Seattle City Council Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights & Culture Committee 81222

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

The August 12th, 2022 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhood Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee will come to order.

It is 9 31. I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Vice Chair Sawant.

Present.

Chair Morales.

Here.

Or present.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss is excused today.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So today we will be hearing two items from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

First is their report on the Racial Equity Toolkit for three investment areas, K through 12, Homelessness and Housing, Family Child Care Mentorship Program, and the Seattle Preschool Programs Selection and Enrollment Process.

Excuse me.

After that, we'll discuss and possibly vote on six amendments that DEEL is proposing for the FEPP levy.

We'll also discuss and possibly vote on Council Bill 120399, which is legislation coming from my office and co-sponsored by Council Member Herbold that would prohibit crisis pregnancy centers from using false or misleading advertising.

that would result in interfering with a person's right to seek abortion, and would also restrict data collection that might put people's lives in danger.

For this item, we'll be joined by Kim Clark from Legal Voice.

And then finally, we'll have seven, I believe, appointments to discuss for the FEPLAB Oversight Committee, Disability Commission, and LGBTQ Commission.

So that's what we've got going for today.

At this time, we will open public comment.

Let me get that script.

I ask everyone to please be patient as we operate this hybrid system.

It remains a strong intent of the council to have public comment regularly included in meetings.

However, the council reserves the right to modify these comment periods if we deem the system as being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to continue in an efficient manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes.

Devin, do we have anybody signed up online?

No.

Okay.

We do have in-person, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay.

So I will call the speaker's name and you will have two minutes to speak.

You will have a chime when there's 10 seconds left.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you wrap up your comment.

And once you've completed your comment, well, there's nobody online, so you can sit down.

Okay, we have one person signed up.

Marguerite Richard, please.

Approach the mic, you have two minutes.

Yes, my name is Marguerite Richard and I'm from Seattle, Washington.

And this area of concern has always been an area of concern for me because I am an indigenous black female and I feel that our civil rights are stomped on, crushed, misused and abused.

at the hand of sorcery, because it takes a whole lot of evil to sit up here and do the kind of stupid stuff that I see that's being regulated at said time.

But you didn't just start it, you started it before you got here.

That's why it's time to make a change.

And I wanna, in sympathy, mention Joyce Holloman Davis, now deceased, that worked many years for human resources.

God bless her because she's a part of my family tree.

I don't know what Joyce went through as an employee here.

I know about some other folk.

Y'all better get on your job and do your job, okay?

Because if you don't, if you don't, and don't act like you haven't heard my voice before, huh?

And then you think somebody is supposed to sit, you're a human being like me, and somebody is supposed to be walking around looking like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz?

You better get jiggy with it.

You remember that song too?

Yeah, I got some more songs for you too.

You say, oh, what you talking about?

The same reason why the FBI came in on Trump.

A warrant needs to be for you and everybody else that thinks that we're not human and you can treat us just any old kind of way.

They got a warrant for the judge and they went in on him.

Huh?

They went in.

Somebody need to go in on you.

But it's not over until that's done.

You feel me?

Thank you.

We don't have anyone else signed up.

I don't see anybody has signed up online.

Is that correct?

Correct.

In that case, that concludes our public comment period.

Devin, will you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, department of education and early learning racial equity toolkit analysis report presentation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So I'm excited to have a lot of folks here from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

If y'all can go ahead and come up to the table here.

Excuse me.

We will hear from Duane Chabelle, Director of the Department.

It looks like we've got, well, maybe Dr. Chabelle, I will let you introduce your team here.

and we will have a presentation on the racial equity toolkit.

Thank you.

Sure.

If you prefer, yeah.

Go for it.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

It is an honor to be here today, and what I'll do is just start off by introducing myself, and then I will ask the rest of our amazing team to introduce themselves, and we'll dive in.

I'm the proud director, Dr. Duane Chappelle from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

And good morning.

I'm Rodney Johnson, Senior Finance Analyst, and I also proudly lead our change team.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I'm Mariko Lockhart, Deputy Director

Good morning, council members.

My name is Daniel Perez, and I am a project manager in our early learning department.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Nick Terrones, and I am the preschool program director of Daybreak Start Preschool of United Indians of All Tribes.

Good morning.

My name is Vic Chima.

I'm a K-12 program advisor with the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Good morning.

I'm Raka Bhattacharya here at home, early learning strategic advisor.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Okay.

And so now what we'll do is we'll dive in and we'll allow or not allow what the deputy director Monica Lockhart would take us and lead us from here.

Thank you, Director Chappell.

So I'm excited to share our update on the Race and Social Justice Initiative work and our change team updates.

And I'm gonna start off by turning it over to Rodney Johnson, who is leading our change team.

Thank you, good morning.

So if I can get the next slide, please.

Perfect.

So we've stuck to our commitment in putting sound racial and social practices at the front foot of all of our work, like the onboarding of new deal staff and really taking moments to make sure that we embed culture in all the things that we do.

Some of the big highlights and accomplishments that we've done internally at deal is that, you know, we've understood that maybe we aren't the best at capturing some of our cultural comfortability needs.

And so we've worked with different firms like equity matters who have, helped us embed their license, Color Brave Space Norms, which is a set of meeting arrangements where we focus conversations on pushing racial equity and justice.

We also start thinking about putting relationships first and understanding power dynamics in the room and continue to practice and examine racial bias systems, just to name a few of these attributes of these norms.

Other excesses include building spaces to commune, like our change team led our all staff in Juneteenth event.

It was the first engagement for Dill and it was a really neat event because we were able to bring out the Seattle exhibit poet who joined us in bringing historic heritage knowledge and shaped our minds on working together as one, regardless of background or even position.

We also remain data centric for our people.

Like later you'll learn through our programmatic efforts, we use varied anti-racist continuum surveys to inform our work, like learning our teams and taking need to figure out what do our people want to succeed.

And one of those things being our professional development opportunities owned by our team members and supported through all aspects of our department.

Next slide, please.

And as we're going to that next slide, I also wanna just give kudos to Tarni, one of those members who took advantage of our professional development opportunities, who utilized those dollars to implement a book club in our department to members, to allow them to read, discuss, practice skills, and implement ideas to improve their performance.

So kudos there.

Our own people take work and our culture into our community as well.

Although most of our efforts shine light on marginalized and unrepresented communities, they aren't directly executed.

And as you'll later learn through our team, our people draw culture at every opportunity, like through our messaging, we find key achieving equity and access in classrooms across Seattle communities.

We also took focus in finding professionals who considers just very cultural differences that are relevant in our communities.

using them to make sure that all of our marketing and advertisements and messages that we send out truly connect with our audiences.

And so we do this through our grants and RFI process, but then all pieces and deal.

And then lastly, you know, through all of our interactions, we just make sure that it's a top importance that the people that are executing our work through the efforts of our change team are also supported and feel good in their day to days and ship their education for all Seattle communities.

And so with that, I'll pass it over to Mariko.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So we also want to touch on challenges and share those with you at this time, both internal and external.

So internally, change team was largely inactive during 2021. There was a huge shift, obviously, to working from home.

So that was one of the reasons that we were largely inactive, but we're excited that it's getting off the ground again.

And we had a loss of staff, primarily impacting staff of color due to the vaccine mandates.

And that had a big impact on staff morale that I think continues to linger.

Externally, childcare provider and educator retention coverage has been a big challenge for us largely because of COVID.

Early learning programs, including childcare, were significantly impacted by educator shortages, ongoing COVID exposures in the classroom, rolling classroom closures, Maintaining COVID protocols, educator mental health were all contributing factors to educators leaving the field.

And we know that the majority of staff in the early learning and child care field are women of color.

Additionally, because education became largely remote, there was uneven access to technology and good internet among families during remote learning.

And even if families had access to technology, many reported not knowing how to use it properly.

So these are challenges for remote learning and as remote learning continues, we are working to address those.

Next slide, please.

So our ongoing efforts internally, as I've mentioned, we're really excited about the direction that change team is going.

We are continue to work.

Our work is centered on closing race based opportunity gaps in education.

And then our change team is working on a number of different work groups.

developing our theory of change, updating a very outdated SharePoint site, and incorporating staff feedback that we received from our Color Brave Space training that is much broader than the training itself, but more on the overall department's actions and practice related to race and social justice.

The current racial equity toolkit that we're working on right now is on the Seattle Preschool Program Comprehensive Supports.

SPP includes funding to support children experiencing challenges to learning in the classroom.

Those challenges could include impacts of homelessness and exposure to trauma and other issues in their lives.

And historically the funding has not been fully utilized in spite of reports of increasing challenges among children.

So the DEEL team revamped the entire funding process so that providers would receive funding upfront and have the ability to decide how the funds should be spent on which kids and in which classrooms.

DEEL plans to conduct an RET on this new process to understand the impacts of this new process, particularly among children of color.

