Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods Committee 5/23/2024

Good morning, everyone.

The May 23rd, 2024 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 9.31 a.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

I will note that this morning Councilmember Wu was excused from today's meeting and Councilmember Moore will be joining us a few minutes later.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Present.

Council Member Moore?

We'll be late.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Three council members are present.

Great, thank you.

There's one item on today's agenda, but first I want to recognize we have in the audience today students from Maple Elementary on Beacon Hill.

Welcome students.

They're here to learn about all the branches of government and we're so excited to see them here this morning.

Thank you for joining us.

And I know that you're gonna be visiting with council member Morales, who's your council member, as well as visiting across the street, the municipal court, as well as visiting with the mayor's office and the archivist.

So you're gonna have a fun day today, and we're so happy to have you here and have you students engaged.

And maybe tomorrow, a few years from now, you'll be sitting up here and chairing a committee.

So welcome.

There is one item of business on today's agenda.

We have a presentation from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have no in-person speakers signed up, and there are no remote speakers.

Thank you, clerk.

Then we will proceed to agenda item number one.

Will the clerk please read today's first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one is a report from the Department of Early Learning and Education about the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy Year 4 Annual Report.

Thank you.

This item has been read into the record.

For the first item of business, we're joined this morning by the Department of Education and by the Department of Education and Early Learning's Director, Duane Chapelle.

We're also joined by Ismael Fajardo, who's the Deputy Director for the Department of Education and Early Learning.

And we also have another.

Will you all introduce yourself for the record?

And colleagues, we're gonna be hearing an annual report from the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

We're in year four.

Please note for the record, Council Member Moore has joined us.

And so we're gonna hear that annual report today from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Please introduce yourselves for the record and you may begin.

There you go.

Can you hear me?

There we go.

All right.

First of all, thank you for the introduction.

Good morning, council members.

Good morning.

Amazing Maple Elementary and teacher Micah and parents.

Good to see you all this this morning.

My name is Dr. Dwayne Chappelle, and we'll introduce ourselves and we'll get started.

I'll pass it over to my colleague, Dr. Ismael Fajardo.

Good morning, Marissa Russo, deputy director of our Impact and External Affairs Division.

So again, we appreciate this opportunity to be in front of you all today.

So thank you for having us.

So today we will walk you through the year four annual report for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

This is a required annual report that our department deal must submit to the council by ordinance.

So, throughout today's presentation, we'll be sharing highlights from levy investments, information about our partners, as well as walking you through data trends and findings.

As another reminder, this slide shows you a deal's four goals for all of our investments.

Today's presentation focuses on the three goals on the right, which are supported with FEPP levy funds, the FEPP Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Funds, which is kindergarten readiness, college and career readiness, and post-secondary degree credential or certificate attainment.

The FEPP levy's overarching goal is to achieve educational equity and close opportunity gaps for Seattle students.

We do this through partnerships with families, communities, community-based organizations, and our anchor institutional partners, Seattle Public Schools, Public Health, Seattle King County, and the Seattle Colleges.

The Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy budget is organized in the four investment areas you see here on the right.

The FEPP levy was approved by Seattle voters in 2018 to generate revenue for seven years from 2019 through 2025. So today's presentation is focused on year four of the levy implementation, school year 22, 23, which you can see as the teal band in this arrow.

We are currently in year five of levy implementation, which is the Orange Band.

And in 2025, the executive will bring a ballot referendum to voters to continue this important investment in Seattle's children, youth, and families.

Across all of our investments, I'm so proud to report that we've invested nearly $137 million in FEB levy revenue to serve more than 30,000 children and youth.

Some highlights reflected on this slide include the majority of students served identified as black, indigenous, or people of color, More than 700 K-12 families received support with basic needs.

Roughly 1,000 learners preschool through post-secondary had access to summer programming.

And we established the largest number of Seattle Promise Scholars enrolled to date, which is 1,250.

The FEPP levy and deal is able to have the reach and impact we do because of a network of more than 100 community-based school and institutional partners.

And just, we're so grateful for their passion and commitment to support the Department of Seattle's to support the development of Seattle's children and to foster the spirit of excellence and possibility in our young people.

So this slide speaks to our overall impact, and I'd like to highlight the big trends and good news we observed from year four of implementation.

So in preschool and early learning, our indicators continue to show that children who participate in the Seattle Preschool Program have increased kindergarten readiness, surpassing pre-pandemic levels across all racial and ethnic groups.

in K-12 for our school community-based and health investments, we see that overall English language arts and math scores for students in grades three through eight are improving.

On-time graduation rates for the class of 2023 also exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

For the Seattle Promise Program, for scholars who started in college in fall of 2022, they returned for the second year at record rates.

And for the scholars who started college in the fall of 2020, their three-year completion rate exceeds national averages.

exceeds, I'm sorry, the national average and shows increased completion among students of color.

So over the next 60 minutes or less, we will be looking at data tables for each investment area to show how our investments are making progress towards our FEPP goals.

And so what I'm gonna do now is pass this over to Dr. Fajardo to talk a little bit about some progress towards results.

Thank you, Dr. Chappelle.

As Dr. Chappelle mentioned, we have a requirement to report on our FEPP levy investments.

This includes access to services in progress and meeting levy goals, demographic data, and there's also requirements that deal report on Seattle Promise participant experience, which includes satisfactory academic progress, part-time, and referrals.

within students not meeting satisfactory academic progress.

For this report, it's at 14% compared to 30% last year.

18% of students are enrolled part-time, a decrease of 2% from last year.

Promise retention specialists have provided the most referrals to financial aid services, tutoring, and the path to UW advisors.

There were no new modifications in the 2022-2023 school year, And we continue to find ways to streamline our application process, coordinate with ECAP.

Now, today's focus of our annual performance management is centered on looking at a snapshot in time and trend data for our outcomes associated with our FEP levy outcomes.

Please know we are just tracking progress.

We're not looking for causal impact, but just looking at trends as we see the data.

We do this year's one through seven of the levy.

Please know that we have process and outcome evaluation reports that are published on the deals website and provide deeper analysis for preschool and promise.

Izzy, colleagues, I just want to point out that Deal will be talking about monitoring and performance management at a later time at this committee.

Deal's going to come back to talk about outcomes of the levy.

So if you have questions, you certainly can ask them, but know that they will be back to talk about outcomes in a few weeks.

So thank you, Izzy.

Yeah, thank you, Councilwoman.

And if you do have questions, please, it is a lengthy report, so it's a lengthy presentation.

If you have questions, please do raise your hand and let's get them answered at that moment.

Thank you.

Before we begin looking at the data, I want to remind us that this presentation is going to be focused on student level outcomes.

We will share all of the investment goals, our strategies, who participates, and our progress towards those outcomes.

Please know that our investments cross from preschool, K-12, and post-secondary.

All data systems are not the same, so we do our best to analyze the data where it's one cohesive story.

We also, to protect data privacy for results that are fewer than 10, we suppress the data so we can protect student privacy.

We also will talk about the opportunity gap.

We define that as a significant and persistent disparity in access to educational experiences and expanded learning opportunities between groups of students.

We calculate that.

by looking at the highest and lowest performing groups.

Many of the slides will have lots of data, and I just want us to remind ourselves, when we talk about opportunity gaps, we're looking at the lowest and highest.

Disruptive data, as you all know, COVID-19 impacted students' lives, but it also impacted the way that we capture data.

