Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights & Culture Committee 7/8/22

Good morning, everyone.

The July 8, 2022 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Vice Chair Sawant?

Present.

Chair Morales?

Here.

or present.

Thank you very much.

Council member Strauss has been excused from the meeting.

There's no objection.

Today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So I do first want to start by apologizing to my colleagues and to the public.

I had intended to be in chambers for this meeting.

Unfortunately, I've tested positive for COVID.

So I am chairing the meeting from home.

So let's move on.

Today's agenda includes the second annual report of the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

So we have folks from ILE here to share that with us.

We'll also have a discussion and possible vote on legislation to bring Seattle into compliance with federal and state service animal definitions.

We will be hearing from the Department of Neighborhoods about landmark legislation on designation for three Seattle schools.

We have an appointment and a reappointment to the Community Involvement Commission.

So that is what we've got on the agenda for today.

At this time, we will open the remote general public comment period.

I know we've got some folks in chambers.

I don't think we have anybody signed up online.

At any rate, I ask everyone please be patient as we operate this system.

We're always looking for ways to fine tune the process and adding new features that allow for public participation in our council meetings.

It remains a strong intent for council to have public comment regularly scheduled in our meeting agendas.

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

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

This public comment period is for up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes.

I'll call on two speakers at a time in the order registered.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this comment period, going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council.

Once I call the speaker's name, We will unmute if there's anybody online.

You will hear a chime at 10 seconds.

When you've got 10 seconds left, please wrap up your comments.

If you do not wrap up your comments, we will turn off your mic so that we can move on to the next speaker.

Public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Can you please call the first speaker?

First speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Mr. Zimmerman, please go ahead.

Don't show my face.

Why you don't show my face, camera boy?

What's going on?

When you start doing this, like civilized people.

Okay, no problemo.

No face, no face.

See how my dirty damn Nazi fascist mob bandita and psychopaths.

I want to speak about agenda number two, confirming definition of service animal.

I want to explain my opinion about confirmation of service animal, because I think more dangerous service animal is in this branch.

You know what I mean?

It's more dangerous animal what I know.

Gomasapiens is always dangerous animal, more aggressive, more stupid, and more suck blood and money.

You know what I mean?

It's exactly what has happened.

This animal in this chamber is very strange to me.

You know what I mean?

I live here 35 year, but this chamber animal, all this nine very aggressive, primitive, and stupid animal suck blood and money from us.

And more dangerous, like all animals in the world, is a female.

You know what I mean?

It's typical for females to be very aggressive and kill everybody.

And these nine animals who sit in this chamber right now, they kill every day and every year thousands and thousands of people.

And suck blood and money like an evil, you know, from us.

So how we can do in stopping this animal suck blood and money from us?

An animal cannot suck money, but blood, they come and kill people.

It's exactly typical for animal.

Human is the most dangerous animal in this planet.

Everybody knows this.

So my opinion right now and recommendation, we need to clear this chamber from this animal who kill us people.

You know what it means.

Suck blood from us.

It is go for a long time.

They are crook, a liar, and psychopath.

Stand up, America.

Clear this chamber from this nine psychopath.

Thank you very much.

Is there another speaker, Devin?

Yes, the next speaker is Marguerite Richard.

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

And I do see something on here, even if I don't see it, you know.

You know, folk going blind every day, and you don't know about a disability as such, I guess, because some disabilities, you can see them, some you don't.

And y'all still involved in discrimination if you ask me.

So I see a reappointment as a member of a community involvement commission.

Hey, I told you whatever's not working, don't bring it back and get rid of it.

Okay.

I knew a bill Southern from the district.

I don't know if this is his son or whatever.

Okay.

But I'm saying to you that all of this stuff that you're appointing and it's not even fitting in the neighborhood, let alone addressing the problems of the neighborhood.

And I'm still, uh, at my juncture trying to figure out what is government all about if you're not fixing anything, if you're steadily harming the people, you're appointing people that I don't even know.

And I should be familiar with just about everybody that looks like me.