With the next slide, I'm going to be handing this over to the team that is going to directly address the different RETs that were conducted.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so these are the three racial equity toolkit presentations that you'll hear about today.

Vic Chima from the deal staff is going to start us off.

So I'll hand it over to him.

Next slide, please.

Okay, good morning again.

I'll share again that my name is Vic Chima.

I'm a K-12 program advisor here at DEEL, and joining me today is one of our Homelessness and Housing Support Services RET team members.

My name is Nick Tronis again, and I am representing Daybreak Star Preschool, an entity of United Indians of all tribes, and I'm happy to be here as a representative of our amazing racial equity toolkit team.

So the Homelessness and Housing Support Services, or HHS, investment is part of the Wraparound Services Investment Strategy, which aimed to remove non-academic and socioeconomic barriers to student success.

HHS serves unstably housed students through a combination of housing specific case management and emergency assistance funds.

And our theory of change underlying this investment is that by supporting student housing stability, students benefit from increased school stability, which in turn maximizes instructional time and school engagement, leading to improved academic and social emotional outcomes.

When the RET team first convened, one of our first steps was to establish racial equity outcomes.

Next slide, please.

thank you, that we wanted the RET process to yield.

We developed the following outcome, accelerate equitable access to HHS for Seattle Public School students at risk of losing housing or experiencing housing instability for students furthest from educational justice.

And as a member of a large and diverse and brilliant RET I was able to collaborate with other community experts who represented the real stakeholders in this all, which are our children and families.

The full RET team was comprised of 23 members, including staff from the current HHS provider, representatives from housing and human service community partners, Seattle Public Schools district and school-based staff, city staff and youth representatives.

In addition to our RET team meetings that took place from spring to fall of 2021, the RET team also surveyed youth who previously experienced housing instability.

Next slide, please.

And we're gonna spend a few minutes on this slide just to take a closer look at this investment area.

And as a RET team representative, one of the key things that we had identified as a team were these benefits and burdens of the HHS investment for students of color.

And so the benefits, SPS partnership, HHS investments connect families with service providers through school staff who are uniquely positioned to identify and refer families in housing crisis.

DO's partnership with SPS encourages swift connection to services for students of color that might otherwise struggle to find the help they need.

Targeted universalism.

meaning that HHS services are available to all SPS students with a focus on culturally specific services designed to serve students of color, especially black children who are disproportionately represented in housing instability and homelessness.

some of the burdens that we identified.

The multi-step referral process, several handoffs occur between when a student in need is identified and when they receive services, resulting in the referral process that feels complicated, burdensome, and bureaucratic, which can deter families from actually pursuing these supports.

COVID-19 impact, which we've all felt in various ways.

The HHS investments were not designed to meet the unprecedented housing instability needs of the pandemic era.

HHS service delivery launched right before schools closed in March 2020. Since then, the cost of stabilizing families families housing has risen, compounding disproportionate economic impacts of COVID-19 experienced by families of color.

At this stage in the pandemic, families need more financial support, increased flexibility for eligible uses of funding and more time to utilize these services.

And the last burden, there was many that we identified, but the one that I'll touch on here was suboptimal awareness and accessibility.

The success of this investment depends on the awareness of and accessibility to HHS services among communities of color.

Barriers identified in outreach include a lack of in-language information, outreach strategies exclusive of families without digital connectivity, and limited options for supporting transportation to meet with HHS providers.

Thank you, Nick.

And thanks to the RET team's analysis and recommendations, DEEL has identified three key actions to take to ensure greater access and improved service delivery for families of color.

First is contract management.

DEEL is taking on contract management from our colleagues at the Human Services Department, ensuring greater collaboration between SBS and our new HHS providers.

We're also utilizing multiple HHS providers for the first time to extend our reach and impact of this investment.

We're also providing more guidance to providers on conducting targeted outreach to our communities of color.

Second, we've adapted our emergency funding assistance guidance to better meet the evolving needs of unstably housed students.

And third, we're incorporating these and other RET team recommendations immediately.

First into the recently concluded RFI, and now into the contract development with our newly identified HHS providers.

We're confident that DEEL's actions following the RET team's recommendations will improve service delivery to students experiencing housing instability.

This work complements council's efforts on the school year eviction moratorium to keep families and educators housed so that students can thrive in school.

And now I'm going to hand off to my DEEL colleague, Danielle.

Greetings all, my name is Daniel Paredes.

I am a project manager in our early learning team.

I'm gonna talk with you all today a little bit about our family childcare mentorship program.

So just a brief definition for those of you where this may be a new concept, family childcare is essentially a learning environments that are located in residential homes, provide childcare for children from ages of birth to 12 for up to 10 hours a day.

Our family childcares are essential part of our SPP program.

They provide culturally and linguistic responsive education to our children serving nearly 3000 Seattle children, primarily from BIPOC communities.

Our FCC investment is designed to increase the number of culturally diverse licensed family childcares and to close the kindergarten readiness gap for our children of color.

Our RET outcomes are assess racial inequities of program participation, minimize participation barriers for FCC owners, operators, to develop a monitoring plan to assess any disproportionate impact on underserved communities.

Next slide, please.

Our FCC mentorship stakeholders come from our licensed family childcare providers, past Imagine interns and mentors, and a number of other organizations as well.

Imagine Institute provides a number of services, including training, substitute pool, prepare for care, professional development path, and the Imagine You mentorship program, which is the focus of today's presentation.

So those are the other mentioned.

subject areas or pathways that interested providers may move through to join the Imagine U program.

The Imagine U program provides interested childcare providers with a relationship-based mentorship program that's peer-to-peer and involves a number of professional development and support structures to help them to become licensed childcare providers.

Next slide, please.

All right, so the four key strategies identified in the RET were strategy number one, increase racial equity among BIPOC FCCs.

Two, to increase diverse quality FCC options for families.

Three is to reduce institutional barriers that prevent participation in peer mentorship and career advancement for BIPOC FCCs, largely around language representation and support.

And four, to strengthen formal and informal networks that provide ongoing professional business, marketing, support, technology, training, access to information, as well as personal networks for self-care, friendship, to support providers from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds.

So with that, I'd like to hand it off to my DO colleague, Raka, to present on the next slide, please.

Thank you, Danielle.

Hello, council members.

I'm Raka Bhattacharya, Early Learning Policy Lead, and I'll be speaking on the Seattle Preschool Program Child Selection and Enrollment Process RET, which I worked on with my early learning teammates, Jamal Hussain, Taylor Oden, and Holly Campbell, along with many DEEL staff and SPP stakeholders.

The FEPP levy goals in our preschool and early learning investments include closing kindergarten readiness opportunity gaps for Seattle children.

As part of the FEP implementation plan, DEEL was directed to conduct a racial equity toolkit on the Seattle Preschool Program child selection and enrollment process.

The toolkit was to assess the list of eligible qualifying factors, as well as whether it would be appropriate to provide a rank order of qualifying factors.

If you reference page 33 of the IME plan, you will see further details.

DEEL wants to better utilize its SPP application process to serve preschoolers furthest from educational justice.

One of our goals at DEEL is to enroll children who might not otherwise have access to quality preschool.

When FEPP was implemented, it gave us a chance to serve more three-year-olds in Seattle in SPP.

So we have two entry points into the Seattle Preschool Program, applying through preschool agencies and the family working directly with DEEL to apply for SPP.

About 40% of families that enroll in SPP do so directly through DEEL's application process.

The other 60% apply directly through our SPP preschool agencies.

Through the course of the RET, we found that slightly fewer children of color enroll through DEEL's application process.

And we questioned if access to technology was an issue.

So we recognized there was room for improvement for the DEEL enrollment process.

To gain insight from the community we serve, we participated in intensive engagement with community organizations parent groups, SPP directors, community advisors, and DEEL staff.

Next slide, please.

So from these community conversations, we revised our qualifying factors for enrollment.

We continue enrolling all four-year-olds first, all children experiencing homelessness or are in the foster care system, and then with input from community on how we could better serve preschool-age children furthest from educational justice, we adjusted our prioritization for three-year-olds.

But the RET learned more.

Prioritization, in other words, the qualifying factors, was not a primary concern from community.

Greater concern was lack of accessibility.

One of our learnings was that the technology of the online application portal was very easy for families with means.

However, the portal could be a barrier in accessing our SPP application through DEEL, and many SPP preschool agencies were able to enroll families face-to-face, circumventing this hurdle.

So DEEL has more work to do in improving access to SPP.

We determined future needs based on recommendations from community.

Community voices consistently ask DEEL to improve online and paper applications, more culturally specific outreach with specific outreach recommended to the Latinx community, greater support for families during the application period, and to make application and enrollment a more personal or even in-person process.

And then finally, we heard from community about expanding the geographic eligibility, especially for unincorporated King County in White Center and Skyway.

So this red illuminates the areas where DEEL can continue to improve its SPP child selection and enrollment process.

I'm the final speaker regarding DEEL's racial equity toolkits.