You will notice in our slides, and we've highlighted where the impact is, Some assessments were not completed due to COVID, some were modified, and we want to keep that in mind as we're looking at the data.

And also, Izzy, keep in mind, colleagues, that the Department of Education and Early Learning works very closely with Seattle Public Schools when they're gathering the data in assessing these programs.

Yep.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Okay, so for preschool and early learning, this is where we'll start.

So this slide right here is a version of what you'll see for each investment area.

And it's a summary of the details that's found in the FEPP levy implementation and evaluation plan.

I'll review it briefly and additional details will be discussed further in later slides.

So our goal for the preschool and early learning investment area is for Seattle students to have access and to access to and utilize high quality early learning services that promote success in kindergarten.

To make progress towards this goal, we fund several strategies that support our award-winning Seattle Preschool Program, which is recognized by the National Institution for Early Education Research as a national model.

We track percentages.

We track percentage of preschool students meeting the teacher strategies, gold expectation.

And when they are arriving in kindergarten, we wanna make sure that they are kindergarten ready.

And that is measured by the WaKIDS readiness standards.

Dr. Fajardo, he'll provide a little bit more details on those measurements in a future slide.

So all of our and all of Deal's investments are rooted in evidence and they are informed by national best practice.

There's a large body of research that affirms the positive impact that preschool has on child development and school readiness.

Council action in 2014 supported a robust body of research that developed the original Seattle Preschool Program model, which we continue to fund today.

We also have a number of internal and external evaluations of our local Seattle Preschool Program that demonstrates its effectiveness in areas for growth.

Our most recent external evaluation that was conducted by Education Northwest, for example, found that Asian, Black, and English language learners who participate in the Seattle Preschool Program are more prepared or kindergarten ready than their peers who are not in the Seattle Preschool Program.

And we have two additional external evaluations that are forthcoming.

Um, so the Seattle preschool program has a six hour and extended day models, inclusion classrooms for students with disabilities, as well as dual language programs.

All of our participating providers are licensed by the state and participate in the early achievers quality framework.

our program is open to all three- and four-year-olds citywide.

So what I'm gonna do now is pass this over to Dr. Fajardo to take us through a little bit more of this data.

Thank you, Dr. Chappelle.

So a quick snapshot on some of the highlights for our Seattle preschool program.

We have served slightly over 2000 children.

75% of them identify as BIPOC.

88 school and community partners are involved in this program.

40% of immigrant and refugee families are participating in this program.

And we've invested 56 million this past year.

This is a 6% increase from the previous year and 71% of SVP children receive free tuition.

79% of SVP sites are located in council districts one, two and three.

We at deal are always looking to expand where there is need.

We conduct RFIs for expansion and we're looking at further expanding up north.

And Director Chappelle, the deal prioritizes communities who've been underserved.

So that's why you're in those districts first.

But you will continue to add because it is a program that is available to all three and four year olds.

But you're not in all areas of the city.

And that's where I know you would like to be.

But colleagues, that is how deal goes about identifying where to start.

And that's where they started the program.

And their goal is really to be able to be accessible throughout the city in a more robust way.

Because we know that even though the program itself is accessible to all three and four-year-olds, regardless of where you live in the city, folks are not going to be able to utilize a facility that it's not near where they live.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Councilmember.

Yes, that's correct.

Thank you, Director.

So what we're seeing on the map is our council district by our provider agencies or our sites.

The orange dots reflect the new sites added in 2022, 2023. We have increased how many children are served by 108 children this past year.

We have 25 provider agencies and 88 sites.

As Councilwoman Marissa Rivera just mentioned, we're looking for ways to expand where there is need.

We also know that there are just under 13,000 three and four year olds here in Seattle.

SPP would need to quadruple in size to offer a seat to all of those children.

However, that is not our goal.

There are also children served by Head Start, ECAP, and private childcare services.

Some families also choose to keep children home through kinship care and our levy renewal.

We will consider these factors and set the next target for SVP expansion.

Thank you, Izzy.

Council Member Moore has a question.

Yeah, thank you very much, Chair.

I just had a couple of questions to get clarity.

So I noticed that nine new sites were added in 2022 and 23, and most of those were in District 2, and there was one in borderline, I guess, 5, 4, and then one in CD1.

So how is the decision made to house or place more sites in particular districts?

So there's more information in the data appendix about the change in provider sites over time.

Decisions on deals end are really based on provider interest.

So each year we engage small businesses, existing SPP partners to join our program.

We look for existing providers to increase the number of classrooms they have, and we also partner with the school district.

to see if we can add classrooms in elementary school buildings.

It is largely a business decision for those organizations.

Can their business handle the capacity to increase staffing, to increase management of their resources, to add more classrooms?

Is there an available space that would meet licensing requirements from the state?

So on our end, it's typically an easy decision because it's dependent on who raises their hand and seeks to expand.

And once we know who's interested, we then layer on our priorities about neighborhoods that need more access to a classroom, family need, where we might be seeing a large number of applications and things like that.

So are you proactive with the provider groups to encourage them to expand?

And is there support from the city to help with expanding?

Certainly, yeah, we have a team of staff in our early learning division who work with our childcare providers to see if they would be interested in expanding their offerings to implement our preschool classroom and meet our quality standards.

We have a partnership with the Imagine Institute who works with family childcare providers so that they can join the Seattle Preschool Program.

And there are other organizational supports For example, we have an investment in early learning where we help teachers get additional education so they can become lead teachers and many of those folks go on to establish their own businesses.

Great, and sorry, just one last question.

So it looks like there's pretty good eligibility.

I'm just wondering how are families connected, like particularly immigrant, refugee, English second language families connected with these programs?

Yeah, we, again, have been recruiting since 2014. So we do believe there's good knowledge about the program offering across Seattle.

We are serving a majority of, I believe that's the next slide, lower income and middle income families, as well as a majority of BIPOC families.

However, to your point, we do know we can do more to increase our language access.

And in language marketing of the program, we actually have a project happening right now where we intend to co-create a dual language marketing campaign to reach more Latinx families.

Do you do any collaboration with Department of Neighborhoods in terms of outreach to the various communities?

We have been talking to them recently to increase that.

We had prior efforts where we worked with the community liaison program, but we are rebuilding our strategies post-pandemic.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And Director Chappell, has shared with me that they've prioritized certain areas of the city, but as they look toward expansion, they readily recognize that they have other areas of the city they have not been able to meet this need, and so they will be looking at those areas of the city.

in their next iterations of the expansion because they recognize that their city, I mean, excuse me, families and these other, you know, on the north end of the city that also have a need for this service.

And so they will be looking at that.

and Director Chappelle has committed that he's going to be looking at the north end as well as they continue to expand SPP.

That's correct.

Thank you for that, Council Member Rivera.

But she is absolutely correct about what she just stated to you.

That is one of our priorities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Go ahead.

So this slide here, we're looking at our provider partners One of our bigger partners is Seattle Public Schools, but we also partner with community-based organizations to provide preschool in the community.

We have various classrooms that support SVP dual language.

We have 22. We also have 70 SVP summer that allow for year-round learning to occur.

And we also have SVP Plus that provides support for for students that need individual educational needs.

And I'll pause for a second.

Thank you, Izzy.

Thank you, students.

Thank you for being here today.

Enjoy the rest of the day.

Bye, Micah.

Y'all have a good rest of the day.