Maybe he's not the same color as me.

And we're having difficulties with that.

And they say, oh, don't talk about race.

You know, there's only one race, the human race.

Then why is a, Jalen Walker did what they said, 60 bullets in him.

So and yes, that has everything to do with what you so-called calling Black Lives Matter.

Let there be no questions.

But hey, they said a dumb question is a question that's never asked.

So I'm always going to be asking questions.

That's why I said, take that sign down and you're playing with me.

You're playing with me because it's still there.

OK, so I think you're involved in something heinous if you think for one minute other people are not included in all this stuff that goes on in this city right now.

Thank you.

Devon, are there any other speakers?

There's nobody else on the list.

Okay.

Thank you.

In that case, that concludes the public comment period, which is now closed.

So we will move on to our agenda items.

Will the clerk please read agenda item one into the record.

Agenda item one, second annual report of the families, education, preschool and promise levy for briefing and discussion.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

I want to welcome Dr. Duane Chappell, Director of DEEL.

It looks like you've got a team of folks with you here, so I will pass it to you to introduce your team here and get us started.

Yes, thank you for this opportunity to be here and I will so what we who we have here what I'll do is ask folks to introduce themselves and what I'll do is just start with the members of the deal team.

Chris, do you mind introducing yourself please.

Good morning Councilmember Morales and members of the committee, Chris Alejandro I'm K 12 post secondary division director at deal.

Good morning.

I'm Leilani Dela Cruz.

I'm the early learning deputy division director for DEEL.

And we have of course some amazing of our some amazing partners and colleagues.

Miss Katron do you mind speaking.

Katrina excuse me.

Sure no problem.

I'm Katrina Karen.

I'm the senior early learning director for Northwest Center Kids.

Been actually the director at our downtown Chinook location.

which is like an inclusive childcare center for kids with and without disabilities.

Thank you.

Dr. Scarlett.

Good morning.

I'm Dr. Keisha Scarlett.

I'm assistant superintendent of academics for Seattle Public Schools.

Thank you.

And we'll allow Chancellor Rosie to close us out.

Thank you.

Dr. Chappelle, good morning, folks.

My name's Rosie Raimondo-Cherensap.

I am the acting chancellor for the Seattle Colleges and also serve as the president at South Seattle College.

It looks like we also have Mr. Redmond from Seattle Public Schools.

Yes, I was just getting ready to call Ms. Redmond and my apologies for skipping over you when Dr. Scarlett spoke.

No problem at all.

Good morning, everyone.

I am Beverly Redmond.

I am the Assistant Superintendent of Public Affairs for SPS and here to assist Dr. Scarlett as she needs me this morning.

Take care.

So again, those are the folks that we have here with us, our great partners.

And Leilani, if you don't mind bringing the slideshow back up and Council Member Morales, I'll defer to you if you want me to get started or if you had anything else you would like to say.

No, please go ahead.

Okay.

You can go to the next slide, please.

So for one, again, thank you.

It is a pleasure to be here.

We are always delighted to come and speak to the panel and share with you some of the amazing things that's happening in DEEL.

Today, we're joining you just to provide an overview of the results from year two of the 2020 and 2021 school year.

While we will not be covering the underlying data from year two, we have shared it with each of your offices in the report and data appendix.

And please know, as always, we're always happy to answer and follow up with any questions that you send to our office.

So we're at, as you know, we're at the halfway point of the levy, finishing our third year of implementation.

And we just wanted to take this opportunity with our partners just to share with you some of our early reflections on the progress that we've seen.

Next slide, please.

So we'll talk a little, yes, thank you.

So just as a reminder, in year one, we were transitioning from both the Seattle preschool program and families and education levies and, you know, was hit with the onset of the global pandemic that truly disrupted the education system as we knew it, right?

And it shut down nearly every industry in our state.

With closures, or should I say with school closures and state assessments, and our preschool quality assessments were not administered.

With year two came, or should I say when year two came, the most radical change in the history of education, it was also the first year of our FEPP school-based and our opportunity and access investments implementation.