So I thank you for your time today.

Thank you very much to the whole team here for sharing sharing the work that you've been doing.

I've got a few questions and then I'll open it up to my colleagues if they've got questions as well.

I wanted to start, where was I starting?

Let's go to slide 10 on the homelessness and housing support.

Can you share with us what, how many or what percentage of our SPS student population is currently unhoused?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So currently, one of our best metrics for that question, to answer that question, is the number of students who are on the McKinney-Vento list.

So that is one source of enumerating that count.

So that currently is about 1,800.

So that's the number that Seattle Public Schools tracks and updates pretty regularly.

So right now it's currently 1800. One thing I would want to note is that this investment by design is meant to serve any student who is either, you know, obviously literally homeless or either unstably housed.

So potentially students who are not eligible to be on the McKinney-Vento official list, but are facing the threat of eviction or losing their home or needing to find more stable housing, these students can also be served as well.

So the official McKinney-Vento count is 1,800, but this investment is designed to serve students who are beyond that list.

Ed, did you want to say something?

So thank you.

Um, so can you talk a little bit about, I mean, obviously, uh, deal is providing program support.

You're not in the schools necessarily, but can you talk a little bit about how, um, the city works with the school district, uh, to make sure that students aren't, we're aware of the students who need that support and the different organizations that are involved in kind of tracking those students to make sure they get the services that they need.

Yeah, absolutely.

So our current model, and this is a relatively new area for DEAL with the 2018 FEPP levy, the model is built on a, essentially like a referral system.

So DEAL contracts with an HHS provider to provide these services for families who are, go to be screened and ultimately enrolled in these HHS services.

But this work, really is dependent on DEEL's partnership with Seattle Public Schools and likewise being able to connect and facilitate collaboration between Seattle Public Schools and the HHS provider since Seattle Public Schools since the school district are uniquely positioned to identify and sort of know our students in crisis, are they nearing housing crisis?

We have this referral model set up that school staff are empowered and equipped to be able to refer those students for a immediate or urgent screening with one of our HHS providers.

So the general model is school staff have the best sort of vantage point to be able to identify who these students are.

And then the city in deal sets up sort of conduits for those referrals.

So those families can be immediately assessed and provided services.

So the list of stakeholders that you have on slide 11, are those some of the providers that you're talking about them?

Actually, these are stakeholders that were represented on our racial equity toolkit team for this investment.

So those are some of the organizations that were represented and were able to take a look at the investment.

The providers that we, that are, have, been selected for this investment.

In our first iteration of this investment, it was the YWCA and we actually just recently rebid this investment and we have two new providers coming online this school year.

The first being the Boys and Girls Club and the second being Neighborhood House.

Okay, thank you.

Can you, as you're talking about As you're talking about the burdens of this process and the things that you have done to try to address accessibility, I am thinking about the fact that we just saw, I think in today's or yesterday's paper, evictions are going up.

You know, the moratoriums that we have implemented in different places are starting to expire.

And we expect that that will lead to increased homelessness.

So can you talk a little bit about how, anticipating that that might happen, that there might be more students who need services, how deal and how these programs might be able to expand to support that?

Yeah, that's a very timely question.

And I definitely appreciate our RET team for throughout their analysis for identifying that the eviction moratorium was obviously helping a lot of students from preventing them from falling into housing crisis.

It was also having this sort of unintended or sort of the strange quirk of, maybe providing to an undercount of how many students were actually at risk once, or would be at risk once the eviction moratorium was lifted.

And so thanks to some of the suggestions that came from Nick and his fellow RET team members, we have, or sort of, We're trying to preemptively enhance the programs so that students, we're just removing barriers for students to be able to access these investments.

We moved from a single provider to multiple providers just to be able to extend that reach and extend that quick response.

And we're also adapting some of our, program guidelines for our providers in terms of emergency assistance funding, how long students can be enrolled.

And so we're taking sort of a multi-pronged approach to get ahead of what we're expecting to see and we already are seeing as a result of the eviction moratorium being lifted.

I'd like to also add that what Vic is also saying is our intent here was to have this investment basically cast the net far and wide and provide flexibility.

Because what we identified is this is a holistic issue.

And being an early learning provider, I'm not necessarily beholden to Seattle Public Schools, but we do have a connection to them, especially as a Native organization where we have Native intake reps. And so if we can streamline, here's what a child and family is going through and pass that information, continuity of services is smooth, right?

And we can continue that and there's no hiccups for families to just to restart the process.

And with the flexibility of funding that we identified in this HHS investment, If a family has to prioritize transportation, food, and rent, they're going to have to make some hard choices.

If we can expand this and make it more flexible to holistically serve the child and families, then it's really alleviating some of these stressors off of them.

Yeah, absolutely.

We all know that especially if families are in poverty, there's a lot of support that's needed.

And if we would just center the needs of the kids and make sure that they're doing well, all that other stuff would follow.

So, okay.

One last question.

It sounded like a theme through some of these issues was accessibility was a barrier, whether it's technology or language access.

So can you talk a little bit about, particularly, I know when we had the FET loving committee meeting in June, you know, a lot of the data that was presented indicated that Latino families were, or students were not keeping pace with the achievement that we would like to see.

And I'm wondering if part of that is the lack of access, language access.

So can you talk a little bit about how you are addressing the language access needs so that folks can understand the programs that are available to them?

Great question.

I, what I can tell you is it just this is a clarifying point is your question specifically to the FCC mentorship program are you wanting to know sort of like in general.

Well, yeah, so that was a broad question.

So there are a couple of places in this presentation where you identify language access as a barrier, whether it's to the SPP selection and enrollment process, or forget what, there was another place earlier where you mentioned just like increasing awareness and part of the issue being language access, so.

All right, I'd be happy to answer that.

So we're definitely aware of that in developing ways to provide interpretation, translation of materials.

And another exciting thing I'd like to just tell you a little bit about, I'd be happy to provide you with more information later, but we are a few years into a dual language initiative, which is providing our Seattle dual language programs with training and professional development on how to strengthen and increase the amount of language supports that we can provide and educational experiences that we can provide in many languages.

We also provide, open that to professional development up to all of the RSVP teachers as well.

And we look forward to continuing to expand the program in 2027. I mean, like I said, it's a big project and my colleagues know me here, I could go on and on talking about it, but I'd be happy to provide you with some more information as far as how we do that.

That sounds great, thank you.

Let's see.

I will open it up if my colleagues have questions.

Do I see a hand?

Yes, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much for this presentation.

So the conclusion in this reiterates your point, but you just said that there are 18 students on The list and the conclusion says that to date, the number of families served by these investments in the homelessness and housing support services do not yet correlate with the scale of investment because of the access issues that you just described.

And this is just one.

So I support those recommendations for getting people into these services.

And perhaps this is a question for the next presentation, but I am interested in making sure that families that qualify for our preschool services in general are actually accessing them too.

And so, because in the original, when this was started in the beginning, one of the updates, one of the first updates was talking about the lack of preschool teachers.

And so now I wanna make sure that you know, we have enough preschool teachers and we have kids that are in classrooms.

So anyway, I'm sorry to bleed over into the next one, but for this, I'm assuming that the services are available.

It's just a matter of outreach and getting the families enrolled.

Is that?

From the Homelessness and Housing Support Services standpoint, yes.

So the resources are there.

We learned a lot in this first iteration of this investment.

And we learned a lot thanks to the RET team identifying like, for example, like the in-language access issues that we think are providing like an undue barrier to access for our students to be able to take advantage of these resources and investments that are there.

So we are, So you're absolutely right that there is, like, we're working on rightsizing the, and addressing some of those access and utilization issues to make sure that we're, all of the investments that we've made are being utilized as quickly as possible.

And I also want to say that just from the amazing work that the team has done and what we've learned, I think you all noticed that just one size doesn't fit all.

And so what we've been also very intentional about is, as Vic just mentioned, just trying to right size it and make sure that we make the necessary pivots to to meet you know our families and children's need because of it just it just continues to evolve.

As you mentioned a moment ago about that article that was just out yesterday or the day before.

So our piece is just making sure that we have a foundation that our scholars and families can be supported by whether as as Danielle was just explaining through the language access.

I mean our CCAP and SPP is is is we have what eight of the top languages.

We have social media toolkits.

And so we're trying to find multiple avenues to reach our audience.

And so I just want to just share that as well.

Yeah, and that you just put it in excellent words that it's not one size fits all and making sure that the preschools that are best suited for these kids are available.

So excellent.

Thank you.

Well, thank you all very much.

Very informative.

I probably have a lot of follow-up questions for you, but really appreciate what you're doing.

And thank you for sharing this with us.

Let's go ahead and move on then to the FEPP levy amendments.

Devin, can you read item two into the record, please?

Agenda item two, council bill 120398, an ordinance related to the 2018 families education preschool and promise levy, amending the levy implementation and evaluation plan adopted by ordinance 125807 and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion.