See you later.

And thank you for skipping out on the macaroni and cheese that you missed at your school lunch.

I looked up your calendar.

So I appreciate y'all for being here today.

Thank you.

This is much better than macaroni and cheese, Council Member Hollingsworth.

Come on.

Thank you.

I like that.

We lost our audience.

Is he?

It is.

Mac and cheese and seasoned vegetables.

So Dr. Chappelle mentioned earlier on how we track progress for preschool.

Here in this slide, we're getting a little bit more specific in what teachers' teaching strategy is called.

What it is, it's an observational tool that happens in preschool.

It's administered by SEP teachers, where they look at milestones in social-emotional, physical, language, cognitive development, literacy, and STEM.

This is closely linked to the WaKIDS, which stands for Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills.

Now, this assessment is carried out in early in, I think, October.

when they enter kindergarten and they observe for similar domains, which are social, emotional, physical, language literacy, cognitive and math.

So when we are looking at our indicators, please know this is what they reflect.

So observational tools in both preschool and in kindergarten.

So who participates in SPP?

Well, we have nearly 2,000 students that participated this year.

The majority of them identify as black, African-American, followed by white, Asian, Hispanic, Latino, two or more races.

Together, this is 75% of students are identifying as BIPOC, which is a slight decrease from the previous year.

Within gender, male, female is equally balanced.

We serve 49% within the 185% federal poverty level, which is also the same level of students receiving free price lunch at schools.

We also serve 40% of refugee and immigrant families in the program, and 4% are experiencing homelessness.

So this table, as Dr. Chappell mentioned earlier, our goal is children are kindergarten ready.

What we're seeing here is a table of the number of SVP participants and indicator trends.

We are tracking this back to 2015, 2016, and we are sharing data all the way up until this report to 2023. You can see that we have increased year over year on the amount of children participating in the program.

We talked about TSG.

You can see that we are increasing our TSG even after COVID.

We are at 81%, which is a 2% increase from last year.

We're at 68% of children, of SVP children who entered kindergarten, 68% of them are meeting WCAG standards.

That means that they passed all six of the domains, which is a 6% increase from the previous year.

And we see that the opportunity gap, again, this means the largest racial ethnic group compared to the lowest racial ethnic group.

And we saw a drop of 10%, which is good.

Izzy, can you talk about, I mean, before, if you're tracking the supporting the TSG, in year 2015-16, it's at 83%.

It jumped up, and then it decreased, and then there was COVID.

It continued to decrease, and then this increase from last year to this year.

Can you talk a little bit about, I mean, even pre-COVID, it had dropped, so...

Yeah.

I will say that in the early years of preschool, we had a smaller sample size.

Usually when you have a smaller sample size, the data can swing one way or another depending on who's in that cohort.

So as your sample size increases, you create a little bit more stability in understanding that data point.

Yes, I would acknowledge that in 2018, 2019, before COVID, there was a significant drop.

With a significant sample size.

Yeah, with a significant sample size, right?

We don't know.

Yeah, so we at Deal, we always look at this data to understand how we can do better.

Our department is huge on continuous quality improvement.

We don't shy away from the data.

We look at the data and we say, what can we do better?

Which is part of the reason why we look at the data and we look at it in many disaggregating ways, right?

We look at race, we look at other ways to make sure that If it's one particular group that is not doing well, then we make sure that we can support that group.

Maybe it's more responsive curriculum.

Maybe it's more training for teachers.

So we're always looking to ensure that that trend doesn't continue downward.

As you can see, COVID happened.

We started to rebound, and it's not where we want to be.

Obviously, the goal is always to be 100%, and we are continuing to make strides to ensure that all students are achieving the TSG.

Do you know what the national trend percentage is?

Not at the top of my head, Councilwoman, but I can get back to you.

Great, thank you.

Okay, so we have now seen the table.

Now we're gonna look at some line graphs.

So here you can see that as SVP has expanded kindergarten readiness results, continue to show improvement despite COVID impacts.

We are proud of that.

And we hope that this 68% continues to climb next year.

So our hope is when we come back, we continue to see WaKIDS standards being met at a higher rate.

To do that, it's important to look at racial or ethnic groups.

So the next slide, we'll look at who is meeting the WaKIDS standard.

Again, we see that particular groups continue to do well in what kids have standards.

However, we can see that all racial or ethnic groups have exceeded pre-pandemic levels, which is to celebrate.

And obviously, we have more room to grow within these gaps, so we will continue to monitor and to ensure that we can support our lowest groups in this case, Hispanic, Latino students at 56%.

So as Marissa mentioned earlier, looking to increase access to the program, but we also want them to be successful.

So how do we support the Latinx students in our program to ensure that they're gonna be walk kids ready when they get to kindergarten?

So we're always looking at data, we don't shy away from it.

So just to recap the preschool and early learning, We're on track to serve the 2,500 served annually by 2026. That is our FEPP levy expansion goal.

Over 2,000 children were served at 88 sites citywide by 25 community organizations.

SVP participants are more diverse and with greater financial need than the overall SPS kindergarten population.

While kids proficiency among SPP participants matriculating to SPS kindergarten exceed pre-pandemic levels.

We just saw that and we're closing the opportunity gap, yet we still have room to grow.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Fajardo for that one.

So now what we're gonna do is move on to our K-12 investment area.

So as I noted above, This is a summary of our implementation and evaluation plan content for this investment area.

The goal of this investment portfolio is that students have access to expanded learning opportunities that promote on-time high school graduation.

We track our progress with our supporting and headline indicators.

For this investment, we want to ensure that students are meeting their third and eighth grade English language arts and math proficiency standards, and ultimately, that they are graduating in four years.

Our K-12 investments, they draw from a broad evidence base on interventions that support youth development and academic success.

In a 2023 Washington State Institute for Public Policy report, they identified interventions such as tutoring, summer programs, and access to additional academic courses as strategies to close opportunities gaps that widen during the pandemic, due to the pandemic.

These are precisely the type of interventions that the levy supports through school day and out of school time partnerships.

Additionally, research supports that our investments to increase the diversity of educators in our schools.

Research has demonstrated that if students of color have educators who share their race or ethnicity, they are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college.

So in addition to the Seattle Preschool Program evaluations, we also have planned internal deal evaluations of our school-based investments portfolio, as well as a planned external evaluation by Mathematica with a focus on the K-12 interventions, or should I say investments, and it will be using a longitudinal cohort analysis.

So our K-12 investments are designed ultimately to support historically underserved students and underserved K-12 youth, specifically those that are not currently meeting grade level academic standards.

And we do this through a school-based and community-based investments.

Our investment portfolio focuses on expanding access to school day and out of school time learning opportunities, like after school and summer programs using research and evidence informed models.

The New York State Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education Framework informs our approach to culturally responsive investments to affirm students' racial and cultural identities, excuse me, racial and cultural, yes, identities, and develop their ability to connect across cultures Our approach to social-emotional learning is guided by the Cassell's Five Framework.

And what this is, this approach identifies five areas for youth development.

There's self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

College and career readiness investments are anchored in research by David Conley to help students develop the four keys to unlock their potential after K-12 schooling.

This includes the development of cognitive strategies such as research and interpretation skills, content knowledge such as credits required for high school or college graduation, learning skills and techniques such as time management, test-taking strategies, and transition knowledge and skills, such as how to navigate financial aid or the admissions process, and really to advocate for themselves in big systems.

