Part 2 Seattle School Board Meeting Sept. 20, 2017

Part 2 of our school board meeting this evening.

We have now reached the action items in our agenda.

Item number 1 is resolution 2017-18-5 supporting undocumented students.

I move that school board adopt resolution 2017 slash 18 dash 5 supporting undocumented students and urging the federal government to provide them formal protection against deportation.

Immediate action is in the best interests of the district.

I second that motion.

This item came to the executive committee on September 12th where we advanced it for consideration simply because I think it wasn't completed completely written.

Okay we just needed a policy number to add and now it is complete.

I'm going to hand the mic over to Superintendent Nyland who is going to talk about why we have this here.

Certainly I appreciate the board's consideration of this resolution tonight.

It continues in the vein of the resolution that the board passed earlier with regard to immigration and the steps that we took to keep students safe.

So the first resolved has to do with our commitment to keep the students in our care safe and do everything we can to make sure that they feel welcome and a sense of belonging as part of the school.

And we do urge Congress to act quickly to restore the yeah restore the rights of those students.

So and I guess kind of is a personal point which I suppose shouldn't shouldn't apply here.

It is, I mean these are the young people that have been here, they've made it through school, they've got jobs, they are enrolled in the military, they're dreamers.

They are part of our American past and they want to be part of our future.

I'm just going to read into the record the resolution paragraphs at the end, now therefore be it resolved and then I'll open it to questions and comments.

Now therefore be it resolved that the Seattle Public Schools will do our utmost to fulfill our constitutional duty to serve every student including undocumented students without regard to race, religion, national origin or immigration status and that we are committed to fully creating a safe welcoming learning space for every student within our care and therefore be it further resolved that the Seattle School Board of Directors urges Congress to act swiftly to find a positive and permanent solution for the young people who are eligible for protections under the DACA program as it has existed.

and therefore be it further resolved that the Seattle School Board of Directors urges the presidential administration to reinstate DACA should Congress fail to act within the designated time frame.

Any questions or comments about this resolution?

Seeing none, check the roll call please.

Director Burke.

Director Harris aye Director Patu aye Director Geary aye Director Blanford aye Director Peters aye This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Item 2 annual approval of schools per WAC 180-16-220

I move that school board approve each school within the district as having a school improvement plan that is data driven promotes a positive impact on school learning and includes a continuous improvement process pursuant to WAC 180-16-220.

I second that motion.

May we please hear from the chair of the Curriculum and Instruction Committee.

This item was brought before the curriculum instruction policy committee on June 12th and moved forward for consideration.

Are there any questions or comments about this item?

We hear from chief of schools about what the history of this item is and where we're going with it.

Good evening Mike Starosky chief of schools.

The continuous school improvement plans have been a process that's been going on for a number of years in Seattle Public Schools.

It's a way that schools basically are letting the public know what it is that our schools are aiming to do.

this past year with the support and direction of school board members specifically directors Burke and Harris we realigned our entire CSIP process to reflect what is truly going on in our system in our schools to be able to support our buildings and also for central office to be able to in a strategic way support buildings through the budgeting process, the staffing process and the scheduling process.

And then also that we're clearer and more transparent to our public and more accountable to our public about what it is our schools are doing and why they're doing it specifically for our students who are on track, our students who need additional supports including our students with disabilities, our ELL students and our advanced learners as well.

So I think our plans have gotten very specific.

They've gotten clear.

and also a good push that has happened as a result of this process is that we are being completely transparent about where the extra dollars that go into buildings are being reflected in school budgets.

For our lab title dollars you can look and our public can see where our buildings are putting their priorities.

and so I would say we are excited about how our system can use our CSIPs to provide specific targeted supports and so for our central office leaders to be able to work with buildings knowing exactly what a building is trying to do and how we can support them and our ultimate goal is eliminating the opportunity gap and supporting all of our students in schools.

Director Blanford.

Mr. Staroski have you gotten any feedback from our building leaders as to the usefulness of the changes that have been made?

Yes I can say very specifically yesterday meeting with principals we had a leadership learning day where all of our principals are here yesterday.

and our executive directors of schools were talking with our building principals about their own professional goal setting and reminding our principals start with your CSIP and the clarity for our building principals to be able to start with their CSIP to see how they are going to build their professional learning goals.

is a welcomed point of clarity for them.

It makes sense to them.

It's starting to for our principals be able to see the things that they should be working with their BLT's on, with their professional development in their buildings, their priorities.

I had a principal yesterday show me She said here's my three things from our CSIP and here's this three pager and it wasn't a full three pager but it had her three building priorities based on her CSIP.

She said I take this to my BLT.

I take this to my professional development committee.

I take this to my PTSA.

She's just shopping it around and I thought that was a great example of how the CSIP is not just being a compliance document but is actually informing practice getting feedback on practice and it's just not just for the principal and central office.