And that's it.

Okay.

Let's see.

Okay, we have a presentation.

Thank you.

And sorry, I just lost my place on the agenda.

Okay, we have a presentation on amendments that are being proposed.

So I will hand it back to you and let you get started.

Okay, and before we get started, just one that would do you mind taking a moment to introduce yourself.

Hi, Marissa Roussel.

My pronouns are she, her and I'm DEAL's Policy Director.

So thank you again.

Again, we appreciate this opportunity.

And you know, I should have acknowledged this in our last presentation.

This is actually most of our first times actually back in chambers presenting in person.

And it's been a pleasure to be up here.

And I think you all just did a phenomenal job.

So I forgot to say that a moment ago.

So thank you all.

Next slide, please.

So just just a quick reminder that and that deal we are, as you know, the proud stewards of the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

It was mentioned a moment ago, but can you believe that levy was actually approved by voters in 2018 of November?

The levy's goals, which you see are shown on the screen, and it's ultimately just to close opportunity gaps in education through investments in our four areas from preschool through post-secondary.

And today, as you mentioned a moment ago, Council Member, we'll present just some proposed amendments in the early learning and K-12 sections of the levy.

Next slide, please.

So use of our FEP funds, they're governed by two ordinances and the establishing ordinance for the levy, which just requires that proceeds be ultimately spent in accordance of the implementation and evaluation plan.

This ordinance also requires that the Levy Oversight Committee, that they are consulted prior to certain changes in the plan.

And the plan was adopted by ordinance in 2019. And it includes further details about strategies that are to be funded by the levy.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So deal what we did, we did our own engagement of our phenomenal FEPP Levy Oversight Committee on the proposed legislation before you.

And there's a letter indicating that their support for these amendments is also attached to the legislation.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so what you'll see here for the timeframe, we're actually currently wrapping up, as I mentioned, we passed in November of 2018, we're wrapping up the third year of our FEPP levy implementation.

And all of the amendments today that will be discussed are for the remainder of the levy through 2025-26.

And what I'll do is pause and I will pass this to our Director of Policy, Marissa, to walk us through those amendments.

All right, next slide.

So as Director Chappelle mentioned, we have six amendments.

One relates to the K-12 homelessness and housing investment, which you just heard about, and five relate to our Seattle Preschool Program.

Next slide.

So for the amendment to the HHS investment, what we are proposing to do is to expand the list of eligible uses for funds for this strategy.

This amendment occurs on page 77, and this is one of the recommendations from the toolkit that we would like to put into practice.

Next slide.

So some quick analysis on this amendment.

We know that students who are experiencing housing instability have a lot of other pressures that can lead to their feeling disconnected to their school communities or unable to engage in activities.

So this amendment will allow for FEPP levy funds to also support other basic needs related to clothing, nutrition, or transportation.

Our intent is that these funds will still prioritize keeping students housed, but our community providers will have flexibility to support other student needs so those kids can stay connected to their schools.

This investment primarily benefits students of color in our schools.

We are not proposing any budget changes as a result of this amendment.

We do not expect to increase the number of families served.

We intend to serve them better.

Next slide.

So the Seattle Preschool Program, as you know, is a universal access program.

We offer free tuition for income qualifying families and other families pay tuition on a sliding scale.

The implementation plan adopted in 2019 set that threshold for paying tuition at 350% of the federal poverty level.

In 2021, when the Washington State Legislature passed the Fair Starts for Kids Act, they changed their metric for the state child care program to state median income.

And so this amendment allows DEEL to align our city program metrics for calculating tuition to the state.

So these changes are made on pages 7, 32, and 122 of the plan.

Next slide.

So just some quick analysis from us.

We looked to identify the equivalence of 350 FPL, and we have noted that as 94% state median income.

We project a 5% reduction in revenue as a result of this change, and that equates to roughly $1,000 annually, so not a significant budget impact to deal.

Next slide.

And we did actually use state median income this past school year.

And what this data shows you is that there was not a change in access to free tuition for families of color as a result of this change.

So again, a fairly budget neutral change and a neutral impact to families as it relates to free tuition access.

Next slide.

The third early learning, I'm sorry, the third amendment relates to early enrollment in the Seattle Preschool Program.

This is another amendment that brings us into alignment with state and federal policies.

So currently the implementation plan on page 32 says that children need to be three years old by August 31st in order to enroll in the preschool program.

So this amendment allows students to enroll after August 31 on their third birthday in two instances.

That is for students with individualized education plans, IEPs.

or who are receiving special education services and for children enrolled in the federally funded Head Start preschool program or the state funded preschool program, which is called Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program or ECAP.

I'll talk briefly about each of those situations next.

So next slide.

All right, children with IEPs.

So this amendment applies only to enrollment in the SPP Plus program, which is administered by Seattle Public Schools.

So this brings us into alignment with federal policies related to the IDEA Act.

So currently, a child with special needs, when they turn three years old, they have access to developmental preschool administered by Seattle Public Schools.

this amendment will allow them to also access SPP Plus.

So some differences between those programs, developmental preschool is around 10 hours a week of services, whereas SPP Plus is 30 hours a week of services.

SPP Plus is also an inclusion model, which means students with special needs learn alongside other peers who may not have those needs.

There's a lot of research supporting inclusion models and Seattle is really proud to offer that.

The data here shows you current demographics of students in SPP plus.

And I do wanna note that our levee oversight committee asked us to monitor demographics to ensure there's not any over-representation of students of color in this program.

Marisa, can I ask how, so there's 32 students with IEPs in the program, but where is the program?

Sure.

So SPP plus, as I mentioned, is administered by Seattle public schools.

So, um, my understanding and we can follow up to confirm is that the vast majority of these classrooms are in SPS buildings administered by SPS teachers.

I believe there are two classrooms administered by community partners.

Um, I believe one is university of Washington, um, and a hearing in deaf school.

So I guess my question is, if I have a preschooler who has an IEP, do I have to take them to the EEU at UW or is there someplace in my local neighborhood school that has, so every neighborhood school that has an SPP program is also SPP plus?

I don't know if that's true, but we can follow up unless Dwayne knows.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that every school in the local, in your neighborhood has an SPP plus classroom, but we do have SPP plus classrooms, you know, throughout the city.

So, but I wouldn't quantify it as every school, but we can get you a list of exact schools that have the SPP plus classes.

I'm asking because I actually had a preschooler with an IEP and there was at that time, he's 22 now, it was hard to find a preschool that could support his needs and we ended up taking him to EEU.

if there was something available in my neighborhood, that certainly would have been much easier logistically to deal with.

And I'm just wondering, as a parent, how do I know, how do I find that support if it's something that I realize I need?

And I wouldn't imagine that every school had it, because it is specialized.

But my guess is that more than 32 student preschool age students in this city could benefit from that.

So I'm just trying to figure out like, what is the actual need?

What is the demand?

What is our capacity?

And how do we let people know what we do have and whether we need to expand it?

Anyway.

Everything that you just mentioned is something that myself and our amazing early learning team has definitely been focused on.

And we're happy to follow back up with you with some more data, specifically around like the need, what expansion looks like, and so forth.

Because we know how beneficial it is for families, which is why we're just trying to be intentional about providing these services for our families and children.

Thank you.

Sorry for the interruption.

No, not at all.

Follow up.

Oh, yes, please.

So I agree with this change, because waiting for the next school year, if your child is born in September, that's a long time.

But my thing is, how does a family even know, a lot of families don't even know their child might have a problem that they should seek an IE.

And that makes, so these demographics make sense because perhaps it's higher income families that notice something and then seek private help to identify what might be going on.

So I guess what I'm saying is I agree with your question, where do families go?

But also how do families, can you just explain how a family might even get an IEP if their kid isn't already in preschool?

Certainly, yeah, I'll speak generally because this is not my policy area of expertise.

But this is one of the reasons why deals newer investments in birth to three programs funded by the sweetened beverage tax are so important.

So, so much of this connects to early developmental screening for children, the majority of that screening happens in pediatricians offices.

And so, you know, a lot of themes here relating to the pandemic, we know Families are behind medical screenings for children as a result of that.

And so more broadly, it's about connecting families with young children to pediatricians to be receiving those developmental screenings, deals other investments are providing home visiting services, broader outreach to families with young kids.

Those connection points will result in referrals to services, referrals to screenings, and that it is the school district's responsibility to provide special education services.

And so in that regard, DEEL is a partner, and the FEPP levy and the Seattle Preschool Program allows us to enhance what the district is able to offer.

Thanks.

And not to stray too far, but pediatricians actually don't screen for that regularly.

You have to request it, and then you get referred to a very expensive screening service.

So there's a lot more work to do there.

I don't see any other questions right now, so please go ahead.

Sure.

So the next category for this amendment is Head Start and ECAP.

The SPP model allows for blended classrooms.

So this means that students who receive preschool paid for by the federal government are learning alongside students funded by the state, funded by our local levy.

