Seattle Schools Board Meeting Oct 26, 2022

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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.

Okay.

This is President Hersey.

I am now calling to the October 26th 2022 regular board meeting to order at 4 18 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

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

Ms. Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Vice President Hampson Director Harris Present Director Rankin Here Director Rivera-Smith Present Director Sarju Present Director Song Moritz Present President Hersey Here and School Board Student Member Yuan Here Fantastic welcome.

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

Thank you President Hersey board members and audience.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Council for Great City Schools annual conference with many directors and staff and it was just tremendously inspiring and rejuvenating to see other people with the same challenges we have and other people doing very innovative initiatives and our stack up really well.

You know, and I appreciate all the things we're doing as a system, but nothing compares to seeing it happen in a school.

This past week I had a chance to go to Blaine K-8 and Ballard and really seeing what we talk about in terms of inclusion and third grade reading, seventh grade math, college and career readiness.

I got to see it in action.

And so as rewarding as it is to observe the learning we as leaders also have an obligation to to monitor what's happening.

And so now that we've been back in school this year we can begin to establish a new baseline for student outcomes.

And last month we presented data from the previous school year on English and math for our younger students.

At the next regular board meeting, we will have 21-22 information on advanced learning and course completion and graduation.

This summative data from last school year will help us to reset the post remote learning baseline so we can learn more about how well our students are being served.

So in closing we can continue to learn from each other and our peers around the country but our mission and our focus is right here supporting schools and making our system work for students.

Thank you so much for this journey to be on it with you and back to you President Hersey.

Thank you Superintendent Jones.

I will now turn it over to school board student member Jenna Yuan for her comments.

Take it away Jenna.

Thank you.

Thank you President Hersey.

Good late afternoon everyone.

I'm student board member Jenna Yuan a senior at Franklin High School.

I'm really excited to be here today at my second school board meeting.

I want to start off by saying that Luna Nasir and I are still working on the newsletter.

We've been meeting with Julie and Valerie every Monday to discuss board updates board meeting agendas student outreach methods and more.

At our next meeting on Monday we'll be talking about the creation of a potential Instagram account to further engage with students.

So that is something to look forward to.

I want to use this time to remind students who are taking an AP class that AP exam registration ends on Tuesday November 8th.

I also want to remind students that who took the SAT in school on October 12th that most scores will be released on Thursday.

November 3rd.

And now that the sun is setting later is setting earlier and rising later it's really important that students have a safe way of getting to school and returning home.

This is especially true for our student athletes who don't go back home until the sun is completely down and the sky is completely dark.

Further there's often haze fog rain and other factors obstruct our vision as we head into the middle of fall and beginning of winter.

So to our student drivers and families please drive safely and prepare enough travel time especially since traffic is really bad recently.

I'm saying this from experience because as someone who's been driving to school every day, it's not pleasant or safe to be in a rush.

And Halloween is just around the corner in five days.

I wish everyone a fun, memorable and most importantly, safe time.

And that is all I have for my student comment.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for sharing.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

We have now reached the public testimony portion of today's agenda, but it is not yet 430. To keep the meetings going, we will begin with committee reports now, though this will be very light considering that many of our committees last or rather this month were canceled due to director obligations.

So with that being said, I will begin with the executive committee.

The executive committee did meet briefly last week to determine Excuse me to determine the meeting agendas for our next two upcoming meetings no further business was discussed and we promptly adjourned after that process was complete.

I'm not sure if we have updates legislatively or others that might be relevant for this moment.

Yeah I do legislative.

All right fantastic.

Take it away Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I am going to be leaving today's meeting early probably between the consent agenda consent agenda and any items that may be voted on individually from the consent agenda before the hearing because I'm going to go to meet with other King County district area to WASDA board members liaisons to talk about upcoming legislative stuff.

So sorry to leave you all, but I'm excited to go and represent us there.

Speaking of legislative priorities, tonight for introduction, I won't be here for the introduction of this item, but It's in the packet.

Everyone should have had a chance to look at it.

So we'll be introducing the legislative agenda for the school board.

I worked with staff and with community partners to develop this.

Based on some of the outreach and priorities from last year, which was not a budget legislative session, so there were still some outstanding priorities and some common themes that our community members still have hold on high priority, and they aligned very well with priorities that I received from board directors when I asked for input on our priorities to the WASDA legislative priority list.

So that was all incorporated and the reason that adopting a legislative platform is so important is because it authorizes the district to advocate for certain things.

We as elected officials The public school system itself cannot advocate for resources for itself.

And so by adopting the platform that allows The district on our behalf to advocate for certain things and it also puts into record authority for any of us.

If we're speaking to folks about our platforms as a board, you can represent the full boards, have the strength of the board behind you as opposed to being an individual, which you can also always advocate as an individual.

So that gives direction to me as the legislative liaison as I have conversations with folks around the district and with legislators and yeah it's just sort of it's our collective approval of those things.

Two new priorities related to funding and from last year school meals was a big one.

Since the federal coverage of school meals is ending, it's a WASDA priority as well.

to request funding from the state to cover that gap that's now no longer going to be coming from the federal government to allow school districts to provide school meals free of charge to all students.

And yes so if you have any questions or comments we will see this again in two weeks to vote on it but please email me call me let me know within the next week or so so that we can get that addressed before it comes back for introduction.

Thank you Director Rankin.

We still have a couple of minutes left.

I don't believe any of the other committees had met this month.

Are there any other updates significant to this particular time that we could entertain for the next couple of moments?

Okay.

Yes, please.

This is Director Rivera-Smith.

It sounds like Director Rankin won't be here when we introduce this item that she just spoke on.

Perhaps I could ask a question now that wouldn't be able to ask later?

Would that be okay?

Yeah, that's fine with me.

Okay.

So just to clarify, first of all, thank you for putting together the platform or the agenda.

So to clarify then, as directors, when we go out to advocate, when we're advocating on behalf of our body and the district, we stick to that.

As individuals we can still advocate for any other specific item or agenda or priority that we.

Yes.

Yes.

You just have to make it clear that you're so when the legislative session starts there and I know you know this but I'm just going to.

There's opportunities for people to testify to the legislature pro or con whatever bill they're talking about.

And you can also sign in pro or con.

So I will be working with our staff and lobbyists on coordinating when we should sign in because sometimes as the largest district in the state It's better to stand to sit back and let other districts take the lead.

So we'll coordinate that and we can all talk about it too.

But you're welcome.

So there may be times where probably Cliff will be signing in on behalf of Seattle Public Schools.

But if you wanted to sign in as an individual you could also just put Lisa Rivera-Smith.

It's just if you're going to sign in as A member of the school board and say that you're signing in as the school board.

It has to be something in alignment with these with this platform and the same with when you're talking to legislators if it's a WASDA priority or a PTA because they have their top five also priority if you're a PTA member.

You just have to be clear about in what capacity you're speaking because if you if you are speaking as a member of WASDA you can use the The full weight of the membership of WASDA behind you when you're advocating for that.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks for asking.

Great question.

All right.

By my clock it is now 4.30.

So we will next go to public testimony.

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

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

I will summarize some important parts of this procedure.

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

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

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

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

Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins.

And this new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or the waiting list.

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

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

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

Ms. Ku 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 are calling from and also press star six to unmute yourself on the conference call line.

Every 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 Sylvie Gittenstein.

Thank you.

My name is Sylvie.

I'm Adeline.

We are fifth graders at Bryant.

Halloween is my favorite holiday because it's the only day of the year where I get to dress up and be a totally different person and get to be someone I admire in a book or series.

At our school we are not allowed to wear any sort of costume or have any parties on Halloween.

We understand that some people do not celebrate Halloween and some people wear racist costumes and that is wrong.

However we do not think canceling it for everyone is a fair or reasonable way to solve this problem.

Something that frustrates us is that other schools in Seattle are allowing their students to dress up and even celebrate.

At Lafayette they are doing a Bookoween celebration where kids can wear costumes from their favorite books.

At Greenwood kids are allowed to wear costumes as long as they aren't offensive or have masks or weapons.

And it's optional.

Some schools PTAs are having parades or parties and this doesn't make sense because not all kids can go to those and they might feel left out too.

We wanted to try to find a solution.

So we wrote a petition that said we think kids should have the option to wear costumes to school on Halloween.

We had about 50 signatures on it.

One day at recess we were playing and another kid took the petition to help get more signatures.

By the end of recess he told us that some other kids had torn up the petition and buried it in the dirt.

Adeline and I were allowed to go unbury the pieces.

They looked like this.

We felt very hurt and angry about this.

We had worked really hard to try and find a solution that could work for everyone.

We understand parades can be overwhelming but this rule isn't being applied in the same way at all schools in Seattle.

That doesn't make sense to us.

Isn't it better that everyone gets something than no one gets anything.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. On construction projects at Montlake the playground will shrink to half his current size.

At John Rogers it will shrink by a third.

At Alki the project is way too large for the site.

At Madison school funds are being used mostly for adult league night field use.

Please change these projects.

On three items goals and guardrails the implementation of student outcomes focused governance and partial suspension of board policy.

Six points.

Number one taken together these items look like a coup and a declaration of martial law.

Number two power is taken away from individual board members and the public and given to a triumvirate of the board president superintendent and an outside consultant.

Number three board members will be restricted from introducing new policy.

This deprives board members of powers given to them by state law and it deprives the public of representation by directors who are able to address their concerns.

It looks illegal.

It would restrict free speech rights which entitle each board member to bring up any issue.

Number four I have seen consultants come and go.

One previous consultant promised to eliminate all achievement gaps in a single year.

He was very entertaining but it did not happen.

Number five you take power and responsibility away from yourselves pretending that being distracted was the error made by previous boards.

Number six it is a bureaucrats and a consultants paradise.

Please vote no on these items.

Thank you very much and happy Halloween.

Great job kids.

The next speaker on the list is Nancy Buren.

Oh I didn't know it had started yet.

I still have to get my visual links out.

Okay.

Oh thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Nancy Buren and I am the kitchen manager at Queen Anne Elementary.

I am here to express my thoughts regarding culinary services my employer directive that we offer and serve chocolate milk at breakfast.

USDA requires that we offer two different kinds of milk at breakfast.

One of the offerings must be 1% non-flavored milk.

The other can either be non-fat flavored milk or non-fat unflavored milk.

Up until March of 2022, we offered 1% and non-flavored nonfat milk at breakfast.

This changed on March 9th when via email, we kitchen managers were ordered to serve 1% and nonfat chocolate milk at breakfast.

Several of us have asked why chocolate, but have only been told to follow the directive.

Pediatricians and child nutritionists recommend that children consume no more than 24 grams of added sugar a day.

One percent and skim milk contains zero grams of added sugar in comparison to chocolate milk which contains 11 grams of added sugar.

The math is simple.

11 grams is close to half of the added sugar a child should consume on a daily basis.

Even OSPI recommends limiting the amount of added sugars in a child's daily diet.

The breakfast cereal we serve augments the amount of sugar a child consumes at an SPS breakfast to 23 grams by 8am in the morning.

Other districts in the state do not serve chocolate Chocolate milk.

Chocolate milk.

These districts include Kent, Retton, Bellevue, Edmonds and Federal Way to name a few.

Please help us to eliminate chocolate milk at breakfast and set the students up for a day of successful learning.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Michelle Thompson.

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

The next speaker on the list is Patrice Griffith.

Hello, my name is Patrice, or Pat Griffith.

I live on Queen Anne at 2561 12th Avenue West.

And although I have not had a student in Seattle Public Schools, I do make a big effort to keep in touch with what's happening with schools in Seattle and statewide.

I'd like to address twin issues of trust and community engagement as they affect the proposed governance plan.

Trust between the board, superintendent and parents as well as the general public is crucial to the success of the district in achieving its goals for students.

However, the public engagement part of this has been sorely lacking and that is something that helps increase trust among parents and the general public.

I would urge the board to pause the decision regarding the proposed governance policy until there is effective community engagement and understanding.

I find in conversations with people that are interested in the schools they know nothing about this even though it has been discussed at the board level for about two years because there has been little engagement and virtually no local press coverage of this issue.

And yes there are positives in the SFOG but at this point we don't know how the changes in decision making between the board and the superintendent will be implemented.

With the current budget deficit and declining enrollment The board needs to focus on immediate remedies.

I would urge you to remove approval of the SBOG from the consent agenda and pause its adoption until the public knows and understands the proposed policy changes.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Manuela Slay.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm a parent of two West Seattle high school students.

First of all, I want to thank Director Son Moritz Director Rankin and Director Hampson for the time, effort and work they put into bringing forth the student outcomes focus governance recommendations that will be discussed later today.

Having goals and guardrails aligned with the strategic plan is critical to ensure that the principles of Seattle excellence are a reality for our students with an intentional focus on black boys and teens.

The families in the immigrant Spanish-speaking community I belong to and that I have brought this to are looking forward to learning more and understanding more about this work.

I have been provided with materials in Spanish I have shared with my community, but that is not enough.

We demand community engagement is conducted in an authentic way, and that starts at the top.

I will admit myself that attending a school board community meeting with four more parents lends for a deeper conversation.

But it is also a missed opportunity to truly engage with a wider community.

Social media has brought up great conversations but also misinformation.

I urge the board as a whole to develop a plan and system to communicate and engage to all your constituents, regardless of their home language or their ability to access social media.

I look forward to tonight's vote.