With just the unprecedented shifts in services and the backdrop, many of the year two results are better viewed as a new baseline to assess against future levy results rather than just a reliable historical analysis.

Next slide, please.

So before commenting on the overall numbers for year one, I want to just share with you that DEEL, along with our school and community partners, we began adapting levy work plans for a remote context in the spring of 2020. Some of the changes included just levy funded tutors who were joining students online.

We had virtual college and college tours, college campus tours.

And then in addition to that, to many other adaptations, just to expanded learning and college and career readiness support.

So I wanted to just share a little bit of that.

And then what I'll do now, we'll just talk a little bit about year two by the numbers.

So as you know, just the FEPP investments primarily serve students of color.

We have 77% of our students identify as BIPOC.

There are 762 families were served by family support services, which was an increase, or should I say 88% increase over the previous year.

And more than 1,500 preschool to post-secondary students participated in our engaged summer learning programs just to better prepare them for the return to in-person classroom learning after just an unprecedented year of remote learning.

We piloted summer extension for the Seattle Preschool Program.

We invested $1,017,000 in community-based organizations through a number of summer RFI for K-12 students and really just supplementing the existing summer investments.

And then we offer pre-college courses at no cost for our Promise Scholars, just to help them prepare for their fall caseloads.

So on the next three slides, what I'm going to do, I'll walk you through just a summary of results from early learning through post-secondary.

And I just want you to know, as expected, the results from the 2020 to 2021 school year really just reflect the myriad of challenges schools, our students and families face during the, just during a mostly remote year with multiple distractions to learning.

And it really impeded our progress towards educational equity.

Okay, next slide, please.

So during the pandemic, Deal and our community partners we've made like multiple pivots as I mentioned to how the Seattle Preschool Program was implemented including just hybrid and remote programming virtual coaching for staff and just greater subsidy and tuition for our families.

Our Seattle preschool program participants overall were more kindergarten ready than previous years but opportunity gaps increased by 10 points back to the 2016 levels.

Even with that, our Black and Asian kids from the Seattle Preschool Program, they were more kindergarten ready than those, than non-SPP kids.

Some of the new innovations such as the virtual coaching and more responsive supports for families have shown promising results that we plan to continue in future years.

And just for an example, while coaching will offer onsite visits, we will continue to offer this resource virtually as well.

Okay, next slide, please.

So in our K-12 space, this is where we saw the most impact from the pandemic.

Tests usually administered in the spring in third and eighth grades were delayed until the fall.

And we had our largest drop in math by 25% and by English language arts by 12%.

However, the four-year high school graduation rates for levy-supported schools continue to rise, and we know that our investments are targeted towards the right schools, so we hope to see gaps closing in future years.

I'm sorry to interrupt, Dr. Chabot.

Can you say that again?

Are you saying that that progress toward achieving a certain goal fell by 25%?

So what I said, so we have, so usually like there are tests administered like in the spring of like third, for third and eighth graders.

And during the pandemic, it was delayed until the fall.

And by, you know, once we, you know, saw that data, we did see a drop in math by 25% and by an English language arts by 12%.

We did see that.

So the scores, the average scores dropped that much?

Okay.

Wow.

Okay.

Yes.

And then, and then, and then the, what I was transitioning and sharing was that, um, although we saw that, um, the four year, uh, uh, high school graduation rates for the levy supported schools continue to rise.

Um, and we know that our investments are, are literally, um, targeted towards the right schools.

And so what we do, we, what we're hoping is to see those gaps close in our future years.

Um, and so, The transitions from the families education levy to the FEP funded schools changed our focus to schools.

And it just really just changed our focus schools that were mostly impacted by systemic inequities.

And so while the number of schools and student population is less overall, the proportion of BIPOC students being served increased by 16%.

So that could be a factor as well in the drop in test scores.

But again, it also means that we're targeting the right schools with our investments.

And then you'll see telehealth services.

The telehealth services and access to community-based clinics that was implemented in 2020 continued.