It's a public document and it's involving our teachers as well.

If I can follow up with the second question.

I heard concepts of accountability and transparency embedded in your response which I greatly appreciate but it seems to me that there is also a front loaded nature in this of we're telling our communities and our various constituencies what we're going to do over the course of the year and whereas that's a great thing.

We know from running buildings or understanding how buildings are run that there's a lot of unknowns that happen during the course of the year and I wonder about the discretion or the flexibility that might be in conflict when you have front loaded and said we're going to do all of these things.

How does that get negotiated during the course of the year?

So how it gets negotiated and this is a great question.

So just from the time that I was before you two weeks ago I've had three buildings who are changing and adjusting their CSIPS based on the start of the new school year.

They have new information.

They have new staff.

They have identified different priorities.

and so how they go through that is they go through their building leadership teams.

The building leadership teams are the ones who endorse support and vote on those and how those they are representative bodies of the staff.

Those get brought out back to the staff.

Staff have input.

Staff help change and adjust those continuous school improvement plans.

so they're just not set in stone in September 1 and that's the only thing that can happen is during that year as the year is going on and things are changing the students are changing new data is coming in.

We are 100 percent in support of our buildings being able to change and adjust as long as they go through the formal process of involving their BLTs and involving the staff in their communities.

Director Harris.

So when you're talking about BLT's you're also talking about parent representatives correct?

Correct.

Okay so we do have an engagement loop for parents in this process.

Correct.

Yes.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

I think I've probably already said more than enough about this but I just want to thank you again for the work and kind of a systems geek myself I'm really excited about how this work has woven in with the systems of the district and that I you know I see the CSIP referenced in you know our formula for success and I see it in our professional development planning.

and so the idea that this is kind of the vision and strategic plan of a school and represents how they relate to all of our central services and how they engage in some cases with each other in some cases within themselves that just absolutely thrills me to no end.

So I want to thank you for that.

when you think about sort of change management you know you you need some components you need to you need vision you need to get everybody to buy into the vision and then you need the right systems and then you need the people to change the habits that actually implement.

and I think you've got elements of that built into the CSIP and I do expect that it will continue to evolve.

I'll continue to throw bricks at it when I see things.

But I just again I'm really impressed by the work and the progress we've made in two years.

Thank you.

There's no further comments.

Let's check the roll call please.

Director Geary.

Director Patu?

Aye Director Blanford?

Aye Director Burke?

I suppose.

Director Harris?

At long last yes.

Director Peters?

Yes.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you everyone.

So we now move on to the introduction items on our agenda.

First item amending board policy number 3432 emergencies.

May we hear from the chair of the ops committee please.

This item was heard by the ops committee on September the 7th and was moved forward for consideration.

Peggy McAvoy assistant superintendent for operations we have had an update through state law on how we are asked to make sure that our schools are prepared for emergencies and because of that we are bringing forward an updated school board policy that reflects compliance with that we did have a robust conversation in the operations committee about what the intent was and how we could best serve all of our students The major changes that you will see in the document are related to the fact that we now need to make sure that we provide drills during summer school if in fact those schools have classes.

The other thing that is very different is that we used to many years ago only require fire drills as part of our drill scenario.

Then we several years ago the legislature decided that we really needed to make sure that schools were doing not only the fire drills or the evacuations but also lockdowns and shelter in places and when they developed that those rules what they gave us was prescriptive on the number of times each of those drills needed to be conducted within the schools.

The new legislation now is giving more latitude to the schools about which drills they're choosing for any particular month.

And what they realized was throughout the state there are different priorities and needs for the types of drills that are needed.

For instance, if you're right on the coast and you have tsunamis, you have to do tsunami drills.

So that was part of the rationale for their change.

So what you'll see is that we're still required to do monthly drills while school is in session, including summer school.

and then the types of drills that are selected need to be decided up front by the school and when they complete drills those drills need to be posted in the school office so that everybody can see when they did their drills and what type of drills they did.

I think the conversation also that we had in operations was really about how do we make this more inspirational.

It turned out to be quite a compliance policy and it also didn't reflect the work that we were doing around supporting some of our students with special needs and how do we make sure that we're supporting them during drills.

So the operations committee decided to move it forward for consideration and ask that Director Geary and I work together to augment the language and so we have done that and we added the first sentence at the beginning of the policy which was more the aspirational language.

It is the policy of the Seattle School Board that the district shall maximize safety for all students and staff so that their focus can be on teaching and learning.

The other piece that we added was in Section L added sentence that says drills will be planned in the manner that is sensitive to the developmental and special needs of students in the school community.

and then finally one that we didn't capture that we had agreed that we were going to capture which is really just a typo in number A it's supposed or excuse me B it's supposed to read include provisions for the special needs of staff and students.