I'm in support of this work and the recommendations made by the ad hoc committee.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Joanna Cullen.

So you can hear me in everything, I think.

Yes, we can hear you.

So I'm Joanna Cullen.

Hi.

Am I going?

Am I heard?

Yes, go ahead, Joanna.

Okay.

I'm Joanna Cullen.

I'm speaking as chair of the League of Women Voters at Seattle King County Education Committee.

And I want to thank the board members who responded to my emails asking that the board be delayed on the governance item until there's greater public engagement and understanding of the provisions for oversight and transparency.

So I'd like it removed from the consent agenda.

The proposal suggests that the board will be relinquishing much of the direct oversight of operations and concentrating more on discussion of student outcomes.

Given the dire budget projection of a $139 million shortfall over the next three years and possible downturn in the Seattle economy, this is not the time for the board to surrender oversight and transparency of operational issues.

The new governance policy suspends many committees and offers up no explanation beyond the idea of various boards that will be developed on how work of the operations committee and showing how it's what the progress doesn't show how it will be publicly shared except on these boards and the items important items such as nutritional service, transportation, enrollment planning, admissions and assignment boundaries will be crucial in discussions of budget issues.

And I share the frustration that some of you expressed with the current lack of transparency with even the current committee structure.

Still delaying the public access to discussions among board members on action until introduction is also not transparent.

Access to board discussions prior to introduction is essential in promoting transparency and public engagement.

Empowered communities And informed communities also impact and promote good student outcomes.

And I look forward to a continued discussion of how to make things more transparent, more engaged.

And I have long hoped that the committee meetings would be videotaped, would be streamed, Those are all things that some of you expressed frustration with, and I agree that those need to happen.

I can't believe I have not used up my two minutes, but thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Jonel Simonian.

Hi, my name is Jo Simonian.

I'm the kitchen manager at Whittier Elementary, and I'm gonna reiterate quite a bit of what Nancy already said, is that I'm requesting help in changing a culinary services directive to serve chocolate milk at breakfast.

In the 10 years that I have been with the district, we have never offered chocolate milk in the morning until this year.

I have not been given an answer to the question of why this has changed.

I have been informed that there will be disciplinary action if I do not comply with this directive.

I can't in good conscience comply.

Many organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, recommend no more than 24 grams of added sugar per day for the school age population.

When we offer chocolate milk at breakfast, that is an additional 11 grams of added sugar each day, five days a week.

We also serve it at lunch.

Two cartons of this milk make up 92% of the entire advised daily total.

Sugar has been implicated in a number of chronic diseases including diabetes and heart disease.

I worry about the health implications for our students.

An email was sent to Culinary Services from former school nurse Marie DeBelle, which sums up my concerns.

She writes, can you please confirm that our students are being offered chocolate milk at breakfast?

In viewing the current menus on your site, it seems we offer many items with added sugar as is.

As a former school nurse and current clinical instructor at the UW School of Nursing, I am concerned that we send the wrong message to our students about healthy life choices when we provide high sugar options.

At least we could keep the drink option without that added sugar.

I feel one of the main obligations of Culinary Services is to provide healthy food and drink options for our student population.

Reversing this directive would be a step in the right direction.

Thank you for listening to my speech.

The next speaker on the list is Christina Cusick.

Hi my name is Christina Kizik.

You're seeing a theme tonight.

I'm also with Culinary Services.

Home of the Otters with Olympic Hills.

So a working adult in Seattle needs to earn more than minimum wage in this state to make ends meet.

If they have a child they need to earn twice that making around $34 an hour according to a research just done by University of Washington.

Many workers can no longer afford the high cost of housing, childcare and transportation.

The average hourly wage for a union laborer in King County is $26.55.

This is to cover the basic costs of housing, transportation, food, and childcare.

In my current position with culinary services as a kitchen manager at the elementary level, I make 13.6% below market wages.

I know many of my coworkers, including myself, that work two jobs.

The differential between our wages and other surrounding districts is between 11 and 14%.

We are the largest district in the state.

We are dependent.

We as a department are struggling to fill our kitchen positions and we can't compete with the other food industry jobs that are paying more than $5 to $10 more an hour.

Our starting wages in the industry Is $20 to $26 to start.

Jobs that offer part-time pay with little or more to retain workers are willing to pay limited hours with no benefits.

We are starting our employees out with three hours a day at $18.82 with limited hours and no benefits.

Then we push them to fill the positions that we're lacking without giving them any of the benefits of medical or sick pay.

I guess I'll have more to say, but I guess I'll stop there, and if there's leftover time someone wants to throw me, they can throw it.

Okay, sorry.

This is leading to high burnout rates and our staffing is feeling undervalued and not cared for.

I'm asking for Aaron Smith and Tina Mead to make good on their promise that they made a year ago to come to the negotiation table for better wages and meet with our union 302 representatives to negotiate better wages for our hardworking department, That worked hard throughout the pandemic to feed and nourish our students.

We got to know our communities better working during the pandemic and we were a positive link and a connection for so many that felt disconnected in our schools.

We worked outside in the cold and the rain, we rode on buses with meals, and we grew with our kitchens while managing one department change after another.

Many of us did the jobs of two people with little support due to lack of available staff.

We as staff have connected with each other.

and are ready to request a 5% raise with the potential of getting some back pay.

We want to see some light shed on this before our next contract negotiations next year.

I feel it is a fair ask in considering what we have faced.

Please hear my request and I speak for many other who couldn't be here tonight.

This is not just solely my voice.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker on the list is Annalise Schroeder.

Hello, my name is Annalise Schroeder and I'm a single mother of this beautiful little boy right here who just started going to District 7 to Rising Star.

I wanted to speak with you, I didn't write anything up, so I apologize if I'm a little jumbled, but I wanted to speak with you all about an inequity I faced in getting him enrolled into school in terms of transportation.

I work and I go to school, and I'm trying to support him financially by myself.

So it's not something that only I'm dealing with, but a lot of single parent households are dealing with in Seattle.

And when I enrolled him into school, I was too late to enroll him into an after-school program that was close enough to the school for him to be transported to via bus, and I know you all switched to the Zoom, whoever the ZUM or whatever the name of the company is, but I had to literally cry to the multiple people in the transportation department In order to get him transportation from Rising Star to Rainier Beach Community Center, which if you all know that distance is like a five minute drive, very short.

But the community center isn't zoned within the zone of Rising Star Elementary.

And so I called literally 13 times trying to get him to get a bus transportation From Rising Star to Rainier Beach, Van Asselt Community Center was full, so I wasn't able to get him to the one that was close.

One of my best friends is also a single mother, and she had this same barrier in order to Get her daughter to the transportation she needed.

So I really hope that you all kind of look at this more because it really does disproportionately impact single-parent households and even low-income households who even have two parents who just are working.

So please...

Please look into that.

And I was told that next year they would not, they made an exception for me.

I'm sorry to go over time, but they made an exception for me.

And then, and he was able to get onto a special education bus to go.

But they were like, don't tell anyone about this.

And this will not happen next year.

They said, don't expect the same treatment next year.

And in order to get that, I literally had to like, I broke down because I was like, there's, I have no other option.

I can't, I will lose my job.

I'm the single income earner.

And I just, that's not possible for me.

And again, I had to call 13 times.

And this is with agency.

And I can just imagine for single-parent households who don't have agency, don't have a strong control of the English language, who don't have the ability to know or have the websites in English for them.

So yeah, please investigate this and look into it.

Thank you.

I do not want people getting rid of chocolate milk.

The next speaker on the list is Alex Zimmerman.

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

The next speaker on the list is Sherilyn Crowther.

That's going to be a tough half to follow.

Hi I'm Sherilyn Crowther and I'm here to speak on behalf of the Seattle Special Education PTSA.

I'll repeat a phrase I have given in testimony before.

The school system is not broken.

It's working as designed.

And that is not to say that any of us find it acceptable.

It is not.

While system change requires heavy lifting occasionally there are smaller actions that can quickly have an impact.

Today I'm asking for two such small actions.

First, Superintendent Jones, please support student services and meaningful family engagement in developing an organizational chart, an org chart, that's made public, specifically around special education.

Here's why.

Families don't know what they don't know.

It's difficult to reach out to a regional special education supervisor with an issue if you don't know there is such a position as a regional special education supervisor.

We're told the Student Services Department is working on the org chart already.

Getting it finished and shared with families publicly is a small action that can have quick impact.

My second ask is will you help us share information we've gathered?

The information is our guide to special education in Seattle Public Schools called Getting to Results.

The 22 pages of information meets one criteria.

Every volunteer who contributed could say, I wish I'd known this before.

The guide is available in the top 10 languages spoken in households of students receiving special education services in SPS, but we don't know which school communities would benefit most from which versions.

As you can see, and we've got copies here, looking at the back of any version, we've made this for students from families where Arabic, Amaric, simplified Chinese, English, Oromo, Somali, Spanish, Tigrinya, Tagalog, or Vietnamese is the primary language at home.

We're working with school-based PTAs, the Seattle Council PTSA, and talking with Seattle Education Association to find out which schools would best benefit.

But district resources would help us get these print pieces into communities quickly.

These small actions will help lead to a new and better system.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Roxanne Clavin.

We can hear you, Roxanne.

Can you hear me?

Roxanne, we can hear you.

OK.

I live Kitty Corner from Medicine Middle School.

What they're gonna do is they're gonna have, I want natural grass in the back of the school and I don't want adults to be playing football or soccer or baseball or whatever.

It should be for kids.

And I don't like the lights I mean, when I look through my windows, I can see those lights, and they're going to get more higher lights than they already have.

And I just really don't like that.

But, you know, I did all this last time when I talked to you, and I hope it all works.

It's not the lights.

It's not on now, but I think there'll be lights when it gets darker outside, you know.

But anyway, I hope that this works or whatever.

So OK, thank you.

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

The first is Michelle Thompson.

She's having trouble getting logged in.

Can I just call her and put her on my phone?

I think so.

If you want to bring it up to the mic.

If you want to go to the next person, I'll try to reach her.

The next person on the list is Alex Zimmerman.

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

President Hersey and board directors please hold.

We're waiting for Michelle Thompson to join the call.

Okay, I just put you on speaker.

Okay, great.

Michelle Thompson.

You're good to go.

Okay, great.

Here I go.

Hi.

I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Michelle Thompson.

I'm a Culinary Services employee with Seattle Public Schools.

I have almost 10 years with the department.

And this job means so much to me.

I really wanted to make a couple of key points today about how the lack of staff, the lack of support, the lack of funds, wages has had a tremendous effect on myself and my family, as I know it has on coworkers as well.

And one key message is that no one can learn or function without nutrition.

This connects to the Maslow's hierarchy of the triangle, and you have to have air, food, water, and nurturing before you can have any of those triangles above it.

And I know how critical and essential it is for ourselves and for students to have access to nutritional meals.

And there's been a lot of information in the news lately about culinary services, taking it to that next level with the cultural and connecting culturally and providing wonderful meals and letting kids explore different things, which is great.

But at the foundation of that is our staff.

And it has been It's been very difficult the last two years.

And just like healthcare workers in the pandemic, we were there on the front lines working with our community.

And so we have to have support.

We have to have this unity.

What's the beeping?

Is that my time?

That's time.

Okay.

Well, I'm just asking for support in our community for ourselves.

We have to be able to survive this and we need each other and we need your support.

This concludes today's testimony.

Thank you Ms. Koo.

Before we move Leslie I see your hand is up.

Do you have something before the consent agenda.

No it's for the consent agenda sir.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yep.

All right.

That concludes our public testimony for the meeting.

Thank you for your comments.

We have now come to the board committee report.

Oh actually there should be a consent agenda.

Sorry.

All right.

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

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

All right.

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?

Director Harris.

Thank you, sir.

President Hersey, I would like to remove items number four, five and six from the consent agenda.

Much appreciated.

Absolutely.

Any other items to be removed from the consent agenda?

Okay.

All right.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda as amended?

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

All right.

Okay.

Hang on one second.

All right.

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

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

All those opposed.

Abstentions.

All right.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

We will now turn to the items removed from the consent agenda beginning with number four.

Sorry President Hersey I didn't hear Director Sarju.

Oh sorry.

I could not tell.

Okay what do you need to know I'm in a crisis.

What do you need to know.

Am I voting.

Yeah just on the consent agenda as amended.

Just an I or a nay.

Okay an I.

I.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's please make sure that that is recorded.

Okay.

So I believe item number four is the first item to be removed from the consent agenda.

Could we pull up item number four if possible on the screen.

Can we get a motion for item number four while we're working on that.

Yeah I move approve I move that the board accept the recommendations of the board ad hoc governance committee.

That's the wrong one for.

Oh sorry.

Approval of.

No I know that's not my motion.

Okay I move that the board approve the revised goals and guardrails as attached to the board action report.

This is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

All right.

This has been moved by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

Okay we will now move into discussion.

On this particular item Director Harris since you pulled it if you have any questions now would be the time to ask those and we can we can move into discussion.

I'm more than happy to let the sponsors of the amendment go first.

Thank you sir.

Absolutely.

There's no amendment to this action.

Director Harris the one you moved was the acceptance of the goals and revised goals and guardrails.

Revised and outcomes goals governance goals and guardrails which was.

I'm aware.

Thank you.

OK.

Cool.

So there's no amendment on this one.

So what is your question or the reason that you wanted number four specifically pulled?

