Just to start this press conference off with the announcement that the Seattle Channel has won yet another Emmy and I think their highest award.
Put another number on the board.
Let's go Seattle Channel.
Good afternoon.
My name is Councilmember Dan Strauss.
I'm elected by the people of Magnolia, Fremont, Finney, Green Lake, Greenwood, Crown Hill, Ballard, many other micro-neighborhoods, and I represent the entire city of Seattle.
Thank you for joining us today.
I want to start by recognizing our amazing volunteers with the Environmental Education Program.
I cannot begin to thank you all enough for the amazing work you do on behalf of the city for our youth.
The city has around 100 volunteers who do everything from guiding nature walks to helping out at educational booths.
Last year, they contributed more than 4,000 hours of volunteer time.
You only get dedication for something that is as impactful and important as Seattle's environmental education and outdoor learning.
That's why we're here today, to make sure that fully funding our program for kids and families so that it's around for future generations.
Seattle's access to our natural environment is one of the things that sets us apart from other cities.
Seattle's access to our natural environment is at a premium in our city and we have to do everything that we can to get youth educated in natural environments as early as possible.
In fact, a recent poll by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce found that people say it's the single best thing about living in our cities.
And the outdoors are for everyone, and everyone deserves that opportunity to experience the outdoors.
And that's why I'm so passionate about Seattle Parks Environmental Education Program.
They offer the opportunity for kids, families, and community members, often from underserved populations, to experience and learn about our natural environment.
With this modest investment, they achieve incredible things.
In 2024 alone, they hosted 5,383 students from 65 different schools for field trips, with a large portion of those students coming from underserved schools, Title I schools.
They hosted 38 public programs and guided walks in 20 parks around Seattle, teaching members of our community about native plants, mushrooms, birds, salmons, and more.
Salmon and more, excuse me.
When I say that this is a citywide program, it touches every single district with the highest concentration of programming in districts one and two.
They ran 188 community partnership programs and served 1,693 participants helping ensure everyone has access to meaningful outdoor experiences especially groups most impacted by social and environmental justices.
And they managed a team of around 100 dedicated volunteers who spent more than 4,000 hours for free guiding nature walks and educating people about our outdoors, saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Unfortunately, because of the city of Seattle's current budget situation, without this levy, funding for this popular program will expire in 2025. The current Every Child Ready initiative being considered by the city council right now would restore some of the funding for that program, but only about 38%.
And we've heard that's just not enough.
We have an opportunity to do more and we should take it.
My amendment would restore full funding for the environmental education program, giving environmental education and outdoor learning teams and their volunteers the resources they need to continue this incredible service for our city.
For a relatively small investment, we can make a huge impact.
Fully restoring the environmental education program would cost the median homeowner about $2 a year.
In exchange, we can guarantee our city's kids and families continue to receive the nature, education, and outdoor experiences that make our city such a great place to live.
Building strong connections between our kids and their natural environment is priceless.
Seattle's kids are worth this investment.
I'm gonna hand it off now to Maggie Johnson, one of our program's incredible volunteers.
About 45, 50 minutes ago, Maggie finished taking some of our city's second graders on a nature tour of this beach.
Maggie, would you like to say some more?
Hi there, I'm Maggie Johnson and I'm a Seattle urban nature guide, which we all are.
That means we're volunteers for the Seattle Parks Department.
We get incredible training from our staff members and then we take kids on field trips today.
Another one of us and I just finished an intertidal zone field trip with students from BF Day Elementary in Wallingford.
And they actually learned some serious science.
We started out enacting the life cycle of a barnacle through which they came to understand that much of this sea life goes through metamorphosis, similar to how butterflies do.
And we learned that they have a plankton phase and during that phase they're very vulnerable to predation.
And but besides learning, we then go down on the beach, get our feet and hands wet, look around.
And so these kids are having a full body, hands on nature immersion experience.
It's so exciting for them.
And some of this information really sticks.
And just today, their teacher told us that from last year's group, they said that this day at the beach was their favorite day of the whole year.
And I'm always talking to teachers who tell me how much they rely on our program for science education.
And I just want to mention some of the schools can't afford fancy field trips and we make it inexpensive for them.
For instance, we get them bus scholarships or We often will hold a program in a park within walking distance to their school.
So I just want to thank Councilmember Strauss and his staff.
I'm super excited and hope we can save this program that's been a legacy program for 30 years and we don't want to lose it now.
Thanks so much.
Thank you, Maggie.
I thought you were gonna discuss the octopus that the students found out there in the intertidal zone.
Our intertidal zone here in the city of Seattle is one of our unique aspects and these volunteers are able to give educational opportunities to youth that might only read about things in a book or see them in a movie.
Being able to come out and see a barnacle come out of its shell in real life at a young age can change a kid's trajectory for a long time.
Next, I want to hand it off to another one of our amazing environmental education volunteers, Melanie Weineke.
Melanie, come on up.
Thank you.
So hello, my name is Melanie Wieneke and I've been a volunteer urban nature guide for over 12 years.
Over the years, I've taken students from all over the city to explore our parks and natural wonders all over the city.
I've had a first grader take my hand, pull me aside and whisper, it's magical, as cottonwood seeds slowly drifted down.
I've had a parent tell me that even though they visit the beach regularly, now they're going to see it differently.
I've had newly immigrated refugee high school students make a connection between their new home in Seattle and their homeland and their experience farming in their homeland through plant ecology lessons.
I've had school students delight in the diversity of life in the pocket forests, literally outside the door of their school.
A green, welcoming and inclusive Seattle needs environmental education.
Our work inspires children, sparks joy and wonder, supports budding scientists, teaches empathy and care for our green world and for one another.
