School Board Meeting May 9, 2018 Pt. 3B

Passed unanimously.

Number five review and approval of career and technical education 2018 annual plan per policy 2170. This came before CNI April 17 for.

For consideration.

Approval of this item would approve the 2018 career and technical education annual plan.

The motion please.

I move that the board approve the 2018 career and technical education annual plan as attached to this board action report.

I understand that there.

I'm sorry.

I second the motion.

Understand that there is a Scrivener's amendment that was not cut previously sir.

Yes ma'am.

Thank you for raising President Harris.

Kayla Perkins Director of College and Career Readiness.

I'll just acknowledge that we have Jane Hendrickson here our CTE program manager and Dan Golisman our principal of the Skills Center.

Excited to have the opportunity to present the plan for vote.

Appreciate how collaborative and inclusive and positive the development of this plan has been.

And we are excited to begin formally implementing the plan As well as continuing to make this a living document through the SMART goal process and a number of other conversations to make these ideas really come to life.

In that spirit I do want to acknowledge that Director Pinkham made an excellent suggestion and request last time we met.

on this to add the word reference to a tribal government on page 33 in the description of career pathways and clusters.

And thus I would like to apologize for that oversight.

It is not in the version that's before you and would like to subsequently request a motion from the board to add a reference to tribal government so that on page 33 under government and public administration it would say something to the effect of planning and executing government functions at the local state federal and tribal levels.

I appreciate you considering that request.

May I hear such a motion for an amendment.

Sure.

I move that we amend Which what are we calling this the amend the appendix B career clusters and pathways bullet government and public administration to read planning and executing government functions at the local state federal and tribal levels rather than as stated currently in the form.

Second.

Second.

May I have a roll call on the amendment please.

Director Burke aye Director DeWolf aye Director Heary aye Director Mack aye Director Patu aye Director Pinkham aye Director Harris aye this amendment has passed unanimously.

Okay.

May I hear comments questions concerns from my colleague.

For the bar as amended.

Support.

I'm enthusiastic.

Roll call.

And may I just say that this is really hitting one of my interim personal goals.

I appreciate the heavy lift.

I appreciate the new energy.

I appreciate the collaborative nature.

The teaching and learning and career corrected connected connected learning as brought to the table.

Much appreciated.

Thank you.

And to your teams.

Director Geary.

I think it's a really great tool for all of us to use in all of our outreach and talking to just community partners.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who as you have conversations they want to know how they can get involved and it can be anywhere.

And it's so nice to have something so comprehensive to refer to and to give them as a starting point to inspire just that outlook and Yeah so it's really good work.

Thank you very much.

Director Pinkham.

Yeah and I too want to echo thanks for this in part to kind of address before that as we look at this career and technical education that does fill the needs of the community.

What are we missing?

What do we need that our community doesn't have like you talk about health services.

We don't have health service here and we need health services to have a good community.

So let's see if we can help provide that so our community becomes more enhanced and rich.

So appreciate it.

Thank you.

Of course.

Director Burke.

I would also like to reach out to other staff to share some of their expertise.

I think one of the things that I've struggled with as a director is how to engage support partners in this work.

And I think there's lots of examples you know in our community partnership Group with Dr. Jones and his expertise.

And so I would just ask you to reach out to those individuals which I believe you already are working with to understand how we're building a partner network in a way that's scalable and sustainable.

I appreciate the suggestion.

Seeing no further comments questions concerns roll call please.

Director Burke.

Hi.

Director DeWolf.

This motion as amended has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Number six expansion of Native American educational programming.

This bar came before CNI April 17th for.

Approval.

Approval of this item would approve two hundred fifty thousand dollars of additional baseline funds to expand the Native American educational program including the addition of Sakachib close no.

Program in the north.

Staff for afterschool programs and a secondary liaison case manager in the north.

Motion please.

I move that the school board approve two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of additional general funds beginning on the 2018 19 school year to expand the Native American educational program including the addition of a Sakachi program in the north staff for afterschool programs and a secondary liaison case manager in the north.

I second the motion.

Short introduction please.

As pointed out in the motion this would add two hundred fifty thousand dollars to our Native American Native American education programming in Seattle Public Schools.

I will ask Gail Morris to speak to more specific opportunities that these funds would provide.