I have heard from a great many community members that they do not understand this process.

So it's my hope that we can give a short version of this.

And I will add that I intend to vote for this.

Thank you.

OK.

All right.

Director Samaritz, do you want to step in?

Sure.

I'd be happy to give a brief overview of what this item is.

So this item is a change to one of the guardrails, specifically guardrail number two.

The updated language will be an operational guardrail.

I don't have it directly in front of me.

I don't know if somebody has it.

It's the superintendent Shawna allow unreliable operations.

Is that right?

If I may, Director Salmaritz, the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service.

This was a change that we had discussed in June and I had worked closely with Superintendent Jones and his team as a reflection that we were indeed missing a guardrail around operations and it was drawn from the 2019-2024 strategic plan.

And the other sentiment was that the original guardrail is largely already reflected in other guardrails that remain.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you both for that.

Director, do we have any other questions on this item before we move to a vote?

This is Dr. Rivera-Smith.

I have a sort of a clarification so I did email Dr. Jones about this already.

My understanding coming out of the conversations from our last board meeting or that there would be additional documentation regarding guardrail number one about what counts what would be considered an initiative in the guardrail of the superintendent will not allow school and district initiatives to go forth without engaging students of color furthest from educational justice and their families, including those who have a preferred language other than English and who require accommodations for disability.

Again, coming out of that conversation from two weeks ago, I was under the impression that there would be an attachment to define what the initiatives are, just to clarify any future confusion so that we know exactly what we're speaking of when we hold them to this guardrail.

And I understand Dr. Jones' reply and I'm able to let him explain his reply since I've raised it for him to my email earlier about that.

Thank you for the question.

Yeah, this guardrail that we're referencing is guardrail number one, and there was some clarification about what would be considered to be initiatives.

Those initiatives are third grade reading, seventh grade math, college and career readiness, inclusion, and culturally responsive and diverse workforce.

Those are the initiatives that will be synonymous with guardrail number one in terms of community engagement.

And so thank you.

So those are not attached to this section, but I appreciate that we can get those on the record right now.

Just again, if we need to refer back to that as we carry this out, no further questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other questions before we move to the vote on this item?

All right, seeing none.

Miss Wilson Jones, the roll call, please.

Vice President Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Sarju I vote yes Director Song Moritz aye and President Hersey aye This motion is passed unanimously.

All right.

Fantastic.

Now let's move to item number five.

If I could get a motion for item number five that would be greatly appreciated.

I move that the board accept the recommendations of the board ad hoc governance committee for implementation of student outcomes focused governance as summarized in this board action report with attached supporting documentation.

During implementation the board president and superintendent will adjust or modify the plan and timeline as needed.

Second.

All right, this has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

In this process, do we want to go to the sponsor or the directors that brought this forward first, or do we want to let the person who made the amendment go first?

Director Hampson, if you have something that you'd like to say for this item, then by all means take it away, or any other committee member for that matter.

So we would need to go to the amendment first before we discuss.

Okay, thanks for that clarity.

Okay, let's go to Director Rivera-Smith.

I move the school board approve amendment one to the board action report titled acceptance of the board ad hoc governance committee's recommendations for implementation of student outcomes focused governance, which will substitute the following motion language for the recommended motion included in the underlying board action report.

I move that the board accept the recommendations of the board ad hoc governance committee for implementation of student outcomes focused governance as summarized in this board action report with attached supporting documentation.

The board declines to implement the portion of board committee recommendation two as follows.

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.

During implementation, the board president and superintendent will adjust or modify the plan and timeline as needed.

Second.

Okay.

Do you want to speak to your amendment, Director Rivera-Smith?

Thank you.

Do we need a second to that?

That's a good question.

Do we need a second?

I apologize.

My microphone wasn't on.

This is Director Songworth, and I second that motion.

Oh, okay.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you so much.

I think we had a lot of discussion about this two weeks ago at our last board meeting, and I raised my concerns then.

We had a good discussion about it.

I have since brought forward this amended motion, which to be clear is not amending the recommendations of the committee, but is amending our acceptance of it to exclude that portion of the recommendations.

As I discussed with board members two weeks ago, I feel that it's, personally, I feel that it's irresponsible to ask board members to not bring forward any policy work that they feel is necessary or that would benefit the district during this time period, or ever really, but especially not to be, I don't agree with a moratorium on such work.

I understand that The logic behind the recommendation was to make room for other work that is to be completed, especially with staff bandwidth and our own bandwidth on the board.

However, I feel that it is still, for lack of a better word, an inalienable right of ours to work on policy that we see as necessary.

And I appreciate everyone's consideration of this amended motion.

Okay.

Thank you, Director Rivera-Smith.

Do we have any questions, any discussion for this particular item?

I think I see Director Rankin's hand.

Yeah, and actually, Brandon, sorry, for the remainder of the meeting, do you want us to use...

Oh, no, I'm not logged into Teams.

If we just waive, do you want us to do that or do you want us to say anything?

Yeah, so for the remainder of the meeting, aside from the consent portion, I'm going to hand it over to Director Hampson just because I can't see you well enough to be able to know whose hand is up.

But I think I can manage through these next couple of pieces, but then we'll figure it out.

But for now, go ahead and take it away.

Cool.

Thank you.

When I was reading this, I kept going back and forth.

This may just be the semantics.

The underlying item is recommendations for a process that then will begin, that has not yet begun, that we're saying, here's the committee did the work to say, all right, we want to do this.

We want to examine our practices, try to become more effective at governance.

This is a way to do that.

The ad hoc committee took on the responsibility of doing that work, research, and bringing forth recommendations for the full board to consider.

Nothing in those recommendations is changing any policy or binding in any way.

This is simply for the most efficient implementation of this governance structure.

Here's what we recommend.

So we recommend not bringing forward brand new policy work because the focus should be on, if you look at the recommendations, there's a lot of policy work coming.

If we follow the recommendations and that in the interest of our own time and attention and that of staff time, we should do the work that we're Committed to doing rather than bring forth new policy.

I still think that's a good recommendation.

But I'm wondering, Chief Counsel Narver, if you can just clarify.

I guess I totally hear what Director Rivera-Smith is saying.

She doesn't want to agree to not being allowed to do that.

I just think that this doesn't actually disallow any one director from doing that if there's something that comes up that's important that they want to work on.

It just says for efficiency's sake the committee recommends You don't do that.

But it's not, there's nothing to interrupt the process of how a policy would come forward.

And also since this is a board recommendation, or a recommendation of a committee of board members to the board, and the board is taking the vote, the board could also two weeks from now say, you know, we actually, something came up that made us reevaluate that and we're gonna bring forth a different vote.

It's all totally up to us.

So this is my back and forth.

This doesn't say you're not allowed to and there's no penalty and there's no barriers being put up to bring forward policy.

It's just saying in the interest of being efficient, we recommend you not.

I'm happy to address that.

Good evening, Greg Narver, general counsel.

Addressing your question, first of all, I'll say I think it's the members of the ad hoc committee who can best speak to what the intent was, as I have read it carefully and read the bar.

I think what we have are recommendations that amount to a set of priorities and a work plan over the next months as student outcomes focused governance is implemented.

And part of prioritizing certain things may be deprioritizing others and that certain policy work is intended to be put on the back burner while this student outcomes focused governance is implemented.

Picking up on what some of the public comment has been, the board, by passing this, is not giving up its powers under state law.

Those powers exist irrespective of how the board chooses to prioritize its work.

The board's statutory authority to enact policy isn't removed What it does do is to message to the public and to staff about this is where we're going to put our focus.

But that doesn't go away.

If, for example, an unforeseen set of circumstances comes up, We're probably all thinking back to early 2020 when all of a sudden there's a pandemic that requires all kinds of board action that hadn't been foreseen.

The board retains the power to make necessary policies to address that.

The board also always retains the ability to change its mind.

If it decides that this prioritization in fact isn't playing out as intended, it may choose to go back to the old model.

The board never gives up that authority.

But this is a statement that for now, our present intent is that this is going to be our focus.

These things are going to wait a little bit longer.

Does that address your question?

It does, yes.

Thank you.

Before I walk away, does anyone else want a piece of me?

Director Harris's hand is up.

I'm not sure if she wants a piece of you or somebody else.

I would never, ever put it that way.

I would ask, however, Who decides whether or not a policy needs to be brought forward?

Who decides whether or not it should be brought forward?

That would be through the agenda setting process.

And any director believing that a policy is needed would get that input into, I know this is on the agenda later, whatever process the board is going to have in mind for Setting the agenda working with staff to develop a bar and and a proposed policy to bring forward.

But the ultimate decision is that of the board whether or not to move forward with a proposed policy if one is in fact is placed on the agenda.

And more specifically, Leslie, to answer your question, ultimately it'll be a combination of the board president and the superintendent.

There's already been an accommodation in this made from the best practice of student outcomes focused governance where it recommends two board directors be required, and we're only requiring one.

And what I'm telling you right now is that if somebody brings something forward to me, you know, I'm not going to block you.

You know what I'm saying?

The hope of this is that we can get to a place to where we realize that I think a lot of us are a lot closer on this than I think we're giving ourselves credit.

And so to answer your question effectively, it'll be a conversation between the board president, whoever that may be, along with the superintendent, with one director being required to bring any such policy forward for consideration.

And I appreciate that, and I absolutely believe in my heart of hearts that you will not block.

But I guess then my next question is, how in fact is this transparent to the general public, our staff, our voters, and our families?

It would appear, if I can count votes correctly, we will not have committees at the end of this evening.

So how is this not behind the curtain, non-transparent process?

And again, none of this is personal.

I am beyond concerned about this issue.

No one's making it personal.

No one uses that word of making it personal but you, Director Harris.

So let's just all clear the air at this moment.

None of this is personal.

This is work.

So what I would say, I think I see your hand, Chandra, and then I'd be happy to tag on afterward.

Well I think Director Rivera-Smith had her hand up first.

I just wanted to respond to that one piece about we could the alternative that the committee did consider was having every agenda come directly to the so just to be clear the committee has been meeting since June.

Through the end of September and those meetings were always open to all board members and one of the things that we struggled with was when we do agenda setting do we take because the intent make no mistake the intent of this governance structure this framework is actually to to drastically increase Accountability and transparency not reduce it.

Those are the hallmarks of this framework both the policy governance framework and the student outcomes focus governance framework.

And in this case so boards throughout the country And throughout the state we are very much alone as the research demonstrates as our staff was so wonderful to help us with in terms of how we set our agendas and the extent to which we have committees that do this review.

We have many options before us that we want to be considering over the next six months and they range from retaining an executive committee to do functions like agenda setting to having agenda setting meetings so some boards actually have just special separate meetings where they all come together and all seven of us set the agenda.

That was something that the committee considered recommending and at the end of the day for the purposes of it we reached a consensus that the best thing to do in this moment for efficiency's sake is to because we do have trust in our board president and our superintendent And we included that caveat of only one person needs to bring something before the board in order for it to be considered.

And as long as it can be fit into the schedule, then of course we would consider it.

So there was not an intent to limit opportunities.

In fact, I felt like we sort of increased it because we cut it down.

You don't even have to have anybody else sign onto it.

And just to be clear, and that is about just setting the agendas, not actually setting policy.

Can I address one legal issue here and then I recognize this discussion is mostly about the board decision on board governance and process and I'll step away.

I do want to point out though specific to adoption of policy the interests of transparency are highlighted by specific state statute.

That says that a school board cannot adopt policy without providing notice to the public that either sets out the policy or reasonably describes it gives an opportunity for public comment and requires that the board take the time to consider that public comment.

So it's not as if a policy can be rushed through that is arising for the first time on the dais that would violate that statute.

So there is there is a process required.

That was the other big component of what the committee did was to we are pushing staff to eventually get us to 14 days of lead time and we're backing ourself into it in terms of getting things out to the public 14 days in advance so that directors have a At least a two week that's before it gets to an introductory state depending on the type of item that it is that before it comes before the board at all that there is at least 14 days.

Right now we only have five.

So we're actually trying to drastically increase the amount of time that there is opportunity and create more opportunities which we'll get into later to have two by or two way interaction with community about those items which is something that we do not currently have.

Sorry.

No, thank you very much.

And I feel like this discussion is weighing into the original motion right now, and I want to stick to the amended motion just so that we can get past that and get on to discussions on the underlying motion.

So I want to first acknowledge Director Rankin's Trying to clarify what this is, and I immensely appreciate your interpretation of the flexibility that still exists in these recommendations.

We are accepting, we're saying, hey, you've handed this to us, we accept this.

I get it.

I really do appreciate that you are making that distinction.

And so just to clarify my understanding of why I brought this, or my reasoning, I guess, why I'm doing this.

And I hear Director, I'm sorry, General Counsel Narver talked about how what's in here tells us, in essence, what we're deprioritizing.

So you could say, well, we're deprioritizing outside policy work.

But it does say board members will not introduce new policy work.

And so I feel that's stronger than even just a deprioritize.

And I'm just personally not comfortable Having that language in there to be accepted.

Again, I'm not changing the language.

It's in your recommendations.

It's not leaving.

For me, to get to a point that I can Faithfully take this on and say that I have accepted it.

I want to have us not accept that part of it.

And again, I think this was without trying to dive in and rewrite your recommendations for you guys, which I wouldn't do.

I think this is a fair way of doing that.

Well, also, you know, and again, I get that it's all flexible, but if it's all flexible, why do we have a period, right?