You'll notice the of is missing and we will fix that by the time we go to action.

Okay, Director Geary.

Well I want to give you a special thank you for working with me and allowing us to make those changes because I know that it is those unique events that happen in our schools that are such a trigger for so many of our students with special needs.

and so we need to be mindful of that always and again I'll say it in committee and I'll say it here compliance is the minimum and I hope that we're always striving to look for ways to exceed the minimum and look for what we want to be as a district and how we want to treat our people.

So thank you so much for being willing to do that.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you.

The next item, item number 2, adopting new school board policy number 4218, speakers of diverse languages.

That came to the executive committee on September 12th where we advanced it for approval.

Would somebody like to come and address the purpose of this policy?

I apologize about that.

Good evening.

Super excited.

Please introduce yourself.

YHSC chief student support services.

I am super excited to bring forth in front of you for introduction and hopefully with your approval adoption of a new school board policy number 4218 speakers of diverse languages and one of the amazing things about this is it helps us do a lot of deep reflection both using the equity analysis tool as well as our engagement with families just to realize how significant a policy like this is to Seattle Public Schools where almost 25 percent of our households here in Seattle that send their students to Seattle Public Schools are identified as where English is not their primary language.

And so when you think about that number one out of every four that tells us we have a lot of work to do around our engagement and how are we going to do that if we don't have what I'd like to say consistent high quality translation interpretation services.

and so with the support of the school board in the last fiscal year but initial $250,000 as well as now adding an additional $82,700 we can continue to support this work and centralize it.

A lot of this work had been out in the schools and site based or in different departments by bringing it in house and being led through the ELL international programs department.

we now can help review specifically the consistency of those communications all essential documents being sent out for the various departments and schools to our families to make sure that they are translated in our four primary languages plus adding on depending on the different school population in our nine top nine languages here in Seattle.

also add is around also that specifically the quality.

Quality is really important.

There's different things that different documents translate but these essential documents need to be done in a very high quality.

The feedback that we also received back from the community agencies and community groups was making sure that that are instructional assistants then also those who we hired to provide interpretation who are out there to do a good job of making sure that we translate information correctly.

And as you mentioned oftentimes educational leads can be really complex and we also have to take considering their own cultural context.

And so we do that work very much out there now and are centralizing it again with your support.

So this work has now helped support additional bilingual translation staff for separate positions as well as we have now multiple vendors who can provide off-site and on-site interpretation as needed.

Are there any questions or comments about this item?

Thank you.

So the third item is approval of a one-year extension of the strategic plan.

This came to the executive committee on September 12th where we advanced it for approval.

It actually originated with us as well.

The strategic plan currently runs from 2013 to 2018 and we took a look at what's ahead of us on our plate this year and we saw we had a lot of things.

We have some serious budget work to do.

We have some transitions to a new board.

And so it was decided that in order to do this process justice, in order to do the necessary outreach to the community and really create a thoughtful new plan that we needed more time.

and so this is simply a one-year extension of the current plan that will give everybody one more year to get going on the next plan.

And so what that means is probably in late spring is when the board will start to formulate how the process is going to look as they move forward and then the community engagement part of this will probably be later on in the year, maybe in the fall.

So it's a It's a request to extend this by one year for all those reasons.

Does anybody have any questions about this?

Superintendent Nyland, did you want to address this at all?

Yes I concur with the recommendation and I also want to thank the board for staying course in terms of our strategic plan so over whatever we're obviously at the end of that five year time frame the strategic plan has provided great guidance and direction for the district and the school board each year when they have set the SMART goals have set smart goals that are well aligned with the strategic plan and that has enabled us to, in my parlance of my illustration, line up our arrows, align our arrows, align our work and do things like bring the CSIPs together with all of that other work.

Thank you for the commitment to supporting the strategic plan and I certainly understand why we want to extend it by one more year and appreciate the board's careful guidance and care of that plan that the community has put in place.

Dr. Geary.

Well the sentiment was I think eloquently spoken to by Director Blanford at our retreat of the idea that for those in the community who were looking forward to us revisiting the strategic plan and reviewing that I can't help but think about how much time and energy we as a district have been forced to put towards our budget over the last year and how that could have been time spent thinking more deeply on other issues instead because if we look back since January we have on a monthly basis been dealing with trying to figure out what our budget is going to be, what that's going to look like, are we going to even be able to meet the tenants of our current strategic plan and move forward on that.

So I appreciate the sentiment and the concern from the public about the delay and I apologize for that but on the other hand we had this very important issue to contend with and as we recall it wasn't really it is still yet to be fully resolved and it wasn't until June that we had even a beginning of an idea of what our budget was going to be.

Director Harris and then Director Blanford.