First Nations Native American education manager.

OK.

I'm going to tell you how to say it.

I'll send it to you in an email as well.

So I want to talk about how this funding would support our program.

First of all we need to meet our students where they're at.

And our students are distributed all over and we need to be able to give them the same opportunities that they're seeing at Chief Sealth.

One thing that was mentioned earlier by Director DeWolf was our population of homeless students throughout and then also our native students.

We have a lot in this in the south end and so our is able to help those students with wraparound services.

We keep things in the classroom for them.

It also helps students to come in and get extra support to stay in school.

This is really important for our students or oftentimes our students don't feel Inclined to work through their problems and I'm talking about the ones that need help not all students.

And so we have that support system from Ms. Boo and Mr. Ben who are out there constantly working all day through IEP meetings and giving that added support for students to stay in school while they can still play football while they can still play an instrument or take a language or any of those things That they want in a neighborhood school.

I also want to talk about When we were looking at developing this program we were looking at Proyecto Ciber.

Proyecto Ciber are in quite a few schools middle schools and high schools.

This program benefits those students like Proyecto Ciber does for their students.

And so that's really needed in the schools.

When our students go it's a place for them to just take a breath To put their head down to figure out what they're going to do next.

How they could have done something differently or just get their paper in for the last minute.

I also want to talk about a little bit more in detail about the wraparound services that we're able to provide students there.

And isn't always just for homelessness or mental health or food or helping them through McKinney Vento and getting You know cleats for football but it's also we have BFI it's a publishing company in Greenwood and so our students write this amazing book and they talk about who they are in this book and I've handed them out before.

But that's an opportunity for students and two of our students stories were picked this just this year.

And it's going into a bigger book that's going to be distributed in bookstores.

And Ms. Boo called me and said it's even going to be at Tulalab.

And so she was really excited about that two of our students were actually picked at a higher level you know and they want to work more in our program.

They're writing bigger grants to write more to get more money to have more of our Native students write.

So when I look at the extra funding not only for the classroom but I'm looking at how we help students in schools to stay in school.

One of our objective is high school dropout prevention.

We can go to the schools and advocate for students.

We can talk to counselors.

Counselors are actually our best friends for high school students.

So we work very closely with counselors all over in all the schools.

In fact we just sent out Today to all the counselors for our summer school program our high school credit retrieval.

My program works year round academics year round.

So we are so excited that we're now looking at placing students into our summer school program at Meaning Middle School.

So these are just some of the things that will help with that funding to bring on more people to do more outreach into the schools.

It is needed.

A lot of our students need that extra support just to get through.

There are a few other things I wanted to talk about but so many people touched base on that tonight.

So I just want to leave that there just that you understand that the work that we do while it's A lot of work we don't have I don't have enough staff they're already maxed out.

I think in combined caseloads we're probably reaching out to at least 350 to 400 students at any given time with a family support worker as well.

So yeah we could use some help.

Yes.

Director Pinkham then Director Mack.

No Director Pinkham.

Yeah I had no shakashi there's no credit tied to this so it's more a service for our students right so.

It is credit.

There is credit and the credit goes towards and hopefully will be wrapped into the 24 credits that's required to graduate or how soon is it any credit in middle school or is it.

Since we've had Chicago to bet Denny NCL every student every student that is in the classroom gets 0.5 credits native leadership class.

0.5 you said.

Thank you.

It's elective.

Other questions comments concerns.

Other questions.

Yes.

We heard a great deal this evening and previously about An Indian Heritage High School.

This is not an either or proposition.

Is that correct.

Correct.

Okay.

And could this be potentially a step towards exploring that but meeting the immediate needs.

So.

I. I'm looking for a framing reference here.

Sure.

Let me.

Give an example of this classroom.

So first of all thank you Dr. Nyland because he understands how this works by being in Marysville.

Most tribes give money into school districts to have these type of classrooms.

They may have a tribal school.

They may not have a tribal school.

But they do give money to districts to have these classrooms for native students to attend.

And so.

In looking at this class it had in creating these classrooms like proyectos a bear.

It was not tied to anything other than just meeting students where they're at in the classroom.

In my mind and the conversations I've had the funding would not go away.

And like I said earlier about tribes doing this just because they have a tribal school they don't pull their money out of the local educational agencies around them.

