Seattle Schools Board Meeting Aug. 27, 2025

Good afternoon.

We will call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

Right.

The August 2025 regular board meeting is called to order at 430 p.m.

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

Miss Worth, please.

The roll call, please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Sarju.

Okay.

President Topp.

Here.

I think Director Sarju just walked in if you want to call.

Director Sarju.

Great.

Thank you.

Before I turn it over to Acting Superintendent Podesta, I want to take a moment to recognize that we have Dr. Jones with us this afternoon.

At the end of Superintendent comments, we'll have a proclamation and an opportunity to thank him for his service.

I also want to share in the excitement of the start of school next week.

We are thrilled to be welcoming our students and staff back to buildings, and I'm grateful for the work that's taken place over the summer to set us up for a strong school year.

We're also opening up three new schools.

We've got Montlake Elementary.

We've got a submersor international, which I had the privilege to tour, which is absolutely gorgeous.

And John Rogers Elementary.

board board directors will be at the opening celebrations of those this coming week along with Superintendent Podesta also the first day of school board directors just want to flag for you that you have an email about which schools you will be at during your first day first day of school visits if any and Superintendent Podesta has invited you to join him as well in some of those celebratory At this time I'm going to turn it over to acting Superintendent Podesta for his comments.

Thank you President Topp.

This is our favorite time of year week from today.

Our community is going to feel different as students families school buses all start moving and going to buildings where they can participate in great learning.

Our teams are busy preparing classrooms.

hiring staff.

We've filled more than 500 vacant certificated teacher positions.

There's nothing more important than having that caring adult in the classroom on the first day of school.

The following week we'll welcome our pre-K and kindergarten students again into a great environment.

As you noted, we're opening three new buildings.

This will be the first full school year.

Students will enjoy the new Rainier Beach High School that we open in the spring.

We also have an early learning addition at John Muir.

These projects reflect our commitment to great learning environments, safe learning environments, and we so appreciate ongoing support from voters to allow us to have a physical plant that supports learning and great environments for our students.

and are looking forward to ribbon cuttings at these new buildings.

We have some priorities during this time of transition that the senior leadership in the district is working on.

We're moving forward on a draft of a revised strategic plan that we hope will be a potential roadmap for the incoming administration.

We're receiving great feedback on that plan through our community task force and absorbing all their additional input, such as the feedback that the board heard as part of the superintendent search.

So we want to absorb all that in as we develop a draft of a strategic plan We have begun work on the next fiscal year's budget.

Budgets wait for no one.

And everyone knows that Seattle Public Schools is facing some fiscal challenges, but we resolved those in the past.

We need more sustainable solutions.

Do want to thank again the assistance we got from the legislature in the last session and again from our voters in February, continuing to invest in Seattle Public Schools and invest in students.

We really appreciate the board and the community and thank you for your leadership and partnership during this process.

I think our transition to new leadership will be strong and it rests on decisions and action made by previous leadership and the team that Dr. Brent Jones put together.

So I wanna thank Dr. Jones for all he's done for all of us and for being here.

And I'll turn it back to you, President Topps, so you can also recognize him for his service.

As I mentioned, thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

As I mentioned, at the top of our meeting, we've got Dr. Jones here this evening along with his mother.

Welcome.

Dr. Jones has served the students, staff, families of Seattle Public Schools in a variety of roles.

OVER THE PAST DECADE.

AND I'LL BE OFFERING, WE'LL BE OFFERING OUR THANKS TODAY WITH A PROCLAMATION RECOGNIZING HIS IMPACT TO THE COMMUNITY.

DIRECTOR MIZERAHI WILL READ THE PROCLAMATION FIRST AND WE WILL CIRCULATE THE DOCUMENT SHOULD BOARD DIRECTORS LIKE TO INDIVIDUALLY SIGN ON AND THEN WE'LL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR BOARD DIRECTORS TO ALSO PROVIDE SOME COMMENTS POST PROCLAMATION.

DIRECTOR MIZERAHI.

OK, this is a proclamation titled Honoring Dr. Brent C. Jones for Distinguished Service as Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools.

And I'm going to read through all of this.

It's a little long, so bear with me.

Whereas Dr. Brent C. Jones, a proud son of Seattle, graduate of Franklin High School, alumnus of the University of Washington, and recipient of a doctoral degree in educational leadership from the University of Texas at Austin, has devoted his life to the students and communities of this city.

AND WHEREAS DR. JONES SERVED SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN PIVOTAL ROLES INCLUDING CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER AND CHIEF OF EQUITY, PARTNERSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT, HELPING TO BUILD THE DISTRICT WIDE SEATTLE EXCELLENCE STRATEGY TO ELIMINATE OPPORTUNITY GAPS AND ADVANCE EDUCATIONAL JUSTICE.

And whereas in May 2021, amid pandemic recovery and operational uncertainty, Dr. Jones heeded the call to return to the district at its helm as interim superintendent and in 2022 was appointed superintendent.

And in March of 2025, he announced a planned transition from the district.

And whereas under Dr. Jones's steadfast leadership, the district successfully guided students back to full in-person learning after an unprecedented global pandemic that profoundly affected teaching, learning, and school operations.

And whereas under his leadership, Seattle Public Schools deepened a nationally recognized focus on racial equity and educational justice, including strengthening the Department of Racial Equity Advancement and the Office of African-American Male Achievement.

the first of its kind in Washington state.

And whereas the board of directors development and adoption of goals and guardrails aligned governance and monitoring with community vision and values, as well as the Seattle excellence strategic plan, focusing on outcomes for students, especially those furthest from educational justice.

and whereas Seattle Public Schools was heralded nationally when the district received the Council of Urban Boards of Education Award for urban school board excellence in 2022, recognizing the board of directors leadership role in governance, academic improvement, educational equity, and community engagement, activities in which Dr. Jones participated as a key partner to the board.

And whereas during Dr. Jones's tenure the work and program of Seattle Public Schools reach more corners of the district through the expansion of equity centered opportunity pathways including targeted efforts so more students especially those students who have been historically excluded from such opportunities were empowered to engage in their learning and exert agency.

And whereas 32 schools in the district were recognized by the state of Washington for closing opportunity gaps and demonstrating strong academic growth during the 2023-2024 school year.

And whereas Seattle has raised by double digits the share of students of color and African-American male students successfully completing advanced coursework relative to prior periods and has continued barrier removal efforts across schools to broaden access to advanced coursework.

AND WHEREAS THE DISTRICT NAVIGATED ENROLLMENT AND BUDGET CHALLENGES AND STABILIZED CORE OPERATIONAL FUNCTIONS DESPITE LOCAL AND NATIONAL HEADWINDS, BALANCING BUDGETS IN DIFFICULT TIMES WHILE MAINTAINING COMMUNITY CONFIDENCE, AS REFLECTED IN HISTORIC MARGINS OF VOTER APPROVAL OF THE SPS LEVY IN 2025. AND WHEREAS THROUGHOUT HIS TENURE, DR. JONES HAS EPITOMIZED WHAT IT MEANS TO LEAD WITH GRACE, DIGNITY AND KINDNESS, NEVER FAILING TO GIVE HIS TIME, ENERGY OR ATTENTION TO THOSE AROUND HIM.

And whereas, student achievement indicators have remained a central focus, including recent four-year graduation percentage rates approaching 90%, alongside expanded services and partnerships that support student well-being and college and career readiness.

And now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Seattle School Board hereby honors Dr. Brent C. Jones for his steadfast, compassionate, and principled leadership, for centering racial equity and educational justice, FOR WIDENING THE DOORS TO OPPORTUNITY THAT PUSH STUDENTS TO ACHIEVE THEIR FULLEST POTENTIAL, ESPECIALLY FOR STUDENTS OF COLOR AND AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE STUDENTS, FOR CULTIVATING PARTNERSHIPS THAT INVEST IN OUR SCHOLARS, FOR STABILIZING THE DISTRICT AMID PROFOUND CHALLENGES, AND FOR BEING NOT ONLY AN OUTSTANDING LEADER, BUT A GENEROUS, HUMBLE, AND CARING PERSON, WHOSE KINDNESS STRENGTHENED THE SPIRIT OF THIS ORGANIZATION.

BE IT FURTHER PROCLAIMED THAT THE BOARD EXTENDS ITS DEEPEST GRATITUDE TO DR. JONES AND HIS FAMILY COMMENDING A LIFETIME OF SERVICE TO SEATTLE'S CHILDREN AND ENTRUSTING THAT THE STRUCTURES, PARTNERSHIP AND PATHWAYS STRENGTHENED UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP WILL CONTINUE TO BEAR FRUIT FOR GENERATIONS OF SEATTLE STUDENTS.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, DIRECTOR MIZERAHI.

I also want to give a chance for board directors to share a few personal comments if they would like.

I know Director Clark would like to share a few words.

Yeah thank you President Taub and I'm sorry I'm not able to be there in person with you all today as I continue to navigate my recovery from the knee surgery that I had earlier this year.

But you know this is a very special moment for me not just as a member of the board but also as a proud graduate of Seattle Public Schools.

Like so many in this room I have seen firsthand the impact that Dr. Brent Jones has had on our district our students and our community.

Since my appointment in 2024 I've had the privilege of working closely alongside Dr. Jones.

What has struck me the most is not only his steady leadership during times of challenge, but also the deep kindness and care that he shows to every person he encounters.

Whether it was in a board meeting, a school visit, or a conversation with families, Dr. Jones always brought humility, respect, and a genuine love for our students to the table.

Dr. Jones stepped into the superintendency during one of the most difficult periods in our district's history, pandemic recovery, enrollment shifts, and serious budget pressures.

Yet through it all, he never lost sight of what mattered most, our students.

Under his leadership, we saw more students of color and especially African-American male students completing advanced coursework, graduating in greater numbers, and being encouraged to see themselves as scholars with limitless potential.

As an alumni of this district, it fills me with pride to know that future generations of Seattle students will benefit from the pathways that Dr. Jones helped build, the offices, programs, and partnerships that now center equity, opportunity, and justice.

And now, as Dr. Jones and his family prepare for their next chapter in California, I want to offer not only our gratitude, but our warmest wishes.

Dr. Jones, you leave Seattle Public Schools stronger than you found it, and you carry with you the love and respect of this community.

We thank you, we will miss you, and we hope this next chapter brings joy and fulfillment to you and your family.

On behalf of the board and the students of Seattle, thank you, Dr. Jones.

Thank you, Director Clark.

I also see Director Hersey's hand up.

Absolutely, that's gonna be a hard act to follow because I definitely don't have anything prepared.

Those are really beautiful words, Sarah.

And it breaks my heart that I can't be there with y'all tonight.

But Dr. Jones, you and I have been through it together, just to say the least.

And you came into the system at a time when we needed really steadfast leadership that the community could not only support, but put deep trust in.

And as we're sitting here now, it feels like just yesterday we were considering bringing you on as an interim, and you've got a lot of really great accomplishments to be proud of.

I can feel myself getting emotional.

It's just been a real joy, especially as a young person, as a Black man in the system, to be able to work with such a prolific figure and just know that as I move throughout the rest of my professional career and even as my time here at Seattle Public Schools comes to an end, I've got your voice and your steadfast approach to not only dealing with the caring for people in my head as a constant reminder of, leading with kindness and clarity and how much that just impacts not only the environment that people serve in, but the memories that they carry on throughout the rest of their lives.

So just know that you've had not only a great impact on me, but so many other young leaders in the system.

I have a number of text messages from so many other young elected officials who asked about you and just want to keep up with you and your moves.

And I think that just speaks volume to not only the leadership that you provided to Seattle's public schools, but the Seattle in general.

So I, for one, I'm incredibly sad to see you go, but just know that California is going to be a little bit more brighter with your presence of you and your family there.

So best wishes.

And I hope that our paths cross again soon.

Thank you, Director Hersey.

Director Rankin.

Hi, Brent.

I also don't have anything prepared, but Dr. Jones and I first met in this room 10 years ago.

And it was on the heels of the 2015 strike.

I used to make, I still make these, the best chocolate chip cookies.

Sorry, just unequivocally the best chocolate chip cookies.

Joe and I might have to throw down about that.

But that became coined strike cookies because I brought them to, I don't even know how many picket lines during that time.

And nothing kind of breaks the ice and gets you to talk to people that might not otherwise than having cookies with you.

And so when I started coming to board meetings after that, when there were particularly contentious items on the agenda, I brought a tin.

Brent, do you remember this tin?

Yeah.

I brought the same tin with cookies and would pass them down the thing and all along the side of the room and Dr. Jones was I think the first staff member to say okay you keep showing up here you got these cookies you're giving public testimony like who are you what's your deal and that was sort of the start of our work together.

From there, it went on to meetings in Larry Nyland's office with Seattle Council PGSA.

I'm just going to call you Brent, sorry.

Brent was always there working on how we could just do good work together for students, what parents wanted to do, what teachers needed.

He was always at the table.

And then since then, we have been through laughter, tears, yelling at each other in the parking lot probably all the whole the whole thing because when you when you care as deeply about children and education um that's what that's what happens emotions come out um and so i just i want to thank you for being part of my grounding in being part of Seattle Public Schools long before I was up here and providing a space at those tables.

welcoming me into this space that can feel really intimidating when you especially you know when you see people with suits and badges on the side of the room you know you broke through that for me and let me know that I belonged here as a community member and the thing I will really be forever grateful to you for is coming in as Superintendent Juneau was departing at a time when lots of superintendents around the country were being exited from their positions.

It was a really, really, it's always a tough time to be a superintendent, but right after COVID in everybody's emotions and everything was even more challenging.

And a lot of people were losing their positions, changing jobs, all kinds of things.

We really needed a known entity to lead us through that time.

And it was a tough sell.

BUT YOU WERE THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THAT MOMENT AND IT WAS A LOT TO ASK OF YOU AND YOUR FAMILY TO STEP INTO THAT SITUATION AND I REALLY THANK YOU FOR BEING WILLING TO COME IN AT A TIME WHEN A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE RUNNING THE OTHER DIRECTION.

SO YEAH, THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, DIRECTOR RANKIN.

DIRECTOR SARJU.

Me neither.

I don't have anything officially prepared.

But I've been thinking a lot about your March decision.

And if you know me, you you know, well, Brent knows me, so he knows what I mean when I say I've been thinking a lot.

And when you made the announcement that you were leaving and why you were leaving, the first thought that came to my mind was, he was raised right.

Yeah, he was raised right.

And the person, one of the two people that raised him is sitting right next to him.

What you demonstrated was the give and take of being in a relationship.

Y'all could have made a different decision.

You could have made a decision to stay here because this is the job that you wanted.

But you made a different decision.

And that speaks to the character of who you are at the heart.

We've come a long way.

I've known Dr. Jones for years.

We've had some hearty disagreements the last four years.

And that's actually what life is about, is that we can have hearty disagreements, and at the end of the day, what's most important that remains is the respect.

Well, I'm not changing my mind on some of those disagreements, because I'm not.

You know I'm not.

I respect that you accepted my stance on things.

It doesn't mean I was right.

It just means that that's the stance that I took.

And we don't always have to be right.

It is possible for two people to disagree and both be right.

But that's not the message we send in this culture.

And definitely not the message that we send to our kids.

We should be sending that message to kids.

We can have disagreements, differing points of views.

And if we're settled in our spirit that we're right, then we're right, right?

We're not talking about things that are just absolutely wrong.

So as you go on this next adventure, and it will be an adventure, this is a big deal.

to move away from home to a place where you don't have a bunch of friends running around down there.

I'm sure you'll make new friends.

It's hard to make new friends at our age.

Wouldn't you agree?