Well in order to do a good strategic plan really robust community engagement needs to occur and we need to test our new community engagement tools and make sure that we hear from communities that we have not heard from in the past.

and we will have a switchover of a certain number of directors, two, possibly three, and we'll have a switchover of superintendent mid next year as well.

So it actually can provide us an opportunity to really do this right.

I appreciate Director Gary's reminding us of the point that I made at the retreat.

I see the strategic plan as a compact of sorts between the school district and the community who were instrumental in the creation of the strategic plan.

and so though I support all of the reasons that we would delay the start of a new strategic plan, they are real reasons that would keep us from considering that in this upcoming year I think it is critically important for us somehow to notify our community partners who participated in the strategic planning process last time around of the delay that we are considering today and will act on next week or two weeks from now.

and so my recommendation would be that we pull out the files and identify all of the community-based organizations and individuals that participated in the planning process the first time around and notify them of the fact that we are delaying the start of the next strategic plan in addition to our regular avenues of communicating.

I want to be intentional about reaching out to those who have participated in the past because you know through our regular channels it is probable that some of them won't actually see the action that we are considering and will take action on in a couple weeks.

So I would like us to be affirmative in reaching out to them and communicating to them the reasons and the rationale behind our delay.

And if that requires an amendment to the motion at our next board meeting then I will be able to make that motion.

I am supportive of this for the reasons that my colleagues have shared but also my hope is that having the luxury of a little bit more time will provide us the space to have a better conversation about how our strategic plan really does engage the community and it really does impact our work.

my feeling is that the engagement at a high level strategic plan level can be unsatisfying for the community because and in some cases for the board because it doesn't feel actionable whereas the work around SMART goals if we can figure out how to better engage the community around SMART goals both in maintaining continuity with high priority ones and identifying critical areas for growth or change that's where I would like to for us to consider as part of our future evaluations so not so much changing the strategic plan per se but changing more of the implementation aspects of it.

I think Director Blanford you made an excellent suggestion that we put some language in this document that acknowledges that we do need to notify people of what we're doing.

I think one way to do it would be if you have some language between now and next time we look at this, if you have some language you want to send to staff to put into this we can do that.

I think it's a great idea.

and I do recall I think there was I was on the task force that was working on the strategic plan I think there were 72 of us heads up but you can cross one off the list because one of us now knows.

Is there any other comments about this item?

Okay thank you.

Let's move on to the next item.

That is item 4, elevator maintenance and repair contract extension.

May I hear from the chair of the operations committee.

This item and the item 5 and item 8 were all heard by the or considered by the operations committee on September the 7th and moved forward for approval.

Good evening Bruce Gaura director of facilities.

So we're here tonight to request school board approval of a one year extension to our current elevator maintenance and repair contract.

Excuse me can you please check that your mic is on?

Sure.

Not really hearing.

Is it on?

We are here tonight to request school board approval of a one-year contract extension to our current elevator maintenance and repair contract with LTCH.

LTCH has a state contract for elevator maintenance and repair and our current contract with LTCH is based on the state master contract.

The contract amount is $284,200 which is a 16% increase over the previous year.

The increase is due to the increase in number of sites serviced.

We're adding 8 sites and the total number of elevators we're adding 13. So we're moving from a total of 115 elevators to 128. Any questions?

So are you saying that all 107 elevators need they all need to be worked on?

We are required by state L&I to do a quarterly maintenance on all elevator cabs.

So the contract is for that quarterly maintenance program and also any emergency maintenance repairs that are required.

So it's every quarter?

Every quarter.

These have to have maintenance?

Yes.

Big problem.

Are there any questions or comments?

Thank you.

Next item, item number 5, approval of property sale of 315 square feet for the South Lander Street grade separation right of way.

May we please hear from the operations committee chair.

So we are requesting approval for the sale of 315 square feet of district property to the city of Seattle for the South Lander street grade separation project.

The city needs the land to complete the project as designed.

If we don't approve we'd have to change the design and the property is basically for the east footing for the bridge.

The offer is also includes damages for the net loss of one parking stall due to the project.

So the total offer from the city is $50,540 $20,540 for the 315 square feet of property and then $30,000 for the loss of the one parking stall.

I have a question.

So who assessed the value of that land?

So it was assessed by the city.

It was reviewed by the city and then we had the opportunity to review it and due to the tight timeline we let them know it needs to be good because they're planning on starting in January and obviously if this isn't accepted by the district they're not starting in January.

So after reviewing it we feel that we got a fair offer.

So this matches what this district feels is the value of that.

It does.

Because this is you know the city assessing something that it's going to.

It is but they were kind of under the gun on this one.

We kind of had the advantage on this one which is rare.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

But how do we know what the value of the land is because if the city is assessing it they have an obvious interest in giving us the lowest possible figure.

How internally do we know that the figure their bid is actually a valid bid?

So we had reviewed by our property management team and also by legal.

You know we'd had some recent assessments done.