They still continue to support their students that attend those schools that aren't a tribal school or any of those schools.

Does that answer your question.

Not necessarily but you bring up another thread.

Do we have tribal financial support for this and is it something that we have explored.

We don't have any tribal funding for this.

The Duwama should not federally recognized nor are they state recognized that there's no funding available there.

That's why we get the funding through baseline here.

I've not explored it.

I have not asked Suquamish or Muckleshoot if they would fund it because they fund their own districts that surround or bump up against their reservations and tribal lands.

So I don't know how that would look coming into here.

I mean You could ask.

Right.

Doesn't mean that they will do it but they're not obligated to.

No.

Director DeWolf please.

I was just going to add to I think that there.

There is room and some potential for us to be better partners with the surrounding tribes.

So I see some promise.

I mean no guarantee but definitely some potential.

And I think building those relationships out may facilitate that.

No promises but we.

Full landscape of opportunity ahead of us.

Thank you.

Director Patu.

Just for clarification.

It's the proactive program the same as the Native American program.

It was the framework around it is the same but it isn't.

So Chicago Chief is for Native American students and so we look at what students are in the schools and then we work with the counselors into building them into the classroom so that they can have an opportunity to come in.

We we recruit students so that it isn't just where a principal could say oh let's just put them in this class because that's not what it's for.

It's for a place for native students to have priority to go into that class.

Now having said that are all of our students 100% native.

No.

We have a few students that have come in that are not native.

Not a lot but you know.

Last question I think have we decided where this north end will be placed.

We've talked about it.

We are in the process of putting together a briefing paper that will consider the options.

Ideally the considerations are around the proximity of students that would be served in the North End.

Where's the highest population density for that consideration.

The model that we currently have that is successful at Denny South is serving both middle school students and high school students on that campus.

And we would like to see if that's a possibility in the north as well.

That would of course point us in the direction of Nathan Hale and Jane Adams.

The other option would be say Eagle Staff and Ingram or something like that.

Because of the distance between schools we would not be able to replicate exactly the model that we have in the Southwest.

So those are considerations in going into the briefing paper.

But a final decision has not been made at this time.

Director Pinkham.

And we've brought this up before as far as identifying our native students and I know you've been working on it.

So when you look at the demographics are we pulling maybe those multiracial native students that may be counted as Hispanic so those aren't getting lost.

So we're that's what my fear is a lot of our native students are multiracial and Ask them just to check only native isn't really fair because then they're denying half of themselves basically.

So are we able to with the numbers that you said hey we have a number of students that Nathan Hale jams that that includes those that may be two or more races are Hispanic.

Thank you Director Pinkham.

If you remember in my presentation and I showed you several different categories of how we look at Native American students.

One was those that self identify.

Those are the ones that are two or more races and then there's under Hispanic and then there's our 506. That's what we work with all the time.

It's tedious and it's a lot of work.

Well we did put on the new enrollment to be Box 2B we have our own but we still haven't figured out how we can get all the data to correspond with one another.

Because quite frankly the one in the Hispanic box that's where we find a lot of and I mentioned this in my presentation before was that we get a lot of Mexican families that say other American Indian that's where they check the box.

So we literally have to call.

We have to work with Spanish speaking people because they think that perhaps we're ice checking on them when we're talking about a federally recognized tribe.

So there's a lot of there's a lot of work that we do but we're very intentional when we're looking for native students and families know how to find us as well.

Thanks for just for getting that on the record.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

OK roll call please.

Director Burke aye Director DeWolf aye Director Geary aye Director Mack aye Director Patu aye Director Pinkham aye Director Harris aye this motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you very much.

OK let's go back to number one.

Approval of purchase of equipment from black box to replace existing voice network that supports desktop telephones and five year software and hardware support for three million six hundred seventy one thousand five hundred seventy five dollars and forty cents.

Approval of this item would approve a five year contract for the telephone system upgrade with black box.

Can Mr. Kroll and Mr. Treat report back as to your sidebars on the 10 year piece please.

John Kroll chief information officer after speaking with the general counsel we will need to pull this item in order to add something that we can add to add to the contract.

So I will have to meet with the vendor and negotiate something like that.

Thank you for your understanding.

It's a tough job sometimes to push back but this is the public's money.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Introduction items number one.