And so again, this amendment brings us in alignment with those programs policies because they do allow children to enroll on their third birthday, even if it's after August 31st.

Next slide.

So the Fourth Amendment today, this is sort of an umbrella amendment that is a nod to those last two that you heard.

We know that early childhood education is a policy priority county, state, federally.

We do anticipate some changes to policy on those levels over the next four years.

And so this amendment is requesting that DEEL has authority to modify our preschool program policies in alignment with those other programs should the need arise over the next four years.

We are adding a 60 day council notification requirement so that if we do make a change to align with those programs, you would all be aware in advance of it taking effect.

And this amendment appears on page seven.

Next slide.

The Fifth Amendment adds to the plan mention of Seattle preschool program occurring in the summer.

And this amendment, so I'll give you the exact page number, is on page 35. DEEL has been implementing the SPP summer extension for the past two summers.

So this is a COVID innovation that we started so that students would have access to in-person learning after a year where SPP was largely remote.

And families loved it and providers loved it.

So we intend to sustain this program for the rest of the levy.

Therefore, we wanted to update the plan to reflect that extension.

Next slide.

Oh, sorry.

Yes.

So summer extension, you can see here, we've served over 800 children annually through this program.

The majority of those participating are students of color or, and rather students who receive free tuition.

So again, we are, we are reaching the population we intend to serve through this extension.

Next slide.

And our last amendment is just an update to the evaluation schedule for the Seattle Preschool Program.

This is the only investment area that received funding for evaluation when the levy was adopted.

So there is a table that indicates when those reports would be coming out.

COVID impacted our ability to do data collection, and so this amendment just updates the table so it reflects what's actually happening.

We have reduced the number of process evaluations from four to three and our impact evaluations.

We are still doing three.

We're just shifting the schedule.

The next impact evaluation will actually be coming out this September.

That's being administered by Education Northwest.

And we're really proud of the evaluation work for this program.

Okay, thank you very much.

Are there other questions right now?

We do have from Council Central staff, Brian Goodnight is here.

I'm gonna ask Brian to, we've had presentation on the amendments themselves, but Brian did identify an issue for us to discuss.

So I'm gonna ask him to join us.

I know he's on here somewhere.

There you are, Brian.

Sorry.

No worries.

Thank you, Chair Morales.

Good morning, Council members.

As you said, Brian, good night from Council Central staff.

Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to briefly highlight one item from the Central staff memo that was distributed to committee members earlier this week, and it's also attached to today's agenda.

The issue relates to item number four from DEEL's presentation, the delegation of authority to DEEL The specific proposed amendment occurs on page 36 of the Implementation and Evaluation Plan, and it states, DEEL has the authority to modify SPP policies, such as eligibility criteria, tuition thresholds, and prioritization, to align with equivalent county, state, and federally sponsored preschool and childcare programs.

The proposed amendment would also make two changes to page 7 of the plan, which describes the types of changes that require approval by the Council and those that require notification.

So first, rather than requiring Council approval for any modifications to tuition requirements for SPP, the proposed amendment would require Council to only approve the removal of tuition altogether.

And then second, among other noticing requirements on that page, the INA plan currently requires DEEL to provide 60-day notice to the Council prior to modifying SPP's child selection prioritization.

And the proposed amendment would now require a deal to provide written notice prior to modifying any of the SPP policies, such as the ones that Marissa spoke to.

So taken together, the changes provide deal with greater flexibility to make SPP policy adjustments without council approval, but they do require council notification for the adjustments.

And simply my purpose of highlighting this issue was just to ensure that council is comfortable with delegating this authority to the department.

And the options described in the memo are the two obvious choices, which are either to accept the proposed delegation of authority or to reject it.

But I do want to note that if the Council decides to reject the change, then it may be advantageous to make further refinements to page seven of the implementation plan regarding what types of things the Council is comfortable with requiring Council approval for or notification for.

And then lastly, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm currently exploring a couple of technical amendments to the legislation that may be needed, assuming the council is interested in approving the changes.

I've spoken with DEEL staff about this, and if they are needed, then I'll work with Chair Morales's office and DEEL staff to get everything prepared for the committee's next meeting on September 9th.

So thank you.

Uh, okay.

Thank you, Brian.

Um, I guess just I have just a couple questions that occurred to me as you were talking, which are, um, are there, um, so this, this would be changing, uh, delegation authority for SPP investments, uh, changes to, to those policies.

Are there other policy changes in other investment areas that are being contemplated or would this, is this for now?

Yeah, this is it for now.

What we are, what I'm working on internally at DEEL is sort of an annual cadence where each fall we'll convene DEEL staff to sort of do a roundup of like what changes, what policy improvements do we think we can make so that once a year we could come to council and say, here are all the things we're considering.

So this is the only area for now.

Okay.

Good to know.

Colleagues, are there other questions about the proposed amendments?

I'm not seeing any.

I do wanna go back to one thing.

I think I just need a little bit more clarity about the state median income issue.

I don't know how much 351% of federal poverty is.

Can you just explain this metric change a little bit and what it actually means for family income?

Sure, I should have brought that and I didn't so maybe or maybe Brian if you do you have that.

Yeah, do you have that with you.

I will look for it right now.

If Marissa wants to say other words, just a moment.

And if we don't have access to it right now, would it be all right for us to send over the information and follow up with you so that way we can be accurate with it?

Yeah, that's fine.

I just I mean, I know this is how we talk about all these eligibility programs, but most people, including me, don't have that off the top of our heads.

So, OK, let me just go through my slides and see if I have other questions.

We've been talking about these amendments for some time, so I appreciate you coming and sharing the information with us.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Brian or for our deal team?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

So I think we can go ahead and vote on this.

And then if there are some technical amendments that are needed, we can talk about those.

Because of the timing of this committee's meetings, which is on Friday, we don't meet the deadline for being able to vote on this in full council next week.

So our full council meeting next ability to vote in full council would be when we come back from recess the first week of September.

Brian, yes.

Thank you.

The agenda, the way the agenda was posted today actually doesn't contemplate a vote by the committee.

So I believe it would need to come back to committee on the next meeting, which would be September 9th.

Unless there's a way to waive that.

I don't know the answer to that.

No, so that's correct.

We had spoken with you previously about having this over the course of two meetings.

Okay, my mistake.

We will be voting on this in committee on September 9th.

Okay, very well.

Well, thank you very much for the presentation and for sharing all of the good work that you're doing.

Appreciate getting the amendment language and we will be prepared to vote on that next time.

Thank you.

And we, again, appreciate this opportunity.

And it's been a pleasure to work with council staff, Brian, your team to make sure that we're doing what's best for kids and families.

So thank you again.

Thank you for being here in person again.

Nice to see, I don't know.

I don't think this is the entire deal team, but good to see you all.

We look forward to seeing you again.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

We, I believe we are going to, We have a presenter who will be here for the next piece of legislation, but she is late, my understanding.

So I see Anne Gorman coming off camera.

I think what we're gonna do is if there's no objection, move that agenda item to the bottom and go ahead and move through the appointments first so that we can make sure our presenter can get here.

I don't hear any objections, so I'm going to, sorry, I'm kind of working on the fly here now.

Devin, I'm going to ask you to read agenda item four into the record, the appointment, two appointments for the levy oversight committee.

Agenda items four and five.

Appointments two, two, four, eight, and two, two, four, nine.

Appointments of Katari Jo and Evan M. Smith as members, family, education, preschool, and promise levy oversight committee or terms to December 31st, 2024, or briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

And if the candidates can go ahead and join us here at the table, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Okay, I'll hand it off to you, Dr. Chabot.

Okay, again, thank you for just this opportunity.

And so I will introduce the first appointee and allow her to say a few words.

And the first one is Ms. Kateri Jo.

Ms. Kateri, she is just dedicated to serving our youth who are furthest from educational justice.

She's worked with youth for over a decade.

She works with Native youth in foster care and partners with tribal communities locally and statewide.

She's also, these are just a few things, created programming to support educational opportunities for Native youth.

A couple of personal things about Kateri is she is a Husky, a UW grad.

She enjoys attending powwows, taking canoe journeys, and attending basketball tournaments.

And a quick fun fact, Kateri, and I'll turn it over to you to speak, is that when Kateri was a student at West Seattle High School, she was part of a student-led movement that successfully advocated for West Seattle to change their mascot.

So with that said, Kateri, I'll allow you to speak.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Kateri Jo.

I'm from Canada.

My pronouns are she and her, and currently I'm the director at Treehouse for Special Populations.

To be quite honest, I thought I was going second, so it kind of threw me off a little bit.

What I really wanted to talk about today is just the reason why I'm here and you shared some of the reasons why I'm here is I'm a product of education here in city of Seattle.

I'm alumni of Daybreak Star.

I'm alumni of West Seattle High School.

And I kept trying to think on what what it was that allowed me to get from just a tiny kid going to school to where I'm at today.