I'm trying, but I'm having a hard time.

I want you to just take a moment.

And when I say a moment, don't rush to the next thing.

Let your spirit settle.

Ask yourself, What does Brent want to do on the sunset side of his career?

Because we're on the sunset side.

We may not like it, but we're not climbing the mountain anymore.

We've reached the mountain, right?

And now we're figuring out what is our descent and how we're going to do that gracefully and how we're going to go out on a high note.

And that's my prayer for you.

is that you will be able to take the time and do what you need to do to figure that out because there's not too many days left.

And at the end of the day, regardless, I respect you and I wish you and Janine all the best.

Thank you, Director Sarju.

Director Hersey, is your hand up again?

Just confirming.

it's down all right thank you I will just share a very quick personal note this is just as I replay the tape of our time together is being a board director a new board director for only a year or so and coming into this role Dr. Jones and I attended a funeral of a student together and what I saw in him that day was such a compassionate leader showing up in the hardest moments standing shoulder to shoulder with the community and carrying such strength and grace And I just remember thinking that day, wow, I am so proud that this person is our superintendent.

Yeah, we say same situation, but, you know, talking with the families, talking with the PTA, the students, the staff who all showed up.

These are extremely difficult moments, and I think there's nothing you can say to make it better.

But being there mattered.

And I saw you embody that in a way that again, I say just made me proud to call you our superintendent.

So thank you so much, Dr. Jones, for your service and for showing me what compassionate leadership looks like.

So thank you.

I want to hand it over to Vice President Briggs.

OK, I'll keep it brief, because everybody's spoken very eloquently already.

But Brent, I want you to know that I was flying the other day, and I decided to watch the Kenny G documentary.

And it made me think of you, because we've had several conversations about music.

And I know Kenny was your classmate or graduated shortly before you some there was some overlap at franklin high school with kenny g and um and so the whole time i was watching the film i was thinking about you and and imagining your era at franklin and the jazz band and made me think of of our conversations around music and jazz in particular um And, you know, to echo Michelle's point, we have also disagreed a lot in the last year and a half that I've been on the board.

But there was never a day that I wasn't really happy to see your face when I walked through the door.

You always...

You just have a way about you that is so engaging and warm and You always had a funny remark in the most tense moments or boring moments When when you just need a little little jolt of humanity, I always appreciated that about you I'm real jealous that you're moving to Santa Barbara and I hope you and Janine have a wonderful experience there and I look forward to seeing you whenever you're back in Seattle

Thank you, Director Briggs.

I want to call up Dr. Jones, who has a few words he would like to share with us.

Dr. Jones, please join us at the podium.

Thank you, thank you.

I'm extremely fortunate to have been deeply involved with Seattle Public Schools for many, many years, since I was four years old, going to kindergarten until, I'm not gonna say my age now, until our journey now.

And I'm thankful of the staff, I'm thankful of the educators, I'm thankful of the parents, principals, my senior leadership team, the school board.

I just feel very honored today, and I'd be remiss if I didn't speak to the fact that I'm standing on the shoulders of many previous superintendents.

Stanford, Mon Haas, Enfield, Goodloe Johnson, Nyland, Bionda.

Juneau.

And what I've tried to do is take what they've built and move it a little further.

Hopefully we were able to do that together.

And so this isn't just the legacy of past superintendents.

There's ancestors, there's freedom fighters, there's parents, there's folks who have really spent a lot of time that have poured into me and us to build this Seattle Public School system.

Seattle Public Schools has been around for almost 160 years.

I happen to be the 23rd superintendent.

So there's been a lot of work that has been done to get us to this place.

And I'm grateful to everyone.

Seattle Public Schools is a premier district.

I don't care what anybody says.

I'm going down fighting for the fact that our reputation has been sullied, but we are an outstanding district.

So I am extraordinarily grateful for this proclamation.

I think it's probably unprecedented to get such a notoriety as we go forward.

I'm thankful for that.

And it's a timestamp for all the things that we've gone through together.

And I say we.

No one does this alone.

We do this as a team.

We do this as a collective.

And through this all, we stood on equity.

We stood on justice.

We stood on excellence.

We didn't chase shiny initiatives.

We built enduring systems.

We clarified roles.

We secured budgets.

We built the infrastructure so schools can breathe and teachers can lead.

We've done the things that we thought were important to do at the time.

And I'm just grateful to this board.

I left it all on the table, so much that I had nothing left.

And I appreciate this board for giving me the time and space so that I could heal and get well.

These last several months have been extraordinarily challenging for me.

As you know, I faced some significant issues with my own health and trying to take care of some things within my family.

And I'm grateful for that opportunity to step away and get right.

I stand here now asking everyone that can hear my voice to take an oath to protect the progress that we've made together.

We cannot take a step back.

There's tyrannical forces that are trying to erase the things that we stand for.

There's forces who are trying to eliminate the gangs that we've made.

For some unknown reason, they don't want to stand with us.

But I think it is meaningful.

The other piece I hope that we can do is Superintendent Number 24 gets full, unconditional support for this work.

It is a challenge as we pass the baton.

I want that person to lead us to be the district of choice, no matter what anybody says.

I'd ask folks to join us in being collaborative and being service-minded and speaking to the things that are necessary to change the narrative about Seattle Public Schools to the narrative it deserves in excellent Seattle Public Schools.

So I leave you with tremendous gratitude for this recognition.

I leave you with a legacy that hopefully we built together.

I am pleased that I was able to leave standing on my feet under my conditions, under my terms.

And that one thing I'm proud of is we are doing a very smooth handoff.

On Wednesday, schools will open.

Our teachers are ready.

Our principals are ready.

Our operational focus is sharp.

And our students will experience 180 days of excellence like they did last year and the year before and the other 160 plus years that they've been students in Seattle Public Schools.

So I thank you.

I thank you.

Board, you have been fantastic.

Keep your vision.

Those fights that we talked about were about the how.

It wasn't about the what.

We agreed on the vision.

We had the desire to make this and continue to make this an excellent Seattle public school system.

So without further ado, I'm going to sign off, and I thank everyone so much with a tremendous amount of gratitude.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Jones.

Just a small token of our gratitude.

Thank you for your service.

And I know it is 5.03.

We're three minutes past our time for public testimony, but we are going to take a short three-minute recess.

We will reconvene at 5.06.

but I also know that we've got public testimony and we are six minutes past and I want to be respectful of those who have came to provide public testimony this evening and giving us a little grace here for our late start.

I do not like to start public testimony late.

But we are now going to go into public testimony.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for testimony.

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

As board president, I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting.

I'm going to pass it now to staff to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you, President Topp.

The board will take testimony from those on the testimony list, and will go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers.

Please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute, and only one person may speak at a time.

The board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak to.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

Time isn't restarted, and the total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted.

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

And for everyone, please do reintroduce yourself when called, as I will miss some pronunciation as we move through today's list.

The first speaker on the list is Dre Say.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Dre, and I'm a Seattle resident, and I'm a member of the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

I'm calling in to voice my opposition against the proposed memorandum between Seattle Public Schools and SPD.

As the Seattle School Board and the broader Seattle community said safety at Garfield in our schools means no guns in schools.

This means no cops at Garfield no guns in the hands of proven anti-black racist and oppressive Seattle police who go against the anti-racist values of Seattle public schools.

This MOU suggests SPS should invite cops into classrooms and assemblies to teach students about serious religious and political issues.

SPS staff should be educating our youth and not cops.

Seattle does not have community control of the police, and we are opposed to SPD assigning whoever they want to Garfield without any community control from families, students, teachers, staff, and the wider community.

Students have overwhelmingly spoke up in the wake of gun violence about councils, resources, and violence prevention organizations like community passageways.

We support the Seattle Student Union SCORE and other organizations, the call for funding for counselors and resources, not costs.

And I cede my time to Sonia.

Did you cede your time to another speaker?

Yeah, to Sonia Herrera.

Oh, thank you.

Hi, my name is Sonia Perez.

I'm a resident of Seattle and I'm a part of the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression.

I come here first and foremost with the safety of students in mind, primarily BIPOC, that's black indigenous people of color, and I see the introduction of SEOs as oppression of black people at Garfield, especially students seeing as the Central District is predominantly black community.

Did I hear keep going?

We're going to try to keep remarks to two minutes today.

So if you want to wrap up your final thought, that would be wonderful.

Totally.

So I just don't trust that SPD will not have a strong bias against the BIPOC students at Garfield, seeing as SPD had the highest percentage of police that were involved in the instruction on January 6th, and many of the police officers that work for SPD are from rural, more conservative communities, and I don't trust that they have the proper training to protect our students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Robert Engle.

Robert Engle, are you here or online?

Okay.

We are going to move on to Jake Milstein.

Hello, we can hear you.

Great.

My name is Jake Milstein.

I have a fifth grader at Catherine Blaine K-8.

Today I'm here to ask for your help with adding a teacher to Blaine because we're running into brick walls and Dr. James Mercer just wrote me with incorrect facts to tell me that this is likely a lost cause.

Let me tell you about the kids.

In 2020 and 2021, my son and the rest of his cohort missed pre-K and kindergarten because of COVID.

The impact of that still reverberates.

One in five kids in this cohort at Blaine have an IEP, and they've made amazing progress.

Then in 2024, that same cohort found out that Seattle School District was going to close their school.

They rallied.

We saved the school.

And thank you to those of you on the board who helped us do that.

Despite fear and anger with SPS, we're about to enter a year in which Blaine will have its highest enrollment since the pandemic.

Instead of celebrating a week before school, we just found out that Blaine didn't get the appropriate number of teachers.

That fifth grade cohort that has made such great progress is about to be smooshed into classes well over 30, mixed then with fourth graders.

And with all of those IEPs, it will be a mess.

The district guidelines say Blaine should have another teacher.

In fact, enrollment is up so much that if there were five more students, Blaine would be due two more teachers.

Oh, and guess what?

There are five students on the wait list for fifth grade right now.

So I'm here to ask for an investigation.

Why is Blaine purposely understaffed?

Who has it out for K-8s?

In researching this, I learned about a shadow policy.

When the district adjusts to allocations, they do it by one less teacher.

Why?

I implore you to help here for this fifth grade cohort.

The board can help them succeed.

Please help us figure this out.

The next speaker is Sonia Herrera.

Wow, thank goodness.

This is really important stuff.

Okay, perfect.

So I did mention that SPD did have the highest percentage of police at the January 6th interaction.

Therefore, I don't trust that they'll keep our kids safe or not have a bias.

Secondarily, there's a lack of accountability for racist police officers in the department and allowing them to assign whomever they wish to be an SEO is kind of comical.

And comically, these cops would be teaching classes on public safety in classrooms when they are a danger to public safety and students.

In Pierce County, they recently removed SROs from their schools.

Teachers spoke out at an event recently at their school board meeting.

Many stated how SROs tackled and handcuffed students, causing trauma and emotional distress to not only that student that was affected, but to others around them.

Lastly, the driving force that I've heard from documents released about this MOU is that SEOs, SROs, similar, want to prioritize relationship building with students, but from a conversation that I had with Police Chief Barnes at a recent community safety meeting at the Garfield Community Center in Central District, the intentions are a bit more clear.

Building a close relationship to students to then have a better scope of what is going on in Central District So clearly the focus is not actually student safety, but a predatory tactic by SPD to use students for their own gain.

I just urge you to think of the kids' safety in your discussions about this MOU.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the four contracts related to software for construction management and support, these four contracts together cost over $14 million and are for introduction and action at the same meeting.

This does not allow time for adequate review by the board.

ON THE 1.4 MILLION DOLLAR VUELANDS CONSTRUCTION PROJECT CLAIM SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT.

THE AGREEMENT ALSO INCLUDES WASHINGTON STATE SALES TAX BUT DOES NOT LIST THE AMOUNT.

ON THE OVERLAKE CONTRACT AMENDMENT, THE REPORT FOR THIS ACTION INCLUDED AN AMENDMENT FOR DARTMORE, NOT FOR OVERLAKE.

On the employment agreement for interim superintendent, my thanks to Fred Podesta for being ready to step in.

On the Memorial Stadium Project, an article in the July 10th, 2025 Seattle Times noted that the developer is connected to a bid rigging indictment.

Quote, unquote.

Does anyone on the board have concerns?

On the personnel report, three points.

Number one, the report does not list school board student members who seem to be paid employees of the district.

Number two, under separations, the report lists information security manager April Mardock.

I wish to thank Ms. Mardock for her talented service to the district.

Number three, the report also lists Superintendent Brent Jones.

I wish to thank Mr. Jones again for his service to the district.

By the way, tomorrow at 6 p.m.

at the West Seattle Admiral Theater, there is a free showing of a documentary called The Case Against Social Media.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Samantha Fogg.

Hello, this is Samantha Fogg.

I am a parent of three Seattle Public School students, and I am a disabled parent.

And as I think about safety, a topic that's on your agenda this evening, I think about the fact that safety for far too long in our district has excluded people like me and people like my child.

I think about how hard we have had to fight and struggle to get accessible alarm systems and the lack of acknowledgement of the advocacy and the advocates who have fought for that.

I think about the fact that we do not have emergency plans for disabled people in most of our schools or at least plans that are not known to staff.

I think about our Bridges students itself where they'll be starting the school year without appropriate accessible bathroom facilities.

And I think about how often our district puts access as an add-on and treats us like a burden.

I think about the way that if you put disabled people last, everything is harder.

But if you bring community together, you can create solutions that work better for everyone.

And I ask that you remember that in emergencies, there's no guarantee that just because you were not disabled before the emergency started, that you will be not disabled and able to get yourself out.

Emergencies, by definition, cause harm.

And I ask that you think about how little support you give to your educators to be able to accomplish the things that our students need for safety.

For example, by law, they are required to read all their IEPs and 504s.

But you need to actually give them time to do that and time to ask questions and time to get support.

And you don't do that.

And it is children in your schools who end up harmed.

I ask that you do better.

And I ask you to consider the harm That happened when your search firm mentioned that deaf and hard of hearing isn't something they're used to interacting with, isn't a community that they've experienced.

And when in their community meeting, they did not know the word ableism and how little trust people have that the needs of so many of your students will be considered.

I hope this October, unlike all the previous years, every Seattle public school will follow state law, and teach about disability history.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Janice White.

Hi, I'm Janice White, parent of three SPS graduates.

The first three items on the consent agenda today ask the board to approve increases to contracts with three different private placement schools for students with disabilities for the 2024-25 school year, raising each of those contracts to over a million dollars.

I've been reading bars for contracts with these kinds of private schools for years, and here are some of the questions I'd like to see answered.

For each bar, how many students are being served?

That information used to be regularly included, but it's not in the ones before you today.

Why is a bar for costs incurred in the 2024-25 school year being presented at the end of August?

Is it accurate to say that these costs have already been incurred and the board really has no choice but to approve?

How many students total from SPS are being sent out of the district to receive their education due to our inability to meet their needs?

How many of these private placement schools does SPS have contracts with?

How many students being sent out of district brought a due process case against the district first?

And is there a difference between which schools students who brought a due process case are sent to and which schools who students who didn't bring a due process case are being sent to?

These placements in general are meant to only be used for students with severe disabilities whose needs cannot be met in our schools.

Should we be able to meet meet more of the needs of more of these students in our schools?

And if so, what's the plan to do that?

Are the students we send away from our schools, do they tend to have certain disabilities or need certain types of services?

And what changes are needed so that we can keep more of these students in their communities?

Last, I testified, I think it was in May, about the fact that the annual report on restraints of students required by policy 3246 was not available on the district website, despite the fact that in past years it was typically available by February or March.