We have this to lay out the intentions of the acceptance.

So I would not intend to adhere to this, the part that says do not work on new policy outside of what is legally required and which drives the effective completion of student outcomes focused governing.

First of all, I think that should have been and or, but short of that, I'm just asking to have the whole thing

I think it was updated to say and or in the future.

I'm reading the talking points and it still says and so maybe that part wasn't updated.

Go ahead.

I wanted to speak to the amendment and clarify my We tried to have as much of a lead time as possible on these recommendations so that we had an opportunity to talk about them.

I wasn't aware of this amendment until last night.

I know we talked about it during the last meeting but I didn't know that it was still a concern.

And one of the things I wanted to point out is that I do believe that it's important that we provide this respite for ourselves and for staff so that we can focus and so By committing so this is really a commitment that we're trying to make together the goal of the committee because we did set out a smart goal for ourselves is with some specific deadlines and then with the goal of having the board adopt the recommendations knowing that there would be a lot of accept the recommendations technically I believe it's the same thing but It's an action that we take right and any specific actions that come from that will actually take place.

There's a few of them tonight which just allow us the opportunity to do the work together and then we will be spending the next 12 plus months, I think it might be 15 months, before we make any massive policy changes.

But without that common commitment, it's difficult to sort of Talk about when does the process start and when does it end and when are we actually making these final decisions before we get into the real meat of because these are mostly just temporary suspensions.

We're not actually changing policy right now.

We're just temporarily suspending them and we have a deadline for when we're going to do that.

In that period of time the The idea was to have the focus be on really getting to a core policy manual that is about how the board does its business.

So some of this is necessary to definitely get out into community and start talking about what it is that we're considering shifting to in whole cloth and some of it and sort of the socializing of it.

But the intent is to come together as a board in terms of as our core policy manual what things need to be stated very clearly in terms of how we work with the superintendent, how we work with each other, and how we work with the community.

We don't actually have a community engagement policy.

We as a board don't do community engagement.

We don't have a community engagement policy.

And that's something that everybody knows we need to get much better at.

Because we don't have the vehicles or the structure for it.

And this is intended to create that structure.

And so I think maybe where there's a gap, because I'm hearing you say that there's this important thing that you need to work on.

And I don't necessarily think we should be making decisions based on individual needs and wants.

I think we should be doing it based on what's going to work for us as an entire board to better focus.

And at the same time, I believe that what the specific policy work that you're interested in may in fact be a critical component of that core policy manual.

I don't see the two things as conflicting is what I'm saying.

If in fact this is as critical as it seems to be and is connected to some really important existing policies that we have, if we're talking specifically about student voice, there is definitely room for that.

I've talked to many folks on this board and in community about my interest in having something in our core set of policies around how we fund buildings.

And so that may or may not make it into the final policy manual depending on what we all decide.

It's been something that's been hard to get pushed forward.

But I'm willing to I think the request is for us to commit to Putting those things into that bucket of these are our core representations of how we work together and the things that are non-starters for us in working with the superintendent.

And a representation about student voice as an example might be one of those things.

I can certainly see it being one.

And then outside of that time, when we get past that culling process and kind of reforming what our core policies are, then we kind of lift the Non-official commitment to only focus on that.

So that's kind of my conversation that I wanted to have here with you is putting forward when I saw this amendment and having heard about it from you during our last meeting is that I don't think that us saying that means that we're not going to be we're just not considering We have a history of considering all kinds of resolutions and we're all guilty of it.

Resolutions and policies that we think are going to be the one that's really going to cause the ultimate change instead of coming together and talking about what are the core things we really need to focus on.

And that's why we're asking for this time.

So, yes, thank you.

So I'm kind of hearing two things here.

I'm hearing that there's not really a conflict, but yet there's enough of a conflict that it sounds like you guys don't want to pass this alternative motion.

And I get that, A, I'm not doing this for any personal need here.

If I didn't have a policy that I had been I had on the back burner for a good while now, I would still be making this motion because I'm still trying to protect everybody up here's ability to work on any policy that they feel is necessary.

Again, I don't think any of us bring forward a policy that we don't think is necessary.

So I'm going to go ahead and use that word necessary.

I think we should all be free to do that without being worried of it's going against some understood.

We shall not do that.

And again, if there really is this flexibility we wanna center on here about how we implement the recommendations, I don't know why this would be a non-starter to have to take this part out of it because you guys can all still not bring forward policy that you don't think is worth time or effort of yourselves or staff.

And again, this isn't even, and I do understand from a conversation with President Hersey that We're being very protective of staff bandwidth because there's a lot to be accomplished in this next year.

I don't intend if and when I bring forward any policy work to encumber staff on that and make them work on that with me.

Clearly there's a routing process that probably nobody wants somebody to skip over because there's legal and financing parts that have to go through.

And President Hersey seemed to understand that that would be still necessary to do routing of any policy work that might come forward, but it would not be a thing where I'm looking to staff to coordinate engagement or coordinate meetings.

Although I will point out, I was like, well, why is staff even necessary to do board work period outside of the routing?

You know, it probably is helpful.

And I do know even in Dr. Jones' own contract, we have the superintendent will use his best efforts to ensure that the board has independent and necessary support from the board office.

That's something that we always should expect, because it is in his contract.

Needless to say, that's not my intent, or I hope it wouldn't be anyone else's intent if they were just to decide to bring forward any new policy work in this next year.

It is simply, again, that that is something that I'm absolutely uncomfortable Accepting as an expectation that will not be done.

But I really appreciate all that you've said here.

I'm going to let Director Somerich say.

And just to clarify, it's just through this legislative session, not through the entire year.

Yeah, I see you're generally speaking, sorry.

It's for the time period noted on the underlying board action.

I don't want to put words in Director Rivera Smith's mouth but what I'm hearing is that the will not as strong language to her and when we're talking about a collective commitment, this is something that she doesn't want to commit to.

Potentially there are other members of the board who are not ready to commit to this.

And from my perspective as a member of the ad hoc committee, there are eight deliverables on there.

And I'm not sure that relinquishing this language will interfere with the other content of the recommendation.

So I, as a member of this committee, feel prepared to relinquish that, if that's what's going to help us cross the finish line.

Thank you President Hersey.

Couple of questions.

I appreciate the student voice piece.

What about things like the student assignment plan and the weighted staffing standard formula.

We've certainly heard a great deal of pushback from committee community and from staff on those two issues.

Don't both of those things relate directly to student outcomes.

I think we're getting pretty far from the amendment.

I think your question is a good one and you've asked it before.

I don't know if there's somebody on the committee who would like to respond quickly, but just a reminder, let's keep it to the amendment because we will have an opportunity to discuss the underlying item afterward.

So we depending on the particular approval that you're speaking to or the work that you're speaking to that is full that still remains and will remain under the authority of the board as to whether or not we're talking about inputs.

Which are under the purview of the superintendent to implement or whether we're talking about an actual that that so that input would actually go under the new guardrail.

Guardrail 2 right.

The at least the two that I think you stated in terms of how do we resource and draw boundaries to Potentially have an input on student outcomes.

I wouldn't say that we have data what the student assignment plan and the school boundaries I think those are the two that you stated.

I don't know that we have any particular data out there that says that those actually have an impact on I think we know they have an impact on how Families feel we don't know whether or not they have a direct impact on student outcomes.

Nonetheless those are decisions that we need to make with good engagement.

And one of my hopes is that out of this process we get a much stronger community engagement structure and framework as a board so that we are doing that not only episodically but regularly.

And as those things come up in the future when it's time to have those discussions which it will be soon we're well prepared to have those discussions and start having them very much in advance of the decision time.

Actually one of those issues was the weighted staffing standards which I suspect is starting right now.

And that means resourcing our schools.

And to me there's an A equals B through line to student outcomes.

And we've all talked about counselors social workers etc.

So I'm trying to figure out how board members can bring forth resolutions if we don't have committees to go through And then I guess and I'll bring it up in the next conversation obviously but do we have any data since we're a data-driven district that student outcomes have increased exponentially because of SOFG?

So that is definitely I don't want to get into that other conversation and in terms of not resolutions because that's not a good form of governance in terms of best practices because they don't formally hold the superintendent accountable to anything as we have found out in very recent months.

Whereas policy is a much stronger form and as I've mentioned many times before I'm a strong proponent of a much more clear and I believe the superintendent deserves a much more clear statement about our position on funding and that was my note how we fund schools equitably and how the budget clearly ties to student outcomes and I believe that is connected to that as well particularly As there's a formula that that the that staff uses relative to that.

I would like to see that as one of our core policies.

That doesn't mean that everyone is going to agree to that.

I think that that should be part of the policy manual.

It doesn't mean it will become that but I I will be advocating for it and we will have that discussion in the coming months.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Thank you.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF Yeah.

And again if you want to bring something forward submit it to the board president.

Processes laid out and if we if we get into this process and we feel like that is not the best way to go there's obviously a couple of different avenues that we could take and then any board director could bring that forth and we can have a conversation about it.

So all of that stuff can can exist in the same space.

Any other questions.

Director Rankin I see your hand.

Go for it.

Well okay so in terms of bringing policy forward Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but to my memory, I think I'm the only board director who has written and brought forth policy in the last year or so that came.

And so what I'm wondering is we're not bringing forth new policies all the time anyway.

So we're kind of getting hung up on how do we do this when it's not something that's happening a lot.

And so.

So for the because that it takes us writing it like we need to write it.

So to the amendment my concern I have made the commitment to Director Hersey and as in relation to these recommendations I am personally fully committed and very ready to work on the board expectation and behavior and board superintendent relationship policies.

And I would really appreciate not I would really appreciate having partners in that from the board.

So that's really actually what this is about for me is like if if we're I mean we decided over a year ago that we wanted to improve our practice as a board recognize that the Seattle School Board has not done a lot of training and professional development that Washington State has one of the lowest requirements for board directors in terms of training and professional development.

We basically have to do Open Public Meetings Act and a quick legal boot camp and then you could be a school board director.

We don't actually get training or required to participate in training about how to be part of a board that governs.

And so that's really what this is.

I am very committed to doing this and to making it work.

And I think why I'm hesitant to let go of that piece in the amendment Is because it feels and I know this is not what you're saying but what it feels like is we're about to just accept we have completed this work as a committee.

Here you go full board.

We're just trying to accept this work and it feels like there's already a foot out the door.

And so that's why I'm like it matters to me as a mutual commitment that I'm not going to be writing those policies by myself.

That we mean what we say and we want to do this and improve our practice.

And there is no policy for the board to engage with community.

There's nothing.

It's not even that it's old.

There just isn't one.

There is a policy about board superintendent relationship.

It's based on a WASDA model policy hasn't been updated in quite some time.

That's where the root of so many issues come from is that Seattle Public Schools doesn't have a clearly defined Role of the board.

We don't have common agreements about how we're going to behave together or what we're accountable to community for doing or not doing.

Those policies simply don't exist.

And I feel so strongly that they must.

And so I don't know.

I'm the amendment.

I understand where you're coming from.

And I'm I think I'm just kind of asking for like our collaborative commitment to You know, taking seriously, not going off on a different path.

It doesn't mean nothing.

It doesn't mean you can't.

We can't individually and wouldn't want to bar anybody from bringing forward policy.

You can already do that.

Yeah.

And I appreciate you saying that, how you feel, because this is how I feel.

And I really do.

I mean, I'm not saying this facetiously at all, because I think how we feel about this is very, very important.

And I'm hearing how you feel.

And I'm going to try to help you out a little.

But again to understand this is how I feel by saying I will not be.

This directive feels very paternal like you will not do this.

And I get that there's flexibility but still seeing it in there like that as a very very few things in here actually are very even that direct a lot of them are might do this could do this should do this.

This one is very much you will not do this.

And outside of that though you know I am Making a huge leap of faith in committing to this work as a board and as a group.

Because I do want you to know that I have that commitment from me.

I'm not and I know we're getting into the underlying motion here.

I'm not the best cheerleader for SMFG right now because I do have my own questions that are not answered still.

But even in knowing that, even in not feeling Super rah-rah great right now about it.

I'm still willing to make that commitment of following through with this work because I know what we're doing now isn't working and I know that we need to do something as drastic as this calls for to get where we need to be for our students.

So I need to put my own holistic feelings about this thing aside to know that this is something that Has the potential to do great things.

And I, again, getting too much into the underlying motion here, but I see this as a roadmap.

And like when we have follow maps, a lot of times you got your GPS and it says, oh, a better route can available.

I feel like we should sell flexibility to take that better route, even though we have a great map ahead of us.

If a great route, if a better route pops up, I hope that we can still pivot there even though it's not in the SOFG Bible because it will be better and we could agree and come together on what's best for our district.

And that is where I'm making that leap of faith in there because I have, we've heard from a lot of supporters who are very resistant and hesitant about us doing this.

They don't feel engaged.

I hear that.

I completely hear that.

I agree there wasn't a lot of early engagement on it.

But the commitment is going forward we will and going forward we'll work together on this and be ready to take those alternative routes that are better for our students better for getting there.

It's a perfect analogy.

I appreciate that.

The route says this better route available and then we can all say yeah let's do it.

I love that.

All right.

I don't see any other hands up.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

But I think it's time for us to move to the vote on this.

Who can't see.

Oh go ahead Director Samaritz.