And it has constantly been my family that has affirmed my Native identity, which is not always the case if you're experiencing the foster care system, or if you have been in a family that has been hurt by all the historical trauma and oppressions that you experience as being a Native person.

I think about how much fear I had just coming into the space.

the idea that I actually didn't even apply for this position.

I was offered, I mean, I went through the process for the Indigenous Advisory Council and it was when my application was pulled that I was even put into this kind of candidate pool because it was never something that I assumed that I had a space for.

And it's always been my community that has showed up for me, that has allowed me to continue in this role of leadership of where I get.

Excuse me for being a little emotional.

I think of how important it is for us to show up for our community.

And there's one thing I always think about being a leader is you can do great things in that moment, but if you're not setting the stage for those to follow behind you, you're not really being a leader.

One thing that my tribal council, my former tribal councilman had shared was, when folks think about the totem pole, they think about the character as being the most important on the top, but that's actually not the case.

The one who is most important is the one at the bottom, because they're the one responsible for holding everybody up.

And that's why I'm here today.

I wanna make sure that I'm...

Sorry, I'm so nervous.

I want to make sure that there are others that follow behind me who feel that they can come into this space and feel confident in it and not be like me right now where I'm here, but I'm still fearful for being here.

Excuse me.

Thank you so much.

That's why I'm here today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, thank you for being here and for your leadership and for being willing to be vulnerable in a space like this.

It's not easy.

And I think a lot of people are intimidated when they come into a space like this.

And there's a lot of reasons why that is.

But we welcome you and thank you for being here.

Yes, thank you again, Kateri.

And I'm super excited that you are going to join our Levee Upside Committee.

I'm looking forward to your leadership, your brilliance, and your passion.

The next individual, and I don't think I mentioned it, Kateri, her current role, she's the Tribal Engagement Manager at Treehouse.

And if you mentioned it, I just want to acknowledge that.

I'm actually the Director of Special Populations now.

Thank you.

OK, the Director of Special Populations, OK.

So the next individual I would like to introduce is Evan Smith.

A few personal highlights of Evan.

He's deeply committed to equity and social justice.

Evan is a former public school administrator in DC schools.

Evan understands the important role of early learning and what it plays in keeping our economy going.

A few personal highlights about Evan.

He's a proud husband and father of a young preschool age child.

His wife, Clarissa, with two S's, is here accompanying him.

Evan is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and a distinguished graduate of the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business Administration.

And a fun fact about Evan is he used his passion for social justice to spearhead a race and social justice initiative at Starbucks for his IT colleagues and Evan's current position or role.

He's a Information Technology Specialist for Starbucks.

So Evan, do you mind?

Welcome, and do you mind saying a few words?

Thank you.

I had prepared remarks, but I just want to say it was beautiful, Katari.

I almost don't.

want to say anything because I don't want to take away from what you just did.

It was really impressive.

Um, so, um, I don't need to talk too much about myself.

I think you've got my, my resume up there and happy to take any questions.

I've had the opportunity to work with council member Morales at the deal offsite.

Thank you very much.

Uh, well, I want to say first things to both of you for being here, for being willing to serve, uh, and for being willing to come here to this space and, um, you know, do the bureaucracy thing.

I really appreciate it.

Colleagues, are there any questions for either of our candidates here?

I am not seeing any hands raised.

Well, I do want to say, you know, we have we have a lot of work to do.

As we just heard from our two previous presentations, the students in our community have a lot of needs and support.

Families and educators, child care providers have a lot of support that they need.

And there's so much that the city can do.

We obviously have a lot of work to do at the state level as well to make sure that our schools are invested in.

But I think it's going to be really important for the oversight committee to be, you know, taking in the information that's provided here, both from the racial equity toolkits, the new policy changes and all of the future work that we have.

So as we prepare for, you know, the end of this levy and the need to get a new one going, I'm looking forward to working with both of you to make sure that we're doing the right thing.

So thank you.

Okay, I think if there are no questions, then I am going to move approval of, let me get to the appointment numbers.

Appointment 02248 and 0, oh shoot, Devin, I lost track.

0249. 249, okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend approval.

Will you please call the roll, Devin?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Vice Chair Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

Four in favor.

Okay, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that council approve the appointments will be sent to the September 6th city council meeting.

So that's when we will make the final vote.

You do not need to be there, but you're welcome to join online if you'd like.

And we will see you then.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Devin, will you please read items six through 11 into the record?

Great.

Yep.

Agenda items.

I'll start with six through eight and then I'll go to nine through 11. Agenda items six through eight appointments two, three, three, four through two, three, three, six appointments of Devin Brightheart, Shelby Day, Troika L. Boswell, members of the Seattle Disability Commission for terms to April 30th, 2024. And then agenda items.

nine through 11 appointments, two, three, three, seven through two, three, three, nine appointments of Jackson Cooper, Alex Mielkarek and Juan Monroy as members of the Seattle LGBTQ commission for terms to April 30th, 2024 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Terrific.

Thank you so much.

And I know we've got Janet Stafford here from the Office of Civil Rights.

Is it just you today with us, Janet?

Yes.

Okay, I will pass it off to you then to take it away.

That's great.

Thank you so much.

Again, my name is Janet Stafford.

I support the LGBTQ Commission as well as the Disability Commission at the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

I will say I think my audio is doing okay, but if I have to get off video, you all know why.

So just to share a little bit, maybe before, to acknowledge folks.

Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, we lost you for just a second there, but so far, so good.

So far, okay.

Great.

So I'm going to be sharing a little bit just about the Commission, some of their work has included the annual flag raising this year with the mayor's office and city council at City Hall.

They are having continued conversations around homelessness and the encampment issues with the mayor's office.

And the Disability Commission, you might remember they have been working on holding their Jubilee events, highlighting folks within the community.

Some of their work has also included closed captioning and the Seattle Straw Band that we have here.

There are a few folks who were unable to attend today, but I do want to share a little bit from their behalf.

I will go ahead and just start with Devin Brightheart.

Devin is an occupational therapist working with people with disabilities.

Most of her professional experience has taken place in the schools, working specifically with children with disabilities and providing direct services has included a lot of her work in advocacy, getting children what they need to be successful from funding sources for technology and making sure that children are included in the general education classes.

Beyond this, she has also worked with adults with developmental disabilities and who are experiencing new disabling conditions.

and adults with mental health challenges.

So she, in addition to that, she also owns her own businesses, her own business that focuses on helping other occupational therapists making their skills effective.

Advocate of making Seattle ADA compliant and more accessible by installing ramps, lifts, and making bathroom modification.

She is a regular at the commission meeting and she looks forward to her time.

The next person from the disability, Shelby Day also was unable to be here, but did ask me to share the following.

She does hope to contribute to the health and well-being of this community.

She believes we need better access to mental health services, especially for our community, and she wants to help increase access to affordable housing and take the time to really listen to the community and what their needs are and finding how to help them.

She's really excited to work on behalf of this community and help improve the lives She has been an active participant of these several last months since her nomination and also looks forward to continuing this work.

I believe we have Troika Braswell who is joining us now.

I can pass it on to him to share some words on behalf of their nomination to the LGBTQ Commission.

Yes, that would be great.

Welcome, Troika.

Please, please go ahead.

Sure.

No, thank you very much.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

All right.

Yes.

My name is Troika Braswell.

He, him pronouns for those I just want to take the time to say I appreciate, you know, this opportunity to actually, you know, to increase the belonging and also the wellness when it comes to the LGBTQI folks that we have here in the city of Seattle.

A little background for me as far as it goes, I've been working in HR for the past 11 years.

Most recently took a position with King County Metro overseeing their apprenticeships and career pathways, making sure we have that DEI lens when it comes into it as well.

Don't really know what to say on here as far as it goes, but I guess I'll just leave it at that.

Great.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Again, as I will say to all of the candidates here, I think it's important that we have this opportunity for folks from the community to engage with these commissions and to be willing to serve, to provide guidance and policy recommendations to the council is really important.

So thank you so much for being willing to serve in that capacity.

Thank you.

So these are the three for the Disability Commission, is that right, Janet?

Those were two.

Jackson is from the LGBTQ Commission.

And then we have three more with the LGBTQ.

Okay, let's go ahead and sorry, my script is a little bit confusing.

Let's, is there anyone else for the Disability Commission?

That's it.

Okay, so let's go ahead and vote on that commission, and then we'll vote on the LGBTQ commission, if that's okay, folks.

Okay, so then, I'm sorry, Devin, remind me the appointment numbers for those two then.

Okay, so I move approval of appointments two through three, four through two, three, three, six.

Is there a second?

Seconds.

Thank you very much.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Vice Chair Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

All in favor?

Okay, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that council approve those appointments will be sent to the September 6th City Council meeting.

Okay, so now let's move on to the LGBTQ Commission.

Will you please read items nine through 11 into the record?