It's still not on the website, which means that the community is not able to see that data or see whether we're making progress in reducing the number of restraints of students that are taking place in our schools.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Rylan Springer.

Hi, I'm Rylan.

I'm going to speak as fast as I can.

I'm a Garfield graduate as of two months ago.

I went to graduation and sat in a sea of students, yet the absence of two students seemed to drown us.

How do we walk away if they can't come with?

Amar and Salvador were murdered, not by children, but by adults.

Where were the cops then?

How can students trust cops when they seem to vanish when we need them, but leave the entire BIPOC community in the dust?

It starts with earning trust.

But that can't happen until students feel safe and secure.

Like Sonia Herrera said before me, students don't need to be policed, but protected.

When letting an SRO back in, we demand they remain around campus, not inside the building.

We demand an MOU that is specific and upheld.

SPD should not be there to punish students, should not be able to punish students.

They should be there to stop the gun before it shoots, to show up when we need them.

We're sick and tired of no contact agreements, being our school's go-to solution to every conflict.

Children are supposed to fight, to be angry, to struggle.

Adults are supposed to teach us to resolve our problems and manage our anger.

We need intervention specialists and counselors.

My school cannot keep relying on the few counselors who care.

We need more and we deserve better.

We cannot keep allowing conflicts to fester or keep promoting silence.

It is cruel to the students who have only learned to fend for themselves.

It's the reason they don't trust admin.

It's the reason kids take conflicts into their own hands and do something irreversible.

Garfield needs urgent action.

We can't lose more kids waiting as gun violence is postponed on your Google Calendar.

I know you want more Garfield voices on this.

I know you want to reach out better for the community, but where was that outreach the entire summer?

Where was the effort for the four months and seven days since Salvador was killed, the nine months and 30 days since Solomon was killed, the 14 months and 26 days since Amar was killed?

You're not the ones dying.

Students are, so it's time to step up.

You've postponed the safety of students you're responsible for yet another month.

How many more schools need bloodstained on their front steps before it gets exhausting?

And how many more students need to stand before you as you sob before you feel some urgency?

How many more times will you avoid looking us in the eyes before you're forced to face the consequences of your neglect?

Do not put my school's lives on your back burners.

Change needs to happen yesterday.

Two months ago, each of you hugged me, offered me tissues, but hugs don't bring them back.

We don't need your comfort, we need your action, and we need it before another class has to prepare memorials at their graduation.

Don't be why there's more empty seats.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sarah Kate Erickson.

Sarah Kate Erickson.

Okay.

I'm going to move on to Kayla Epting.

Kayla Epting.

Hi, can you hear me?

Oh, yes.

Yes, we can.

Awesome.

Good evening, school board members, SPS staff, and other community members.

My name is Kayla Epting.

I am a proud SPS alumni, parent of a recent SPS graduate, and a proud aunt of current SPS students.

It has been my pleasure to be able to help support SPS in organizing the Black Families Focus Group around the superintendent search.

Throughout this process, I've had a number of meaningful conversations with community.

And during these conversations, a few things have been extremely apparent.

That we need a process that is transparent and inclusive of community outside of the listening sessions and focus groups.

I urge the board to deeply consider thoughtful and intentional ways to include community in the balance of this process.

This decision is too important to our broader community and its stakeholders to move forward with a closed process.

I would also encourage you to extend the timeline to ensure that we have truly had an opportunity to think about a shift in the process as well as to ensure that we have truly launched a meaningful and comprehensive search.

And October is just not reasonable for that to happen.

We have an interim that can provide stability while we ensure that we have done our due diligence in the search process.

and made a decision that is truly best for students, families, and our broader community.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration of these sentiments for myself and members of the Black community.

The next speaker is Athena McDermott.

Sorry, one second.

All right.

Hi, all.

I'm Athena McDermott.

I just graduated Garfield High School this year.

I had a fantastic time at Garfield.

The community is incredible.

And as someone who has grown up in the Central District, it's been an essential part of my life forever.

However, this summer, I worked in elementary school.

And when I told the kids that I went to Garfield, many responded with confusion and worries.

One middle schooler told me about how their mom had planned them to send him to a different high school when the time came, even though he was zoned for Garfield.

And although my heart aches for him to hear how he's going to miss out on the joy and vibrancy of his own community, who can blame his parents for wanting to send their kids to a school where they're certain he'll come home each day?

Garfield needs to prepare for the upcoming school year.

We need individuals on campus to assist students in cases of emergency, such as SROs.

My friend Ryland has already laid out how these SROs would function in accordance with the community, and instead of policing students, they would properly address their needs.

A slogan I hear often is counselors, not cops.

And while well-intentioned, this slogan fails to grasp the issue of violence that Garfield faces on the regular.

The violence that Garfield faces stems from the outside community and bleeds into the school.

While counselors are valuable resources to schools, kids will not stop getting shot and killed at Garfield because of counselors alone.

Plus, before COVID, Garfield successfully fielded engagement officers that interacted positively with Garfield students.

Many of these officers were from the surrounding community in the CD and not just random officers.

I understand that you want to all hear more from Garfield students before ultimately making a decision, and while I respect that, I will remind you that I, as well as many other Garfield students, have been advocating and demanding change since June 7th, 2024, the day after Ammar's death, and well before then.

This was over a year ago.

Look, I'm a student, I was, and I know all about procrastination.

But one week from today, the school bell will ring and students will flood back into the halls of Garfield.

Then the clock will begin to tick.

Does that feel like a lot of pressure?

Yeah, it should.

And I can tell you that Garfield students are about to feel the stress.

So I urge you not to waste time wading through bureaucracy because time spent in inaction equates to the lives and safety of our students.

Long live Amar.

Long live Solomon.

Long live Salvador.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Marie Hunt.

Good evening members of the SPS board and community.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Marie Hunt and I'm the commander of the Seattle Recruiting Company.

I'm grateful to be part of the conversation about how we as the Army can support Seattle students.

I want to start by recognizing the value of Superintendent Procedure 4200 SPB.

The policy ensures fairness for all organizations who wish to share opportunities with Seattle Public School students.

My purpose today is to not ask for immediate changes, but rather to open the door to a conversation.

Specifically, I hope we can explore whether there may be ways to expand access for recruiters beyond the current two visits per campus per year limit.

The Army is often seen only as a path of service, but I would like to highlight a few of the broader opportunities it provides.

A robust path for education, great healthcare and benefits for families, and over 150 different jobs to choose from for career skills.

Two visits per year per high school may not always be sufficient enough to reach students in a meaningful way.

Our intent is to not take students away from college or other great pathways, but to ensure they learn about the great opportunities the military can offer as well.

I believe the Army can partner in helping Seattle Public Schools achieve their mission, preparing students for success no matter what path they choose.

I respectfully ask the board to consider opening a conversation about how recruiters might have increased but still very balanced access to the community.

My commitment is to work hand in hand with you to ensure any adjustments uphold the district's value of equity, transparency, and student-centered decision making.

Thank you again for your time and your dedication to the students of Seattle.

The next speaker is Rosalind Vaughn.

Rosalind Vaughn.

Okay, I'm gonna move on.

I will come back to the people we missed though.

The next speaker is Jonathan Toledo.

My name is Jonathan Toledo and I'm here to talk about firstly that I'm a member of the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and the fact that putting police in schools will often you know who will react to student misconduct with violence and especially towards disabled students, black and brown students and in the past parents and students have already fought to get cops out of schools once before We have been down this road already and we know specifically the lack of accountability for officer misconduct will create a liability for the school and a burden on the taxpayers of Seattle.

We don't need cops in schools.

We need qualified teachers and staff to support students and keep them safe.

We need adults who are trained in de-escalation, and we need to direct our efforts towards programs and staffs that help students, not towards armed police in and around students, as students need to be supported and not threatened, and particularly Like it was said, there's not going to be any process in place to make sure that if cops are put in, how students can be safe.

There's no input from the students, there's no input from the communities, and everybody who needs to be actually consulted.

The next speaker is Nedembo Helena Juau.

Nedembo Helena Joao.

Okay, I don't see their number online, so we are going to move on to Kristen Walks.

Good evening.

I'm here as a representative of Catherine Blaine's student population.

I have two kids there and we are missing a teacher.

And I think there's a lot of broad policies that are the problem here, but I'm here to speak specifically about the district's two full-time equivalent staffing policy that undermines student learning and deepens inequities across the district.

Under the two FTE policies, schools receive additional staff only when enrollment grows enough to justify hiring two full-time teachers at once.

As a result, even when class sizes climb to more than 30 students, the district's policy blocks the addition of a single teacher.

For the 2025-26 school year at Blaine, there was a projected 15% decline in enrollment, but with a large waitlist.

More students from the waitlist have been enrolled, resulting in the highest enrollment since COVID.

The fourth and fifth grade classrooms will now be combined into three classrooms, splitting the curriculum and overloading the classrooms with 32 students each, well above the district's 27 to one ratio.

Students will lose individualized support, have fewer chances to participate, and fall behind their peers in properly staffed single grade classes.

Blaine is one example, but this policy harms schools across the district.

The impact is especially severe in high poverty, high diversity schools.

These schools have more fluctuating populations, but not in large spikes that would meet the two FTE threshold.

That means that most vulnerable students are least likely to have a well-ratioed classroom and that contradicts SPS's own commitment to racial equity.

The effects of the pandemic on student achievement also must be considered.

According to Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research, American students are still less than halfway to a full academic recovery, and yet SPS is placing those very students already behind in overcrowded, split classrooms well below the district's own student-teacher ratio standards.

The bottom line is this.

SPS is prioritizing administrative efficiency over student success.

Other districts have shown better approaches that prioritize unilateral student support.

It's time to replace the two FTE rule with staffing policies that reflect enrollment, honor SPS's ratio standards, and ensure equity.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Manuel S. Lai.

Good afternoon, my name is Manuela Sly.

I am a member of Seattle Council PTSA, and most importantly, I'm a parent of three graduates from West Seattle High School.

Just wanna acknowledge that public speaking is not my favorite.

I struggle with that, but I owe it to my community, those that are not able to come to these spaces, those that have barriers such as language and access that cannot be here to raise their voice.

I want to talk about student safety.

I'm a Seattle Council PTSA Student Safety Committee Chair.

I help families navigate issues with their children in terms of safety, whether it's identity safety, physical safety, social emotional safety.

One thing that I want to share with you is that in community, it's been shared with me that for some of the parents in the immigrant and refugee community, a good day for them is when their child comes home alive and unharmed.

That is heartbreaking.

Nobody should ever feel that way.

So safety needs to work for everyone.

And I ask you to really work to do better when it comes to safety for those with special education needs and special needs students with disabilities.

Speaking of which, I also want to talk about Bridges.

Bridges is a program that serves children that would be considered further from educational justice.

In a recent Seattle Times article about Bridges, there were just a handful of comments, for better or worse, that is a reflection of how important or how visible those students are, and they really seem to be invisible.

The problem right now with bridges is that there's no proper communication with families about ADA accessible bathrooms.

You know, we hear pieces of information here and there, but nothing that reaches everyone.

I'm almost done.

i would like to have a public update to school board about bridges and the situation with the bathrooms and everything else and i would appreciate that being on in the open so people can get that information because it's not getting to everyone thank you the next speaker is beth duran chiang

Hello, my name is Beth Duran-Siang, Seattle resident and parent of two Seattle School District graduates.

i'm here to talk about the liability that seattle school district is under because of its gender policies both in their education as well as practice uh...

has done studies to show that gender treatments hormones and surgeries of children is more likely to be harmful then helpful Because of that, they've pretty much stopped gender hormones and surgeries throughout Europe.

The UK, Finland, Sweden, and I won't remember the other names right now, but the Scrimetti decision also looked at all those studies independently and found the same thing.

Now that the danger of gender hormones and surgeries are known, Seattle schools are at risk for telling children that they can change sex and that hormones and surgeries are safe and effective.

Now that more evidence shows that that's false, Seattle School District is at risk of immense liability when children and families realize harm.

CSE, the Comprehensive Sexual Education, as well as all the pride progress flags around the schools and elsewhere, are all pushing a message that gender is a spectrum, that kids can choose.

They start telling them at kindergarten and first grade that they can choose whether they want to be a boy or girl, and that's just not true.

And we know that's not true, and it's harmful.

Also, Seattle Schools is hiding transition from families when children change their name, et cetera.

That's hidden from families.

We have reached time.

Please conclude your remarks.

Yes.

CSE emphasizes consent, but Seattle School District does not allow girls to not consent to males in their bathrooms and locker rooms.

Thank you.

I'm going to go over the names of the people that were not here the first time I called them to see if they are here or online.

Robert Engle.

Okay, I'm going to move on.

Sarah Kate Erickson.

All right.

Rosalind Vaughn.

All right.

Nedembo Helena Joao.

All right, that concludes public testimony.

Thank you.

That is the conclusion of public testimony.

I appreciate folks taking time out of their busy lives to come and share with us this evening.

We are going to continue on at least through some of this action before we take a break.

So we have reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Okay.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

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

All right.

Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Okay, those opposed?

Okay, the consent agenda has passed unanimously.

Moving right along here.

We are now moving to the action items for today's agenda.

So the first one is approval of employment agreement for interim superintendent.

May I have a motion?

I move that the school board approve the proposed interim superintendent employment agreement with Fred Podesta as attached to this board action report and authorize the board president and vice president to execute the agreement with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Great.

I will be introducing this item at the July 30th special meeting.

The board authorized me and vice president breaks to negotiate a contract with Mr. Podesta to serve as interim superintendent while we continue to search for the next permanent superintendent.

Vice President Briggs and I worked with Mr. Podesta and counsel to negotiate the employment agreement attached to this board action.

We are grateful for Mr. Podesta's leadership and willingness to continue to serve our students as interim superintendent.

Seeing if there are any directors who have questions or comments.

Director Rankin.

um i apologize i couldn't open the file and i didn't have enough time ahead of time to let anybody know that i couldn't open the file to give me a chance to review it so i haven't been able to review um uh i don't think that well so here my my main two questions are and again apologies for not being able to read it um are uh do we have in it the flexibility to pivot to either another interim or a permanent, depending on how I'm not trying to flag anything, but I just want to make sure that we don't know yet what our applicant pool looks like.

We don't know what may happen between now and October.

I want to make sure that we have the flexibility to enter into another contract with somebody in this role at any point in time, regardless of whether that's interim or permanent.

I will call up legal counsel, but I believe that Vice President Briggs and I could answer this.

This was a question I think we also asked our counsel, and I think the answer was yes.

But Director Briggs, do you have a different sense in any way?

That was also my understanding.

We'll bring up General Counsel Narver.

Is this?

Yes, it's on.

Good evening, Greg Narver, general counsel.

That's correct.

The board always has that power.

The interim superintendent is a word that's used to denote that the board is still in the process of conducting its search.

But legally, there's not a difference in status and powers between an interim and a permanent.

It's always the board's choice as to how they fill that position as long as the terms of the contract that the board would be agreeing to are complied with in terms of notice, termination, replacement.

But the short answer is yes.

Okay, so we don't have, I mean, a permanent superintendent contract, if there was a three-year contract or a one-year contract, and we, or a board, wanted to hire somebody else in the middle of that contract, there would be penalties.

My understanding, or I want to confirm that we have sort of a, This is like a pay-as-you-go agreement.

We wouldn't have the same kind of penalty.

There's not a time by which this contract goes.

There are provisions in terms of giving notice if the board wants to go into another direction.

like that.

So the contract does contain provisions for termination that need to be complied with.

But the ultimate decision as to how the board wants to fill the superintendent role will always belong to the board.

But there's not a date by which we don't have to pay out this contract.