Point of clarification.

Excuse me sir.

Question on that.

I just want to make sure that if if we're looking at an adjustment to this that includes an incremental cost That we're deliberate about are we paying more for that extra five years and what that amount is.

I'm not ready to make a blanket decision that yes we should do an extended warranty for the foreseeable future.

So I want to be cognizant that that hasn't been discussed in committee and would need some.

Director Geary.

Thank you.

Good point.

That's a good point.

And what I understood the letter to say is that they're assuring us that should we need service 10 years out they would be able to provide it not that we are guaranteed to pay for it.

So it would seem to me that that assurance Could be clarified within the contract even without creating an extra fiduciary obligation on our part.

But if you can negotiate a 10 year for the same price because of your ornery board that would be awesome too.

Thank you.

And your CEO can watch us on YouTube.

Number one introduction approval for it'll come back to us.

Approval for contract amendment with school data solutions for school based implementation of MTSS student data portal RFP 09615. This came before CNI April 17th for.

And was moved forward for consideration.

Approval of this item would authorize the superintendent to execute a contract amendment with school data solutions in the amount of two hundred seventy four thousand dollars for the student data portal homeroom in the form of the contract amendment dated March 28 2018. Chief Jesse would you like to give us a short presentation.

I'll highlight the word short.

Hi Wyatt Jesse chief of student support services.

This is a continuation of our contract with school data solutions.

Actually just met with them today.

Really excited about this work.

Again our vision is so that every staff member here in Seattle Public Schools can know each and every student story strength and need.

And that's critical to eliminate an opportunity gap.

You can't address students needs unless you know what's going on with them.

And so the problem is Too often some of our staff don't have the whole story don't have all the information in one spot.

This provides that.

In addition as we've talked about at CNI a lot of schools and staff use spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets are oftentimes incomplete or they get into the hands of people or access to where it's just not appropriate around FERPA.

So this helps us provide some better solutions ease of access.

And so that's what I move forward to you today is a contract for $274,000 to continue our work in the 2018-19 school year.

Questions comments concerns.

I'll bring up the concern that I go ahead please Director Geary.

I would like to hear more about the discussion in C&I around this.

My concern that I brought up in home in C&I about homeroom is how many of our schools are actually using this and with what kind of of deep dive robustness fidelity etc.

It feels slow from what we voted on last year.

This is the first year of implementation in all fairness.

And so we have 1000 I believe I that's in your packet has 1713 current homeroom users and that tracks somewhere between monthly usage rates of 1000 to 2000 which is actually quite a lot.

And I will agree with you definitely in this I think in your in your comment or that collecting that conversation that we had from board president Harris is just around increasing the usage.

And so we have a further more robust homeroom PD online plan outline plan I'm sorry for addressing this needs.

The trickiness with homeroom is It's not something that just is easy to just pick up on a quick guide video.

You actually as requested people like to get to use that tool just like anybody else with any other sense of technology is use it as you are doing the work to use it for not just by itself.

So and that's what our plan is.

And so I will hold us accountable.

I said I would come back to CNI with those usage rates and report out on that and that's what we'll do.

Director Burke did you wish to address this.

I think that that was was definitely one of the you know at CNI the conversation was really understanding how it's used frequency of use and sort of use use across the district.

Was it used by every teacher all the time.

Was it used by you know I think that where we converged on that was that this is a tool for like MTSS groups.

So it's not an everyday type of thing.

But it's something that is part of more of like a periodic intervention or evaluation cycle because it's not like this has daily updates of data.

So I was wondering if maybe you could just kind of quickly brief us on what are the data elements that roll up into it so we can get an idea of what's the granularity of that data.

Yeah so the assessment data that's in the district assessment calendar goes into it anywhere from our state testing that we perform to the interims we're working on right now so that data can be there but it migrates into it.

Grades attendance the missed instructional log which we've been working on for five years.

So the misconstruction log that we've been working on for five years has awesome reports we've had rave reviews on that and that was completed finally this spring.

I think that the thing that I would say from being a principal former principal in this district is I think it's so easy to ask for.

It's so much harder behind the scenes to actually migrate and integrate data and any industry faces some of the same similar challenges.

Here's a great opportunity for us to have an opportunity to see the statewide data coupled with their own school wide data.