And the last framework that I want to unpack a bit for you is around what academics call 21st century skills.

I know we've all heard it.

This is admittedly over, it admittedly overlaps between this concepts and others that I've shared, but it most often describes as fostering youth creativity, their innovation, and critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and collaboration and technology skills.

This is most often achieved through project-based learning, specifically group projects and design challenges.

So we fund programs across this wide range of beneficial youth programming, and we will provide additional examples on later slides.

So what I'm gonna do now, uh-oh, yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth, do you have a question?

I did not.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

No worries.

Oh, Council Member Moore.

Yeah, thanks.

So I noticed on your eligibility slide, you said CBOs, community-based organizations, are responsible for their own program recruitment and enrollment.

How do you monitor recruitment, like are there recruitment goals set?

Is there an enrollment goal set?

How do you sort of monitor performance on this?

So what we do, so for one, our community-based organizations have really robust relationships with families.

They have robust relationship with schools.

And as they are planning for the summer, what they ultimately do is work with whether it's a school in their geographic area to make sure families are aware of the programming that's being offered.

We also set, as we partner with them, enrollment targets within their specific programming for the summer.

So we are very intentional in making sure that we're clear on the anticipated number of students we're looking to enroll, and then connecting with them to see how we do with meeting that target.

But I just know that the partnership really comes from them having these robust relationships just with schools and the community.

So is there a do you enter into a contract?

We do.

Yes, ma'am.

We do.

We do.

We enter into a contract agreement with them.

And in the contract agreement, one of the deliverables is is the expected enrollment amount.

Okay, and then do you check back to see how they're doing on meeting those?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Can you talk a little bit about how elementary schools are selected to receive FEPP dollars and if there is multi-year funding granted?

And then I have another question after that.

Can I come to that question on later slides?

We'll be talking to that.

Sure.

We'll be talking about that on later slides.

That's why I'm smiling.

Okay.

Do you want to ask your other question?

I'll wait.

Okay.

Okay.

Great.

So what I'm going to do now is pass this off to Marissa to talk about this next part.

Perfect.

Okay, so the indicators of impact that we'll be highlighting for you today include measures of academic proficiency for third through eighth grade students.

We leverage data from the Smarter Balanced Assessment to assess progress towards this goal.

It's a measurement tool used in K through 12 and administered each spring.

We also look at the four-year graduation rate to monitor on-time completion of high school for our seniors.

And Marissa, the reason why third grade is because that's when they start testing in the schools so they can start gathering data.

They don't have data before then because they're not testing in the schools before third grade, correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

So this slide here, you can see the geographic spread of our K-12 investments.

We are currently investing in 35 schools through our school-based investments and family support services investments.

So this is the overlapping light blue and orange circles on the map.

We also are currently funding 32 community-based organizations, and in total, this investment area reached more than 18,000 K-12 students in the 22-23 school year.

So this slide lists our 35 school partners.

You can see the code for who receives a school-based grant and family support services.

So for our school-based investment partners, to your question, Council Member Morales, there was a competitive funding process held in the second year of FEP levy implementation, where all Seattle public schools were invited to apply for funding.

We identified 20 elementary schools, five middle and five high schools to receive investments.

There was a robust application that assessed school need, school readiness to implement interventions to address those student academic needs.

And we also required a budget proposal, intervention proposal to inform our decision-making process.

The grants for elementary schools are smaller than middle and high school because there are less students enrolled at that grade level.

And in total, the grants range, I believe from 250,000 up to 700,000 on the high end.

And this is our largest investment area in the levy, K-12.

And are those grants over multiple years or is that per school year?

They're for the duration of the FEP levy.

So they'll go through year seven.

Can I ask one more question?

Yeah.

So what I am beginning to worry about is what happens to schools who may receive funding here if they are on the list of schools that will be closed?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we're closely monitoring those conversations, partnering with the school district to keep pace with their budget discussions.

And we are prepared to be nimble to support students.

For us, the commitment again is to student success and closing those gaps.

So whatever the district decisions are, we'll be prepared to address to ensure students continue to receive their support they need.

Okay.

Great.

Marissa, can you talk a little bit about on deals end?

So the schools apply.

I understand this piece about you look at, the need and the readiness to be able to implement.

What other things does DEAL look at in terms of, typically when departments do an RFP, a request for proposals for grants, they have a list of items that you're looking for from schools in order to be able to, I mean, the need is so great and there's so many schools that apply and you can't fund all of them.

So there are some indicators or standards that you put as you're making the decision.

So can you talk a little bit about what those are for deal?

I can take that one.

Yeah, so you're right.

There's over 100 schools in Seattle Public Schools.

So what we did is we had many indicators that looked at academic need.

So we looked at third to eighth grade math, third to eighth grade ELA.

We looked at percentage of ELL students, percentage of...

graduation, total enrollment, and free and reduced lunch.

With that, we created composite scores, and then we used a decile calculation to figure out what schools rose to the top based on need, which ones fell in the middle, and which ones were doing really well in those indicators.

So based on that, we narrowed down the pool, and then we invited them to apply to an RFP to let us know what their interventions are to meet the academic gap that was being experienced at their school.

So there was multiple reviews.

For the selection, there was a community panel, deal panel, to assess, and I believe there might've been an interview, an interview of potential schools that were gonna receive the funds.

Yes, and we also partnered with Seattle Public Schools in creating the deciles or the indicators of selection.

So are you saying not all schools, you select the schools that are invited to apply?

not all schools can apply or you do a second process.

Everybody applies and then you do a second based on what you're looking for.

Yeah, we use the criteria to narrow the need.

So we would not, in other words, if there was a school that was doing really well, we did not want them to use up their time when they may not be competitive for the grant.

So then we released an RFP for the schools that we identified that would, were meeting the criteria And then we went through a community evaluation panel to select.

Correct.

And you tier them.

So are there schools that you would fund if you had more funding for?

I mean, there are 35 schools, but I don't know.

And there are 105, I think, schools in the city.

Yeah.

Yes, with any funding, there's always more need than available funding, which is why we used the decile criteria to identify those that rose to the top with the greatest need.

Yes, there were schools that were of need, but may not be the greatest need when we looked at the data.

Great.

Izzy, when you all come back to present outcomes, will you please do, I'd love to hear more about the decile criteria.

so we can get a better understanding.

So we can move on now for this, but...

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

And I skipped over our examples of interventions at the school level, so I'll share those quickly.

So Director Chappelle mentioned social-emotional learning, 21st century skills.

Our partners at James Baldwin Elementary School, formerly Northgate, they are using our grant to implement a research-based curriculum called Second Step.

So this supports students' social-emotional learning development.

Lessons and activities from that curriculum are helping students develop skills to resolve conflicts with their peers, regulate their emotions, and have empathy for both their families, their community.

Our partners at Beacon Hill Elementary, with their school-based investment, they are creating a culture of positive social-emotional learning in the building.

So they are implementing school-wide assemblies where they are reinforcing the positive behaviors they want their students to develop.

So in those assemblies, they're celebrating safe, kind, and responsible school choices.

So among our community-based partners, you can see the full list here across all of our K-12 investments.

Some examples to highlight include our partners from STEM Path Innovation Network, or SPIN.

They are implementing STEM enrichment activities, and this would fall under what we call college and career readiness.