It doesn't have a...

Well, it depends on the terms.

That's my question.

There's actually a couple pages about termination provisions, so I don't want to oversimplify it.

But the contract does contain those provisions.

The question I thought I was answering was, could the board decide it wants to make a change in the superintendent role, but still you're not, you still haven't found the permanent superintendent yet?

The answer is yes, as long as the protections that are in the contract for the incumbent and what notice they're entitled to if the board wants to make a change and what the circumstances are that would lead to that change.

As long as those are complied with, it's up to the board how it wants to handle that.

Okay.

And then...

But I do want to stress that the language of the contract you're approving governs not my attempt to give a short summary of it.

Okay.

I think specifically one of the provisions that Greg might be referring to is, that's in the contract that I'll state right now since you didn't get to read it, is that Fred is guaranteed to continue on for a year after his position as interim ends in his previous role or equivalent.

That was going to be my second question too.

But do we, I didn't, yeah, that was gonna be my second question, was that once this contract does end, that we're not losing Fred completely.

Yes, that is in the contract.

Okay, so it would be current or previous role or equivalent Depending on the incoming superintendent and their needs.

Correct.

OK.

Correct.

But it's not like Fred would have to come back and reapply for?

OK, good.

Yeah.

And I just want to echo, or I don't know, repeat myself, repeat somebody, and just really appreciate Mr. Podesta for being willing to be flexible and supportive.

And I know, you know, sometimes think that the best person for the job is the person that doesn't really want to do it.

And so I really, really, really appreciate you kind of stepping up at this time and providing your leadership.

And just as a personal point of something, I...

Mr. Podesta led a, with Chief Redmond, a sort of start of school meeting with all central office staff that we were on invite to and I just popped in.

And it was really clear from comments in the chat and questions that people were asking that your leadership is appreciated and respected and it gave me an additional sense of relief to know that what I could see and hear was gratitude and respect from the folks who make things happen out in buildings every day and it gave me just an additional sense of confidence going into the school year that the people who are with our kids felt like they've got a leader who's supporting them.

And so, yeah, it's all weird, and I just really appreciate that you're in this with us.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your support, Director Rankin and the board support.

I'll try to answer your question to my understanding in plain English.

It's a 10-month contract.

It has all the typical terms.

It's 10 months or until you hire permanent.

There is no permanent superintendent isn't a thing.

I don't see how you would have constraints because it's clear that it's a 10-month contract or until you hire somebody else.

And what that means, there's no contract definition of what a permanent is.

So I think your hands are free to do what you need.

That's perfect.

Yeah, no, that helps a lot.

10-month or.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

Other directors?

All right, then I'm going to call on staff for the vote.

Director Hersey?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Happily.

Happily, aye.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Amazing.

Superintendent Podesta, we are very excited to have you in this role.

And I am also very excited I get to administer the oath of office for Fred tomorrow.

Right.

Tomorrow?

Why not tonight?

We need a notary thing.

So only special people.

I think it's just Superintendent Podesta, me and a notary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Continuing on, unless Superintendent Podesta, do you have any words you'd like to share?

Again, just I appreciate everybody's support.

be to do this, I'm surrounded by a great team that has wrapped around me and we're gonna make this a great school year as long as his interim status is in place.

Next, approval of progress monitoring calendar for the 25-26 through 29-30.

Can I have a motion?

20-29 to 20-30.

Yeah, for the next five years.

I move that the board adopt the progress monitoring calendar as attached to the board action report.

I further move that if changes are necessary to the progress monitoring calendar after board adoption, the board president and superintendent are authorized to make modifications.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Try one more time.

Maybe direct drinking.

Can you borrow your mic?

SECOND.

THERE WE GO.

THANK YOU.

SUPERINTENDENT PODESTA WILL BE INTRODUCING THIS ITEM.

Thank you.

I'm bringing forward a progress monitoring calendar for your review and approval.

This action would establish a five-year timeline for how and when the board will receive monitoring reports to track progress on achieving our goals and operating in compliance with guardrails established by the board to reflect the community's vision and values.

Our team spent a lot of time reviewing many variations of the calendar that's attached to the board action report.

And we settled on a priority and a couple of strategies.

And the priority is we wanted this process to be useful in a meaningful way that will drive staff decisions about our practices and priorities and how we allocate resources.

We wanted progress monitoring that occurs at the board to be an organic extension of our internal processes and accountability processes.

So our strategies for this will be integrating monitoring discussions into our internal progress monitoring calendars and accountability systems and aligning the calendar to moments when data are available about student learning, when assessments are complete and when we have something new to share.

Our internal processes Again, we'll have an internal performance management calendar that will be reviewed by our academic and senior leadership team.

We'll build shared data tools and inquiry protocols for regular executive reviews by district leaders at the system level.

at the cohort level and at the demographic level to assess how performance is moving along.

So we propose that goal come to you in three core reports.

These monitoring sessions come to you in three core reports throughout the year, one per goal.

First, there would be an end of year and baseline report that seeks to answer the question for each goal, where have we been, where are we now, and where are we going?

This summarizes prior year strategies, top line performance, and outlines the current year plan.

For our first year, this will include baseline setting for the next five years, and after this year, we'll include a report on progress from the previous year.

Second, we would see a mid-year progress report to answer where are we now, where are we going, and what adjustments do we want to make during the current year.

This focuses on fall and first semester interim metrics and adjustments that are underway.

Third, there would be a coming year deep dive review, looks to address what we accomplished in the past year, what we are learning, what we've concluded, and how we'll make adjustments as we work through each of the five years.

So to be concrete, for goal one, early literacy will set a baseline report in October, a mid-year progress report in February, and a deep dive report next May.

Sixth grade mathematics will include a baseline report in November, a mid-year progress report in January, and a deep dive report in the next year in April.

And progress monitoring will...

Excuse me, sorry.

For Life Ready, we'll include a baseline report in December, a mid-year progress report in March, and a deep dive report looking ahead to the next year in August.

Again, the timing follows data availability.

Map results for literary results are typically arrived first, SBA informs mathematics, and credit accumulation and graduation for Life Readiness follows later in the cycle.

Within each report, subgroup visibility, trend analysis, so that we can clearly understand what each student group is performing and how different cohorts are performing and how different buildings are performing is part of what we will do in our internal review.

I want to thank directors Rankin and Clark.

We walked through this in much more detail with them as they've been designated by the board to work with staff on a regime, and I invite you both to make any comments that you have about what we discussed or questions that you have.

Thank you.

And I also want to echo the appreciation to Director Clark and Director Rankin for working through this with staff as designated in our retreat, but seeing if there are calling on seeing if there are board directors who have questions or comments, excuse me.

Director Clark.

I'm not able to raise my hand.

I'm sorry for just jumping right in.

I just wanted to thank um, Superintendent Podesta and the staff for all of the work that was put and thought that was put into the development of this progress monitoring calendar.

Um, I honestly felt like, you know, we didn't have a lot to work out, um, other than, you know, um, just in being able to review what was in front of us and ask a few questions.

So thank you for making the process really easy for us.

In the meeting, I think one of the reflections that I walked away with was not just how I think, as you mentioned, Dr. Podesta, this calendar will align our data systems with reporting and other internal processes that are, that staff use to monitor and move the dial on students' progress.

But I think grouping the goals, going through each goal and interim and the interims associated with it in one progress monitoring session, I think will help us to have more meaningful conversations.

It will be helpful for members of the community who are also tracking and committed and following us on this work.

And so, yes, just wanna thank you and the team for bringing this forward and all of the thought that went into it.

Thank you, Director Clark.

Director Rankin?

Yeah, I will echo what Director Clark said, and it was really evident when we had the opportunity to get together with Superintendent Podesta and Julia from the board office that it seems so dull, which is actually like really the point.

We actually want board meetings to be really boring because we're all doing our jobs and things are going as agreed upon.

But it was really clear that there's been a sort of a, I'll call it a leap forward and understanding of really why we wanted to do progress monitoring and how it's not an additional layer of activity that the board is demanding but it actually is a peek under the the hood and kind of a reflection to the board and to the public of how are we doing how are students doing are they learning um which is our most important role as the board is to, you know, there's so many things that happen in a school district.

All of our other duties of oversight and different policies and different expenditures and things that we approve, we could have, you know, 100% happiness in climate surveys and all the buses could be on time and student safety could be perfect and all of these things could happen, but at the end of the day, the purpose of all of those things together is to support student learning and so if we're not also reflecting on whether or not students are learning we're not doing we're not doing our job and so um yeah i really appreciate the work that's gone into this i think also having this sort of five-year overview will help us as a board also now structure other routine things in review and just make the whole process more accessible for not only board directors but also the public of, oh, it's this time of year, that's when X happens.

Also, there's always new things happening and old things resurfacing.

So having this calendar to anchor to will also help us and future boards plan for work sessions or study sessions on things that whatever composition of the board there happens to be maybe hasn't had the opportunity to learn.

to learn about yet um so yeah i think you know i also want to echo or want to state that the importance that when a permanent superintendent does join us they this is also open to you know their leadership and guidance and and tweaks as to what they they may have that they want to bring to it so yeah i'm excited to approve it

Thank you, Director Rankin.

I just have one question.

So when we were adopting the goals, we talked a little bit about and we saw some data that in order to achieve our top line goals, the annual gains for all students, it's likely necessary We will set more accelerated targets that exceed the two points per year for targeted groups, the students who need to grow the most to reach that targeted proficiency.

Will we explore those sort of breakouts in the first session for each of the goals?

I expect that we will have to demonstrate, talk to you a little bit about how our internal processes are working.

I think in the discussion we had with Directors Rankin and Clark, I think Director Rankin made the analogy that what the board sees is the tip of the iceberg and there's a lot of process below the water line that we're trying to integrate into this.

I think we're happy to explain what that looks like.

I will say that that is a bit of a work in progress to build that integration.

Two other points I failed to make in my introduction is we are seeing these as work sessions separate from regular board meetings because we recommend that that That venue leads to a different sort of conversation and engagement than business meetings, which obviously is a board decision.

It also builds in some flexibility as assessment schedules change and other things change that doesn't necessarily take another board action to make adjustments as necessary to make the schedule work.

A lot can happen in five years, but minor changes could be agreed to by the superintendent and board president.

Other directors.

All right.

Then I'm going to call on the staff for the vote.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Yep.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director Clark.

Aye.

Director Hersey?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Right.

Thank you.

And that concludes our business section.

So we are going to move to the tables in the study session, but we're going to take a break and we're going to recess till 615. We have two items left.

We have a study session.

We have a safety study session as well as we have our board self evaluation.

So why we are taking a longer break is if you board directors, every board director has an assignment.

If you did not.

Carrie sent an email with your assignment.

If you did not do your homework beforehand, now is your opportunity to do your homework, so you are ready for the board self-evaluation.

And board directors online, you also have assignments, so please be prepared.

We will join back together here at, let's do six, I said 615, let's do 618, just to give folks time.

Thank you, 618. All right, I want to bring us back together.

All right, we are going to get started here.

Board directors are truckling in.

Hopefully they have finished their homework assignments.

We are at the tables and we're moving into a safety update from staff.

We have a work session today on school safety and I'm going to pass it over to Mr. Podesta now to begin the presentation.

Thank you, President Topp.

I'm joined today by Accountability Officer Ted Howard, who has been instrumental in this work over the last couple of years, helping us engage resources to do assessments, working with our partners at the city on various supports that they provide, and being an advisor with his experience at Garfield High School in particular, but just as being a respected school leader in our system for many, many years, so I appreciate him joining.

I actually am standing in for Executive Director Jose Curiel Morelos, who has stepped into the role over the last year in a brand new position as Executive Director of Safety, and in that capacity has had to define what that job is.

It's a new role in Seattle Public Schools, we find ourselves in extraordinary times.

Locally, there's good news about drops in violent crime in our city and in our county, but most of those gains are not enjoyed to the same rate when they involve youth.

violent crimes, use of firearms are still persistent and so we have a community issue about threats to safety among young people and obviously schools need to be in the middle of that.

So we're continuing to try to adapt as the ground continues to change under our feet and I just I'm sorry I couldn't be here tonight, but Jose has done a great job building relationships in the district, building relationships with other districts, with national organizations, and law enforcement.

He's really led a lot of the work that we're going to talk about.

He also is a much deeper expert than I, so I'll do my best to answer questions as we go along, but if I can't, we'll take note of those and make sure you get answers following the meeting.

All right, let's see if this thing works for me.

So as always, I think we're trying to be very disciplined when we are spending time talking to the board, explaining how it aligns to the very clear Guidance you've given to us on behalf of the community.

You established a guardrail related to safety and safe environments, both for physical safety and emotional safety.

We're talking about physical safety mostly in this session.

We last discussed this subject in early June.

And we brought a suite of policy recommendations around four policies, one relating about how we manage emergencies, updating our policies around weapons prohibitions to align with state law, a policy about our relationships with law enforcement, mostly from an information sharing kind of mandatory reporting view of the world, not with regard to school resource officers, which is embedded in our policy 4311, which is about our program overall, and it includes parameters about school resource officers while we did make a recommendation to change it.

Subsequent to introduction, we suggested as our new policy proposes that any such relationship agreement that would involve school resources officers in one of our building prescribes community engagement with students, staff, and families.

So we said, well, let's do some of that, see if we learn anything along the way before we bring this back.

Again, this is just an update.

Obviously, there's no action on the agenda tonight.

So some of the, and Mr. Howard has been really important in that work around school resource officers, so I'm gonna let him lead that discussion.

I will cover Jose's part about operational changes we've been making and enhancements.

Again, one of his chief goals when he joined us is to kind of professionalize and enhance our safety and security department.

Again, we've had this function for many, many years.

They've always done great work, but we are adapting to a changing environment.

We increased the staffing at schools by a third from 45 safety and security specialists to 60. We added more field operations leadership.

Safety and security is a unit that runs seven by 24 and has a lot of management oversight.

Our monitoring office takes 700 calls per day.

on a variety of issues.

It's kind of the nerve center of Seattle Public Schools, so really needed more help in kind of leadership and even just administrative work.

We help with, that unit helps with fingerprinting and background checks and other aspects, so just the administrative workload was burdensome and distracted safety and security specialists from taking care of students.

So we added some back end resources to help the department manage more effectively and then added resources so we can have private security doing kind of perimeter patrols around our building at the start of the school year and at the end of the school year where we often have peaks in security incidents.

And so kind of a extra augmentation of resources at that point in time.

One of the recommendations we had gotten with the experts that Mr. Howard helped us with were that our program needed to be more visible.

That would be reassurance to students, staff and families, be a deterrent perhaps, and so we, team worked with their labor partners and others to settle on some choices for uniforms, so staff are readily identifiable.

I think we have staff here with us tonight, and it's really clear who is providing safety and security services for us because we have more field supervision we've also replaced the the fleet that supports safety and security they have to manage incidents that you know over a hundred sites and made sure that those vehicles are easily identifiable so if there's a presence on campus that people know where to go for help and and perhaps give a more of a sense of safety that they know that resources are in place We've invested a lot in technology upgrades.

Verkata is a new suite of automated tools that help manage our security cameras that we have around school buildings.

become digital resources, we had kind of a mix of different sorts of camera systems.

So we're unifying around a single system that provides lots of extra capabilities, more digital access control in buildings, and more intrusion alarms.

So we have issues, our schools are by design, meant to be open places, they're kind of porous in nature.

People work hard to keep doors locked, but if they're not, we're not trying to rely on just the kind of visual inspection.

There are more alarms on doors so we know if there's an access problem subordinate building.