This will be let's try to keep this to the last one because we can still talk about the underlying motion and so I just want to keep us moving along but the conversation has been great.

Go ahead Director Samaritz.

Yes I just want to respond to what Director Rankin said.

I think from my perspective we were doing the recommendations as a smaller group and right now we're trying to socialize these recommendations with the full board.

And so I see this amendment as a way to keep the foot in the door so to speak.

And so I am in favor of moving forward with this amendment so that we can keep this moving.

Okay.

Any other statements.

Director Yon would like to speak.

Yon.

Sorry.

Who.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead.

As a student listening into this discussion I think that what Director Rivera-Smith is saying makes quite a lot of sense.

I think that if the board is allowing some flexibility I think that it wouldn't hurt to have it say that on paper so that there isn't future disagreements.

Future disagreements in the board.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Are we prepared to move to the vote on this issue?

Or rather the amendment?

Okay.

Seeing no opposition, Ms. Wilson-Jones, the roll call please.

Calling the roll on Amendment 1 to Consent Agenda Item 5. Director Rankin.

I was really hoping I have a couple more minutes to think.

I'm having a trust a trust issue moment of I want to build trust in this process.

And for me it's a sort of a violation of the trust to vote for the amendment.

But I don't want to violate relationship with Director Rear Smith by voting no.

I don't think I ever abstain or I don't typically but I'm going to abstain.

Director Rivera-Smith Director Sarju Director Song Moritz Vice President Hampson Director Harris President Hersey This motion has passed with a vote of 4 yes to 2 no and 1 abstention.

Okay.

Can we please have a motion for the underlying item.

I move that the board accept the recommendations of the board ad hoc governance committee for implementation of student outcomes focused governance is summarized in sport action report with attached supporting documentation.

The board declines to implement the portion of board committee recommendation to as follows 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 to implementation while standing committees are suspended.

During implementation, the Board President and Superintendent will adjust or modify the plan and timeline as needed.

Second.

This has been moved by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

Director Hampson, I don't know if you want to continue to speak to this particular motion or if we want to go directly to questions, but you let me know.

First of all just thanks again for fellow committee members and staff who put an enormous amount of time and effort into this work.

Our ability as a governing team to actually create a culture of continuous improvement and accountability in particular And ultimately to be successful in creating the conditions so that our students can succeed very much depend on our ability to self reflect hold ourselves accountable to the work that we do on behalf of children representing the vision and values of community and to hold the superintendent accountable to producing those outcomes.

By making decisions about the inputs and working with us in measurement of outputs which are interim metrics that we have not ever in Seattle Public Schools used as a tool to determine whether even in the course of a year we are effectively moving toward success for students.

Most of our students get to the end of a school year And get passed on to the next grade and nobody pays any attention to what has happened to course correct during that year.

The mantra of student outcomes focused governance which just to be really clear is based on the policy governance model.

It's based on every piece of research and best practices out there when it comes to governance.

We didn't make this up here in Seattle.

We don't have some nefarious consultant out there who's dictating these things.

It's actually we all spent the better part of a week in Orlando with every major urban school district in the country talking about exactly this work.

And the critical juncture that we are at in public education where we continue to fail to serve our students who are at the margins of society and for whom the gaps are continuing to grow.

And even as they continue to grow economically, something over which we have no control, we have no business continuing to proceed with the same structures, the same models, As one of our speakers said today with the same system that is doing exactly what it was intended to do which is fail our students.

Fail our students furthest from educational justice and as our strategic plan states particularly our black male students.

We have a tremendous benefit of being in a community where Our vision and values are on display in our yard signs at our schools.

Black lives matter.

Black lives don't matter in our academic outcomes in Seattle Public Schools.

And if we want to realize a shift in that reality a positive shift in that reality and start to This model on this governance structure isn't about closing the achievement gap or the opportunity gap.

It's about closing the belief gap.

It's been one of the most profoundly challenging things for me on this board to realize that even in as much as I am committed to this strategic plan, I'm committed to this work of targeted universalism, of decolonizing our education system, of really designing it to serve the students based on their needs.

There's still this Outlying notion of oh but we can't solve poverty and we can't solve nutrition and we can't solve lack of medical care and we can't solve lack of mental health and behavioral health care.

And therefore we can only get so far with our students.

And what this model insists is that yes we can.

And we owe it to them to believe in one another.

To believe in our superintendent.

In our ability to do this work in spite of all those things because our children are in fact that capable and that talented and that deserving of our confidence and our trust and our belief.

What it means to operationalize notions like that.

Superintendent Jones and I in particular had some really incredible conversations with accountability.

Many of the districts that are similar to ours have a position that is the head of accountability for the entire district which is about exactly what we're talking about.

How do we take these values that we espouse in Seattle in this liberal bastion and not have this reality that is so incongruous with those vision and values.

This is from all corners of research and parts of the country, from southern red states in the south to blue states in the north to purple states, somewhere in between.

This is the work that people who are dedicating their lives to changing the education system in America for kids, are committing themselves to, we are not in this alone, and that's important, because we can get very isolated here in Seattle.

But make no mistake, there are districts in Seattle who are doing this work.

I'm sorry, in Washington, who are doing this work and are doing it successfully, and do in fact have really similar demographics to us, but because of a very clear focus are doing much better for students from educational justice.

So yeah apparently I did have a lot to say.

I'm really proud and excited about the opportunity that this represents for us as a board with our very very different personalities and ways of seeing things.

To come together around what does it mean to actually structure a governance model that not just works for us but works for all boards going forward and that is clearly visible to the community about exactly how our students are doing and exactly what our plans are for shifting midstream and at year end to do better by them And making sure that we have plenty of time additionally to then go to Olympia and fight for what our kids deserve in terms of the funding that allows us to so that the superintendent has that much more to put towards input for things like salaries for nutrition services providers.

So.

Thank you all for getting us to this moment.

We're going to continue to have disagreements about how we get there.

And that's all part of the process.

And hopefully we have all day Saturday to spend together talking about namely community engagement.

One of the things that this plan lays out and we're going to have to push really hard to get out there and figure out how we're going to feel comfortable having two-way conversations with community about what it means To take those values and operationalize them.

What does it mean to operationalize them?

What does it mean to do it differently than what we're doing now?

And what are the particular metrics that we're going to which are now represented by our goals and guardrails?

They're going to help us get there.

So thank you to Superintendent Jones.

For and there's a lot of staff work behind this and I hope he'll take the opportunity to speak to that because it is a huge culture shift for the district.

As well.

And our hope is that we start to represent here in this boardroom the kind of trust and belief in our success that we want our students to experience when they walk into their classrooms.

Thank you, President Hersey.

Thank you, Director Hampson.

Do we have any other questions, comments before we Move to the vote on this particular item.

I see maybe Director Summers' hand.

It was me, Director Rivera-Smith.

I was just leaving it open for the committee members if they would like to say anything.

No, thank you.

I probably said enough in the other part because we talked a lot about the underlying motion.

I want to just again reiterate and acknowledge the Commitment we've made to, A, do better by our students.

And that's why this is not, SOFGI, we all up here know this is not new.

This isn't us bringing it in right now.

This has been part of what our work has been for the last year and a half.

And I think that clearly hasn't been communicated very well to the wider general public because a lot of them think this is something we're doing today.

But it's been going on for a while.

And I agree that it hasn't been really covered by the media, so it hasn't been out there.

And that is a little regretful.

But at the same time, that just shows us that we have a lot of work to do to catch up with the engagement and communications that are necessary to have people understand it the way we understand it and the way personally I'm trying to understand it.

Because again, we have two people on our board who are training to be coaches on this.

I mean, they really are.

are dedicated and see this as imperative and others of us have done trainings and personally I still have a lot of questions that I need to dig into on it.

But that's why I take comfort in knowing that it is something that we can still There's a lot of votes between now and a year or nine months from now, whatever it is.

And we can have great discussions as we go for each one of those.

We're about to have another one after this, right?

Steps towards implementing this.

And those are all things that I think that I want people to understand are not done deals.

None of this is done.

None of those future steps to get to the end of this transition are done deals.

There are things that we're still going to be Getting feedback on, sharing as much as we can, and making those personal decisions on.

But it's not gonna be easy.

I mean, these are gonna be, again, somebody could either think it's beautiful about this or bad, but it is very disruptive.

This is taking everything, all the policies and practices we've done and changing those.

And that could be a great thing.

But it's also discomforting to people who are trying to understand what we're doing.

And now suddenly they're not going to understand it very easily.

But that's part of the process.

And I'm, you know, they say you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

So we're going to break a lot of eggs here.

But it's not for a bad reason.

It's because we are failing our students.

And none of us get that more than us up here.

So I want to just Again, reiterate the commitment I have to doing this journey and exploration.

But also, again, yeah, we're going to disagree again.

We're going to have times where we're not all going to see eye to eye on the next step.

But I know that we are growing as board members in that journey also of how to respond and how to respect and how to react and respond.

So I'm very hopeful.

Thank you.

Director Harris, I see your hand up.

You're on mute if you're trying to speak.

Thank you so much.

Director Hampson, what you just said was incredibly powerful and I appreciate your statement and I appreciate from the bottom of my heart your hard work and I absolutely believe that you believe that this is the right way to go and I respect that.

I am having a problem with the how, not the why, the how.

I appreciate that there is a pendulum swing in education about every five years from one end of the continuum to the other.

I appreciate that there are a great many school districts, much like ours, that are part of this student outcomes focused governance.

But I cannot and will not get behind the concept of suspending board committees.

I cannot and will not get behind the concept that we have done good community engagement on this package, if you will.

You know, my biggest issue right now is three years from now, this district is going to be in a receivership and it's a question of priorities.

And frankly, those that know me know I'm cynical and pragmatic, but I do not want the state taking over the Seattle public schools.

And right now we have no way out of the box With over $139 million deficit in year three.

And to me, that has to be the highest of priorities.

Second highest priority is to actually bring the community in to this.

Educate, learn up, if you will, what we're looking for.

Put a pause on this, and if the community is behind this, then, you know, I'll change my vote.

But right now, I'm voting no.

Thank you.

Okay.

If I may, I'm going to hop in really quickly.

And so just kind of to pull this out, I've been really trying to consider where My head is at with this entire process.

I think it's a secret to no one that I am in big support of all of the steps that this process is taking to get us on the right track in many ways.

I think immediately when I was pondering through what comments I wanted to offer here is the Memory that I have of like stepping into my classroom for the first year, right?

Teachers have to make snap decisions all the time.

One of the most exhausting part about being an educator is having to be on 100% of the time and being able to respond to when a kid asks you a question that is better probably answered by their parents and Or hands you something that is gooey and wet and you don't know what to do with it.

I think that from my perspective the board does this often.

Being in a position to where we have to respond and beyond 100 percent of the time because we do not have a strong sense of clarity or understanding about where some of the issues in our district rise from.

Whose responsibility it is to respond to them.

Whose responsibility it is or maybe it was to insert themselves into a process based on where your vantage point is.

And I think largely the thing that helped me as an educator become not only better but great at my craft is the presence of framework, pedagogy, and best practice.

Because I can tell you firsthand in a classroom, especially filled with eight-year-olds with wet, gooey hands, if you do not have a framework, and if you do not have pedagogy, and you do not have best practices in place, you, like I, will be humbled repeatedly.

And I think that there is a strong correlation between this board's lack of framework and clarity and the amount of times in which we are humbled repeatedly.

What I do want to also make very clear is that the way in which we are having this conversation I don't think does justice to what is and isn't possible under this framework.

And I want to make it very clear that legally required items Which I think a lot of folks have been quoting at us, you know, their interpretations of the law, which I welcome wholly.

But this does not exist in antithesis of that.

Many of the things that folks are demanding that we keep are in fact legally required.

And we will have to, by law, continue to do them.

A lot of the things that folks have not mentioned are the things that are going away.

What I would also say is that this takes an immense amount of trust.

And we often say that trust and modeling starts at the top.

And unfortunately for us as a board, I don't know if that's necessarily true because what I've seen is that there's a huge amount of trust between our educators and our students.

There's a huge amount of trust between our parents and our educators.

And there's a huge amount of trust between school communities and those who receive those services And go to those schools.

And where I think that we lack is the opportunity or at least the foresight to be able to replicate that on the board.

And so what we are doing here and what I feel strongly about is the fact that this needs to be an exercise in trust and understanding that what we are currently doing of no fault to anyone is just simply not working.

And quite frankly, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

And so I believe strongly that we are all incredibly concerned about the budget.

No board director would be up here if they were not.

I think at the same time, all of these things are interconnected.

And when we get into these deep conversations, in many ways, I think it's more of a signal of not a lack in philosophical alignment, but more so a lack of trust in understanding where each other truly stands.

That's just my read.

What I am excited about is an opportunity to engage in this practice together.

And quite frankly, we have been engaging in this practice together for a very long time.

And the results of whatever transpires tonight ultimately will not impact the way that this work is moving because we've already made the commitment as a board to try and implement this framework.

What I will say, though, is that as we look at the item that is in front of us and we kind of zoom out a little bit and we think about What is this actually saying and what is this actually doing?

I think for me, what this clearly does is give us a roadmap to how we can implement many of the needed changes that are required for us to improve not only outcomes for students, but the whole operational system of the district.

I think what's also very clear is that there's space for augmentation and space for addition where there may not be as much guidance as we would like.

Where I want us to be creative of as a board is understanding that there is a balance between these things.