So they're actively exposing young people to career paths in the STEM fields through culturally relevant instruction, expanding their ideas about what might be possible for their careers.

And our partners with the Academy for Creating Excellence or ACE organization are offering summer learning experiences in culturally responsive manner for male students as they transition from seventh to eighth grade.

Their program model includes academic learning opportunities, in humanities, math, and science.

They also plan a variety of field trips that also fall under that college and career readiness framework.

Marissa, can you talk a little bit about how you select these partners?

You talked about how you do it for SPP.

Sure.

How do you go about selecting?

Do they apply and et cetera?

Yep.

So for all of our community-based partners, there were, again, competitive application processes at different cycles of the levy.

Some of these partners came to be a part of the portfolio as a part of council action or prior budget ads.

where Deal launched new grant applications.

The opportunities and access investment area originated in the FEP levy.

So we actually had two RFIs.

The first was for three years.

We refer to that as a cycle one that closed and we're now in cycle two.

Yeah, and again, our standard funding opportunity process is we release an application, we identify our standards for program implementation through our website, applicants apply.

We have a technical review process where we ensure all components of the application were submitted.

And then we convene review panels of deal staff, community members.

We engage members of our levy oversight committee to advise on that process.

applicants are scored and ranked.

We look at the geographic spread.

We look at how much the programs cost so that we can try and serve as many young people as possible.

Thank you.

Council Member Hollingsworth, you have a question?

Yeah, thank you.

This is a very impressive list of all the community partners.

Quick question.

Do you differentiate in-school mentorship versus afterschool mentorship on this list?

Yeah, the majority of these grantees who we contract with directly are providing out of school time interventions.

What is not reflected here to your point is our school-based investment partners, they manage their own subcontracts with CBOs.

So there are likely additional community-based organizations working during the school day, but they are funded through that school-based investment model and receive contracts directly from schools in the school district.

Got it.

Understood.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Great, so some things to highlight overall for this investment area.

We're seeing growth in academic proficiency.

We know that we are reaching students who need support most, students from lower income families who are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

And again, 47% of students served are located in council district two, where there is the greatest need in our city.

For access to services, the majority of youth reached by these investments are BIPOC at 75%.

And again, you can see on the far right image, students from families with additional needs to support both their learning and meeting their basic needs.

Again, we believe we're serving students who need the most support.

In monitoring our supporting indicators and headline indicators for this investment area, if you look at that bottom row, you can see that we have increased the number of students served.

We are showing gains in English language arts proficiency and math proficiency, and our graduation rates are constant.

We also saw a slight 2% closure in the opportunity gap for high school graduation, and we have graphs and visuals to show you that data in more detail.

For English language arts proficiency, again, you can see the downward trend that students across Seattle Public Schools experience during the pandemic.

We are recovering from that learning loss and FEPP serve students are showing an increased proficiency.

The rate of improvement for ELA is 8% compared to a 4% rate of improvement for the district as a whole.

When we look across racial and ethnic groups, again, you can see over time that performance among FEPP served students is similar to pre-pandemic, but again, this should be better.

And so we continue to monitor student progress to scale our interventions to meet the need within school communities.

In math, again, a similar more pronounced downward trend following the pandemic.

This does mirror what was observed nationally among students during the pandemic.

For students served by FEPP investments, their proficiency again is increasing at a faster rate than the district as a whole.

So FEPP served students have improved by 16% since fall 2021, whereas district-wide that improvement was 10%.

Again, looking more closely across racial and ethnic groups, we see that proficiency is similar to pre-pandemic.

We did see a slight closure in the opportunity gap, but again, this should be better, and we are continuing to work to improve student outcomes.

On time graduation is occurring at higher rates than pre pandemic.

I do want to note that the state allowed for a waiver of some graduation requirements.

So this may be attributing to the increase.

But the key takeaway for deal here is that FEP serve students are graduating at similar rates to the district as a whole.

In general, colleagues, I just, deal's going to come back.

They're doing, obviously, they indicated they're doing their evaluation work is in progress at the moment.

These are just almost raw data.

There is no causality between the FEPP investment and these rates that we're seeing.

And so the hope is when they complete their evaluation data, they'll have a better picture of why.

So I just caution you as you're reading these not to attribute causality to the FEPP investment because we actually don't have that information yet.

Thank you.

Okay, and then again here you can see improvement in graduation rates, a narrowing of the opportunity gap, and those student groups where we would want to see improvement through our investments.

And then closing out our K-12 investment area, just to summarize the data you just saw, we served more than 18,000 students with 60 school and community-based partners, leading service delivery in our schools and community.

District-wide outcomes have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

However, among FEPP serve students, we are seeing gains in both English language arts and math at an average rate of 6%.

Graduation rates exceed pre-pandemic levels.

And in FEPP year four, we continued to see opportunity gap closure.

Thank you, Marissa.

And colleagues, also, I just wanted to remind us that the FEPP levy investments are not meant to supplant the work of Seattle Public Schools.

They really are meant to be complementary to help some of the students who are not achieving be able to achieve and meet their goals.

requirements for Seattle Public Schools and this is like a really key point because the FEPP investment would not be robust enough to meet a need that that really is something that Seattle Public Schools is required to provide to students so we really need to I just wanted to underscore that point because it's really important our investment is not meant to supplant but to really complement

Thank you for sharing that, Councilmember.

You're absolutely correct.

So I'm gonna push us again to this next slide, which is K-12 school health.

So our focus...

Excuse me.

Our focus with the K-12 health investments is to promote student access to medical and mental health services.

When...

When students are healthy, both in body and in mind, they are more able to engage in learning that takes place in the classroom.

And, colleagues, the FEP includes a school-based health center investment, and this is what you're hearing about now.

Yes, and that's a great transition.

So school-based health centers are our largest investment.

There is a strong body of evidence which supports the effectiveness of school health centers and demonstrates that when students have access to health care in school buildings, not only are they more likely to access care, but they miss less school and have better academic outcomes.

And our implementation partners, Public Health, Seattle, King County, have collaborated with researchers at the University of Washington to complete external evaluations locally, and an analysis of utilization trends is also expected later this year.

So our school-based health centers also provide a comprehensive medical and mental health care to students, as well as school-wide health education and support for insurance enrollment.

A partnership with NeighborCare Health also brings portable dental services to students.

And Seattle public school students are eligible to access school health centers, health center care at our 29 location citywide during school hours.

All right, so moving into the data portion of this section, we just want to orient you to the indicators you'll be hearing about.

So we'll be reporting on access to portable oral screening through that mobile dental program.

We will be talking about student immunization in compliance with Washington state requirements.

We will also share rates for school nurse administration of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire.

And our headline indicator for this investment area is student school attendance.

Access to school-based health centers, as shown with the dots on the map here, occurs citywide.

This investment area served more than 18,000 students through seven provider agencies and 29 school-based health centers and nurses.

So on this slide, excuse me.

Second table.

On this slide, excuse me.

We have our seven partner agencies, as well as the 29 schools that those clinics are located in.

The contracts with these partner agencies are managed by Public Health Seattle King County as our anchor partner for this investment area.

As a snapshot for this area of investment, again, you can see the majority of students served identify as BIPOC.

And at the bottom row here, you have the number of visits that those providers offered to students.

We'll share more on this slide about the actual numbers of students served.

So in total, after we control for duplicate numbers, we're estimating more than 18,000 students reached by this investment area.

Students are likely to access services across this range of investments.