And then a recommendation that we had gotten through the audit committee, we'd done a safety audit a couple years ago about student, not safety in this sense, but safety, making sure that students weren't put in compromising positions with adults who came into our building.

And one of the recommendations there was to have better tools to understand who's in your building at any time.

So we're implementing a visitor management system in all our buildings.

And then better emergency notifications that will allow remote shelter in place and lockdown alerts.

How we do these alerts now with schools that still have the older technology is safety and security starts making phone calls and talking to school administration.

Sometimes it can take 10 minutes to enter into this status.

This is now something they can do through an automated system as we roll out this system.

I do want to highlight the visitor management system a bit because you all will enjoy the benefits of using the system as you visit schools.

The members of the public will.

It's a kiosk system that you sign into instead of the three ring binder we've relied on for years.

The system We'll issue a badge so you have a sticker you can wear so people can identify you and can make a check if we've, for whatever reason, if we've excluded somebody from visiting our building, staff can be alerted that this person's identity is checked against any kind of exclusion list and should be monitored, should not be allowed access.

You'll all be seeing this, and we'll all be learning how to use it.

I have to say I had a little bit of anxiety that, hey, this is a lot of technology in a lot of buildings, but from what I hear, people are finding it pretty easy to use, and it has been in service in a few buildings in the previous year, and so far, so good.

And then, again, thanks to voters for supporting our capital levies.

We're investing in security vestibules in our buildings that allow two-part entry.

This happens to be from Garfield High School that it makes sure that any incoming traffic through the main entrance is routed.

through the administrative office and that visitor management system, so it controls kind of access to the building more securely than just locking a single door and making sure that ingress and egress to the building are monitored.

So we still, those are improvements that we worked on over the last year.

We have improvements that are coming online with the start of school.

We have a new tip line as part of our SaferWatch system, which will do a lot of things.

It'll also be our incident management system.

That new tip line is 206-202-HELP.

That'll be live on the first day of school.

The incident management system, the department has historically used internally developed technology to record security incidents.

Training has not been great.

The system is not easy to use and not standardizing procedures.

As we've been talking about Guard Rail 2, staff had proposed to the board to set baselines around climate surveys and kind of subjective data about feelings of safety and we got feedback from the board and we agree that We'd like some more hard measurements of actual security incidents and what are the trends associated with those.

We would like to start that type of measurement and progress monitoring after the system is in place and staff are fully trained so we can establish a baseline where we know we're getting clean data about how many safety incidents there are in a year.

We want to make sure that we're not providing any perverse incentive to not report things because people are expecting this to go down.

We'd like to encourage a baseline that's realistic and then monitor over the coming years which will require some standardization and training, some work between folks who manage safety and security and discipline to make sure they're on the same page of what kinds of things get tracked and what system of record another aspect of the safer watch system our virtual panic buttons for staff that are kind of cellular based if staff need immediate help from safety and security need someone to make a 911 call on their behalf that you make that easier we're will also be exploring other types of panic buttons, and then they're also built into the classrooms as part of our technology rollout.

One thing we are starting to explore, we have some demos scheduled for later in the month, are weapon detection systems.

Sometimes people talk about metal detectors.

These systems have gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years.

We're gonna start seeing what it would take in terms of staff and school operations.

The current technology people can walk through.

They don't open their bags.

It takes less administration by people.

It still needs to be monitored, so we've struggled again with how many points of entry we have in a building.

How would this work?

But certainly at main and secondary entrances, we think this technology is promising and again, can detect, has more advanced technology, artificial intelligence technology that can track more kinds of threats and again, don't require people to stop.

People can walk through these kiosks.

So we're starting to get demonstrations of those later this month.

So those are kind of the operational improvements and investments we've made over the last several months.

Maybe I'll pause here and see if people have questions about any of that, comments.

Director Sarju.

I had a question about the, I think it's Verkita, Verkata, what's her name?

Verkata?

Verkata.

That's her name, okay.

Verkata.

There it is.

So it prints out a badge.

So person walks up.

are we asking for ID?

The reason why I'm asking this is that Children's Hospital, when you go in, they ask you for picture ID, they do something with it, and then they run you a badge.

So I could walk up and say, I'm Ted Howard.

Because we wear glasses, we got a similar skin color.

How's anybody going to know?

I believe we do ask for ID.

I did try to set up some provision to phone a friend if I need help.

Mr. Wells, do you want to describe what that walk-up experience is like?

Sure, absolutely.

So what that means is that...

Let's get you a micro...

Come, come, have a seat, please.

Thank you.

Let's get you...

Staff, can we get an additional microphone, too?

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

So right now, we're not using certain analytics in this new system.

And when I say that, we're talking about facial recognition and some of those other things.

So right now, you're correct that you can walk in, you sign in, and most of the time when folks walk into a school, staff know who they are.

But if they don't recognize you or anything like that, they can still ask you to present your ID to them.

And the reason for that is because of the information, the data, people are concerned about those kinds of things and we respect that.

And this still, and again, we're sliding into this, evolving into this over a three ring binder that didn't necessarily, you know, relied on a lot of human intervention, was hard to do, to find out who was in the building if we're trying to investigate circumstances after the fact.

We'll grow into this.

We will.

And it also helps when you have emergency situations.

You need to evacuate the building.

Then you have a track record of who's in your building.

It also works as if someone leaves your campus and forget to check out.

It will send them a notification, ask them, are you still with us here at Garfield High School?

Any follow up, Director Sarju?

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think this is a major improvement over a three-ring binder.

And, you know, I mean, especially the folks that are sitting in our front offices are tracking so many different things.

And this also takes away a level of potential confrontation that some people handle better than others and I think that's really important that it's it's sort of like a a neutral party in a way of like sorry it's not it's not me the system is telling me you're not supposed to be here

Correct.

It's a soft approach.

It will alert your administrative team or your security team if you're denied access.

I think to take that burden off the individual who happens to be behind the desk is really important.

Similar wondering, but more technical.

As someone whose child has been hospitalized multiple times, very familiar with the system at Children's Hospital.

The first time you go in, they do a little bit more looking at your ID, confirming who you are, and then as you come back again and again, the system recognizes you.

So a question that I have about that is, you know, there's increased, justified increased anxiety for some populations about providing identifying information.

So what kind of protections do we have?

Parents who are undocumented immigrants, how can we assure that they have the same access to a building that other parents do?

And that how do we help them help assure them that, you know, their information is not going to be shared or that it's not going to compromise them.

So thank you.

Great question.

Sorry, thank you.

Great question.

Because we're not using those analytics, we're not tracking any data that visitors come in.

So you're presenting your ID to a staff member who looks at it and confirms who you are.

So nothing's going into the system.

Got it.

We're not storing people's information.

We're not storing data in this.

Okay.

At least not that type of data or pictures at this time.

And the team was sensitive to that particular issue, people worrying about having to present credentials.

I think those are business rules we'll keep thinking about to try to balance security in the system and what it can do versus we don't want to create anxiety for people.

Beyond just pulling me out of the fire right now, I just really want to thank Mike Wells, who has long served this district in the Safety and Security Department was willing to take on a role in our capital group to be the program manager for all these investments, and nobody knows better what goes on in schools than Mike.

And so he's been an enormous asset in all of this.

Thank you, Pedestrian.

Superintendent Pedestrian.

There we go.

Put the super on there.

Regarding that, so on the one hand, this is really great.

I can see how much thought has been put into all these different things.

And it almost feels like a whole bunch of things happening at one time.

So as we especially go through the next year and revisit this relationship with SPD and all these different things, from the governance perspective, I'm interested in whatever we can do to help us kind of see what's having an impact and what's not, as opposed to, I don't know, we tried five different things and we're not sure which one is working and which one isn't.

Particularly with the weapons detectors, I would really like to know if other districts are using those, how they work, That seems like a big monetary investment.

It also is just a visual signal that's very different to walk past a detector as opposed to walking into a school.

So I do have some concerns about that.

And then I also, you know, Yeah, sorry.

Thanks.

And we're thinking about models where this newer technology is easy to move.

Maybe it's not at every school every day.

It's random sampling.

We're really trying to answer the question because we've heard some concerns expressed by school leaders and others.

We believe there are firearms in our building.

Our staff know if things get confiscated, but we'd like to know more about what we don't know.

So we're trying to explore models with some selected use.

Give us an understanding of, well, so how many weapons did we confiscate with this technology?

Does it provide just a deterrent if you never know on any given day?

Is it something that needs to be in every door, in every building, every day?

We are exploring.

It seems, and again, we're seeing a lot of violence, just general in the community, in our buildings and not in our buildings.

It seems that part of the strategy, we could separate young people from firearms that would save lives, not necessarily just on our campus, just in general.

And so we're trying to look for strategies that do that.

Yeah, I think as much real, tangible information that we have, the better.

You know, I have a student in high school and a student in middle school, and there's a lot of stuff that goes on that they're like, oh, yeah, I know this happens.

One thing I have to point out, though, is that for especially our youngest students, the biggest threat to their physical safety is often other adults that are actually intended to be in our buildings in terms of restraint and other interventions.

And so, you know, this all sounds promising and most of the violence that our students are experiencing is outside of our schools or from people who are actually supposed to be there.

And so...

Yeah, I think, yeah.

And we appreciate the kind of comprehensive language in the guardrail that has a broad definition of safety.

This is really just a slice we're talking about this evening.

Director Mizrahi.

MR. Yeah, so a couple of things.

I mean, one, Director Rankin, I'm glad you brought up the point about people who might not have ID or feel comfortable showing it.

I think that's an important thing to consider, and at the very least, I think this system that really creates a point of entry where everyone has to interact with the front desk, has to talk about the reason why they're there, at least get asked for ID, hopefully people have the right training to, if there is someone there who clearly has a reason to be there, but they can't provide that ID that will manage that situation.

uh at the building level so i think that's important uh second thing you mentioned it uh you mentioned it as well the uh the idea of having metrics that we're looking at we have all these things that we're doing this is like a lot of very seems like good and well-needed change so that we should have a point not hopefully at the end of the year but at various points throughout this year where we're looking and saying what are the right metrics to see are these things working and um Maybe you can't disaggregate and see which of these things are working, but these are all good things to be doing anyway.

So if they're all working, that would be a positive thing.

Or if they're not working, then we can figure out why.

I think just to manage expectations, I think we'll have maybe some qualitative subjective.

We'll have some anecdotes, I think, this year.

Are they going to be broad trends?

Because I think we just need to work a lot at collecting data.

you know, it's just difficult to measure things that didn't happen, which is kind of the goal.

And so this is a hard world to, this is not an easy world to think of what appropriate metrics are.

We do think, we would always care about whether they become interims for the board, that the climate survey and do people feel safe I worked in local government for a long time and learned from a few police chiefs that you can cite crime statistics until you're blue in the face.

If people don't feel safe, it doesn't really matter.

And we want to promote a learning environment in our buildings.

So yes, we need to track what's going on and then also understand, so how did that impact that learning environment?

So we'll work hard to get those metrics.

I have a feeling it'll take us a while to figure that out.

I guess, sorry, as a follow-up to that, do we have baseline metrics?

Do we have for what the number of violent incidents occurred this past year?

We have data that we've collected.

We don't feel it's reliable because it's been inconsistently recorded.

That's why we're replacing the a system of record.

It's difficult to use.

It's difficult to report on.

The numbers seem suspiciously low.

So the last school year I looked at, I think there were 2,300 fights across all our schools in a whole school year.

I have a feeling there were more than 2,300 fights in our schools.

So that's why we want to interrogate the data more to get to that reliable baseline.

We do collect data.

I just don't think we can quite use it would just think we're skeptical about it yeah no i think that's fair i i just wonder if there are things if there are data points that we think from that we can pull out to say we think this number is at least reliable so we have something to compare it to certainly um you know i'm pretty confident that confiscate weapons at certain things things that would have to be reported right yeah those frankly are pretty small not just by their nature are it's hard to know well as going from 180 to 172 year over year.

There's kind of a rule of small numbers there.

But we'll keep working it.

That's where we definitely want to get.

I just want it.

And again, if then we establish a goal that we want these to go down, I'm just worried about that perverse incentive.

So will people under-report if we're going to ding them for it?

And so we just want to be careful about that.

Other directors or should we continue?

I think we're ready to go if you are.

Perfect.

And by we I mean Mr. Howard.

All right.

Good afternoon, board directors, President Topp, and our new superintendent, Fred Podesta.

I like how that sounds.

I want to ground you in going from what I consider the district level all the way down to the building level.

And I want to thank board members for actually attending.

It was great to see you in community and working with us.

Garfield's community is basically, I'll read this community message.

Garfield's families value safety through relationships, growth, and shared responsibility, not merely being present.

A successful pilot should embody a culture of learning, healing, and partnership.

I embrace that being a principal of Garfield High School for over 17 plus years and understanding the community quite well, and having been at the high school level and understanding that over 12 years of having an SRO in the building.

That kind of conversations went very well to bring a community together to kind of look at what does it look like to engage that community and community engagement?

What does that look like?

What does it look like from a district level?

But what does it look like when you involve community that has various opinions and had various experiences with police officers.

So on July 17th, the community forum was held at Garfield to actually lift student family and partner voices on finalizing an MOU.

This is the first time that I have ever seen a partnership with the city of Seattle in the mayor's office to actually bring an MOU to that level where you could actually see the MOU of a job description and what it would actually entail.

What we talked about was training.

We talked about what would that look like, looking at the state level of training, what would it look like with the school district training, and really learning with one another.

That is really, really important.

Sometimes we can get away from what schools are all about.

Learning is messy.

How do you learn from what you're doing and grow with that?

And so I would say the themes that we heard loud and clear, you see training up there, you see role clarity, you see accountability and student impact.

I would say what's not up there is safety must feel like belonging.

a culture of learning what does that look like true accountability which requires transparency and continue to center what is working and so those conversations were talked about what investments have been made with the mayor's office with the deal investments what does it look like within our Our teen health centers, what does that look like?

What does it look like with our counselors?

What does it look like with our social workers, our intervention people that we have invested in and our new safety and security people have invested in and the new trainings they've gone through?

How does that actually dive into the themes that we heard loud and clear?

So after hearing the feedback, We've taken that feedback and we're continuing to work with Seattle Public Schools with the City of Seattle and the Police Department on the MOU, the language and conversations around the language.

And so some of those themes that I shared with you, they were all open to finalizing that MOU across the board.

The biggest one was who picks the officer?

Well, that happens jointly between SPS and SPD, which is great.

I think that was the number one, as we collected some data, that was the number one piece of information that came back from the community gathering.

This is just one of many that we're going to do, and one of the things that Dr. Hart and myself have had continuous conversations about is this is ongoing.

You need to continue to have these conversations.

Superintendent Podesta is going to have a virtual one on September 9th.

with families at Garfield so we can continue this conversation of engaging.

And it just doesn't stop there.

You know, this is year to year.

This is dependent on community, whether it's a Garfield community or it's another school community.

They have these conversations.

They have the trainings they have to go through.

When you ask about the trainings, I've seen these conversations come up over and over again about what are the trainings.

And so, I was ready for that question, even though it wasn't brought up yet, but this question that keeps coming up about the training, and the training is put on from our Puget Sound ESDs, and our SROs or SEOs, they both go through that training, and their restorative practices training is their teaching our police officers how to de-escalate.

They are also teaching them how to work with students.

They're also helping them understand what situations, how they should be handled, and how you should collaborate with the community.

The other piece of conversation that keeps coming up is, are they directly involved in discipline?

They're not.

Not at all.

Now, if it's a life-threatening situation or something like that, they're able to step in, but police officers are not involved in discipline.

And so those were two of the two big questions that I saw that really stepped out.