One for the Lowell right away we did an assessment there so we felt that this was in line and was a little bit more than we expected actually and I think that was because that they knew we had to accept this or they're going to potentially spend millions in redesign.

Thank you.

Okay, next item.

Item 6, Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, OSPI, beginning educator support team which is the best grant approval.

May we please hear from the chair of Curriculum and Instruction Committee.

This came to the C&I committee September 12th then was moved forward to the board for approval.

Hi I'm Chris Drape I'm the program manager for the STAR mentor program and for the Seattle teacher residency and I'm happy to be able to introduce what is an expansion of our best grant.

A little bit of background this is the supports the STAR program which is our teacher induction program that is very clearly directed to the recruitment retention and induction of teachers into SPS.

and also foundationally set in our work toward institutionalizing racial equity as well as our work around the PAR peer assistance review process.

So it's nice to be able to present this as something connected to two of the three pillars of the formula for success.

Some quick background on the STAR program to set the context.

We are a program that's been in place for over 20 years.

It's part of the CBA so it's a partnership between the district and SEA and it's a robust mentorship and induction program for all new to profession teachers.

in Seattle Public Schools.

We currently have 13 and with the grant hopefully 14 full-time release mentors who support each carry a caseload of new to profession teachers.

Each year it is in the neighborhood of 250 new to profession teachers that we support through that.

and the basic components of the STAR program are one on one mentorship that's focused on support and challenge and instructional growth for our new to profession teachers that is at least 30 hours of one on one connection between mentors and teachers over the course of the year.

So that's the primary context of our work.

We also offer second year support as an opt in and that is actually the piece that's funded historically by the best grant and that is a context of four release day sessions that focus on particular components of the Danielson framework that also entail follow-up work with the mentors in small groups in between sessions.

So that's the quick context of our work in terms of the grant.

for the past three years we've received best grant funding that has allowed us to fund the second year support.

The second year support is in addition to the context and the caseload that the mentors work with the first year teachers.

This year for the first time we've been eligible to because our program is so robust prior to this we've not been eligible for funding that is tied to first-year teachers.

So this year we were able to apply for funding of 50 first-year teachers.

If we applied for all of our first-year teachers we would consume most of the best grant in the district excuse me in the state.

So we were able to apply for funding for 50 of those teachers.

So this will both support the ongoing work of our second year as well as it will allow us to add an additional mentor FTE that will lower our overall caseloads and support our work around the PAR implementation.

I couldn't be more in favor of this work and thank you for doing it.

Happy to.

I do have some questions about sustainability and how we fund this district and I understand why we go for grants because of McCleary et al but at what point can we fold this into our operating budget because this expresses our values.

I can speak to that in the short term and if Clover wants to speak more I'll let her do that as well.

One response to that would be the current context of our star mentor program as in addition to the second year support is really being folded into our work in the PAR context which is a comprehensive approach to how we support teachers in their first three years.

their provisional years within the district.

We have our baseline and Title II funding has fully supported our first year program.

We were able to expand into second year through the best grant which is renewable.

But isn't our Title II funding disappearing in large measure?

I will let Ms. Codd answer.

I might not be able to be as specific as you'd like.

Sorry Clovercott assistant superintendent of HR.

But this is part of our work with SEA over last year and this year to look at our star mentor program, our evaluation and support consulting teacher program, our career ladder teacher program and how we bring all those into alignment so that we can truly support with the resources that we currently have already built into our collective bargaining agreement.

new to profession teachers in their first three years and then any teachers who are veteran but may be struggling with one or more areas of their practice.

So this is part of a comprehensive relook into our teacher evaluation and support system.

So we are thinking about sustainability the PAR program, the STAR program is not contingent upon these grants.

We do have this program built into our collective bargaining agreement already.

This is this grant provides some additional support and capacity for us to actually enter into this PAR pilot this year.

Lower case loads a little bit.

Director Blanford.

Chris, I'd like to thank you for your stewardship of this program and particularly for connecting it in the first part of your remarks, connecting it to the goals that we have around improving student achievement overall and particularly in closing our opportunity gaps.

I for a long time have seen this as one of our most robust strategies for actually accomplishing those things.

and I'm pleased to see that we are able to identify funding externally.

I've been part of some of those conversations with folks externally to try to find additional funding for this and you know I think lots of people look at it like it should be part of our base operating funds and so it makes it more difficult to pitch it as something that is worthy of support Though the fact that we are inducting teachers, putting them in some of our more challenging schools, they are staying with us over time, they are changing the culture of the school, right, to be more focused on gap closure.

seems to me to be one of those what they call it force multipliers, right?

Where a little bit of work has a leverage impact on the entire school.