So for example, a student could be included in a school nurse count.

They may have also accessed the portable dental services and they may have received medical care at the school-based health center.

So that's why the vertical column is not added cumulatively.

So for school-based health center services here, you see that's over 7,000 students served.

For school nurses, that is more than 15,000 students served by nurses at those 29 schools.

Access to services, again, we see majority BIPOC students served at 61%.

For students with greatest needs, 5% of students are McKinney-Vento as defined by the school district, 16% receive special education services, 19% English language learners, and 25% immigrant and refugee family backgrounds.

For our indicators, again, in this bottom row, you see that we are increasing access to services across all of those supporting indicators.

Attendance rates, as we'll show in later slides, have not improved district-wide.

We know that our school-based health centers, again, are reaching students who need the most support, and so it's likely that the students accessing care already have poorer attendance than other schools in their building, or students in their building.

Great, so here's that trend line for school attendance.

The blue line is the district overall.

The green line is FEPP serve students.

And when we look at this more closely by race and ethnicity, again, you see the widening opportunity gap for attendance and that this has not improved since the pandemic.

Overall, for this investment area, more students have accessed our FEPP-funded services compared to the prior year.

We served more than 6,000 students with medical care through the school-based health centers.

About 1,500 received mental health care through school-based health centers.

And again, that school attendance rate overall has not improved.

And I also want to underscore here, colleagues, that as with our SPS investments in the K-12 space, I should say, not the SPS investment, but the K-12 space, with the school-based health centers, it's not meant to supplant a primary medical need, as most of these students, or all of these students should have access to healthcare through the state.

But it's really meant to supplement while they're in school if a need arises while they're in school that the health-based school centers are able to address that need.

But it's not meant to supplant their primary health care that gets provided through the state.

Thank you again for highlighting that.

Yep.

Okay, so as we're in the home stretch here with the Seattle Promise...

Excuse us, or excuse me.

So last but not least, we are eager to share the great things happening with the Seattle Promise Program with you.

So the goal of our Seattle Promise Program is that students access post-secondary opportunities.

They attain their certificate, a credential, or a degree.

The program has three core components that include tuition support, equity scholarship, and college preparation and persistent supports.

We monitor the success of the Seattle Promise Program in partnership with our colleagues at the Seattle colleges, and we look at supporting and headline indicators such as enrollment, persistence, and completion rates.

The Promise Program launched with funding from the FEPP levy and joins more than 400 Promise Programs nationally.

However, or should I say, and similar to how our Seattle preschool program leveraged research and best practices from other preschool programs nationally, the Seattle Promise Program design team looked at more established Promise programs, like from the City University of New York, to develop our implementation policies.

So to date, DEAL has partnered with the Seattle Colleges on two process evaluations, and we have an external evaluation conducted in partnership with Westat Insight and the Washington Student Achievement Council, and those are expected later this year.

I wanna say by also adding a third option, the 2020 cohort graduating class increased size by 30%.

In fall of 2023, 28% of all Promise Scholars were enrolled part-time.

And we are currently collecting more data about the part-time students and are conducting an impact evaluation on part-time equity scholarships.

Oh, we missed the overview slide.

Oh, I'm sorry.

This slide is this.

Oh, okay, thank you.

I skipped over this slide.

Going a little too fast.

So the Seattle Promise Tuition Scholarship is applied after state federal funding, and it is accessible to all Seattle public high school graduates.

The Equity Scholarship is an added funding support for students with increased financial need.

This scholarship is up to $1,000 per quarter and can be used by Promise Scholars to address non-tuition related expenses.

College preparation support begins in the junior year of high school and persistent supports continue through a Promise Scholars participation, through the Promise Scholars participation in the program.

In response to COVID impacts and a racial equity toolkit completed by DEAL, Council supported extending Promise beyond the original two years to three years.

as well as allowing other barriers, excuse me, as well as allowing students to enroll part-time in certain circumstances to ensure medical, financial, and other barriers, they don't impede their success.

And so, as you'll see in later slides, our data shows that allowing for three years of support is increasing positive outcomes, particularly for our BIPOC students on both in the case to fall to fall retention as well as completion.

And Director Chappell, this is just to underscore, it's giving the students more time to complete those 90 credits and maybe helping with some equity scholarships by which they're able to access some extra support in order to complete those 90 credits.

Yes.

Okay, so now I'll pass it over to Dr. Fajardo to talk to us about some indicators of impact.

Thank you, Dr. Chappell.

So for this investment, we look at three indicators, fall enrollment, number of Promise Scholars enrolled in courses at Seattle colleges during the fall, persistence rates, we calculate this as they return for their second fall, and completion rate, we observe both two and three years.

Today, we'll be sharing the three-year completion rate.

So as you can see, we have 1200, or a little over 1200 Promise Scholars enrolled at three Seattle colleges, and we have 22 eligible high schools.

This is an increase of 136 scholars.

You can see the darker, the blue, the more students who are enrolled in that campus.

Campuses are in orange.

The green dots are high schools

Izzy, are these all high schools in Seattle?

Yes.

So here are the eligible high schools.

Perfect timing.

So I'll let us have a moment to look at the list.

This is a universal program, so anyone in the city can apply for the two-year program.

college program.

Yes.

I also want to acknowledge that we also have Atlas and Sierra, who are not part of the Seattle Public Schools system.

And Rainier Valley Leadership Academy.

Oh, yes.

And Rainier Valley Leadership Academy.

So here's a snapshot.

So we have a little over 1,200 scholars enrolled.

70% of students identify as BIPOC.

Again, 22 eligible high schools.

550 students receive equity scholarships.

And in total, we have invested $17 million to this promise program.

We're at a 31% three-year completion rate, one percentage point above the national average.

And we'll get into more details on other comparison groups.

We have the largest ever persistence rate from fall to fall at 60%.

And 41% of scholars are from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

So all around, if you look at those subgroups plus the BIPOC, huge success for providing access to those that need it.

So here's a snapshot of demographics.

The largest group, white, followed by Asian, black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, two or more races.

We have more male than female, which if folks have been following the national trends, Females are more likely to enroll in college compared to men.

So this is an interesting observation that we're actually attracting males into the program.

So something to keep in mind.

As I just mentioned, 41% immigrant and refugee families, but we're also serving 20% that have an English language learner background, 14% special education, and 5% are experiencing homelessness that are being served.

Here we're going to be looking at cohort.

Cohort means that in the fall of 2018, that's where students were initially enrolled.

Promise began with six schools and had 191 students enrolled and had a 57% persistence rate, and they had a 37% graduation rate.

Part of the reason why I'm highlighting this is because that has been kind of standard for the rest of the cohorts that follow.

Again, keep in mind the small sample size, and then we had fewer high schools still want to celebrate that cohort.

You'll see that we started to increase to 290 in 2019. Persistence rate dropped 6%.

Three-year completion rate was at 30%, which is a 7% decrease from that first cohort.

Now in 2020, we included 17 high schools.

So this is where we expanded all access.

We had 689 students enrolled.

We had 54% persistence for this group, which is an increase from the previous persistence rate.

And this group graduated higher than the previous 2019 cohort at 31%.

We don't have completion data for cohort 2021 or 2022, but you'll see that in 2022, we've increased to non-Seattle public high schools, Rainier Valley, Atlas and Sierra, and a few others.