The other one was transparency of data, and yes, data will be collected and it will be transparent, and we will put that in a monitoring calendar so you'll be able to see that data as we continue to learn about the process.

The last piece of information, I will leave you some insight for the board.

This pilot is not just about one role at Garfield.

It's a test of how SPS defines safety across all schools in alignment with our guardrails.

If we can co-create a model where safety means belonging, healing and accountability to students and families, then Garfield becomes the blueprint for the district.

The question for us as leaders is, are we ready to move from reacting to incidents towards building a culture where safety is inseparable from learning?

So I leave that as a thought process for us as we continue to build on our next steps and things that we need to do as we continue to build community engagement at all levels, whether it's student or community members, which were key in bringing this first engagement to Garfield at that level in the summertime on a hot day.

uh we had a a large turnout of community uh which again tells you how invested the community is around safety and the changing of what's happening in our environment this is a different world that we live in post-covid but even now where students if they don't feel safe they feel like their power is slipping from them and they're bringing items to protect themselves.

And so as we get behind those conversations of why they feel like they need to bring items anywhere they go to unpack that so they can make better decisions.

We know their brains haven't fully developed yet and they'll react and do certain things.

If we can actually get in front of them, which we've been working really hard to do, we can change that.

So they'll have a plethora of options before violence is part of that option.

So those are some of the things we're working on.

Continue to train our community, continue to train our teachers, our staff, our security, our principals as we work through this conversation of continued engagement along with having an option of having an SEO in the building to help support our students and make sure they feel safe.

The data is transparent around that and we create a cohesive learning community with our SEO.

We're happy to take questions, hear your feedback.

Can you just go real fast?

I guess my first question is, this has been on the table for a while.

It says board discussion and possible vote on September 17th post this second follow-up meeting with the Garfield community.

Can you clarify, are you recommending a pilot for only Garfield for one year as what that vote would be?

So the policy recommendation we made to the board restores authority to the superintendent to make decisions about deployment of school engagement officers.

according to state law and the policy we're proposing, has these agreements being school-based and only being a year at a time.

So I think it would always be a pilot that the agreements expire.

But that's the way the draft policy was presented at the June meeting, and that's what we'd intend to bring forward.

The point of this follow-up, community session is we got feedback.

We are still negotiating with SPD on the MOU and we want to speak back to the community and say this is what we heard.

This is how it manifests itself in this memorandum of understanding.

Did we that we get it right.

And then if we are affirmed there, then our proposal would be to bring it back and then the policy doesn't get into implementation issues as written.

Is this a pilot for one school?

It just restores the authority that existed previously where these agreements were not board agreements, they were staff agreements.

Our intent would be to keep moving at this pace that, and I think we have consensus with Chief Barnes and the police department, This only works if a community is welcoming and accepting of it.

You'll ever achieve 100% consensus about everything, and we're taking the idea of a pilot seriously.

We want to know.

We haven't completely thought through how we're going to measure the pilot, how at the end of the year we can know whether it's successful and we want to renew.

Again, the policy recommendation is broad.

Our intent in terms of practice is to keep it pretty narrow and one school at a time, and that while we've heard from a couple schools that they might be interested in this, I don't think we want to move any faster than seeing how things work out at Garfield.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

We're going to go to questions here real fast.

And this is a very difficult vote for me.

I'm still very undecided.

And so very much looking forward to what my colleagues have to say here.

And so I think Director Sargi said we're starting with Director Mizrahi.

We'll just go this way.

So yeah, Mike, this works out to my question.

It's a little bit of a follow-up to yours.

So Mike was off.

If I understood what you said correctly, the change that we would be asked to make to 4311 would be broader than just Garfield.

So has there been any engagement beyond Garfield?

to talk to those communities about how they would feel about this?

No, our proposal, the policy requires that engagement, would require one school community at a time that the MOUs require the engagement that we're doing at Garfield.

These are pretty localized decisions that we want to hear from each school community.

Garfield is dealing with very real circumstances and other schools are as well.

right now we're not really soliciting kind of philosophical feedback from across the whole system do you think this is a good idea it's we're asking the garfield community is this going to be helpful based on what you face you all heard from dr hart and and again one measure i think we are committed to to test the pilot is again back to do people feel safer or not because that's Mostly, the spectrum of feedback that we're getting is many people have told us they think they appreciate this enhanced relationship with the police department and how it might increase safety, and then we're hearing people say, boy, the idea of a sworn commission armed officer in a building doesn't make me feel safe.

And so we had an enhanced present by SPD last year.

That's why we're kind of following up on that.

And Dr. Hart worked in advisory and other places to talk to students.

How did that make you feel?

And would this next step make sense?

But again, this feedback is, what we're proposing is a very localized system, a school at a time, to see what would work in their building.

Because I think the criticism would be that we're changing a policy for the whole system while only having engaged with one community.

But what I hear you saying is that before any SRO MOU was signed with any other community that that engagement would inherently have to occur.

That's what the policy requires and so does state law.

The policies align with state law that requires these agreements only be a year in length and the engagement is done with families, staff, students and community before any such agreement.

I think it's a reasonable governance question for the board.

Is this a decision if we Director Sarju has talked about wanting a comprehensive system, but as we make these decisions, as we consider a single pilot, is this something that the board wants to weigh in each time, or do you want to delegate?

We've teed it up that this is an operational issue that you've delegated the superintendent.

I'm certainly not religious on that topic.

And we've stepped into this.

We said, well, we won't bring the policy back to you.

You've actually seen us do some engagement.

If we want to structure this policy around, well, this is a single pilot that we're authorizing now and come talk to us before we make the system approach, I think we're certainly open to that.

Because we want to learn along the way as well.

I have other questions.

Yeah, yeah.

Director Briggs.

Okay.

I'm gonna just try to articulate what specifically I'm still struggling with here and it's, So I think there's unanimous agreement that there are safety concerns.

Nobody is disputing that.

I also think there's unanimous agreement in the community and amongst board members that we need to be proactive as opposed to reactive.

That couldn't be more important than when we're talking about student safety.

So those things are not being contested at all.

I think what's difficult for me is that it feels like instead of bringing the community together and saying, okay, we all recognize these problems exist, what is our solution as a community going to be?

Let's put all the options on the table and talk it through.

And I said this last time we talked about this issue.

It instead felt like the solution was predetermined and that all of this engagement is really more around convincing people and I don't want to say coercing but compelling people to get on board with this plan and that's a different that's a different conversation than the conversation that starts with what do we collectively decide?

We don't have a predetermined outcome here.

We're coming together as a community to figure out what is the solution that is going to result in the most number of people feeling safe.

Because what is also true is that we have heard very definitively from groups of people who have stated repeatedly that they will feel unsafe with police in the building.

And then we have also heard from groups of people who said that they will feel unsafe without police in the building.

And so that is where things diverge.

It's not around what the issue is.

And so I guess my concern is just that these conversations always felt leading in a way.

They were never entered into with an openness to what are the other solutions that could be considered.

And so I just struggle with that.

Thank you.

I appreciate the comment.

Maybe part of it is kind of the nature of the discussion and the structure, which is all on me.

Because I think sometimes we've also heard, well, counselors versus police.

I think what we heard from Dr. Hart and what we tried to outline is we think we need to do all of it.

We have partnered with the city in a lot of mental health supports, on case management, on violence interrupters, on safe passageways resources.

And we're trying to follow all those strategies.

And we've heard loud and clear from community that they do want all that.

This is, frankly, in the scheme of things, this is just one thing among many, many, all the investments we've talked about.

And again, there is no point in doing this over people's objectives.

And we're not going to get 100 percent consensus.

We're just trying to understand, so what is the overall sentiment?

And again, this is something that we've heard from the Garfield community.

This is something we used to have, and that there was less discussion about changing that than we put into perhaps restoring it.

And so is it worth trying?

And again, that's a staff recommendation.

And it won't work if the community doesn't support it.

And police resources are pretty scarce.

And so this has to actually work.

Yeah, and I would just add that previously the PTSA, Garfield staff, and the principal actually brought this forward.

It wasn't something that central office was asking, do you want this, and trying to convince them.

That was something that was presented to central office about how do we do that.

The process where they were unclear was no one in this current system has ever, students, have never had an officer in the building.

So they don't know what it felt like to have one staff does that's still there that once was at Garfield.

But no other leader except for myself and probably one other leaders at middle school, Jeff Clark, has ever had actual officer for a long period of time in their building day in and day out so when people come up and speak about an officer this is what they do it's alarming to me where they're getting this information from because they weren't a student at Garfield and they did not participate in the process that we're doing now nor did they actually have insight on it so I you know it's someone's viewpoint but at the same time I I kind of how do you weigh that when they haven't had an officer in the building, nor did they have the parameters that we have currently in place where we're saying that not only is the officer going to get training about trauma, brain development, restorative practice, anti-bias, you know, these are all new things that the state has handed down that enhances someone to engage with young people in a different way.

You know, quite frankly, we're preparing our students for the real world.

Police are a part of the community.

So how do you engage them in a way that you actually set a tone for what you want in the future?

So do we coddle them or do we actually say, hey, this is the real world.

Now engage and have conversations and help shape what you want for the future.

So now when the future is presented for you, you're really prepared for the real world.

So that's kind of the approach we've been having with the community at large.

going to continue around the u and go to director hersey and then director clark director hersey if you are talking there you go you're off mute oh sweet sorry when you said you're going to continue around the u i thought somebody else had their hand up in the room um yeah so as one of the board directors rat was here when we first implemented this policy, I can say with full confidence that we moved very quickly.

Do I regret what we did?

Absolutely not.

And at the same time, as the nature of everything that was transpiring during the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and COVID and all the other compounding factors, there was a real urgency in which the community pretty solidly, in a unified way, asked us to act.

That being said, there were still a number of Black families at the time and Black parents that we communicated with and asked us, please don't do this, right?

And by don't do this, I mean remove SEOs from Garfield.

would seos have prevented any of the violence that we've seen in any of our schools i don't necessarily know right i don't think any of us do but what i can say is that in order for me to support this the notion of decoupling this from and by decoupling i mean removing the support that we provide for garfield from a full-throated uh endorsement of the process that took place at garfield in other parts of the city is really going to be critical because what i know for a fact is based on the conversations that i've had with families at garfield and educators at garfield and students at garfield um There is a real desire for some type of support specifically from SPD.

That does not necessarily mean that that is true for everyone.

I also do not attend Garfield on a regular basis, so I would not know what the balance of that is.

But over the years, I know that I have had no short of at least 50, maybe even closer to 100 conversations with different folks who some of them may still be there some of them who may not be there and in the vast majority of folks who i've talked to most of which being people of color a lot of black families um share with me that they are terrified right so the reason that i bring that up is that again in order for me to support this those two things need to be decoupled and the process needs to be walked as slowly as possible the reason that i ask for that is because I feel as though from my vantage point, having seen the long arc of this issue from its inception to now and how public sentiment has either changed or remained the same for some folks in the experiences that have been shared with me from people that are actually in Garfield's building, I think that there is a real need for us to do something.

I cannot say that that is necessarily true for every building in every building in our system.

So I'm just making it super clear, and I would like my other board directors to consider this as well, is that the issue of safety at Garfield and what that community needs to feel, quote unquote, safe.

And let me be very clear, unfortunately, given the situation that we are in and the time that we are in, we can we could never guarantee a child's safety.

We can do everything we can in our power to provide that sense of safety with with measures and policy and resources and all this on the other.

I think that it's also a super scary time for people, given that, like, we are now back in the same administration that we were in initially when a lot of these conversations kind of started bubbling up.

That being said, I don't think that folks, to your point, Ted, not a whole lot of folks know what the resource officer provided for that building.

In the conversations that I've had with especially Black students and their families at Garfield, the resource officer that was there previously wasn't actually a resource.

and provided a lot of support to students.

There's no guarantee that we're going to get the same thing.

I don't know who the officers are at SPD at this moment.

And we don't have any control over who that person is or like rather any insight over who that person is.

So while in the best of situations, it can be a really positive thing.

I think that's almost the exception and not necessarily the rule, because in the majority of situations, I would say that regardless of what that resource officer is or who that resource officer is, what the color of their skin or their cultural experience might be, the reality is that there are also a lot of students in the building who have never had any interaction with Glees before.

And even worse so, there are students in the building that have had wrongful interactions with the police, right?

So this is a wildly complex issue that I think requires the level of detail that y'all have put into the process as much appreciated.

And there is no upper limit to the amount of time and pacing and just slow walking of a decision like this to be made.

I also really want to just point out the fact that, like, And this is no shade to the city, but it's also kind of shade to the city that this issue has been like spun around so much.

And even when Dr. Jones was here, I feel like we started these conversations about having a actually meeting with whoever was in charge with SPD at the time.

can talk about what it would look like.

And it wasn't until very recently at the last minute that a meeting was offered with the current police chief, right?

And that's of no fault to anybody on staff at SPS.

I can't speak for the city.

But what I can say is that I think that the concerns and the rationale and the concerns around the positionality of SPD in this agreement are completely warranted by community.

Does that mean that we shouldn't do it?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

But I do think that that is just another example for me why it's so critical that we decouple the situation that is occurring at Garfield and the support that we can potentially provide for that community from a full-thrown approach to this, full stop, within our system.

So I'm just going to leave it at that.

Director Hersey, can I ask a clarifying question?

You mean- Absolutely.

You mean instead of the whole changing the policy for the broad system, just focusing on Garfield?

That would be my ask.

Got it.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Yep.

Super, do you have any-

Our focus now, Garfield was the only high school that ever had a school emphasis officer.

We are reinstating a program under new protocols with SPD.

I think that's a governance issue.

What's going to happen on the ground, at least while I have authority over this, is to move very slowly and see how it works at one school before we'd even consider.

We've heard from other school leaders and other school communities that there's some interest.

we're taking this idea of a pilot very seriously.

I certainly would, it wouldn't really change what happens in the near term if there's an amendment to this policy that requires board approval of each MOU or there's a carve out specifically for this pilot.

That wouldn't change what we're gonna do.

So I'm agnostic.

I think that ends up, how often does board wanna have this conversation?

And so that's a question for you all to consider.

And your time.

As much as possible.

I get it.

And you're also...

doing a lot of great work and hard work to think about what's governance and what's management.

And so I think this is one of those questions.

I think you know I'm a fairly practical person.

I just wanna move forward with something and we will amend the policy to whatever the board is comfortable with knowing that this is a very complex issue with a lot of community interest.

So maybe for now it is a governance issue, one side at a time, that would be fine.

Director Clark.

Absolutely.

And you know, sorry, if I may, really quickly, you know, I appreciate the work that y'all have put into this specifically, Fred and Ted.

I think for me, again, it is just like, especially as we navigate the differences between what is governance and what is under the supervision of the superintendent X, Y, and Z, there are going to be instances, to your point, Fred, where, or Seattle, in order for this to work, we are going to have to look at extreme instances like this on an individual basis.

And I think that that is going to be a critical part of like how we build trust in the community to know that when there is an issue such as this, we have the wherewithal and the, I would say, emotional acumen to understand that this is kind of an outlier in terms of how we're moving forward, right?

I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time while acknowledging that.

And that's not necessarily the staff, that's just in conversation with my colleagues as well.

Thank you for the additional time.

Thank you, Director Hersey.

Director Clark?

Thanks.

Thank you.

I just want to thank my colleague, Director Hersey, for your really thoughtful comments.

I am in agreement with you on every point that you made.

And while I haven't had the length of service as a board director, you know, that you've had, just, you know, as an alumni of Garfield High School and a community member, yeah, just, and board direct just really resonates with me.