And so I'm hopeful that you will be able to identify other sources of funds because I have the same concerns that are shared by Director Harris around sustainability as our budgets get tight.

but want to celebrate the fact that we have crossed this bridge in the short term and that we can look out it gives us a little bit of time and space to be thinking about what's the next big ask.

But I want to thank you for your leadership of this program and it's worthy of celebration.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next item is item number 7 Rainier Beach school improvement grant SIG year 4 funding.

May we please hear from the chair of the audit and finance committee.

This came from before audit and finance September 11 for approval.

Recommended approval.

Good evening directors.

Michael Stone director of grants and I am bringing forward some additional funding that has been provided by the Department of Ed to continue the approved school improvement grant from 2014. they are providing an additional $1.1 million with some change for Rainier Beach to continue the transformation plan that they started in 2014 in building a robust program around international baccalaureate program and increasing graduation rates.

Director Blanford.

In the audit and finance committee if I'm remembering correctly there was a little bit of conversation about underspend.

Can you share that part with us?

So originally in the spring we were notified from the state that they would be receiving about $300,000 of underspend from prior years.

that was then changed and I didn't get clarification yet and I can from the state I apologize on was that rolled into this 1.1 million we were informed this was the underspend was taken off the table and this new funding was brought forward so I think it has all been incorporated but I will confirm that.

And the reason I ask that question is just because if there's underspend it would be important to the Rainier Beach community to be clear and say that the underspend goes away and here is a new grant.

Here is an extension of the prior grant.

So they're extending it one more year with some funding.

there could be underspend in the future OSPI has not given us any indication as to that possibility.

But yeah the underspend was the $300,000 was pulled back and this $1.1 million was brought forward instead.

So will the guidance to the administrators at Rainier Beach will that be to spend this money while it's available?

Yes that has been and we've also been talking as we've had the sustainability discussion about how do we move forward with this work and not make it staff dependent so that we can still keep the systems in place that they have put in place and keep it moving forward.

Superintendent Nyland and then Director Harris.

I appreciate all the comments.

We do certainly want to give as much continuity and sustainability as possible to the principal and to the rest of us.

This is part of the continuing evolving structure of the universe.

The funding that comes to us from the federal government we know Title II was eliminated.

It's now restored in the Senate budget but that would require negotiations so we're hopeful that we're going to get part of the Title II money back.

title one I think it was about a 20 percent cut that we had in our budget.

But part of that cut is that the state has a mandatory set aside that's bigger than it has been in the past which I'm pretty sure is why Rainier Beach has ended up with some additional money.

So it's all evolving and we'll try to keep up and we'll try to keep people notified.

In this case we lost something on Title I coming in on the front end and they took it out at OSPI but then they turned around and gave it back to us as a specific school improvement grant for Rainier Beach.

So I think maybe after this year it will settle out and the state will know a little bit more about what they can expect because those federal rules changed quite a lot this year.

You know where I'm going.

International Baccalaureate program.

Yes ma'am.

is more expensive a program to run than other programs.

We have given the IB schools one more FTE but I don't know that we have given them additional funding for the more expensive texts and to safety net the very expensive testing fees and we have heard substantial testimony from Ingram, Chief South International High School which also has high poverty which also requires each of their students to take at least one IB course and mandates 11th grade language arts I believe.

I appreciate building based leadership I appreciate the innovation that comes with that but at what point are we actually going to sustain programs that we put in place and keep our promises?

How does that work SIG with funding IB?

it's limited because there are federal requirements around the funding that it is following Title I rules and it is supplemental to support the work to turn the school around.

It was used to support the professional development for all teachers in the IB program so all teachers at Rainier Beach have been that but to get to what your question is I don't have an answer.

But haven't we thrown a lot of money southeast education initiative the southeast initiative 10 years ago and we didn't see before your time others in this building recall it well and we didn't see a large closing of the opportunity gap and we spent a great deal of money.

so I'm confused about analysis of what we've done before and if we're indeed a data-driven district where's the data?

Director Blackford.

I'm struggling a little with the last two comments that have been made about sustainability.

You know frequently we're up here talking about the fact that there's not sufficient resources to do everything that is required.

by the district and ultimately it's we around this table who make the funding decisions about where things go.

By the time a new board by the time a new decision on a budget rolls around I won't be on this board anymore but my hope is that we that future board members exercise the authority to if sustainability is important and valuable to try to infuse it into the budgets that we have going forward.

That said, I think that's a difficult exercise because the prior conversation that we were having about McCleary means that we will continue to struggle to maintain the baseline and hopefully shift priorities in order to get the biggest bang for the buck.

But I think it's maybe not the best way to interrogate those who are running our programs to be driving towards sustainability when we don't have the revenue to give to them to be able to sustain our programs going forward.

The nature in the four years that I've been on this board is that we have done things, you know, a little bit at a time, we have some money, we put it into the program, we make the investment on the short term.