You'll see that this is the largest cohort that enrolled that fall.

and has the greatest persistent rate fall to fall.

So bigger numbers, more schools, and we have a higher persistence rate.

So I'm encouraged that when we come back in a year or two, that we'll see three-year completion rates increase given that persistence rate.

And you work with Seattle colleges to get those data points.

Yes.

And can you talk a little bit about those four schools you added?

Yeah, so let's go back here.

So we added Rainier Valley Leadership Academy, Atlas, and Sierra.

I don't have the specific numbers for those schools, but can come back to you.

It's in the data appendix.

It's in the data appendix, yeah.

So it's in the data appendix to get really specific on the numbers.

And if you cannot find it, I'll help you look for it.

And these are just, they're not private schools.

They're just, they're public, but not part of the Seattle Public School Charter.

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure folks understood.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

So again, I was elevating cohort 2018 for its three-year completion rate.

It was at 37%.

We were proud of that, but there was smaller sample size, a smaller cohort.

But when you compare it to the national average, And when you compare it to the Seattle College District overall, you'll see that Seattle Promise across all of the cohorts are doing better in three-year completion.

So that's worth to celebrate.

Now, Very similar to the other investments, we always disaggregate by race or ethnic groups.

Here you'll see that in cohort 2018, some of the highest three-year completion rates were from Asian students.

Now in cohort 2020, you will see that they've experienced the largest drop, yet are still at the top at 43% for cohort 2020. Again, We look at the opportunity gap between the highest and the lowest.

Obviously, we have more room to do for the Latinx, Latino students, where we hope that we are supporting them.

I will say that Black African American three-year completion rates have gone up 7% from the previous cohort 2019. So again, worth celebrating.

And we continue to look at the data and find ways that we can ensure our BIPOC students are completing at high rates.

And some notes here that aren't in here, Izzy, but I know having worked with Deal for a few years now and when this program actually started, so it's really great to see for me a program from the beginning to this point now in year five is that...

As the program has gotten going, you add things to improve, make improvements.

And as I said earlier, it's a universal program for all students across the city, which is great.

They have access to everyone in the city.

Every high school student has access to a two-year college education.

if they want it.

And I know that SPS through the high schools do robust outreach to the students who are graduating to let them know of this benefit.

And then you added the equity scholarships to support the students that needed that extra help as the program got going.

Yes, we did.

And what you just talked about is what, that's an example of what Dr. Fajardo mentioned, what we do for all of our investments, which is continuous quality improvement to make sure that we're hitting, that we're using the data, taking our learnings and figuring out how we can do better in serving our young people.

So yes, you're absolutely right.

I just want to just tie that example.

Thank you.

I have a question in looking at this chart.

So, you know, fantastic news that the completion rates have gone up quite a bit for black and African American youth.

Looking at all the other categories, Asian, Hispanic, Latinx, missing, unknown, two or more races, and white, they've all gone down.

I'm just curious to what, do you have anything that you attribute that sort of overall decline in completion rates?

Yes, Councilwoman Moore.

In this slide, the orange indicates COVID impact.

And this is the first core 2020 that experienced COVID in the high school.

Now, and the data shows that it had impact in their learning in their senior year, heading into their college experience.

So I would infer that that had some reason why those numbers went down.

I'm sorry, can you speak into your mic?

Oh, yeah.

So why would all the other communities have had that impact and yet we see a rise in black and African American participation and completion?

A little bit.

So we are looking at this more closely through our process evaluation efforts as well as focus grouping conversations with students.

What we know about our Seattle community is the number of multi-generational homes for certain racial and ethnic groups.

So the students impacted by COVID, particularly the cohort 2020, they graduated high school just as the pandemic was starting.

So their first year of college was in the throes of the pandemic.

They had the most disruption at the college level in terms of having to take college courses virtually.

At the same time, we know certain communities were affected most by stigma related to COVID, by illness related to COVID, and our Asian communities are among those.

So while we can't say conclusively, I think we do know a lot about the societal impacts the pandemic had, how that would create a really challenging learning environment for certain students.

to take classes from home while they had elders at home, perhaps grappling with illness.

So again, we continue to monitor this so we know we have the right interventions to support student success, but there were certain groups more impacted by the pandemic than others, both in their homes, their family context, as well as having to adapt to virtual learning.

And I see that and that's fair.

But I also note that the numbers are actually going down from 2018 to 2019 pre-COVID.

There was a significant drop and then obviously with COVID, it was more accentuated.

So there's obviously something going on there that wasn't necessarily related to COVID.

So for the three year rate, this cohort 18, where we do see the higher numbers, those students graduated in 2021. So they were the least impacted by COVID in terms of their college experience.

They may have had virtual classes in their third year, but by that time they had already normed to being college students.

These cohorts 19 and 20, we consider that a significant impact to a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old having to figure out how to navigate a college system during a pandemic.

But 2019 wasn't the pandemic.

She's cohort 2020.

But why are your numbers lower in 2019 if your cohort is graduating pre-pandemic?

cohort 19 was enrolled at the Seattle colleges during the pandemic.

So they would have been in their second or third year while the pandemic was happening.

Okay, so they were already in the program.

That's what you attribute the numbers going down?

Correct.

Okay.

So their learning was disrupted.

Their first year was in person, but their second year switched to virtual.

And so again, we know that's really hard for perhaps a first generation college going student to navigate.

I think a couple things.

So 2018 to 19 shows a decrease, which is what Council Member Moore is referring to.

And there was no pandemic involved.

So I don't think that the department actually has the data to show, nor have they done the work to show what's going on.

This is why I said earlier, this isn't show causality.

It just shows what's happening.

Raw data on there is a decrease.

There is no deal would have to, and I'm not sure if it's planned for the promise.

I know for K through 12, same thing.

Deal is working on the evaluation to figure out causality and really whether our investments are making a difference.

All they have is the raw data to show what's happening.

I don't know if for Promise you're intending to do the same, why some cohorts are doing better than others, especially in the BIPOC group.

which is slide number 69, which Council Member Moore is referring to.

But the answer, the short answer now is they don't know and they need to work to figure out why, the why.

and true for K through 12 in general.

I will say, colleagues, that there is more information about the preschool program, and to a certain extent, notwithstanding what you just talked about, Councilmember Moore, about Promise and how well those two programs are doing than the 12 through K.

The evaluation came later, and so it's not completed.

There's a lot of answers that we need to find that the city and that deal needs to find and I think deal is working on that but it is At least I'll speak for myself a little discouraging that we don't have causality By which to say how well these investments are doing in the K through 12 space and then there's still some missing pieces obviously in the in the promise space as well and

Yeah, thank you for that.

And just, and for Council Member Moore, I appreciate you for asking these questions.

I just also wanted to remind us that as you just mentioned, Council Member, we are partnering with folks to do a process evaluation, as well as we have an external evaluation that's being conducted.

And once we get that information, we'll have a little bit more to report back then.

I will say that Diehl, one of the, when we talked about equity scholarships, I know part of the conversation was to address why some of these students weren't doing as well as others.

And so I think Diehl's response to that was, do some of these students need extra supports?

What would those extra supports be?

And so they came up with this equity scholarship solution, but we don't actually know if those, equity scholarships, if the services that are being provided are helping all students, are they the right combination of extra supports?

And that's something that the department's going to have to look into.

Yes, thank you.