The Faunus Pinnell data is in there and you can see the elements of their attendance and behavior.

I was just going in the back here during this meeting.

With one of the executive directors we were going over some data at a school that we were talking about and we drilled down to individual student to see exactly what their suspension was and then also what their grades are and talking about some individual kids at one of our high schools.

That's powerful.

Thank you so much for that and my last request would be I know there's there's training opportunities directors had had an invite I think on the first round to sit in on a demo.

I'm wondering is there an opportunity where we would be able to get trained at the next training cycle where we could be trained in the use of the tool as well.

Yeah I think a great time would introduce yourselves to some of our new staff.

So in August this August we'll have new teachers and as you know many with the reduction in class size.

That'd be a great opportunity to make sure you guys get the invite.

I'll write that down right here.

Give us.

Thank you.

Not last minute.

Director Mack.

I'm just curious about how long it takes to actually enter the data into this like you know take a school how many different people and how much time are they spending punching information into the system.

So it's actually an efficiency tool because instead of passing paper around all the time the really the best trick of this for example with Faunus Pinnell right and everybody you should be familiar with the reading inventory and what level is your student at.

I'm trying to explain this quickly is so instead of each and every staff member all they do is just put it onto a shared spreadsheet and one person just uploads it in.

It goes that fast.

You can do it all on the same day.

It's actually just hours a couple hours worth of work to have all the staff at least give you the letter for the kids and then upload it so everybody can have access to it.

So I believe I asked this question in CNI.

Is this a mandatory use tool for our teachers and the comparison was updating I believe it's Schoolology and you have five teachers and you have three that update it with fidelity and you have two that aren't going to do it because it's not a mandatory do and it's not part of our collective bargaining.

Can you address that issue please.

Yes I can.

So we have now mandated that people don't use a couple other vehicles.

One is for example a particular product called Swiss where they had entered their incident data.

That has been sunset.

We just actually send that out to principals so they can no longer use their data.

So we are by forcing out the other types of usage and software it is requiring them and channeling them towards the use of homeroom.

And I know as part of that conversation I can force people to do a lot of things.

I think that detracts from our particular culture of where I need to integrate the work that they do And again not the singular sessions for homeroom because that does not work either for adult learning but is actually when they're doing their PLCs I have a facilitator there to help them access their information show them how them do it monitor that and grow them towards independence of actually using this tool to inform what's going on with each and every student's story strength and need and adapting their instruction and supports to match it.

Director Geary.

Just I'm wondering given the slowness of its uptake if you were to do go back again back to last summer when we approved the initial contract for the 104 schools would it have been wiser to originally contact with fewer schools and roll it up sequentially to save money and then get more people using it within each of the sites.

Rather than us having brought all 104 and having it only one sixth of our teachers using it.

All right so now we're into really big detail.

So one I don't believe in the characterization this is going slowly.

I think when you say 2000 users in a month that is quite actually have its usage rate as Director Burke was saying it's not an everyday usage.

You're not the only the administrators and the people doing some of the database decision making will pump reports out to people and print them out.

We don't want teachers sitting mining data all day long.

We want teachers planning.

But by having this information really readily available it provides them with that opportunity.

So I just want to get some clarity around that.

But I do appreciate most certainly around the issue that we have around the rollout.

That's why we did a field test last year.

And so we did a field test only with about I believe it's 25 schools and rolled that up to do a rollout this year.

And one of those challenges and I know you know this is schools are all over the place with this work.

And so that's that's actually where some of our challenges the site based leadership and as Director Nyland Wyeth move that pendulum and get it towards the middle.

That's what I'm that's what I'm essentially trying to do.

And that's why we are sun setting those other things.

Hold me accountable for moving forward for the usage rates.

I'd be really excited about that.

We're going to do a big kickoff with this tool at this SLI.

We were not able to migrate the data for the last August SLI.

That was one of the part of the problems I have not we had not talked about today.

Director Pinkham and then Dr. Nyland.

So what is it I guess the lift for this for our staff and teachers.

Is there a huge learning curve to use this or is it pretty straightforward.

Here's the tool upload the papers or the documents and you're good to go or.

And can then parents also access what teachers are saying about their students.

So we have another vehicle for the access to the parents so to set that up off to the side.