I would love to be able to say for the next ten years we will guarantee that IB is sufficiently funded or whatever is sufficiently funded but I don't see the revenue streams that allow us to make that kind of a commitment.

And so I would just encourage us to be thoughtful about the best ways to work with our managers, program managers to keep our programs up and running for as long as possible.

Director Geary.

This may have nothing to do with the SIG grant other than to say I want us to be mindful that when we're I appreciate Director Harris's point about us figuring out ways to continue to fund the IB program at Rainier Beach.

I think that's really important.

but I see that as like using terms like basic ed right if we're doing it in some of our schools then we need to make sure once we've committed to it we're going to we're going to figure out a way that we're going to commit to it at Rainier Beach and if it's going to be at Ingram it's going to be at Rainier Beach and we're not going to get rid of it at Beach unless we're going to really examine whether we can sustain that program equitably in our district for our kids.

and that using monies that are identified to address different particular needs contributing to the achievement gap need to continue to be focused in addition to the funding of the program which is the basic goal.

and it's just so easy to get well we'll just use this money to fund what we should be funding as a district when it's a special pot.

So we just need to be mindful to protect that pot and continue to look about ways to equitably fund that which should be equitably distributed.

My only comment.

So I know that when schools actually are getting grants and then they have so many years for them to actually be able to do the work that they need to do to actually restructure the whole school in terms of moving it forward.

Now don't we have data that actually that tells us exactly how successful what's been done overall from the beginning when they actually start those grant what they have done in order for them to actually to raise academic scores and vice versa.

So I didn't pull any SBA data or map data but I did put down in the bar the increase of graduation rate from 2014 to current of going from 57 percent to 81 percent.

so that is a large increase in just on-time graduation rate for students at Rainier Beach High School.

And I'm aware of that but I wanted to actually to kind of go back you know I hear this a lot where there's been grants has been actually been given to that school in ten years times and that has not we have not seen any progress you know in terms of those past grant we see a lot of progress now in terms of what we are looking at right now like graduation rates have tremendously been raised.

But I guess my question is did we actually look at those the ten years beforehand that actually were the grants was given and what progress were those being made before we actually move forward to where we are today?

Which are you talking the southeast?

I'm talking about southeast grants that were given to Rainier Beach in the past.

I would need to know those specific ones so I can go back and look at what the projected outcomes were and work with research and evaluation to find that data.

I don't have anything on file because I don't have records back that far.

So we don't go back ten years?

We don't have any records anywhere that tells us exactly what happened to the grants that we have actually given out beforehand?

I don't have anything on file.

I could go look for it.

I would have to find that information for you.

Thank you.

So the graduation rates as you point out have gone up considerably during the time well preceding and during the time of this grant.

So that's one data point we can look at.

I think what in terms of what my colleagues have been talking about sustainability It's good to have these resources but we also don't want to start something that has to suddenly stop.

So what is the future of the SIG grant?

Is it something that can be extended indefinitely?

I'm assuming not.

We didn't know we were going to get this funding until July.

So this was one-time funding to extend it for one more year.

Under Every Student Succeeds the funding that Dr. Nyland was talking about that is extra pulled off top will now be put back out to districts with schools that are in the lowest 5% or are not meeting graduation rates that funding will come back out the district in the form of school improvement grants at the state level not from federal government from those Title I funds that have been pulled from every district.

they pulled another $700,000 from our Title I allocation to put into that fund to put back out because they now can pull 7% instead of 4% for administrative purposes down at OSPI and also to put back out for school improvement.

I sort of appreciate Director Patu's question about the history.

I think it would be helpful if we were able to have more of a sense of what grants are leading to good results and that would help us better understand and what's the magic combination of not just the grant but who's working with it and what they're doing with it.

As far as history goes I'd like to make a request that between now and the time that this is brought to us for action that you attach the original grant to this because I know there's about I think most of the directors were not here when this grant was initially granted to the district and we'll give them a chance to read about it and see what the goals were and the stipulations of it.

And I can attach the application that was put in for the funding for this year also that is currently under OSPI review.

Okay great thank you.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Okay Director Patu.

I just want to add to that that it really would be great when grants end we would really like to see exactly what progress has been made from the time the grant was granted to the time it ended.

So that way at least we know what's working and what's not working because adding grants to something that's not working doesn't make any sense.

and I know that there's you know there's been cases where we keep adding and I'm not talking about it particularly for this particular grant this grant that we've been given to different various programs and yet we see no progress but yet the grant keeps going in so I really would like to see what results are we getting out of these grants so we can really look at that and be able to you know be able to make sure that if it's working in a certain school or they're doing something differently then we would like to actually use those same process to be able to let other schools also be able to work the same way.

I will work with you to get a list of which grants specifically you want addressed.