It continued, and in-person services at school-based health centers, they reopened in September.

of 2020. And so what also took place, the school-based health center staff, they did home visits to provide routine immunization services and behavioral health supports.

And the clinics, they also, the clinics and the school staff, they also work closely to provide mental health supports and just really assess students' health needs upon them returning to the classrooms.

April of 2021. Next slide, please.

So, for the second time in three years as we expanded the Seattle Promise Program, and nearly tripling the number of high schools whose students really could enroll or had access to the program.

We went from six to 17. And that expansion resulted in the largest Seattle Promise cohort to date.

And while, you know, the Seattle Promise continues to serve a large number of our BIPOC students, proportionally, the 2020 cohort had a higher percentage of white students due to the expansion of all 17 high schools.

And this also resulted in FEPP tuition supports going to students with more financial means.

But as designated or as we, when we as designed the FEP, funding is the last dollar funding source and many lower income families who need financial support are qualifying and receiving funds from other institutions.

But however, you know, this just, it didn't cover the true cost of college and it leaves a gap in resources that are also compounded by COVID-19.

And also just wanted to share that just a just a reminder that our levy oversight committee recommended to you and you all approve the flexibility legislation that allowed our scholars to.

delay or defer enrollment for that year.

And that was just an attempt to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on our student outcomes.

And I wanna close by saying just despite those challenges, the 2018 Promise Cohort completion rate surpassed the national average.

So next slide, please.

So now what we'll do is this brings us and you go to the next slide.

This really brings us to our.

a year three reflections and again just first and foremost we're finally back in the classroom despite those challenges and it was huge.

We have our amazing partners who I introduced or who introduced themselves a moment ago.

They're here just to share with you some of you know the triumphs and challenges that that they've experienced and I want you to know that we expect to receive our year three data on academic progress in October, and I hope to be back to you with that presentation sometime early next year.

Next slide, please.

And so, Thank you.

What I would like to do at this time is just hand this off to my amazing staff and our outstanding partners who have been in the field helping us to navigate these uncharted territories throughout the pandemic.

So if you would, Leilani, do you mind taking down the slides?

And Leilani, I'll allow, I would ask for you to speak next.

If we if I could interrupt for just a moment.

I do want to acknowledge Councilmember Peterson has joined us.

Good morning, Councilmember.

He worked hard on the Seattle school work so wanted to come and participate.

Thank you for being here.

And I just want to clarify, there is a second presentation that we will also go through the second year annual report.

Is that correct?

Say no doubt.

So this is so this is actually the last slide right here.

This is what we're well that was it right there.

What I'll say is that once we get the data for our year three in October we'll come back in in early in early of next year to present and share share that with you all.

OK, my apologies.

I have another presentation that's 46 slides long.

So I wanted to make sure that I was on the right track here.

OK.

We aren't going through that presentation as well, is that correct?

No, no.

OK.

OK.

So please go ahead.

I've got a few questions, and then we'll open it up to colleagues once you're done.

But please continue.

All right, Leilani, do you mind sharing some Sure.

So I wanted to share with you today some reflections on how year three went, which is the 21-22 school year that we just wrapped up.

So in contrast to year two, the 2021 school year, we were able to prioritize in-person programming across the board, including all of our preschool programs.

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that some of our preschool providers, including our guest speaker today, remained open during the pandemic and did their best to accommodate students and families, even though we were allowing for remote and hybrid options.

So I always try to take time to acknowledge that and thank them for doing that.

We were able in the 21-22 school year to ensure that all students were able to receive in-person programming.

With in-person programming came some challenges, as you can imagine.

And the significant challenges included what we termed rolling closures due to COVID exposure, as well as staffing impacts.

We saw an increase in overall educator staff mental health issues, as well as just general burnout.

In some cases, staff simply left the field and did not come back.

So these kinds of staffing challenges were challenging to navigate during the school year, and they do continue to persist even today.

But there's also a reason to celebrate.

Our overall preschool enrollment for the 21-22 school year has increased to near pre-pandemic levels, signaling to us that families and students were ready to come back to school.