Yes, agenda items nine through 11, appointments 2337 to 2339, appointments of Jackson Cooper, Alex, Mule, Karek, Juan, Monroy as members of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission for terms to April 30th, 2024, briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, Jenna, I'm handing it back to you, please.

That's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, so we just had Troika present a little bit about himself.

Cooper was unable to present today, but just a little background.

He is a resident of the Seattle District 7, the East Lake-South Lake Union neighborhood.

He is excited to serve on the commission as his roots in public service and advocacy date back from high school years in advocating for gay marriage legislation, specifically in North Carolina, and serving on city and state art council committees, and also working in state and municipal governments in North Carolina.

Now here in Seattle, he has worked in the philanthropic field and looks forward to bringing his skills and relationship building to serve on this commission.

So in addition to Jackson Cooper, we also have Alex Malkorek, who is also not able to be here in person or online, but has shared the following.

So Just a little bit about Alex's interest.

It's rooted in getting more involved in the process behind making changes and contributing to the dialogue around LGBTQ issues.

She has elected to do so through the LGBTQ Commission, specifically because of her positionality as a lesbian.

being a resident in Seattle and a former LGBTQ historian.

Her area of focus is elevated in the LGBTQ history and increasing access to gender affirming care.

Prior to her relocation to Seattle several years ago, she was one of the leads for a research team collecting LGBTQ histories from elders and youth in South Carolina.

And through this process, she was able to better understand and work the work that goes into preserving the history and how the evolution of access to gender affirming care has impacted trans elder and youth.

While she is not, she would like to explore more ways to share this history, specifically the Seattle LGBTQ history and to take the knowledge that we gained from this to advocate for ourselves.

And I think to wrap up, our third commissioner, Juan Monroy is joining us online, and I will pass it on to him to share some more words.

Great.

Thank you so much, Janet.

There you are, Juan.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Hello.

My name is Juan Manuel Roy.

Council members, I appreciate the time and consideration.

I'll be brief.

Yeah, my name is Juan Manuel Roy.

I am a brown queer immigrant.

I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, but I moved to the States about 10 years ago to finish or further my studies in fine art.

I am a visual and performance artist and a nightlife personality and queer leader of sorts.

For as long as I've been in Seattle, I've spent most of my professional efforts in social service work.

particularly serving underrepresented communities in our area.

And I'm hoping that being confirmed as an LGBTQ commissioner, will help me in further my interests in assisting those the most needed in our communities.

As a non nationalized permanent resident, I currently don't have the ability to vote.

So my involvement in local politics really means a lot to me and I take it very seriously.

I'm hoping that being part of the community, the commission, I'll be able to advise the mayor's office in how to better serve LGBTQ individuals in the Seattle area.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Juan, and thank you for finding a way to be engaged.

If you're not able to vote, it's really important that you're here and excited to be part of advocating for a policy that positively benefits the community.

So thank you so much for being here.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Juan or Troika who are here?

I just have a couple of comments.

Yes, please go ahead.

So since you both are here, back to Troika, I have to say that I think it's really important that we do have someone on this commission, and I haven't studied the bios of everybody, but with human resource experience and in the private sector and, you know, from Coke to freight, Coca-Cola, I mean, and also with strong collaboration with labor.

I really appreciate that about your experience that you will bring.

And I echo what has been said about your engagement, finding a way to be involved.

And I just urge anyone to go to Juan's resume because he's got a really compelling experience in the arts.

So thank you very much for stepping up for us.

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions or other hands raised so I'm going to move that we accept appointments.

0233, I think it was six through 02339. Is there a second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Lewis.

Yes.

Councilmember Nelson.

Vice-chair Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

Four in favor.

Okay, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that council approve the appointments will be sent to the September 6th city council meeting.

Troika and Juan, you do not need to be there, but you're welcome to come join us in chambers or online if you'd like, but that's when we will be taking the final vote.

Thank you again for your interest and willingness to serve.

All right, thanks so much, Janet.

Have a nice day.

Okay, we have one more agenda item.

We're going back to agenda item three, I believe.

Yes, Devin, will you please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three, Council Bill 120399, an ordinance relating to limited services pregnancy centers, prohibiting false and misleading advertising by limited services pregnancy centers and adding a new chapter 7.32 to the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Perfect.

Thank you very much.

We are expecting Kim Clark from Legal Voice to join us.

I am hoping she is able to join, but I'm going to ask Anne Gorman from Council Central Staff, who's been working closely with us on getting this bill drafted, to go ahead and present first.

And if Kim is able to join us, we will ask her to join us then.

Thank you Chairman Morales, good morning committee members and Gorman Council Central staff.

I'm here this morning to talk to you about Council Bill 120399. This bill is jointly sponsored by Chairman Morales and Council Member Herbold, and it would seek to regulate limited service pregnancy centers or LSPCs.

These are non-medical facilities that provide information and services to pregnant people, all based on the belief that abortion and contraception are wrong.

They're typically affiliated with national or international organizations that advocate against abortion and for reduced reproductive rights.

LSPCs are also known as crisis pregnancy centers or pregnancy resource centers.

This bill just uses the LSPC terminology.

A great deal of research over the past few decades has documented deceptive practices on the part of LSPCs with the presumed intent to draw in people who are at a vulnerable point in their lives and have a lot of important decisions ahead of them.

Their ability to do this is in part because many of them offer services for free or at a low cost, which is appealing to people with limited means or who lack insurance.

But they also draw in and retain clients by means of deception.

First, by not stating how limited their services are or the ideological orientation of the LSPCs, and then by promoting falsehoods.

For instance, that abortions cause mental health disorders.

Council Bill 120399 would prohibit the provision of such false information on the part of LSPCs.

In a 2018 case that is outlined in your central staff memo, the Supreme Court found that this behavior, this provision of false information that is, is commercial speech.

Commercial speech is not protected by the First Amendment, thus it may be enforced against.

One note here is the bill would not have any impact on an LSPC that accurately portrays its ideological position and very limited suite of services.

The proposed prohibitions would be enforced by the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, specifically its Consumer Protection Division.

The bill provides for two different paths to enforcement, depending on the nature of the violation.

This is discussed in the central staff memo, and it also explicitly permits the criminal charging of violations by the city attorney's office, should that means of enforcement be deemed necessary.

I'll take any questions.

Great.

Thank you so much, Anne.

I wonder if you could address a few things, and then I will I'll hand it over to my colleagues.

We have some questions around the number of centers that are in the Seattle area.

I know in the memo you mentioned there's something like 50 or so across the state.

Is it possible to determine how many are actually here in Seattle?

At any given time, it is difficult to determine how many are in operation.

This is because the various deceptive practices that these facilities engage in include changing their names, moving from one location to another, putting information on their websites, which is not necessarily accurate, taking down those websites, which is something that I found while I was doing research for the staff memo.

It's an industry that's hard to pin down.

We are aware of one mobile clinic operated by Care Net that regularly stations itself in the South Seattle area.

But beyond that, these clinics are not, they tend not to be enthusiastic about stepping up and saying, hey, here's where we are and here's who we're all about.

Okay.

And then part of what we're trying to do here is address the data mining issue.

Can you speak a little bit to data collection practices?

Sure, sure.

Because I'm sorry, and I do see that that Kim Clark has joined us so I can ask her as well because I know that's something that she's

Yeah, let me just, I'll introduce it briefly and tee it up for Kim, who has a lot of very specific information to share.

One important note about LSPCs is that because they are not medical facilities, they are not subject to HIPAA, which means that any information that clients provide to an LSPC is not protected and may be disclosed.

And this is very concerning in the wake of anti-abortion provisions that are going into effect in other states.

Those states could theoretically ask for and receive information about who was a client and what services they asked about.

from LSPCs.

And again, LSPCs would probably not disclose that to the clients.

And I will hand it over to Kim right now, but I'll stay here if anybody has any questions for me.

Thank you.

Great, thanks so much, Anne.

Okay, we do have Kim Clark here from Legal Voice, and I am going to hand it off to you.

Thank you so much, Kim.

We've been collaborating quite a bit on some of these bills, so I appreciate you being here and giving us the opportunity to hear from you and to ask questions about why this work is so important.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

So my name is Kim Clark.

I am the legal director at Legal Voice, which is a nonprofit organization that seeks to advance gender equity in the Pacific Northwest through impact litigation, policy advocacy, and legal rights education.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, the anti-abortion movement has been very vocal about its intent to step up activism in safe states, so-called safe states like Washington, Unable to advance its mission through the legislature or the courts, the anti-abortion movement instead seeks to intervene directly to stop pregnant people from accessing care through misinformation, intimidation, and harassment.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers, also known as Limited Service Pregnancy Centers, are the engines that drive that effort.

And we're already seeing anti-abortion legislatures and leaders throughout the country promoting Crisis Pregnancy Centers as a legitimate alternative to legitimate full-service reproductive health clinics.

without any regard for the harms that that will cause to pregnant people.

