system.

And so this is to create that space and I wouldn't, say that that isn't something that belongs in, because the policy manual is kind of what we determine to be our real core governance policies that we commit to not just keeping up to date and reviewing on a very regular basis, but actually holding ourselves and our superintendent accountable to and getting that number small enough, right?

And so we have student voices become a huge part of our push for culture change.

And we have that policy as for student school board members existing.

And so I'm not saying it's not possible.

It's just a matter of is it something that is connected to.

And then that's just through this legislative year, which is in July.

So it doesn't stop you from working with students on it.