And also because we prioritized in-person programming, we were able to collect child level assessments for the first time in two years, which will truly help us understand the overall impact that COVID has had on our children as we emerge from the pandemic.

So that's a synopsis of year three, the 21-22 school year.

And I would like to now turn it over to Katrina Caron, who is the Senior Early Learning Director of Northwest Center Kids, in particular in the Chinook building.

She can speak eloquently to the experience of providers on the ground.

Notably, Northwest Center Kids is one of our Seattle Preschool Program providers, as well as one of our Child Care Assistance Program providers.

So Katrina, if you're ready, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.

I am and thank you again for having me.

I'm really excited to speak.

So yeah, I was supervising managing our center that's downtown right on Fifth Avenue in the building.

So I want to talk about the celebrations, which were I mean, we've been in person, that's kind of been amazing.

deal did a summer extension of our contracts, which was fantastic.

It allowed us to serve families through the program throughout the summer.

Specifically for us, we are a year-round program anyway, but this allowed really our CCAP families to continue to get very reduced tuition, which was awesome.

We stayed full and we're full again this summer too.

We got ongoing contract support and flexibility from DEEL.

So like extra payments, understanding of staffing shortages, adjusting of expectations and deadlines, which was fantastic.

in-person coaching again this year, which is integral for our program as our teachers do not do virtual stuff.

They're always in the classroom.

So it was a huge challenge to get all of our coaching and supports via Zoom when they're in the classroom all day long.

We also were able to continue providing like in-person services specifically for kids with disabilities.

About 40% of our children in each of our preschool classrooms have a disability, many of them with IEPs, so that was really great.

This year we also saw health screenings happen again, which I personally, my child was in our classroom here and I was able to find out he had a significant hearing loss because of the early health screenings where he would have got screened a little later.

So that was kind of something personal to me to make sure we were doing.

As Leilani said, the challenges were really tough.

We still struggle with burnout, mental health, issues with staff and children and families.

We continue to have staffing challenges.

COVID is still real, like we had two more cases reported last night.

So it's still kind of, it's still very much top of mind.

We've also seen some, you know, with inflation, some very significant cost increases and having to raise salaries to not only compete in the market, but to also pay our teachers more for what they're worth.

And then being downtown, we've had significant safety concerns.

So we have had families, staff, we've had assaults, we've had scary situations, and it's been significantly better this year, but it still persists as a common issue in downtown.

But overall, again, it's been an amazing partnership with DEEL, and we're really proud.

Again, we're proud we've been full this whole time too, and been able to continue to serve kids and families.

Thank you.

Thank, oh, go ahead, Leilani.

Oh, no, I was going to turn it over to Chris, unless you had something to say, Dr. Chappelle.

Okay, so now we will hear from our K-12 colleagues.

Chris Alhano.

Yeah, thanks, Leilani.

So not unlike in the early learning space, in the K-12 part of the system, we also experienced the same sort challenges as far as staffing goes and trying to deal with sort of the phase of the pandemic that we're currently in.

So we shared some similar issues and challenges as Leilani was sharing in the early learning space, similarly in the K-12 space.

But all that said, some of the key takeaways for year three and K-12, you know, our school-based investments Deal advisors work really closely with our schools to craft goals and interventions that are unique to their school population.

So there's really no one approach to implementation across campuses, which actually provides the flexibility for partners to really tailor their programming to the needs of their students in ways that work best for their school, which was hugely valuable in addressing the impacts of not having been in-person schooling for an entirety of last year.

Within our family support service investments, we continue to see high levels of support in addressing the basic needs of families and students so that they can come to school ready to engage in the teaching and learning that's happening in the classroom.

So students and families were connected to both internal and external resources depending on their need.

Finally, with some of the K-12 health investments in our school-based health centers, now that we're back to full-time in-person learning in year three, we're expecting to see an uptick in students using the school-based health centers to address various student health needs.

Sports physicals is a service that health centers provide, which were impacted last year since not all sports were running.