In response to Director Patu's question I went on to the OSPI website, the publicly available website and I see that from at least 2005 I couldn't click back far enough but at least from 2005-2006 there is an annual on time graduation rate for Rainier Beach for each year from 2005-06 on.

and so that would give some longitudinal information about graduation rates during the time of the grant that might be useful and that's publicly available information that's on the OSPI website if you scroll down and get to Rainier Beach High School.

Thank you.

Can I just add something?

Sure.

In the world of Rainier Beach High School a recommendation that I have just around data tracking.

I mean I think the graduation rates is a really good one.

Kelly Aramaki executive director used to oversee Rainier Beach High School but they are keeping a lot of data at Rainier Beach High School around IB participation, full diploma participation and the data that they have around students of color accessing international baccalaureate classes and the IB program the diploma program is really stunning and when you look at the roadmap research when they show South Seattle the participation of kids of color in IB classes is really stunning and so I think that would be a good place for us to track some data around especially the SIG grant because the graduation rates tells part of the story.

but the data around getting students of color to access advanced coursework is really something to see.

So Colin Pierce is the IB coordinator at Rainier Beach High School.

He does an amazing job tracking that data and trying to make his case for further supporting the program.

Can I ask a question, Kelly?

You know that's really great to hear all those wonderful things happening in terms of those test scores, but how do we publicly actually put that out there so people know that there's great progress that's actually happening at the beach?

Because as I'm out there talking to people, you know, it really hurts me when people say it's a terrible school, and I know for a fact that's not a terrible school, there's great progress that's happening at that school so you know what do we do in terms of actually letting people know that this school is actually moving forward in high graduation rate and that kids are actually progressing instead of you know we don't see anything like that happening on the website so it would be great if we can actually put it out there.

Yes I agree with that and I think one way is to highlight it at the school board meeting so we can do that maybe as part of renewing or extending this grant for one more year just to highlight the progress that they've made as part of our rationale for extending it a year.

But they've been getting awards too so I think that it's important for us to do that.

Just a side note about International Baccalaureate and why it's it's a gap closer not just when you look at like smarter balance assessment like that.

It's not necessarily that we're going to see the gap closing in that assessment alone.

But when you talk to students that come out of Rainier Beach High School there are so many stories of the students saying when they tell other kids I went to Rainier Beach High School they know that they're not respected by a lot of kids who go to different high schools.

but when they say and I graduated with an IB diploma it changes the whole story.

You know the International Baccalaureate diploma is internationally recognized as rigorous and to be able to pass the tests and to get that diploma it shows that you've reached an international standard for academics and so it's important for schools like Rainier Beach High School to have programs like that so that when they are confronted with people who look down on them because they went to Rainier Beach High School with all of the bias that comes with that they can show their diploma which translates into people understanding what that success means and what rigor looks like at Rainier Beach High School.

Thank you.

but Mr. Aramaki you're not saying and I don't think you're saying this but I want to be clear you're not saying that a graduate from Rainier Beach High School that doesn't have an IB diploma cannot be proud of their diploma.

Oh no absolutely not.

I'm just talking about changing perception about Rainier Beach High School because the students want to change that perception and they should be proud and even if the students don't get an IB diploma part of what Rainier Beach is doing is making sure that all students have access to that rigor and making it public that students that go to Rainier Beach High School even if they don't get the IB diploma are still expected to take international baccalaureate courses.

And I knew that was the case.

Thank you for clarifying I don't want that to come out.

I didn't hear that in your first remarks so I wanted to be clear that we expect that regardless of if you are enrolled in the IB program or enrolled in some other program if you graduate from Rainier Beach High School your diploma has meaning and is of value.

Thank you for clarifying that.

No further questions or comments?

Thank you.

All right we had another item on the agenda but that's going to be deferred to a different meeting because it needs to be reviewed through the curriculum and instruction committee.

So now we move on to our final item of the evening and that's the BTA 3 and BEX 4 final acceptance of public works contract K5059 with Western Ventures Construction Incorporated for the seismic green energy and re-roofing Adams Elementary School projects.

And I believe we've already heard from the Ops Committee so go ahead.

Good evening.

My name is Mike Skutak, senior project manager of the capital projects and planning department.

This board action if approved would acknowledge the final acceptance of public works contract K50-59 with Western Ventures construction for seismic green energy and re-roofing at Adams Elementary School for the purposes of avoiding disputes concerning the timing of the filing of liens prior to the release of the contractors retainage bond.

The architect Dull Olson Weeks has recommended acceptance.

Project closeout checklist has been completed.

Accounting records have been verified.

The project finished about $623,000 under budget.

and the green energy project was partially funded by $500,000 OSPI energy efficiency grant and that was converted into a geothermal loop.

Are there any questions?

Apparently not.

So thank you very much.

So since all business has been addressed this evening I now call this meeting adjourned at 7.59 p.m.

Thank you everybody.