Legal Voice recently conducted a comprehensive study of crisis pregnancy centers in the five states in the Pacific Northwest in which we do work, the results of which we published in a paper called Design to Deceive, a study of the crisis pregnancy industry in nine states.

And it is that work that informs my testimony today.

Crisis pregnancy centers, which outnumber real clinics by three to one in the United States and approximately two to one in Washington, by and large are fake clinics that the anti-abortion movement has built throughout the country to spread misinformation, promote anti-abortion activism, and surveil pregnant people and prevent them from accessing abortion and contraception.

While crisis pregnancy centers might look like real clinics, their staff wear white coats and scrubs, they're set up like doctor's offices and they take medical histories when people come through their doors, their advertising mimics that of legitimate reproductive health clinics, the majority of crisis pregnancy centers provide no medical services that require any kind of medical licensure whatsoever.

Indeed, as in other states, the most common services Washington State CPCs offer are pregnancy testing, and by that I mean the kind of pregnancy tests you could get at Walmart, and non-diagnostic or keepsake ultrasounds, which are just what they sound like.

They are basically souvenirs.

They cannot accurately determine gestational age, much less diagnose pregnancy complications.

But because they're situated in what looks like a doctor's office, these ultrasounds can give pregnant people a false sense of security.

that they still have time to access abortion care, or conversely, that all is well with a wanted pregnancy when in fact there might actually be complications.

And as a result, they might delay their search for abortion care or legitimate prenatal care, which of course is the point.

Our study also found that a majority of crisis pregnancy centers in Washington, about 60%, make false and or biased claims on their website, which our study defined as any medical claim that is untrue or unsubstantiated, misstates or selectively cites to factual information, or uses gratuitous or graphic language grounded in extremist ideology rather than medical science.

For example, some CPCs falsely claim that abortions can lead to increased promiscuity and increase the risk of breast cancer and infertility and we know anecdotally that aside from what's posted publicly on crisis pregnancy centers websites.

They also, you know, are known to make all kinds of other misstatements to pregnant people once they're through the doors.

While Washington CPCs also falsely claim to provide full and unbiased information to support a pregnant person's choice, when in fact the only choices they offer are adoption or becoming a parent.

In fact, 13 of the CPCs in Washington deceptively use the words choice and options in their names, and many falsely claim to be the only resource that will provide unbiased information to pregnant people about all of their options.

Over half of CPCs in Washington promote a service called abortion pill reversal, which is a practice of injecting or prescribing high-dose progesterone to pregnant people who have taken the first medicine in the two-step protocol for medication abortion, in an attempt to stop an abortion.

And this is a practice that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers to be unsafe, unethical, and unsupported by medical science.

That's more than half of crisis pregnancy centers in Washington State that are promoting that service.

At least as significant, though, is what CPCs in Washington do not provide.

Of the CPCs we studied, none provide contraception.

The majority do not provide any STI-related services, and those that do generally only provide testing.

They don't provide any treatment, which begs the question, of whether they're doing the testing themselves or simply using the same types of kits that people can secure for themselves online.

92% provide no well person care.

And for all their talk of supporting healthy pregnancies, 94% provide no prenatal care.

And almost half of these so-called clinics don't even refer for prenatal care.

Indeed, while CPCs present as medical offices, most have no licensed medical professionals on staff or on their board.

And even if they do, as I said earlier, most crisis pregnancy centers offer no services that actually requires any medical licensure.

Amid a maternal mortality crisis that's driven by radical racial inequities in prenatal care, misdiagnosis, and miswarning signs, the implications of allowing extremist political organizations to go around masquerading as real clinics are particularly grave.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention that crisis pregnancy centers also serve another less obvious purpose, which is to collect vast amounts of personal health information.

That can be basically used however crisis pregnancy centers see fit.

And again, that's because most crisis pregnancy centers, since they don't offer medical services and are not billing insurance, they're not subject to HIPAA or any other privacy regulations, which means that they can use the information that they collect to harass and intimidate patients, or now to help bring civil and criminal cases against pregnant people and their providers.

For years, Heartbeat International in particular has been selling a data management tool called Next Level Services to crisis pregnancy centers around the world, which it markets explicitly as a tool for collecting data to advance the anti-abortion movement and create profiles of people who are likely to become pregnant again.

And of course, again, now that information can be used to help bring lawsuits against patients and their providers.

If CPCs were not sufficiently motivated on their own to engage in this kind of medical surveillance, statutes like Texas SB 8 and Idaho's SB 1309, which is essentially a Texas SB 8 lookalike statute that creates These bounty hunter lawsuits allows for individuals to bring private causes of action against abortion providers for offering care after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected.

Those statutes literally financially incentivize the medical surveillance of pregnant people, which crisis pregnancy centers are in the perfect position to lead the effort on.

And again, those targeted will be the very people who have experienced a long history of medical surveillance in our country.

In short, crisis pregnancy centers represent a threat to the health of pregnant people and confidence in our healthcare system more broadly.

Litigating individual cases against crisis pregnancy centers are a fool's errand, because even if you can find a plaintiff who's willing to tell their stories and whose damages are significant enough to change the behavior of one CPC, There are so many other CPCs engaged in the very same conduct.

That is why regulations like the one before you today are so important, and we strongly urge that you support it.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Kim.

I will open it to my colleagues.

I do have one question that you may have the same answer as Anne, but I'm trying to understand if we have a sense of how many centers there may be in Seattle.

So we count two in Seattle right now, one of which actually does provide, appears to provide actual medical care, the other doesn't.

And I think it was mentioned earlier that there's also a mobile clinic.

One of those two crisis pregnancy centers also operates a mobile clinic.

But similarly, there are crisis pregnancy centers, there are numerous crisis pregnancy centers in King County and surrounding areas that may also operate mobile clinics.

you know, that could be operating in Seattle.

But beyond that, I would say we also know that there's a real press on the other side, by the anti-abortion movement, to really promote and expand crisis pregnancy centers.

So we fully expect that we will see a proliferation of crisis pregnancy centers throughout the country, and especially again, in so-called safe states, because that is really, you know, where the activism is needed.

And again, you know, there's a good deal of research that suggests that crisis pregnancy centers are really not actually that effective in achieving their stated goal of preventing people from accessing care.

they do tend to delay people in accessing care.

But what they are really effective at is radicalizing anti-abortion extremists, folks who will then go on to become protesters outside of clinics and so on.

So really, truly, the action now is going to be in safe states like Washington.

Well, and as you're talking about the medical surveillance and the encouragement of bounty hunters, the legalization of bounty hunters in some states, that certainly is cause for alarm as well.

Exactly.

Knowing that many of those folks will be coming here.

Okay, colleagues, are there any questions for Kim or for Anne?

Yes, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I'll just say right now I'll be supporting this.

I served on the NARALPAC for a couple of years, and a candidate's position on fake clinics, as we called them back then, and what they were going to do about them was always top vetting questions, so I really appreciate this.

So even though there are a couple identified clinics in Seattle, are these non-profits or businesses?

And I understand that one is mobile, so it's hard to pin them down, but has there been any action?

If they're businesses, can their business license be addressed?

Because if a business isn't selling what they say they're supposed to sell on their license than their actions.

So is that ever an area of addressing this?

So for the most part, they are loosely-affiliated, separately-incorporated nonprofit organizations.

And that is one of the challenges.

So consumer protection statutes, for example, tend to apply to...

Right.

So that is...

certainly part of the challenge in addressing their deceptive practices.

OK, thanks.

Other questions, colleagues?

Okay, I am not seeing any.

I want to thank you, Kim, for being here, for sharing a little more detail about what your experience is, you know, here in Seattle, in Washington, but really give us sort of the bigger context for What we are anticipating some of the things that are already happening across the country and why we need to be prepared, as you know we we recently passed three other bills including one from Councilmember so on.

I'm expecting that this conversation is going to be continuing.

We are taking the steps that we can take now to prepare our community and are very clear that there may be more that we have to do over the next couple of years as we really start to see the impact of this Supreme Court decision.

So I appreciate you helping us get started.

and we, I'm sure, will be continuing to work with you and with advocates to make sure that people have their healthcare protected.

Okay, I don't see any other questions, so I am going to move that we adopt Council Bill 120399. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded.

Devin, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Warren, favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass the bill will be sent to our September 6th city council meeting.

I wanna thank you again, Kim and Ann.

I also do wanna thank council member Herbold for her co-sponsorship, Christina Katsubos on her staff has been instrumental in helping us get this far.

And my staff, Alexis Turla, thanks to everyone who is helping us navigate this new era and make sure that we're protecting people in our city.

Okay, so we've gone through our appointments.

I believe that is the end of our agenda.

Is there anything for the good of the order?

Okay, in that case, this concludes the August 12th meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee.

Our next scheduled meeting is on Friday, September 9th.

It is 1130 a.m.

Thank you all for attending, and we are adjourned.