I think, you know, we are in this, you know, kind of unprecedented moment, as you articulated very well, under, you know, a presidency that I, you know, and just uncertainty.

And at the same time, we need to move our safety policies and procedures and programs forward in a way that is equitable, responsive to community desires and student needs.

And so just echoing flexibility, I think is key here.

And just agreeing with your sentiments around carving out this pilot from a broader systemic change.

I also just, I wanted to ask a quick question around data collection, which I know one of my colleagues already touched on, but, you know, as Dr. Podesta, or Superintendent Podesta, as we're moving, some of the other, you know, initiatives forward that we discussed tonight, you know, whether it's this, you know, new sign in system or, you know, detectors and other things.

I guess what I'm wondering is if those new safety system upgrades are going to be at Garfield and we pilot an SRO in the same school year, How do you all envision being able to determine what intervention is playing a role in enhanced safety or sense of safety over another?

If we're doing it all, kind of rolling it all out in one school year.

The record-keeping technology that we're implementing, I think we're looking for a more standard way to classify incidents, understand when, and even our old system, we tracked when there was police involvement.

We would hope SCOs would have a very minimal role in actual safety incidents, because the policy of this district, it's our intent that safety and security issues primarily get handled by district staff.

On an operational level, we would see the SCO getting involved only if we'd gotten to the point where we would have called 911, which is something we would keep track of, that we needed police involvement and that we would see this role on an operational level when needed to help be a liaison with the department and other public safety agencies when we need that.

The reason it's called school engagement officers, the primary role is really about relationship building, about teaching as Mr. Howard referred to, so we're hoping that the SEO doesn't show up too often in our safety incident management, information management system, that that's the role of safety and security staff, but might for those incidents that involve police anyway, because that really on an operational level Having an officer who understands your campus, understands your culture, and can help be a liaison with the department is the biggest practical gain that we get here.

So we're still hoping that that's not their primary focus.

But the police department sometimes knows about threats and other issues that we don't know.

that they do their best, and we do our best to interact, but it's not the same as having a full-time dedicated presence there.

And so I think that's, you know, we would see, we would track those kinds of incidents where police involvement was necessary, and how did this facilitate that, improve that, and then I think once we understand that data better, coupled with climate surveys, we really wanna, I mean, I've,

So we've talked about- I'm sorry, can I stop you for a moment, Superintendent Podessa?

I don't think I was clear enough in my question.

I was referring to the climate survey and how students are responding to the enhanced, whether it's, and I'm thinking about Garfield in particular.

If we do an SRO pilot and we are, implementing some of the other strategies that we discussed tonight.

I guess I'm just curious how we'll be able to, will we be making updates to the student climate survey to really nail down what of these new initiatives, which ones are helping students feel safer and which ones aren't?

whether it's our broad system climate survey or some of the engagement that Dr. Hart has done site specific, I could foresee circumstances similar to what we had last year where we had an increased police presence and Dr. Hart led focus groups with students, used advisory time to interact with students to find out.

So how exactly did you react to that specific circumstance, having an officer, at the Teen Life Center, having more increased police presence?

Did that make you feel safer or not?

I think our general climate survey that we want to do across all systems are, you know, what is your overall sense of safety and what do you see as the specific threats?

We've heard about issues in bathrooms.

Are the threats really about adults?

Are they about other students?

Are they about the surrounding community?

I think that would be a bit broader, but we would expect this pilot, this, again, we're taking the idea of a pilot very seriously, we haven't fully thought through, so what is gonna be the assessment regime for it, but at the basic level, it's gonna be, did this make you feel safer, did it make you feel less safe?

And whether that's, that particular question won't make sense across our own system, because we're talking about a pilot at a single school, so we'll have to do something tailored at Garfield.

And Director Clark, we are in a process of going through RFP for our new climate survey.

So some of the feedback you're giving us will be taken into consideration in this new process.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just, I think, you know, I'm still torn myself, but I do think that it's important that if we, you know, if we decide to move something like this forward, that we are, able to collect data that gives us a true picture of did this pilot have what impact this pilot had on our students' sense of safety and not just rely on the existing survey tools and things that we already have because, as I said, it sounds to me like if we were to move this forward along with some of the other initiatives that there would be several things going on at Garfield this year that were not going on in the last school year.

And it would be important for us to be able to sort through that data in a way that helps us identify impact and inform our next steps.

So thank you guys.

And I'm sorry that my question was a little confusing there.

I think it might be getting close to dinner time.

No, I would add one more piece for you, Director Clark, that the focus groups I think for some of our more communities that have not been forthright in sharing their viewpoints.

I think those have been really, really telling for me to actually engage them and go where they are.

And some of those places have been where they felt safe, whether it's small conversations with small groups of students to larger groups of students.

And I know you know the history of Garfield.

I mean, Garfield has taken a knee multiple times to stand up for students' rights, as well as to say, hey, Police have been an issue and so this conversation at Garfield has been going on way before George Floyd or any deaths that had occurred recently.

This is going back to 2014, 2015, 2016. This is an ongoing conversation where students have taken a knee with Colin Kaepernick.

conversations have continued to go on because this is such a diverse community, but also an understanding that this is so complex.

So I do appreciate the time and space that you're giving us to have this conversation.

At the same time, I would say to Director Hersey's point, We're not there every day.

And we've heard from Dr. Hart and we've heard from students about how they can feel safe.

And I truly believe our major job is to give our educators, our teachers, especially our principals, what they need to do their job.

And if this is a piece of that, then I think we need to support them in getting them what they need if you guys see that as something that's what they need to do their job more effectively.

So I just would add those pieces there and then sum it up with saying that, yes, we will collect every piece of data that we can from focus groups to our climate survey that we're currently in the process of doing RFP to get more information.

Thank you.

Director Sarju?

Ooh, yeah.

So first of all, I wholeheartedly agree with everything that Director Briggs said.

And I think I wholeheartedly agree with everything Director Hersey said, although I can't remember everything he said.

So I'm not conflicted about this.

And I've said it numerous times.

What this feels like, and I'm saying what this feels like.

So I want people to understand I'm not accusing anybody of anything.

But what this process has felt like, I think Director Briggs referred to it as convincing, like the plan has already been developed and baked, and now we've got to try to convince board directors to be in support of.

That may or may not be true, but it feels like it's true.

And what it feels like to me is being backed into a corner like we were with well-resourced schools.

I felt like that was a total setup, a backing into the corner.

And because of that, we really did a disservice to the students.

I have had many conversations with Dr. Hart before the most recent decision to do a pilot.

And my first statement to him was that I will support whatever it is that you want.

So when there was a change, And first it was not feeling like they needed more violence interrupters and they didn't need a police officer in the school.

And then something changed.

I don't care what it was.

I've never asked.

But Mr. Hart decided that he wanted a police officer in a school.

in the school.

And I said, I don't need to know why you have had a change in direction.

I will still support you with this pilot.

And I still do support him with this pilot.

I'm real clear.

I think I've said that in other board meetings for the record.

What I will not do, though, is be backed into a corner to overturn the moratorium.

Nobody has named that that's what we're doing.

We're talking around it.

And for me, that feels disingenuous.

Again, I'm not stating that anybody is being disingenuous.

I'm saying to you what it feels like.

I also have not heard whether the racial equity tool analysis has been applied to this process, which leads me to believe that it hasn't.

And at this point, I don't think it really matters whether it's done or not.

I can say from my own position, you don't need me to vote yes on whatever this possible vote thing is to actually, so that Mr. Hart can actually do the pilot.

Dr. Hart can do the pilot.

I don't see why we're even engaging with this, unless there's some other intent, and that's to open the flood gates.

And we haven't done the work.

that this abrupt and sudden let's do this pilot is, I think that's what we need to stick to for now.

When we talk about doing data collection, it needs to be done like community engagement by a professional whose job it is to do research, who understands actually how to do surveys that cannot be manipulated to such a level that they're not reliable and valid results, right?

When we go for a cancer treatment, we don't want to be engaging in a treatment that hasn't been thoroughly tested and researched by the people whose job it is to do that for the purpose of saving lives and creating treatments that actually work for people.

And so I'm actually feeling a little bit frustrated.

And again, I do need to say this is not with the three people at the table.

But you have to understand how, at least for me, it's making me feel.

And so I don't know how else to say it.

Why are we even talking about a vote when Dr. Hart can just do the pilot?

Like, what is the undercurrent here?

And I don't need an answer to the question, because at this point, I don't think it's really relevant.

But I've been real clear that I've just been real clear, and I don't think that having multiple meetings and restating the same concept but in different words is actually going to change anything.

I think board directors, I get the sense that my board directors are in support of Dr. Hart doing this pilot.

I know several board directors are very much so in support of that, and they've told him that himself.

The overturning of the moratorium, I'm not sure why those words aren't on the screen.

That makes it feel disingenuous, like a possible vote.

What does that even mean, if it's not overturning the moratorium?

And I, unless somebody can convince me, and that would likely be Liza, because she just has a real good handle on policy interpretation, right?

And that's why I said, unless it's Liza, I don't see why we need to overturn the moratorium in order for Mr. Hart to do the pilot.

see if Superintendent Podesta has a response and then Director Rankin for comment.

I believe our policy analysis moratorium is very clear.

It says for an indefinite amount of time, Seattle Public Schools will not enter into agreements with the Seattle Police Department and to do the pilot, that has to be changed.

That doesn't need to be a wholesale overturning.

It doesn't have to be a system-wide change.

But that pilot, that moratorium as written prohibits this pilot.

So that's why we're having a discussion.

If people feel that we're trying to back you into a corner, I apologize.

And that doesn't apply to my colleagues.

That's me.

That's on me.

But that's why we need a vote at some point.

The scope of that vote, again, We will defer to the board because we all want to support Dr. Hart.

We want to learn how this works.

We're taking this idea of a pilot to Hart.

And if that changes the scope and places a moratorium with one escape valve for one school, that would be fine.

It's also the firearm piece, right?

Sorry to be rude.

But it's specifically like a police officer cannot carry a firearm, cannot not carry a firearm.

Is that it?

Is that part of it?

So let's let superintendent...

I need you to say it differently.

I don't understand cannot not.

Right, right.

An on-duty police officer must have their firearm.

Is that true or not?

That's what I'm asking.

Sworn commissioned officers carry firearms at all times, yeah.

Got it.

And that is a specific part in the moratorium that firearms can't be on campus.

School resource officers are defined in state law and in board policy, and the moratorium is specifically about school resource officers.

The directive, the superintendent, is you can't have them.

And so even a pilot, we believe, requires some amendment to that.

It doesn't have to be system-wide, but there's a policy that prohibits it now, and so that's what we're talking about again.

And in terms, just as a practical matter, we're only interested in Garfield.

As initial scope, there's no dam to collapse here.

These are very scarce resources.

This will never be a huge program.

It never was a huge program at Seattle Public Schools.

This will probably be a select issue.

I think we could all learn together.

We could learn with the community.

We could decide if this even helps.

It is one strategy among many.

I also apologize if it looks like we're trying to sell it.

I won't run away from, yeah, this is a staff recommendation.

We've thought about it.

We have done some engagement.

That surveying interaction with students was done by Dr. Hart.

We trust him.

We'll get more support on how we do this.

Yes, it's a recommendation.

You know, that this is what we recommend we do.

But ultimately we need the board support.

I think it's worth trying.

I think at Garfield we need to try every tool in the toolbox and this would be one.

Director Rankin.

I want to plus one pretty much everything that Director Hersey said as the second board director who took this vote.

So there's a number of policy issues.

I think something that we're dealing with all the time is wanting to be in a certain place in terms of governance versus management and reckoning with the reality of the system that we have where there's really no system.

I mean, I have, so I've been going through policy manual of critical, important, and discretionary, and there's a whole bunch of policies in the 2000s through 6000s that are considered critical, meaning they're required by law, and they're ensuing procedures that are wildly out of date.

And that's, we delegate the authority to maintain and implement policies 2,000 through 6,000 is the responsibility of the superintendent.

But it's the board's responsibility to make sure that that's happening.

And so our policy manual is evidence that it hasn't been.

It hasn't been.

And stuff like this, I mean, like Brandon said, things happened really quickly when this was done, and it even was sort of preempted a little bit by the superintendent at the time, informing the police department that there was a moratorium and they were not welcome on our campuses, and the board very quickly also making the statement through a resolution, which is not binding in the same way that policy is.

So we've learned a lot since then about how we should or shouldn't do our job effectively.

In the theoretical sense, the board should not be spending this much time on one employee at one school, just like period.

However, we are where we are, And our community is where our community is.

And I feel like it would be irresponsible of us to just say, well, you're right.

It's not our job.

It's up to the superintendent.

Because that's not, we have to move at the speed of trust to borrow a Dr. Jones-ism.

And we have to also work our own way out of a decision that was made in the past.

in a way that feels right and appropriate.

So a year ago, I had suggested to Dr. Jones that a policy revision come to us that said, and I just forwarded it to everybody, in 2020, the Seattle School Board directed an indefinite moratorium on the use of the Seattle Police Department School Emphasis Officer and SRO programs.

Accordingly, this policy, meaning 4311, does not address the role of SEOs or SROs, which were a CL-specific position staffed by police officers at Garfield High School and four SPS middle schools.

Garfield High School has an individual agreement for a community emphasis officer governed by an MOU, insert link here, for school year, at the time it was 24, 25, because I wrote this last year.

Such positions may not be expanded or replicated without board approval.

We could approve that.

it maintains it doesn't it doesn't open the flood gates for do whatever you want it says there's one pilot at one school it's an agreement specific to Garfield and we'll revisit it in a year that's a possibility it just means that a year from now we have to actually do all the things we said we were going to do and have the information that we need to have the discussion about does the policy change further and I think you know, what Director Sarju was saying about feeling backed into a corner, I feel a little bit that way, but more what I feel like is that we've just, it's kind of so typical Seattle.

We've been really afraid to make a decision because we're kind of in the same place we were of this conversation a year ago.

There has been some more community engagement, but it didn't really, it hasn't really moved us forward, and there's a lot of, oh, well, it's the moratorium, oh, the board isn't acting, oh, it's the city, the city's being difficult, oh, it's the city, you know, all these different things.

And those things kind of, we have all kinds of policies that we decide are not that important and don't follow.

So, to be totally honest.

And so, you know, this is a kind of a political flashpoint.

I think that there is an appropriate way forward in our role as governance to, not just say, not our business, and we lift whatever, but to take a step of saying, the moratorium's still in place, we need more information, we need more community consensus on a broader program, and there is a one-year agreement for Garfield High School.

For me, that is a workable to provide Dr. Hart with what he needs and is asking for, because that's also, I mean, my personal view on police and schools, as board directors, we have to weigh that with what we're hearing from the people who are in the buildings day to day.

So that's my proposed solution.

I re-emailed it to you, Fred, and I don't know how that squares with changes in law that may have been made since then.

The other kind of more general thing is what it feels like is a little bit of lack of specificity about what safety issues we're trying to address.

I think I brought this up the last time we talked about this.

If we're talking about students at risk from other students, which I don't think we are, then having the focus be a police officer inside the building doesn't make sense to me as a way to address that.

providing conflict resolution and, you know, we were talking about yesterday, civic engagement to younger students seems like the more proactive thing to do, and we're not talking about that at all.

That's obviously a longer-term scenario.

Garfield needs support now.

But this is feeling like a little bit of a solution in search of a problem with the way that we're talking about it.

So I would like us to, assuming we do go forward and say, it's one year, it's at Garfield, the moratorium's still in place, there's no broader program, my ask would be, and what I will look for a year from now is, We don't want to just say, we think we're improving a sense of safety.