And then of course, they were helping to support COVID vaccinations and other routine immunizations as well.

So yeah, we're excited to be able to see some of that data as it comes out.

On post-secondary side of things, with our college partners, we were able to sustain high enrollment in the Seattle Promise Program and continue our expansion efforts, as Dr. Chappelle was mentioning, expansion into the 17 Seattle Public High Schools, and just trying to make sure interested students in the program all had the opportunity to enroll and receive the support necessary to matriculate into college.

So those are just a few general takeaways from year three, but excited for our partners to provide some additional perspective.

So first you'll hear from Dr. Keisha Scarlett from Seattle Public Schools, followed by Dr. Rosie Raimondo-Churensep from Seattle Colleges.

So I'll pass it over to Dr. Scarlett.

Thank you Chris.

So I'm going to also send greetings on behalf of Superintendent Brent Jones, who's not able to be with us today, but also highlight Chris is sharing.

I'm going to share a few bright spots as anecdotes from SPS about some of the progress that we're making in this important partnership with deal in the FBI school based investments in SPS.

So I'm deal in SPS have long worked in collaboration and have really, the FEP investments work to really align with our Seattle Excellence Strategic Plan priorities and goals that are focused on improving outcomes in early literacy, middle school mathematics, and access to advanced coursework for college and career readiness.

We are so excited about the school-based investment collaboration with school sites like Rainier Beach International Baccalaureate High School.

So for us in Seattle Public Schools, our trajectory for our theory of change is that We take students to ensure that they're successful in ninth grade, successfully earning those six or more credits to enrollment in advanced coursework.

and then to successful college enrollment, which includes really enrolling in college credit bearing courses so that they're not kind of stuck in that remedial track.

So I can say for me, I'm a parent of a Rainier Beach, of two Rainier Beach international baccalaureate high school students, one in 2016 and one in 2020, both of them IB students.

My youngest daughter is a Promise Scholar who graduated in 2020. And she just completed her a Seattle Central College she and my eldest daughter also participating in the Academy for rising educators program through Seattle Central.

which is a teacher preparation program funded in partnership with deal FEPP and the Seattle promise scholarship.

As for rain or beach high school, there has been an increase in the percentage of students enrolled and completing advanced coursework.

there's also been an increase in the number of rain or beach high school students enrolled in the Seattle promise and directly enrolling in college.

and college credit bearing courses, particularly in mathematics, where many students are stuck in that remedial cycle.

One data point that we track is the percentage of African American male students who graduated in four years.

and also successfully completed one advanced course.

So among the class of 2021 85% of African American males in Rainier Beach High School, graduated in four years and also successfully completed at least one advanced course, so I can't cannot.

not take this opportunity to highlight Dr. Duane Chappelle's equity-focused leadership as the former principal of Rainier Beach IB High School.

He actually put the IB in high school, in that high school, literally.

So he was really ahead of thinking about this measure that we now track, which is around the advanced coursework enrollment for students.

He insisted that all students, so he was my own students principal, he insisted that all students enroll in advanced IB courses during their matriculation.

And his early insight of this as an important data point is an important indicator of college and career readiness and really showed tremendous equity leadership and really led us forward with that.

So thank you, Dr. Chappelle, for your leadership.

Another area that Chris highlighted is around Olympic Hills, and this is also a really great example of how school funds, our FEP funds, and private funds are being leveraged to improve literacy outcomes through the Satterberg Partnership across several elementary schools.

We've aligned our continuous school improvement plans, our Title I plans, and our levy plans for strong implementation of our strategy.

So I can't help but highlight Olympia kills wonderful principal Libby the bill, who's a strong instructional leader in this focused on implementation of high quality aligned curriculum, including the science of reading high quality instructional practices, and also a professional culture that is focused on professional learning cycles, using data to improve practice.

This is a key strategy in the partnership with FEPP in the work as a school-based investment site.

Additionally, this partnership with the Office of African American Male Achievement in Seattle Public Schools and Olympic Hills is one of two schools with Emerson, which is also a FEPP school, participating in an early literacy collaborative.