Yeah, and so, I mean, I just, in transparency, I've talked a lot to Director Chappelle about the information that we need going into next year and a potential renewal of the levy to show how well these investments are really doing.

So if we decide we're going to move forward with a renewal, we have the robust information by which to show the public that, you know, these investments are really working.

Obviously, they're working for some students, but we just don't know overall, and that's why these evaluations are taking place.

And so it's my hope we have at the end of these evaluations more information to be able to answer your question and certainly all the questions we all have.

Thank you.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Oh, yeah, I had a question.

Are we at the end so we can ask questions?

Yes.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure.

I know there was like one more slide.

I think the slide after the question is in discussion.

Yes.

Okay, I was counting the slides.

Okay, I had two questions.

I think when you all first came to present, I had mentioned that I would love to see for the next levy potentially...

I call it dirty hands, clean money, right?

The plumbers, the pipe fitters, just a direct pipeline from our Seattle Public Schools into the trades.

I saw a job for a plumber starting at $55, and, you know, there are so many opportunities in our city, and I think it's one of the things that when you hear a lot of the city departments talk, you know, everyone's needing mechanics and just people that just do stuff with their hands.

And I think these are phenomenal jobs for kids to be able to get into in the trade.

So that's definitely something that I would love to work with this committee on to make sure that we have a direct pipeline for our Seattle Public School kids to get into.

The second piece, regarding some of the programs that you all work with, which I think are great, the K through 12, I wanted to flag that would love to see programs that potentially do food over the weekends for families and kids, three square meals, because a lot of the, and particularly, now I'm gonna go to Council Member Morales' district, in District 2, and I've said this before in another meeting, that there's only one food bank that is in the south end, south of I-90.

There's other food pantries, but Rainier Valley Food Bank is the only food distribution that can be able to get TFAP dollars from Department of Ag, USDA dollars as well.

Right now they're in Rainier Beach at the...

It was an old mortuary that they're at.

And they are able to distribute food right across the street from Rainier Beach and South Shore.

You know, because you were the principal, Dr. Chappelle.

But I wanted to flag that because the, and I said this in committee before, that Othello Safeway is the largest redemption in the city for Fresh Bucks and Snap.

And a lot of the kids that are in these programs in District 2 are struggling with having meals just over the weekend, and there are not enough food access for kids.

So the programs that you had, I had worked with a lot of them, like Candela and Technology Access Foundation, a whole bunch of them.

Just having a food piece to their programming model I think is so incredibly important because kids are not being able to access food over the weekend, three square meals.

They have them during the week, you know, during school time, but that weekend is a hard time for a lot of the kids, especially in south of I-90.

So I just wanted to flag that.

I know you all know that, but couldn't be more...

you know, passionate about making sure the kids have food, because if you don't have food, you can't learn, and it's just a hot mess.

So just wanted to just flag that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we appreciate you articulating what you just said.

And again, as you're happy to continue to work with this committee and see what that actually looks like.

But I love those ideas.

I think that's awesome, especially, not especially, but I like to catch dirty hands clean money.

Dirty hands.

Well, I'm going to tell you this.

I didn't make that up.

That's where I went to, I saw a construction worker and they had a sticker and it's dirty hands, clean money.

I was like, I'm going to take that.

That's going to be my new thing.

But I think, you know, just anything catchy for the kids, I think they like that.

But those opportunities exist.

I mean, if you go down to the port and they have those jobs down there, 150, 200,000, you know, it's amazing the opportunities that people have in our city to be able to have a great career.

Thank you.

And I know that Seattle Colleges has a partnership.

I've said this before with the fire department, they built a curriculum and that's like, let's do more of that.

And that's something that I'd love to, to continue to work on and to see the department look into as we continue this promise piece and working with the colleges, doing certificate programs for the trades, I think is a great opportunity that we're missing at the moment.

And as we look toward a possible expansion with a levy renewal, I think is something that we need to be looking at.

And in terms of food making sure that we're working that deal is working with the other departments that work in the food space because it's not something that per se deal works with but we do food in other departments in the city and making sure that you all are plugged in because I could not agree more with council member Hollingsworth.

And I know that there's some food deserts across the city and some neighborhoods.

And I also would love to see this as part of the comprehensive plan.

Because as we are building for more density and within these neighborhoods that we really are looking at this food piece so that we're not creating unintentionally food deserts for folks.

Food needs to run with adding more density to neighborhoods.

And so that's an opportunity for OPCD as they're doing comp plan to make sure that is included.

Goals for food are included as part of those plans as well.

Thank you.

Any other questions, colleagues, about the annual report?

This was a long presentation.

Thank you for sitting through it.

But the levy, the FEPP levy investments is in a lot of areas.

And so, you know, Deal tried to present, I know, Director Chappell, as robustly as possible, you know, the FEPP investments and show where they're going.

I'd just like to say thank you for the presentation.

It was very thorough, very educational.

And, I mean, you're doing amazing work.

And I also appreciate the willingness to continue to look at ways to improve.

But thank you for this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I'll say that, how about, can I just do this slide and then I'll close this out, if that's okay, Councilmember?

Yes, of course.

Just, so on behalf of our partners at the Seattle Colleges, you all are invited to join in celebration of the largest Seattle Promise graduating cohort to date at their 2024 Seattle College Commencement.

There is more information online about this, but it will be on June 21st at T-Mobile, and there's a lot to celebrate.

So I wanted to put that out there.

Chancellor wanted to make sure you all had this.

But I also just wanted to close us out by just thanking you all for this opportunity to come present here.

As you see, you know, we're committed to continuous quality improvement.

That's gonna make sure we're doing what's best for our youth and families here in Seattle.

And so your questions and encouragement is always going to push us to do what's better and continue to improve.

I also want to just thank our like fantastic staff at deal who help not only pull this presentation together, but who are actually in partnership working with all of our community based organizations.

So I just want to thank them because without them, you know, our kids and families wouldn't have the necessary supports that they have right now.

Also, um, I want to thank you two right here.

Dr. Fajardo is sick, but he didn't want to miss this today.

So thank you, and thank you, Marissa, for everything we've done today.

And last but not least, it's just been a pleasure working with you, Councilmember Rivera, to make sure not only that we're clear, but that we can truly figure out how do we find ways to improve and support the young people in Seattle.

So I'm looking forward to our continued partnership And we'll see you all at a future date.

Thank you, Director Chappell and Izzy and Marissa for being here today.

Colleagues, you know, this was a robust slide deck.

So if you have questions and, you know, I welcome obviously your partnership.

We all work on this together on this in this committee.

So if there are things that you want to follow up with, please do reach out to me.

And I meet with the department regularly and happy to share more information if there's something that's missing happy to make sure that the department has that as they're working uh forward on these evaluation pieces especially so if there's something you'd like to see or know about or think that's missing as part of the evaluation process and as part of the slides that you see here please do let me know and I'll make sure that becomes part of our follow up with Director Chappell and his team.

So thank you so much for being here.

Let me get back to my script to close this out.

Maybe I have so far the, do I win the award for longest committee meeting?

Oh, that's true.

That's Bob, huh?

All right.

Do any of my colleagues have any comments or questions broadly?

Okay, seeing no questions, thank you for your presentation, Director Chappell and team.

Seeing no further questions, this concludes the May 24th, 2024 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, June 6th at 9.30 a.m.

If there is no further business, this meeting will be adjourned.

Hearing no further business, it's 11.14 a.m., and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

to see you all.