We want to say, you know, the biggest risk at this school is in the surrounding area.

Here's what we did to address that.

Having an officer helped a more immediate response time from first responders.

Or, you know what, it was really student to student.

And so having, you know, I don't know.

But it's feeling a little bit of...

with the police are through typically threats from adults or threats from outside The jurisdiction of the police is the community, and we have faced threats from community.

Part of our internal strategy of being visible is part of addressing those threats.

A police officer being visible, I do think it would have made a difference on June 6, 2024, if the patrol car that was parked in the fall, was in the parking lot at the Teen Life Center.

I bet that would have changed what happened in the parking lot.

That's what police are about.

That's their space.

It's not to police students.

It's not to handle discipline issues in buildings.

It's to protect from threats coming into the community.

We heard from a student tonight that there are threats that lead into the community.

That's the role of the police in general.

Having a dedicated presence and somebody they can work with that knows our community would help those interactions work out better.

That's what we're trying to achieve.

We're working with all sorts of partners, community passageways with others.

We need the police to be one of those partners.

And if we had a dedicated resource there and a liaison, we think that would work better.

That's the goal of, on an operational level, they're interested in relationship building and, you know, having the ability to describe what their role is larger.

But these are mostly about community threats, is what safety threats that are originate in the community, not so much at the campus.

Which I think is what my wondering is about, the insistence that this person has to be inside the building.

I don't understand where he's coming from, and that's my question.

If the threat is outside the building, the officer should also be outside the building.

All the officers, all the other, again, they're liaison to the other officers who are outside the building.

They're not interested in being patrolled.

That's why we have contract security.

That's why we have community passageways.

That is not something the police department wants to patrol our campus.

We would like school administrative staff, our safety and security team to be able to work through liaison when they need to talk to the other 1,000 officers.

And that's why That's why we want a relationship with school staff.

And that's part of the engagement, frankly.

I have one more question which relates to, so now you're superintendent number three now, that this has been an open issue.

When we made the moratorium, there were some specific things that it wasn't, it wasn't, we hate police go away forever.

It was, also remember, nobody was in buildings at this time.

So it was a little bit easier for the board and the superintendent at the time to say, we don't want this in our buildings, because nobody was in our buildings.

So, oh, I just totally lost my train of thought.

There were assignments in that resolution.

Oh, yes.

The things that are in that moratorium.

We haven't accomplished all those things.

So I think it would be worthwhile to revisit when we did say the moratorium is until these other things are addressed.

we should, based on that vote of the board at the time, look and see, are there things that are outstanding that, you know, the vote was the moratorium remains in place until these things are resolved.

So if they're still not, we need to

Revisit those and see which are still applicable.

Some of the, again, violence interrupters, case management, explore other avenues.

A lot of that has been done.

I don't think we've accomplished everything on that list.

I'm not sure everything is still relevant, but we'd be happy to have that discussion.

And again, if a broader action is not something the board is comfortable with,

that won't change what happens in the 25 or 25 26 school year because we we want to stay pretty focused all right we have director Mizrahi and director Briggs both have questions they both said that they're going to make it quick because we're going to wrap up so we're going to start with director Briggs and then go to director Mizrahi okay this is just a really quick quick clarifying question I'm I'm getting really confused about

where the moratorium lives.

Because my understanding was it was a resolution, which is not binding in the way policy is.

So like policy 4311 references the resolution, but that's all it does.

It references the resolution.

So I'm just really confused about what we have to vote on here.

So we believe that staff's legal opinion is that incorporation by reference into the current policy 4311 has made that a matter of policy.

It says SROs aren't a thing at Seattle Public Schools because of that resolution.

what we're trying to get to in broad strokes is, yeah, SROs are a thing at Seattle Public Schools.

Again, and we'd be happy to narrow the scope of that for a single circumstance and go broader.

But that's why we think we're in the position that we're in.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, I have several in the weeds question, which I'm just going to replace with one process question.

So if we are asked to take action at the September meeting, will we have a chance, I know you're still in negotiations, to see the outcome of that negotiation, see what the MOU is.

I have lots of questions about where people are stationed, whether or not they have weapons with them, and how we ensure that they're not involved in student-to-student issues, which are probably going to all be answered hopefully in the MOU.

So what will be our process?

MR. I think I could foresee, again, our original proposal broader.

But if we want to limit it to a single circumstance, I think we would bring, you know, authorizes the superintendent to enter into agreement that conforms with the attachment in this board action report with the flexibility of there's still some finer points too.

We've shared, as Mr. Howard noted, we've kind of been somewhat negotiating in public.

We shared the draft MOU with the Garfield community.

They gave some fairly substantive feedback that are not All that presents some challenges for the police department, so they're working through that.

It does have language about how the officer is assigned, how they're trained, how they're accountable.

But yes, we would certainly show a near final draft if there are some fine points and then ask for authority to finalize it with the department.

Do you have a follow-up?

All right.

All right, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I know this is not an easy conversation, and I think we all have safety of students as a paramount responsibility on our shoulders here as we start the school year.

We're going to transition, though, so I thank you all for being up here into our board self-evaluation.

And I think we've got some materials, so we'll give staff just a minute to distribute materials for our quarterly self-evaluation.

We'll stay here.

Thank you.

All right, let's just start right into it.

And we're going to start with, uh, we're going to start with Brandon or director Hersey, cause he's got to leave here in a second.

Uh, so he is monitoring and accountability and in Brandon, um, if you want to go through your scoring for, um, monitoring and accountability.

Yep.

So, um, For my scoring for monitoring and accountability, I listed us at a 10, which would be no change.

Based on my calculations, I don't think that we spent 25% of our time on progress monitoring quite yet.

And given that we haven't had any significant, this is our first meeting back over the summer.

Yeah, I gave us a 10. Let me know if anybody disagrees with that.

I'm happy to.

I'm seeing shaking of heads that that is the score is a continuing of 10. So I appreciate that, Director Hersey, and I appreciate you going first here.

It helps that we literally just adopted a board-approved monitoring calendar.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm excited.

I hope I get to score this one next round.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks.

Have a good evening, Director Hersey.

All right.

So now we'll start from the beginning.

Sorry for going just a little bit out of order with vice president Briggs vision and goals.

Um, okay.

I put us at, and we don't in all of these papers, I don't think we have the, um, the key, right.

Um, I put us, I, I kept us at a 25, um, Yeah, and if I had the rubric in front of me, I would justify why, but I don't, so.

Oh, thanks, Liza.

We'll do a quick justification here.

And so everyone's aware, so we don't have to continue to print out our rubrics.

It is in your board handbook in your binder in the kitchen.

Okay, so we didn't change from January to March, which apparently we gave ourselves 35. Oh.

Oh, estimated.

I'm confused here, folks.

I'm not gonna lie.

What, what?

We did give ourselves, yeah, that's what we gave ourselves last time.

So estimated shouldn't be there?

okay so that's just like an extra thing so we said we were mastering student outcomes focus last time I that doesn't sound right I don't know what happened there but I which will just so the one that you think we're not hitting so the the one that I don't think that we are hitting is the board uses a process that included students, parents, staff and community members in a way that leads them to express ownership of the adopted goals.

And I'm not even entirely sure what that means, to be perfectly honest.

But what leads them to express ownership of the adopted goals?

Students, parents, staff, and community members expressing ownership of the adopted goal.

I mean, what does that mean?

I don't know.

Our goals were developed through students, parents, staff, and community members telling us what their priorities were.

Yeah, but that also is here.

The board included students, parents, staff, and community members in the goal development process.

I feel like that is a more accurate representation of what we did.

But I don't know.

Does anybody have a different interpretation of what this means?

The board used a process that included students, parents, staff, and community members in a way that leads them to express.

I guess I just don't entirely understand what that would look like for community members, parents, staff, et cetera, to express ownership of the adopted goals.

Do they refer to them as our goals or your goals?

Or do they even know what they are?

That's a great point.

I don't think they do.

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

Well, if they don't know what they are, then they can't express ownership of them, and then we're not in the mastering student outcomes focused governance category.

25 it is.

Okay.

Did we give ourselves a 35 the last time?

Yes.

Oh, interesting.

All right.

Director Clark.

Values and guardrails.

Yeah, hey, so I gave us a score of 10, which is what we scored ourselves at our last self-evaluation, which is meeting student outcomes focused governance.

If we, in order to move into the mastering category and get a score of 15, we would need to adopt as a board

one to five guardrails on our own behavior and evaluate ourselves against them at least quarterly and i don't believe that we have done that thank you thank you director clark i agree and i am seeing shaking heads all right uh next we'll go to director miserahi communication and collaboration

Yeah, this was a good one.

I think we're still at a one because our meetings exceed three hours.

I'm clocking us right now at three and a half hours.

We were close, but our safety conversation derailed us a little bit.

I think this is one we should really strive for next time, but we're still at a one because our meetings are long.

Am I hearing, seeing shaking heads?

All right, thank you.

Director Rankin, unity and trust.

I THINK WE WERE AT A ZERO, THE LAST ONE.

OH, WE WERE AT A ONE.

ONE.

HOW DID WE GIVE OURSELVES A ONE?

WELL, DID WE GIVE OURSELVES A LOT OF GRACE IN THAT WE ASSUME WE WILL SOON REVIEW OUR POLICIES GOVERNING BOARD?

OH, NO, WE JUST DID.

WE JUST DID.

OKAY.

We're at a one.

Because to be in a, there are a couple of agreements here.

List one.

In three that we wouldn't.

List one.

one of the in the three oh um including language in ethics like so we do have an ethics and conflict of interest policy it doesn't include kind of related to sarah's it doesn't include specific language about our behavior like not giving operational advice or instructions to staff members we don't have language about that okay i don't think all right one are folks comfortable with the one

okay now director sarju continuous improvement we're still at zero and the reason is that so we we we are doing everything in the pink so that's a yes um We do kind of track use of time reports and reports monthly, the percentage.

Yes, we do that.

What we don't do is track the average annual cost of staff time.

We scratched that one last meeting at our retreat.

We scratched it at the retreat.

Well, then I wasn't.

I was out of town.

Well, what about the next one?

I don't know what the next one is.

The next one is the board has provided time during regularly scheduled board authorized public meetings to recognize the accomplishments of its student and staff regarding progress towards goals and interim goals.

That's one thing we're working on.

Yeah.

Well, we haven't done it.

That we said we would work.

Yeah.

All right.

Perfect.

So we're at a zero.

We scored ourselves.

So I have a question.

Can I?

Sure.

I mean, we sort of at the retreat talked about, oh, maybe we don't want to do that.

I think there's a whole opportunity to, as we look at this and decide how we evaluate ourselves, really dive into and be a little bit more specific on some of the things that we're evaluating and also where we want to focus.

And I'm not sure, I don't know where that conversation lives, but I don't think it lives at 8.06 tonight.

But I do think that's work that we need to do.

I mean, it needs to live somewhere.

I just don't have an idea right now.

Like, what are we doing this for?

Yeah.

Anyway, if we're serious about wanting to make progress on this or our version of it, we should set some goals for ourselves about what what changes we would make to have a change in number.

I think three-hour meetings is an easy one that we could knock out.

I think that's a really good one for us to focus on.

I like that one.

And I think we can all take a category and suggest an area of focus for that category.

I also think that's a lot.

Oh, you think we...

I almost think that's...

Oh, you think we should just pick one of these?

Like one category.

Okay.

Just so we're laser...

Like, what is that one thing we really...

Where do we want to move up?

You know, if we're at a zero at something, do we want to try to get away from a zero?

I don't know.

Or do we want the most bang for our buck?

Or what?

What if we were to each look at the one that we just scored and look in the next column and see what the most achievable thing is?

And then...

All right.

And then some of them are going to be like three-hour meetings is something we can all kind of think about.

Then there will be other things like, well, that's a whole policy change, and that would, you know, we can kind of prioritize that way.

Yes, yes, yes.

Perfect.

So for the next conversation, please bring that with you, looking at what you've scored tonight.

And then what I'll ask Carrie to do is just the next time we do evaluations, let's let folks keep their same evaluation item so we can just keep a little continuity there.

Can we also make sure that the assignment gets communicated out to our colleague who had to leave early?

yes we will make sure that gets out to director hersey as well um all right so board and committee liaison reports so just really quickly as i mentioned at the top of the meeting we're looking forward to the start of the school directors have the opportunity to join superintendent podesta visiting schools during the first week of school i will be at west seattle elementary school for their red carpet rollout and then joining uh superintendent podesta at rainier view elementary school but so if you haven't already done so Please let the board office know which visits you can join so we make sure we don't have a quorum We also have a busy September ahead of us again application Review for the superintendent those dates are on your calendar already We also have our regular board meeting on the 17th and then our work session on the 24th and Putting a plug in there for the 24th.

This will be the review of the information from ers For the strategic plan so that should be a really interesting meeting as well so that do others have a board Committee or liaison reports excuse me Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Very quickly, policy committee, we want to schedule the meetings for the fall.

I have sent possible times to the board office and I believe we, I'm looking at Julia, we need other directors, other members of the committee to respond to availability.

Are we waiting for that?

Okay.

So what I'm hearing is budget committee needs to get dates in so policy committee can get dates in.

Budget committee, we just got dates today.

So yes.

Okay.

So if you haven't let your availability be known, or sorry, never mind.

Julia's on it.

Julia will let us know.

Be looking out for an email for dates for both policy and budget committees.

Director Clark.

Thank you.

I have a couple...

quick updates.

Um, I'm going to start with a, um, lovey updates.

Um, I just wanted to let directors know, um, that, um, the, oh gosh, the, um, I have an update on the $12 million investment that we received from, um, the city of Seattle last fall.

Um, um, related to youth mental health.

All of the investment priority areas will be fully operational for the 2025-26 school year, which is really exciting.

We will see 40 additional counselors at 21 middle and high schools.

The virtual therapy and safety teams will be up and operational on the first day of schools.

The safe passages program that is a collaboration with community passageways and a couple of other community-based organizations will be fully operational.

And the family support fund that was created is accessible today.

So I think this is really an exciting moment.

If folks remember, this investment was championed by our students and their advocacy with the city of Seattle and requesting additional support on one of our students' top priorities.

My second update is related to the ad hoc budget committee.

We had our first meeting just a couple of weeks ago and discussed our timeline for the year and our priorities.

And I just wanted to share with my colleagues that I think, you know, we've had a couple of conversations this year where we've at our retreat and even came up at our special meeting yesterday where you know we have some alignment realignment of our budget that we want to do that will require the system to realign other processes specifically the enrollment timeline and as well as the timing of the weighted staffing standards committee and so we discussed this in our first budget committee meeting And because the shifts in these timelines will take us, I think it will take us a school year to shift these timelines in a way where we can have a broader ability to reallocate resources and shift in a way that, you know, community is asking for and that we know is necessary for our students in classrooms.

And so the work of this committee, we will focus on short term, as our colleague, Director Mizrahi likes to say, low hanging fruit, things that we can do in the short term that will move the needle.

And we will also focus on bringing recommendations to the full board on longer term strategies to move the needle.

So I just want to thank Director Mizrahi and Director Rankin for a robust conversation.

We will be looking at our budget policies in our next meeting and starting that work.

And thank you to President Taub for joining us as well.

And just want to remind the rest of my colleagues that you all are welcome to come and participate in discussion in the Ad Hoc Budget Committee.

Thank you.

Thank you director Clark and I think I really appreciate the work of the ad hoc budget committee and I think that there is a heavy lift and I'm excited for what is possible from that committee and what what will come out of it other directors seeing none i think that concludes our business for the evening so there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8 15 p.m thank you everyone