There is a balance between having enough information to feel comfortable and then actually also knowing and doing one's own work to be able to dig deeper into that information to become comfortable.

I think that we have an opportunity here to really do a self-assessment and ask ourselves, What structures do we need to do our jobs more effectively?

No one has brought any other option forward.

No one has suggested any other pathway.

And so the work that we are doing here is being done and is seeing great results in various parts of the country.

What I'm excited about is our opportunity as a board to come together And get a shared agreement upon how we will operate to put parameters on our work, not to keep folks from being able to do their fiduciary duty, but to do what we expect the students in our classroom to do and get focused, to work as a team, to actually engage with the content and develop our own understanding so that we can move on to the next level, whatever that might be for us.

As a young member on this board and as a person who's been serving here since right before the pandemic, I think that's something that we can all really greatly benefit from.

And I know that there's a lot of hesitation.

I know that there's a lot of folks out there who will say, I don't fully understand it.

So if I don't fully understand it, it doesn't make sense to move forward.

And what I would say is that there is a lot of folks in this district, a lot of which are sitting on this board and a lot of which who are staff, Families who have engaged with the work, right?

And it is unfortunate that there are folks out there who feel as though they have not had an opportunity to really dive in.

I look forward to you joining us on this journey so that we can have a very candid conversation about what it will take for us to improve.

Because as I look into our classrooms and I look into our school buildings, the cohesion there is beautiful.

And I'm just wondering, what is it actually going to take to bring that to the board?

And it has not happened in the last three years that I have been here.

And it doesn't take much to pull up a Seattle Times article and suggest that it also hasn't happened in recent history either.

And so I think that everyone is justified in their own opinions about where this work is headed, what the how might be, and how we are going to get there together.

What I will say is that I believe that this will be a strong opportunity for us to engage and trust with one another and replicate what we see in our classrooms here in the boardroom and take a shared step forward to trying to improve the situation that we are in so that we can improve the outcomes for students, which means that they will ultimately have better, happier, more fulfilling lives.

So with that being said, if there are no other comments, I think we are ready to move to the vote.

Anyone help me out here if you're in the room?

Go ahead, Director Rankin.

Just briefly, seconding, thirding, whatevering what my colleagues have said.

And also, regarding the community engagement part, the Nothing actually changes right now with this item.

This item is the acceptance of work done by an ad hoc committee and the ending of that committee.

These recommendations now become, I'm going to use Lisa's analogy, the map, the suggested path, right?

And Along the way, we're going to make tons of stops and starts and invite people on.

People are going to hop on and off.

People are going to decide to ride with us for a while.

People are going to send messages ahead to the next stop so we get them when you get there.

In the recommendations is The eighth item is around specifically community engagement on this shift in governance.

So the concerns that, well, everybody doesn't know what it is and everybody, you know, you don't have all the answers, so how can you approve it?

What we're looking at now is committing to taking that step.

We want to do this with community and in community.

And that's what this item actually is.

Nothing suddenly happens or doesn't happen right now.

It's really the mutual acceptance of that suggested path and agreeing to at least try to walk along it.

And anything that changes in policy, practice, anything will all be a vote of the board.

This doesn't tell us what to do or not to do.

It's helping us structure our time and focus on the priorities, focusing on our students and living the values of the community that has elected us to represent them.

That's it.

It's just a governance framework.

It has not made any drastic big changes in people's power or anything.

It's just this is how we think we should behave and what we should try to do going forward because the current structure as it is It isn't creating the conditions that we want for our students.

It isn't creating the ways for all of them to succeed and be seen.

It isn't, as Brandon said, it is not creating trust.

We have to model the, not only do we need to Try to aspire to what we see in our classrooms.

We need to model.

We can't hold anybody else accountable for behavior that we're not willing to hold ourselves accountable for.

And that's really where this moves from being, I mean, it's real.

And the thing that this does the most for me is commits us to trying to find ways to hold ourselves accountable as a board for the job that we are committed to do on behalf of children.

But again, it doesn't change anything right now.

All of that is in the future in partnership with each other, with staff, with community.

Okay.

With that being said, are there any other hands?

All right.

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

Directors, I'll be calling the roll on Consent Agenda Item 5 as amended by Amendment 1. So just to kind of bring us back to what that vote is, Amendment 1 passed and now it has altered the underlying item which has been moved.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Aye.

Director Song Maritz.

Aye.

Vice President Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

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

All right.

Thank you.

Now moving on to action item number 6. Do I have a motion for this item?

I move that the school board partially suspend and temporarily modify board policy numbers 1240 1220 1250 1310 1400 1420 1620 and 2015 and board procedures 1620 BP and 1630 BP.

Is attached to the board action report to effectuate a partial suspension of the board standing committees and revision in board governance structure through July 31st 2023 with work to identify permanent policy changes scheduled for April 2023. The board does not adopt permanent changes prior to July 31st 2022 the partial suspensions and temporary modifications will sunset.

Second.

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

Do we feel as though we need a presentation on this particular item?

Okay.

No, I think we're good.

Right on.

Any questions?

Can't see, so help me out.

Is there someone who could present on it?

Do we have like a staff member or is this when you say present?

Well, I mean, this is the same.

These are just the specific amendments.

These are the myriad of policies that govern how we work together, which is telling, right, that it's that many policies.

So it's pretty spread out.

Hopefully by July we will have a much clearer set of policies that clarify how we work together and get our work done.

I think I would offer just for the record because we throw out a lot of numbers in these policies that even I had to go make sure and made my own little list that explained what they each are.

1240 is committees.

1220 is board officers and duties of the board.

1250 is school board student members.

1310 is policy adoption and suspension manuals and superintendent procedures.

1400 is meeting conduct order of business and quorum.

1420 is proposed agendas and consent agenda.

1620 is board superintendent relationships.

1620 BP is board superintendent relationships procedure.

1630 BP is evaluation of the superintendent, and 2015 is selection and adoption of instructional materials and board procedures.

Again, I just wanted to get those stated in their full name so that people, when they see all these numbers, I'm sorry, they are in the header.

What I wanted to just more just say them out loud so that we're understanding the extent of which are going on.

It looks really vast, but if you go through them, it is very small modifications to each one.

I appreciate the red line versions of the material so that people could see clearly what is being on there and what is changing.

I think that What I'm also appreciative of is that these are temporary.

They're suspensions so that we can do some work and then evaluate, I believe in April, if they should be lifted at the end of July.

There you go.

Because I think, again, we talked about nothing was going to happen with that last item.

Well, now something's happening.

It's policy changes, but not permanent.

These are temporary suspensions and modifications.

I had a question regarding the agendas that they were going to be decided by the Superintendent and Board President, I had an email exchange with them about that, about would we approve the, because in committees, one of our first items is to approve the agendas.

And I thought, well, could we approve the agendas during the legislative meetings?

I understand it's a little more difficult to do because of OPMA and getting things posted in time.

So I'm not going to pursue an amendment there, but I just wanted to understand the process a little better.

Regarding the approval of those, and it sounds like approval of the agenda isn't actually required anyway.

We just do it in committee because we always have.

And so this is a learning process.

I learned something today, so I didn't have to make a big fuss about it.

And I appreciate, President Hersey, your explanation that when you receive a request for an agenda item, it isn't your intention to Make a judgment call on it, you will find a way to get it on an agenda, it sounded like.

Because I think, you know, I've been part of other organizations where you could submit something for an agenda and it's sort of pocket-readed in a way that the person who received it is like, I never got that or I decided not to do it.

And I like the transparency you gave that that's not your intention at all, that you're trusting your board members to bring forward things that are of value and that you will work with the superintendent to find a place to get those on agendas.

I think that's very important and reassuring, so thank you for that early clarity you gave there.

Again, these are a lot of policies here.

The changes are not vast.

They're just kind of adding a note at the beginning about the suspensions.

And I'm happy to, I know as we go forward, we're going to get a lot of questions and concerns from community on what we just did here.

Actually, I look forward to having conversations with people about this to clarify what's happening.

Thanks for that.

Director Harris I see your hand up.

Thank you President Hersey.

I have two concerns here.

One we are delaying for eight nine months curriculum adoption.

Are people aware that some of our curriculum adoptions are 25 to 30 years old.

And for many, many, many years, curriculum adoption was the first thing that used to be cut from the budget.

And if we want our staff to be teaching our students relevant information, my question is, why would we stop that policy and those issues full stop.

Dr. Kenosha years ago put together a beautiful color-coded chart that showed us just how far behind we are and we continue to be that far behind.

The other question is one of the things we just did was.

Before we go on to that next question, Director Harris, can I just clarify?

This has nothing to do with any administrative policy that might come forward.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding if the selection and adoption of instructional materials is on this action item, how that can be.

And then I have another question if I might not be interrupted.

President Hersey?

Do you want to finish your question?

Let's let her finish your questions and then we'll make sure that we respond.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

We are talking about the evaluation of superintendent, and in the last vote we just handed a fair amount of board power to the superintendent, and if we are suspending the evaluation of the superintendent, frankly I'm very, very confused.

Please lure me up.

Thank you.

Take it away, Director Hampson.

So the lists of policies, those full policies are not being suspended.

It specifically mentions of committees.

So the curriculum adoption policy, we can still adopt curriculum.

There's no restriction on that.

It's just that in the policy it says that it goes through the curriculum instruction committee and since we're suspending committees that piece is suspended and anything would just come straight to the full board.

The shift that's happening here is that rather than things going first to a select group of three board members everything comes first to the full committee unless it falls into a particular category like things that are just annual renewals.

So anything that is major is going to come in the same way except actually the full board gets it first rather than it going to a committee first.

So it actually increases overall transparency relative to those items because they come to the full board first and they come much earlier to the board.

So my follow-up question then would be how soon will we be getting a calendar of the work sessions that go with these suspended policies to go to the entire board for work sessions for discussion.

I think that's a beautiful thing.

But I also want to see it on paper so we can back map.

Thank you.

That's going to be part of the conversation that we have this weekend at our retreat.

I think that the current calendars that we are working with largely in committee could probably be a starting point, right?

Those things already exist, but we all know that the efficiencies with those leave a lot to be desired.

I think that in addition to that, As we've talked about many times before, one of the big hopes from the Community Engagement Committee is to develop such a calendar so that it's not just something that's used as an internal document for us to know, but that there are clear stages in community engagement and two-way conversation that happen with community that's just not possible under the current committee structure.

And so that would be my answer to you on that, Director Harris.

Your hand is back.

So we have a follow-up question then if I might please, kind sir.

Indeed.

Thank you.

So will this retreat on Saturday be accessible to the community?

Yes.

Those are very, very critical questions to me.

It's an open public meeting, yes.

It will be accessible to the community.

Does that mean that it will be videotaped, kind sir?

Not necessarily.

Not all meetings are videotaped.

I understand that, but if what we're doing is setting up a calendar, doesn't that make sense?

We're not setting up a calendar at this particular meeting, that we wouldn't have time to do that.

Misunderstood you.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

All good.

All good.

That will be the work of the Ad Hoc Community Engagement Committee that will be formed once we have gotten through the piece tonight that was critical in the item that we are discussing right now.

And where does it talk about this ad hoc committee on community engagement?

There's a whole recommendation around it inside the packet.

So if somebody could tell me what number or where that is, or rather tell Director Harris where that exists specifically, that would be super helpful.

It's at the end.

So there actually is there are really clear we aligned we looked at all work plans and we aligned we looked at work sessions and so there is a specific we're keeping works I believe we're keeping work sessions through April so there This was really the ultimate back and forth between the committee and staff to make sure that we were allowing time for all the things that need to get done to still get done and Pull back on the amount of time that we were spending reviewing things over and over and over again for us to focus that energy on community engagement and staff to be able to focus their time on other ways of better focusing our work.

The calendars are inherent in this and they have been aligned to the school board calendar all along the way.

So I'm not sure if there are other if there are particular work sessions or calendar items you're concerned about you could speak to the board office to Julia Worth she can probably Illuminate whatever those specific concerns are.

That's not something I don't think we're going to talk about on Saturday.

What we will talk about that parts of the community engagement process to the extent that they could be built into the implementation timeline are built in.

We have to commit as a board to what that looks like.

We have to commit to dates.

We have to commit to not just community engagement which is what we do here in the boardroom when we have two conversations but also to community outreach which is what we do when we go out into community with two or more of us.

So that's what we're going to be talking about on.

Saturday and I'm not leading that but I did do the deliverable of the community engagement plan which was one of the things that we heard was desired of the committee and that gives the recommendation which we just accepted of Forming an ad hoc committee to specifically focus on keeping or creating the larger plan and driving the engine of community engagement for us over the next at least six months.

I don't know if I missed anything fellow committee members.

No, and I just wanted to make clear that talk of the Community Engagement Committee superseded the Ad Hoc Committee.

So we have been talking about that longer than even these recommendations had even arrived for our vote.

So just to make sure that the record is clear there.

Appreciate that explanation very much.

Do we have an agenda for this Saturday's retreat?

Yep, it's been posted and sent out, if I'm not mistaken.

All right.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Seeing none, Ms. Wilson-Jones, roll call, please.

I'm sorry.

I thought you were asking Director Harris if she had any more questions.

I'd like to...

No.

Questions in general.

Sorry.

Did you have your hand up?

Go ahead, Director Somers.

Thank you.

I just want to provide some context for my vote here.