This is this tool is strictly meant for instructional purposes and having that information for those folks.

The nice thing is you could print a report for your student for upcoming parent teacher conferences that would be a more appropriate usage for them.

I would say it's no more complex than using an Excel spreadsheet.

That's my best analogy within the world of technology.

So whoever struggles with Excel me.

Well they're not apples to oranges.

They're an apples to oranges comparison.

I'm just trying to talk about just a skill difficulty if you'll allow me.

And would you give it put a cost on that for what it would take to train the instructors to use this.

Yeah and so the training is really best again integrated within the schools and so central to that is obviously school leaders and usage and then those experts.

So we do have data leads at each school we've gone out and given them those trainings.

So that's that's worked.

In a great sense.

And again you know I'll go back to quite a few people are using this if I have right now currently the current usage rate is 1,713.

That's a that's a really good pretty robust number of people looking at data across this district when you have around 4,000 teachers.

So our current users can train new users.

How do you would have to bring in someone from the homeroom to say here's how to use how to use it.

That's why in that handout you'll notice that we're just gunning for new teachers.

That'll be helpful to get in the entry point as opposed to somebody who's been 20 years saying I've seen this I'll wait until I'm really required to do this.

Director Nyland excuse me Dr. Nyland.

As said it's about moving the pendulum.

So thank you to the board for keeping the focus on four years or three years or five goals or whatever it is.

We're keeping the focus and that means that I envision I haven't gotten this one to you in a graphic form but I envision the MTSS work in stair steps.

So this year we've been really working on the MTSS teams and knowing the students by story strength and need and making sure that they're in a program.

And we're learning from the green schools have already known how to do this for some time.

We're coordinating PD so that the yellow schools get the idea and then Wyeth and his team are out meeting with the 20 schools that aren't there yet.

And doing really good coaching around what all do you have going.

What seems to be what did you say that you would do six weeks ago and have you done it.

What are your issues right now.

How is it going to move the needle and how can we support you.

And we're doing that we're moving the pendulum back and we're moving it very appropriately to what we can identify as best practice.

And we're doing it with coaching and support and love and affection and determination that you will do this.

Meanwhile second level is homeroom.

So homeroom was rolled out as we've just talked about it with enthusiastic support from 15 schools or something like that.

And then it was rolled into the rest of the schools and made available.

As I've talked with the schools they're all in different places for good reasons.

Somebody might have a climate issue that they're working on.

Somebody might have a CCC implementation of new curriculum issue that they're working on.

Someone else may have a teacher that they need to put on probation.

And so some of the principals principals that aren't there yet for homeroom are saying it's working for me.

It's on a spreadsheet.

I've got my plate full.

I'm working my spreadsheet and we'll work on bringing teachers along as we go through the year.

And meanwhile we continue to work bugs out with homeroom.

We have more supporters.

We have more people using it and part of SLI will be principals hearing from principals Yeah this works really awesome.

This is how we use it in our building.

So it is the old joke about how many people it takes to change a light bulb only one but the light bulb has to want to.

It's kind of there's some readiness factor here that will continue to work on it and will continue to bring people along and then back to where I started.

As long as the board can keep the focus on those goals it helps us.

I mean Wyeth and his team can continue to do that.

It's kind of like OK now we've got everybody who has MTSS teams.

Now we need to get better on the data and through next year get everybody to the point where yes homeroom is what we use and everybody does it and here's your support and you can talk to a colleague that shows you how to do it.

I believe that if we're spending this kind of money this kind of talent this kind of human capital and we are committed to this work that there has to be an accountability loop in this and that waiting for folks to come along or for the pendulum to swing another direction is not good enough.

I think that we need to either evaluate principals based on how many of their teachers are working homeroom since you know we hear I don't have the tools to do my job.

Well now we gave them the tools and it's hard for me to tell a parent that Two of their five teachers don't use schoology with fidelity or keep our taxpayers parents advised and we bought a shiny new tool that can make us breakfast and I'm really excited about this tool.

I want to see real fidelity and real implementation and I want to see some consequences for not using it.

That's my two bits.

Any other comments concerns or questions.

And with that we are adjourned at 9 p.m.

Thank you and we will be moving into executive session to discuss potential litigation.

We're going to take five minutes.

Thank you.