I'm so grateful to Councilmember Dan Strauss for his support of our city's wonderful environmental education programs.
His Amendment 6 for the FEP levy saves the amazing naturalists and their administrative and management support staff, preserving these programs for our city's children, maintaining the history and institutional knowledge built up over the 30 years that this program has served our city.
I appreciate Councilmember Strauss' work and hope that our city council members will support this amendment as well.
Thank you.
Thank you, Melanie.
And you brought up some good points.
With this funding, the outdoors education program may change.
We might not be able to educate adults with this funds, but we will be able to educate more youth and children with these funds, future adults, if you will.
And while this amendment won't provide office space, that's another thing that the city has to still address to make sure that this program is running.
The point that I'll make is no matter who's receiving this education, it's critical that we don't lose the institutional infrastructure around using volunteers to teach youth about the wonders of the natural world that are right outside their doors, and oftentimes right under the surface of the water that we find in the intertidal zone.
Before we conclude, Laurie, another one of our amazing volunteers, would like to share a few words.
Laurie, here you are.
Hello, I'm Lori Roback Farmer and I'm a retired science teacher and I wanted to say through all my years of experience in the classroom, I know firsthand that being out in nature and and experiencing it firsthand is the way to go so many times in the buildings of schools you can't do what you can do here on the beach and that's why as a retired teacher i'm out here with the kids and i'm loving it because all those science standards are right here but they have so much more experiential value and something that really sticks with you and you you got to admit a lot of kids sometimes don't like to be in their desks learning with a paper and pen and computer they need to get out in the natural world and really experience it and stem is really important right now and there's never been a more important time in our planet to learn about the environment and to know those science standards and the natural world than now And to have that connection of Seattle.
Seattle's icon is its natural environment.
So we really need these additional resources through Amendment 6. Without them, we just really need it.
Dan Strauss is right on because there's not enough right now.
So please vote for Amendment 6 so that we could get our children connected and really learn not only the science standards, but have that connection with Seattle and our natural world.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Laurie.
And the point that I'll drive home here is that we have the program built today to educate youth about the natural environment.
Without this amendment and without this modest investment, we will likely have to close down parts of this program.
As we all know, watching the federal government when programs are closed down, they are more costly to reopen.
So it's important that we're able to keep this institution of educating youth through using volunteers established in our city.
You might ask, how would educating youth impact our city's future and impact policy making?
I can tell you as an Adams Elementary alumni who had the opportunity to raise salmon fry in the aquarium outside of our fifth grade classroom, I didn't have a full understanding of a salmon's life cycle as a fifth grader.
As that education grew and when we were able to release those salmon, my knowledge of the shoreline and the predators, opportunities to save these salmon has only grown every single year of my life.
And so today when I am taking up public policies, whether it's the seawall that was replaced on the waterfront a number of years ago, the importance of those glass tiles, the importance of those glass tiles is to help those salmon fry and those young salmon.
The ability for any time that I'm working on shoreline and in the shoreline environment, understanding what we have to do to help our baby salmon all comes from that educational experience provided to me in fifth grade.
And so as we wonder and when we think about what is a modest $2 investment going to create, I don't think we yet know because the impact ripples so far, I don't even think it's on our map.
With that, I want to thank the dozens of people who have already written the council in support of this amendment to restore full funding of this program.
The final vote on this and other amendments to the Every Child Ready initiative is scheduled for this Thursday at 9.30 a.m.
in the council chambers.
And I really, again, have to thank all of the volunteers who do this for free.
to be able to educate more people in our city about the environment around us.
Thank you for coming today.
If you've got questions, I'm happy to take them.
I do.
I just wanted to check.
Your amendment would be additive, like you're not replacing putting elsewhere in the levy to make up for this.
That's correct.
Yeah, rather than trying to cut another program's funding to save the environmental learning coordinators, we are proposing additional funds to make the program whole.
What's your understanding of the rationale for spending this program to begin with?
This was part of the budget reform exercises that have been going on for the last year and will continue for the next year or so.
What we knew last year was that we were able to extend the funding this year and that funding would end in 2025 unless we found a new revenue source or a new way of funding the program.
And so that's what we're here doing today, making sure that that program does not end at the end of this year.
And if the way I understand it, the way the Every Child initiative came out, this program would still admit, but at like 38% of the needed funding, is that right?
That's correct.
So the program in total would be reduced to less than 40% of its current operational capacity.
And that's a problem.
As I was mentioning, as we're watching these changes with the federal government, shutting down a program costs more to reopen it.
And so by keeping this program whole at full funding, we're able to leverage the institutional volunteerism by Seattleites to continue educating folks.
Does that mean that maybe the adult tours drop off and we're just educating youth?
That's a possibility.
Does it mean that, as was mentioned, the program charges Title I schools for the field trips?
Maybe that's taken off.
What is known to me, though, is that we can't undo this volunteer infrastructure that we're relying on because the return on the investment is so high.
And if that means just educating more children, I'm fine with that because the impact that we have on those kids' lives will ripple for so many years into the future.
And they're future adults anyways.
Okay.
If the program is at 40%, though, that means that the program could still serve some children, right?
Is there an estimate, I suppose?
I think we would have to get you back the exact numbers on the estimates.
But yeah, I mean, you're able to get a 40% return on the investment.
the the crux for me here is that we're leveraging volunteers to do this work and so as compared to other city programs that we operate where we're paying for every single person involved this is people who are educated well know like know a lot about this work and out here looking out for other seattleites investing their time to help seattle and we frankly need more volunteerism than less Yeah.
Well, thanks for your time today.
And again, congratulations to the Seattle Channel for winning yet again another Emmy.
Thank you.