For all that we said about the last item about we're not making any changes, this is sort of a planned roadmap, this is actually the first change.

And since the ad hoc committee submitted its recommendations, I have been speaking to a lot of community members because this has obviously shown up on our board agenda and they're asking me questions about it.

And I think the realization that I've come to is that what this framework is is essentially about board work, how the board plans to do its work and My feeling about it is that the public input piece is really important because the reason we're doing this work is for the public.

And so give every single conversation I've had people do not understand what this framework is.

They have a lot of concerns.

I have tried my best to explain the framework address their concerns and I just at this moment I'm I don't think this is the right first step for us to be taking.

Personally I think I would have been interested in us having the retreat first having a conversation about what our plan is with community engagement.

And I think that would have assuaged a lot of concerns.

My objective here really is you know I wasn't part of the board when the board committed to this work but I am trying to be a good player here and do the right thing for this board.

Do the right thing for Superintendent Jones set him up for success.

Do the right thing for our students.

And so if this is the way that we're going to go forward I want to make sure that we're seen to it the right way.

And really when we're talking about change management You know I one of the recommended books from our student outcomes focused training is called Leading Change.

It's by John Cotter and in this book they talk a lot about communicating the vision forming a powerful guiding coalition and quite frankly we haven't done that yet.

And so that is the context for why I will be voting no.

It is less about what the actual content is in this action but just about the timing.

I don't think we're ready to take that first step.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

Again help me out because I cannot see the entire dais.

Director Rankin I just wanted to reiterate for based on the questions that have already come is that this is specific to bringing work right to the full board instead of going first through committee that it looks like a big list.

But if you look through the the changes it's it's literally just about where committees are mentioned and that the recommendation is We just bring it to the full board.

It's a committee of the whole.

And it can be undone, redone, changed.

That's that's the power of the board.

That's what that's it's we're the deciders.

We can always change our mind.

And I would just add that this is about if we had the capacity to run parallel tracks in this system then I think that would be everybody's A lot of folks preferred way to go.

We do not have that capacity.

We have limited units of time.

And with those limited units of time we need to make sure that we're applying them in the best possible way.

And this allows us to not only work more together but to work smarter together During the time that we're working to move towards a more effective and efficient form of board governance.

Our current structure is not accessible.

It's barely accessible to students.

Our student members have to alternate and have limited time commitments.

If we don't create a structure of governance that is based on a much more limited amount of Time and energy commitment but particularly time this role of board director will remain inaccessible to the vast majority of those that might want to contribute and participate in this way.

And we owe it to and I would just say that I don't believe that we Our work here is on behalf of students and we represent the vision and values of community.

We don't represent their direct wants and desires.

We represent their vision and values and we charge the superintendent with showing us demonstrating to us how we how he is accomplishing those things and This will provide us I believe this will provide us that break to refocus and confirm how it is that we need to to work together and set up a structure so that future board members might actually find this something that is doable even if they're working full time and are a single parent for example so.

All about units of energy.

And the only other thing that I would add is that this framework, the goals and the guardrails that we selected, I would just say that I respectfully disagree that it doesn't align with the values or that work hasn't been done because it's directly aligned with our strategic plan.

If anything, it makes those goals smart and gives us as board directors more ownership over how do we achieve that through our partnership with the superintendent.

Because I feel strongly that, you know, in the In the absence of the ability to really get clear on what it looks like for us to put ourselves into a position to have actually effective change and proactive opportunity to impact our strategic plan, which we all know is one of the boldest in the country and has had an immense amount of community engagement.

As the basis of that, we are now better positioned to hold ourselves accountable and quite frankly, the superintendent accountable to actually getting results on it.

Whereas before there there was not that, in my opinion, that deep opportunity outside of, you know, the the few conversations that we might have about it in largely segmented and disconnected disconnected efforts.

Right.

And so this actually gives us an opportunity to really dig deep and see, are we closing the gap?

And if not, what do we need to do to get there?

So, but that's my opinion.

I see a hand up.

Give me one second.

Director Rivera-Smith is hand up from your phone.

That is me.

Okay, go for it.

No, that's very clever.

Thank you.

There's two of me.

I just wanted to say, I absolutely agree with Director Song Moritz about the lack of understanding with community because we clearly have not Communicated this well.

I won't even say engaged, because I know engagement carries a lot more weight, but even communicated it out very well, what this means and what this policy changes or suspensions look like.

But I don't think that Director and Director Hampson actually disagree much, Community is how we know what students need and want.

This is not two different parties, really.

It's our community as a whole, and we up here don't know what all our students out there need better than their families and their community members.

So I think that engagement and that ability to communicate out and then receive in is super, and we all acknowledge, ultra-important and what we're going to be working towards in this work.

I believe, again, while I agree that the engagement hasn't been there and people aren't up to speed on what these changes or suspensions are entailing, it looks scarier than it is, I think, but it still has changed.

It still is.

I appreciate, again, that they are temporary.

There's an emphasis on that.

We're going to keep talking about this.

Evaluating if the committees should stay suspended, they should be changed policy permanently.

I personally would love to see the committees work towards actually doing the policy work, each committee looking at its own segment that were in our charters.

I think that could be a good use of time, and I think we'll keep talking about that.

I don't think that's decided yet.

These are just baby steps.

I know they look like monster steps, but they're kind of baby steps.

And hopefully we can do a way better job engaging with the community and getting this out there to make it more clear and to all of our benefit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Comments?

Hands up.

Director Hampson is that you?

Oh sorry.

Okay.

All right.

Ms. Wilson-Jones are we prepared to move to the vote on this?

Seeing no objection Ms. Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Ms. Wilson- Calling the vote on consent agenda item 6. This is the one that is the partial modifications and suspensions of policies.

So Director Sarju.

Director Sarju So I vote yes to approve this.

Yes.

Director Song Moritz.

No.

Vice President Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

I vote no.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion has passed by a vote of 5 yes to 2 no.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

I'm going to sorry President Hersey I'm going to say thank you and good night and hustle my way over to the meeting in progress with the other legislative folks from King County districts.

Bye.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So.

President Hersey would you like me to take over the public hearing component.

Yes.

Yes.

I was just trying to see.

So Director Harris are you intending to stay with us through this portion or are you planning to exit at this time.

President Hersey I will stay for the action item votes.

Thank you so much.

But I am sicker than the dog that I am.

Thank you.

OK.

Thank you for letting us know.

Go ahead Director Hampson.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate your help.

The board will now be taking public testimony on the redistricting plan before us for approval tonight.

We had the opportunity to hear from members of the public during a public hearing held September 28th through 165 comments received online and during testimony during our regular board meetings this fall.

Public Affairs has been sharing updates on the redistricting process and regularly inviting feedback and board office staff have been answering process questions from the public through Let's Talk.

During the last regular board meeting the board approved an amendment that places scenario seven before us for approval as our redistricting plan.

Before we move to that vote tonight's hearing will provide us a final opportunity to hear any remaining feedback not already captured through our priority testimony.

And written comment opportunities.

Testimony signups have been accepted online for those testifying remotely and we also have a signup sheet here tonight for those with us in person.

We will begin with those in person testimony signups and then move on through any additional testimony remotely.

We had a general public testimony section earlier in tonight's agenda and this portion will be for testimony related to board director district redistricting.

Speakers will have a maximum of two minutes speaking time.

As a reminder written testimony is also accepted as stated on the agenda and if you are unable to finish your comments we invite you to provide those in writing.

Once your name is read staff will begin a timer and a beep will sound when your time is exhausted.

Ms. Wilson-Jones will read off the speakers.

The first speaker on today's testimony list is Chris Jackins.

Nice to see you again.

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

On the school board redistricting plan eight points.

Number one the board is set to vote on scenario number seven which was based on districts suggested for the city council.

Number two a board director previously suggested that some other amendments based on changes to current board director districts might be more familiar to voters which is a valid point.

Number three it seems that board directors should still be allowed to vote today for previous amendments as such scenarios have received detailed prior review.

Number four.

The district and its consultant assert that the current population of the entire district is 737,255.

These are the only residents who the board may represent and who may vote for the board.

Number five the plan that the board proposes to adopt contains a total population of 737,763 a larger number by 508 people.

This appears to mean that these residents who live outside the district will be allowed to vote for board directors.

That seems illegal.

Number six there may be another explanation maybe a typographical error but the consultants report states that the data is drawn from the same source.

Number seven I have brought this issue to you publicly twice before.

Number eight perhaps some inquisitive reporter will look at the numbers and ask some questions and I can read your response in the news.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Pat Griffith.

I'm not sure if Pat intended to sign up for this public hearing, so I will just make an announcement to the room that if anybody intends to provide testimony in this public hearing, you can come see me now.

We do not have any remote sign-ups, Vice President Hampson, so unless anybody stands up in the room and would like to testify, that concludes our testimony for today's public hearing.

Okay.

Once again this concludes today's public hearing on the draft redistricting plan for school board director districts.

Do you want me to keep going Director Hersey or you want to take it back over for action items.

You can keep going.

Thank you very much.

My throat is destroyed at this point.

I'm sure.

We will now move to the first action item on today's agenda approval of school board director district redistricting plan.

May I have a motion for this item?

Director Rivera-Smith, would you mind reading the motion?

I'm just going to pass her the motion.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And I will be happy to second.

I move that the school board approve scenario seven as attached to this board action report as the board's plan for redistricting director districts.

Second.

This item for redistricting the Seattle School Board Director districts.

This means we are redrawing the boundaries of existing school board districts.

This process will not affect where students go to school.

As mentioned before our public hearing Scenario 7 is before us tonight for approval as the board's redistricting plan.

We discussed Scenario 7 during our October 12th regular board meeting since that time the board action report before us has been updated to identify Scenario 7 as our proposed redistricting plan for approval tonight.

Flow analytics or redistricting consultant is with us remotely if there are any technical questions before we move to the vote.

Outside legal counsel, no treat is also available if we come to a question on the statutory requirements for redistricting.

We will move now to any remaining director questions and discussion on this item before the vote.

Are there any questions?

I'm just wondering if we can get clarification on the discrepancy of populations that has been brought to us by test by public testimony speaker Chris Jackins.

I don't know who would best address that.

I know I received an explanation via email but I don't know if I'm the best person to speak to this.

I could read what it says but I wonder if Miss Wilson Jones might be a better source.

Let's turn that over to flow analytics.

Thank you.

Good evening.

This is Kent Martin with Flow Analytics.

Gavin Harabotkin explained that discrepancy.

We noticed it after a discussion with the elections office.

So let Gavin explain it.

Yeah so as Kent said after we created our initial scenarios we were directed to send them to King County elections to do a technical review.

In doing so they identified census blocks that weren't included in our initial analysis and suggested that we do include them and the total population of these census blocks came out to 508 which is the exact difference between what's reported in the existing district boundary statistical report and the draft map statistical reports that have been created for these scenarios.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So just to clarify then are we are there is not there's there's nothing amiss with our numbers we're using these aren't the ones that we were told to use by King County election it sounds like.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you so much for that clarification.

I appreciate all the work that's gone into this, not only by flow, but Ms. Wilson-Jones and everyone on the board office.

I was one of the people who preferred a different map at the last meeting, but I respect the process.

I know that all things considered, this is about making sure our The population of Seattle is equally represented in our elections.

I hope that we can do a good job clarifying what it really means to be elected out of certain districts and what that means in relation to the schools within it, that it's not necessarily a one for one because we're elected out of that.

Primary area that that's all we represent.

We represent the entire city.

I know that we would like to say that's my school and my district and they always will be.

But I know that a lot of us do enjoy having relationships with other schools outside of our districts because we do, again, ultimately represent all of them.

And hopefully we can all, you know, Embrace that and embrace it in our language online too because I think that's also where it's perpetuated that we have certain schools that are ours versus other directors.

Not that I don't enjoy those relationships.

I'm going to miss a lot of the schools that I'm not going to be having anymore once these maps are changed.

Definitely that's going to be difficult for me.

But I'm still their director.

So I want them all to know that and I'll keep reminding them.

Thank you.

Do any other directors have questions or comments.

OK Ms. Wilson-Jones please call for the vote.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Aye.

Director Song Maritz.

Aye.

Vice President Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

And President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Okay and our next action item is the 2022 to 2023 farm to school purchasing grant.

May I have a motion for this item?

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute an agreement with the Washington State Department of Agriculture to receive payment of $416,000.

$1,442 to provide students with nutritious Washington grown foods with any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement this agreement.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Okay this has been moved and properly seconded and Fred Podesta is here to tell us about this awesome grant.

Good evening directors.

Yes this Fred Podesta assistant superintendent of operations this action accepts a state grant from the Washington Department of Agriculture to help us fund the procurement of locally grown food produce and other food products.

It helps us with our overall food costs.

It doesn't really change the menu but helps us with our sources sourcing strategy to buy from local providers and it helps them and helps overall community access to local food by supporting those providers.

Thank you.

Questions from directors.

Go ahead.

Director Versmith.

Thank you.

Hello, Fred.

Good evening.

This is an item that would have probably come through operations, I assume, had it gone through a committee.

It did not because we did not meet this last month.

But I appreciate that, obviously, we have a chance as a full board to discuss this, have questions.

I'm wondering, for this grant, what are the requirements or limitations in it, if any?

Really anything that is acceptable per the USDA program can be bought under the grant it just needs to be locally produced and we have to demonstrate that it is produced within Washington state.

OK.

Does this include milk?

I don't know.

Got to ask.

I don't think we're using it.

I mean milk is generally locally produced so it's not something that I think we would use this grant for and given the scope of our dairy contracts.

Gotcha.

And it is to go with the USDA.

What they consider nutritiously grown food.

So I think it is worth looking into what the USDA says about milk and chocolate milk.

And I'm sure you heard the testimony.

I did hear some of the testimony, yes.

So it'd be great to know that's on your radar for whatever it should be.

Rationality you know the culinary services has done thinking about whether to offer flavored milk.

Districts looked at data across and our own experience that Milk consumption generally drops by more of a third if flavored milks are not offered.

Waste is usually rises by more than 11 percent and we feel that the right course is what we do is to offer choice.

We don't require anybody to choose flavored milk and so students have a choice.

We think it's important for students to have a choice and we think it's important for the other nutritional benefits of milk to offer students something that they'll actually consume.

Yeah I will say so I help out at my son's school for lunch and this is lunchtime not breakfast and at least last year when it was free every kid who came through wanted a chocolate milk.

And so I was actually like the milk police.

I would make sure that all the hot lunch kids got it first because they were the ones actually getting a hot lunch versus the kids who brought lunch from home.

They were still taking the milk, which I don't think they were supposed to.

But anyway, because milk, hot chocolate milk was a hot commodity.

And we ran out fast because kids are always – oh, not always.

There were four kids to regular milk and everyone else wanted chocolate.

So it is something that kids are going to gravitate towards.

It's way tastier.

Doesn't mean it's better for them, clearly.

I actually looked at it this morning.

I was actually looking at the difference between white milk and chocolate milk because I was at my son's school for breakfast.

And it does contain twice the sugar.

Really, it only comes out like 10 or 20 more calories, but still, it's a lot of sugar.

So I appreciate that you heard our speakers.

And if there is a way to communicate to them the reasoning that you just gave here, sounds like that would be very valuable.

And I don't know how much engagement Nutrition Services does with families, because I don't know if parents are as concerned about this as our nutrition workers are.

And teachers might also be concerned, because if their kids come in and hopped up on sugar and then crashing, that's probably not helpful for their learning.

Lots of things connected to this so.

Culinary services does a fair amount and has worked hard to improve the menu at Seattle Public Schools which had a history before kind of the current leadership in culinary services of annual decline in participation which has definitely gone in the other direction as we've worked harder on the menu.

Yeah, no, and it's some good stuff, yeah.

I mean, there's some really amazing dishes coming out of culinary services.

So, but, you know, I think we should be, it's great to make those look farther.

Students, chocolate milk.

That's a no-brainer, but as far as, you know, If there's a way to steer them towards regular milk or other water, things like that.

Because, yeah, we want the kids to be happy, but we need them to be healthy, too.

So not an easy balance.

But I thank you for your time and entertaining my questions.

Thank you.

And no further questions.

Okay Director Sang-Muriz I'm just going to state that I think Director Rivera-Smith took all the non farm grant specific farm to school grant specific question time.

So I hope this is on the grant.

These are questions specifically about the grant.

So I just wanted to confirm that these are to cover meals that are consumed in the 22 to 23 school year.

They're not retroactive.

And I noticed that this is a one-time grant.

Is there no expectation that the Department of Agriculture will continue with this program going forward?

There is an expectation that they might.

They award them on an annual basis.

Great.

And I think in the future it would be helpful to have some context about the size of this grant relative to the culinary services budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments questions or concerns.

Not for me.

OK.

Ms. Wilson-Jones you can call for the vote.

Director Sarju.

Director Sarju.

Director Song Maritz.

Vice President Hampson.

Director Harris.

Director Rivera-Smith.

President Hersey.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Okay, that moves us to intro items, which must have something to do with Associate Superintendent Podesta.

Okay, approval.

Hold on one second.

I think Leslie is trying to indicate her intention for the rest of the meeting.

Go ahead, Les.

No hand up, Director Harris.

Okay.

Unmute.

I have been sicker than I want to admit, and I am bowing out at this point to go back to bed.

Thank you so much.

It's an honor and a privilege.

Thank you, Director Harris.

Okay.

So approval of the use of capital finance excess resources from BTA IV to purchase maintenance fleet vehicles and auto repair shop equipment.

Approval of this item would authorize the superintendent to approve the use of capital fund excess buildings, technology, and academics, athletics from BTA IV resources not to exceed $1.8 million for the purchase of replacement, maintenance vehicles, and auto repair shop equipment with any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement the purchase.

Thank you again Fred Podesta assistant superintendent of operations.

This item authorizes the purchase of light duty vehicles to support our building maintenance teams.

The district has not historically had a structured vehicle replacement program Anyone who spent time in the north parking lot knows that it would be the saddest automotive museum ever if you walk through there.

Average age of our fleet vehicles is more than 15 years.

Vehicles being replaced here are 20 to 30 years in age.

Again we have a we've had a run to failure strategy.

Our fleet management staff and our finance team for the last couple of years been working hard to correct this to come up with a strategy that minimizes the total lifecycle costs of maintaining vehicles that are important to our operations.

We are spending on average more than $5,000 per vehicle annually for vehicles that some are worth less than $2,000.

We tow vehicles every other week we're towing a vehicle which really is disruptive operations that these vehicles need to be used to get our various maintenance staff to sites.

It's as you know resources are always scarce.

One of the great things our partners and our finance team Did is to get the legislature to give us a temporary authorization to use capital dollars for maintenance activities.

And we've managed the capital program well to find some savings in capital construction projects.

That we could use to fund this purchase of roughly 30 vehicles mostly vans that support maintenance staff taking equipment tools and parts to our 106 schools to maintain HVAC system security systems general building envelopes and We really recommend making this purchase now while we have this temporary authority to use capital dollars to buy vehicles which is not something we normally have.

And that authority.

So I'd be happy to take any questions you might have.

Director Song Maritz and then Director Rivera-Smith.

I'm curious if there was other ways that we could have underspend from the BTA for or is this mainly driven by the temporary language from the state?

It's driven mostly that this is a limited window that we have and we didn't really have another funding source.

For these kinds of vehicles we thought it was you know we can use capital dollars for maintenance and thought it was a priority to get the worst offenders out of the fleet because it's disrupting maintenance and it's also disrupting the capital program in that the capital program funds some of our major maintenance which is the work is performed by armed forces using these vehicles unless they're stuck in the parking lot getting a vehicle repaired.

So and I think the board is aware of kind of the scope of our capital program 1.8 million that we've set aside out of a couple of years of spending is a very small amount given the overall context of the more than 200 million that were spent on capital on an annual basis.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Did you say this will get about 30 vehicles?

All together.

We buy new used.

Where do we purchase?

We buy new vehicles.

We have plenty of use.

Is it through like the King County kind of that purchasing district or how do we?

Vehicles are there are supply chain issues with vehicles so we look we either leverage if possible the King County Director Association contracts or others just basically on What is available?

I mean, we are scrambling.

This would have been actually a little bit larger, but there are some vehicles we just don't think we can get right now.

And I see your note in here regarding the Fidelity of the Clean Energy Task Force work, how really we're trying to get away from gas, oil, fossil fuels.

And I see you acknowledge that it's about the Infrastructure to support electric vehicle fleet right now?

It's the infrastructure and the vehicle types.

While there are some light duty pickup trucks coming onto the market, they're very expensive.

And what we mostly use are vans, cargo vans.

And those are not really in place in the market.

And I think Yes, we don't have the infrastructure in place either, and this is kind of an emergent situation.

And I think we really want to, we are eager to adopt the use of electric vehicles, but we also want to have a real plan where this is close to kind of an emergency purchase.

I got you.

Well, and I trust that we're going to get closer to this goal as we work with the task force and which recommendations will be coming soon, which we'll talk more about as a board because they're getting near the end of their Tenure which is exciting.

But thank you assistant superintendent no further questions.

Director Hersey.

Director Yuan any questions no.

OK.

The next item is approval of the 2023 state legislative agenda.

Approval of this item would adopt the 2023 state legislative agenda as attached to this board action report.

Hello Director Worth.

Good evening directors.

Julia Worth director of board relations and strategic initiatives.

Director Rankin has already provided you all with a brief overview of the legislative agenda.

And the process for its development.

Just wanted to give a little more detail.

As mentioned, the majority of the priorities are carried over from last year.

The priorities have been reorganized and in some cases language has been updated to reflect legislative progress or new context such as the federal ESSER dollar use deadlines coming up here in the next year.

Some priorities were also combined for ease and clarity of reading.

The four priorities represented on the legislative agenda, the four priority areas are addressing funding gaps in basic education, supporting student learning, supporting student wellbeing and providing stable and equitable operations.

Community partners who were engaged in the development of the 2022 legislative priorities were again reached out to for the 2023 agenda.

They were notified that we'd be carrying over a majority of the priorities and were also asked if there were any new priorities that have emerged over the past year for them and their communities.

All who replied indicated that they have continued support for these priorities.

The draft legislative priorities of partner school districts, state agencies and state associations if they were available at the time of this agenda's development were also reviewed for alignment.

After the With the approval of this legislative agenda the agenda will be distributed to our legislative delegation and meetings will be held with legislators in November and December and as Director Rankin mentioned the adoption of this agenda allows the district to advocate on these specific issues in the 2023 session.

With that I'd be happy to take any questions.

Directors.

I know you had a chance to quickly ask Dr. Rankin some questions earlier.

No from me.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

That brings us to board comments.

Yeah.

You had your comments right.

Do any directors have comments that they'd like to offer.

I do not.

I feel like I did a lot of talking tonight, so I'm not going to do any comments, but I do want to acknowledge the students who were here earlier to speak about Halloween and the discrepancies and activities at their school versus other schools.

We love hearing from students.

That was so great.

Thank you for the memo that gives their speech.

I think it would be great to find out what we can do with that.

I don't want them to come here and then we aren't acting on Or at least considering more about what they spoke on.

So I think Director U.N.

actually has maybe a plan to engage.

I don't want to speak for her, but because I think It's one thing Halloween but it's also a broader issue of the differences between schools and how things are celebrated or not accelerated.

So you know it's a it's a micro example of probably a bigger thing.

So thank you for Director Jones for being here to hear them out and I will pass on my comments now.

Director Sarge you have your hand up.

Okay, let's hope I can get through this without an emergency.

So even though I'm not there and I'm in the emergency room, I am paying attention for the most part.

And one of the things that struck me is...

And I don't think this is...

It's not revelatory, meaning...

It's not gonna be a revelation, but this is really, really hard work.

And whenever any entity is trying to do a change management process, what we often don't think about is sort of psychologically where humans enter change processes.

And usually, for the most part, it's with a mindset Sometimes unconscious of resistance.

It's hard to change.

There can be a lot of fear or questions when something that we're facing is unknown.

So all of these things are normal.

And at the end of the day, I feel like my number one job, which is why I ran, is to focus on our students and Setting the system up that will allow them to be successful in the end.

That said, we have a group of students who historically, in this district in particular, but you can find other districts around the nation that has failed certain groups of students.

And it's no longer okay to be aspirational.

In our articulation, like, yes, I really want to see the best for black and brown boys.

That hasn't worked for the last 60 or 70 years.

And as Cheryl Lynn frequently says, the system's working.

It is absolutely working because it was designed to work that way.

And if we don't want it to work that way, then we have to be willing to do something radically different.

And so we can have these conversations about whether or not student outcomes-focused governance as a model is the best model.

And I will say this, if there's a better model, then let's go for it.

But quite honestly, there isn't a better model.

And I'm not going for the perfect.

I'm going for good.

Because right now we don't have good.

If we're not willing to admit that this system has failed, in particular, our black boys and continues to fail our black boys, we're really not, it's gonna be futile, our efforts.

And so I hope as we navigate this process of change that you'll keep my nephew front and center, straight A student, Fighting the system.

Fighting to be recognized.

He's doing his part.

I'm asking us to do our part.

Thank you Director Sarju.

My before I turn it back to President Hersey to close this out I Was really grateful to the young man that spoke up about his love for chocolate milk because it isn't a clear cut thing.

I sent fellow directors an article something that I have a question I've asked and have looked at before and there's a good Ed Week has a good bit about the benefits of drinking milk getting that calcium.

And hydration versus nothing, right?

And so the pros and cons of that, it's not clear cut.

But he was clear.

His voice was clear.

And I really appreciated him speaking up in a moment when we really did need student voice in that space.

And he does represent the voice of the students as it pertains to chocolate milk, as we've all experienced in the lunchroom.

So it's just something we can take and And then we as the adults in the system have to say, OK, yes, we know you like chocolate milk.

Is this the right thing for you?

And all things considered.

And they're not easy decisions.

They're not easy decisions.

And sometimes the margin of difference is quite thin.

But I know we have an outstanding operations team and nutrition services lead who's very communicative.

And that they would not take that question lightly knowing what the reality is in buildings.

So thanks to him and his mom for showing up and sharing their truth today.

And thanks everyone for holding space with us and looking forward to being in space with everyone on Saturday.

We've got a lot of work ahead of us which is why I'm going to stop talking now and turn it back over to you Director Hersey, President Hersey to close us out.

Thank you for the assist Vice President Hampson.

There being no further business on the agenda today this meeting stands adjourned at 7 34 p.m.

Thank you very much and we will see you soon.

Thanks all.