We work with black boys and their families to build community and hear from their insights as students and families and share practices that really build black boy joy and reading in in school, and this has been a seamless alignment in our partnership with deal around these efforts on as we move forward.

We continue to work to align our data practices, Dr. Fajardo and Dr. Eric Anderson in Seattle Public Schools, working on data sharing agreements in a variety of different areas to ensure that there's a seamless implementation focused on equitable outcomes for our students.

Thank you.

And I'd like to hand this over to President Rosie Raimondo.

Your last name is covered, so I'm so sorry.

That's quite all right.

Dr. Scarlett, it's a long one.

And thank you council members committee members for giving us time today to share a little bit about our experiences.

I'm representing the Seattle colleges and our work on the Seattle promise with our good partners here on the screen.

And just as a bit of personal history I was involved in Seattle promise from very early days when we were promoting our 13th year program.

at South Seattle College to the City Council at the time, and that served as the precursor for what the Seattle Promise Program evolved into as funded by the FEPP levy and so it's a particular pride point for me to be reporting back to you all today about how this program has grown especially over the last year or so.

There's a few things we're particularly proud of in the Seattle Colleges as a part of this partnership.

One is around really, despite the pandemic, our ability to implement, not only implement, but grow beyond our anticipated numbers, the application and enrollment of the Seattle Promise students over the last couple of years.

Just as a way of illustration, we've grown 475% since 2018, where we were in very early days of the Seattle promise concept and welcome 230 students that fall to last fall 2021 we welcomed 1100 students from that which exceeded our targets for the Seattle promise planet planning at the time, and we are on track for more growth into the next year right now we're working with students there's 2200 students that are applied for fall.

2022 when we're currently working with those students through the summer to get them ready for that enrollment in the fall.

And that's really exciting because we are also targeting the students that we wanted to reach.

Our levels of students of color, they exceed that of the populations of the schools where they're coming from.

And so as an example, We're at 62% students of color that entered in fall 2020, and this recent year, as a result of some of the ways we've strengthened our retention and adjusted our outreach strategies, we're seeing 67% students of color, an increase there, that are coming from the Seattle Public Schools.

And the numbers, when we look at it by school building, do exceed the numbers of BIPOC students, the proportion of BIPOC students that are served in those schools.

really on a hyper local level building by building, we are reaching who we've been wanting to reach through this large city wide program in reaching communities of color and those who are furthest from access to higher ed as well.

And also I point out that over two thirds of our students are below 75,000.

They're, they're a low and moderate income.

And so, though we are as Dr. Chappelle pointed out at the beginning, serving a wider range of economic need across the city, we do see that we are still reaching those who, based on socioeconomic status, have traditionally been locked out of access to higher ed in the past.

And I also wanna add that open access really matters.

The way that we've structured our Seattle Promise Program makes it something that is easy to understand when you can say that any senior from this high school can pursue higher education through this route.

It makes it really easy to really work in the buildings, communicate that message to parents and to students.

And that has really helped our staff who work in partnership with the building staff to reach students through the years.

And so, Some of the things that I'll add about our colleagues have been talking about the pandemic as essentially a stress test of our systems.

When we went into this, we knew that the programming we needed to design, in addition to the scholarship funding, really needed to address the other holistic needs of particularly first generation students, first generation college bound students, those who didn't have someone at home who had known the ropes and could help them navigate new terms, you know, like a bursar and registrar and enroll, you know, enrollment and tuition due dates and things like that.

And so this pandemic has certainly been a stress test of all of our systems, it's certainly exploited any weakness in any of our systems.

One of the things that I'm particularly proud of being able to accomplish is the investment in the wraparound supports that students have from the high school engagement piece through the summer, and into their first term first two years of college enrollment.

That really served a safety net in COVID, even though we also saw a softening of persistence rates that really represent some of the systemic challenges and barriers, economic barriers that our students are facing in addition to educational challenges.

Despite that, we still saw stronger retention rates than our general population because Seattle promise students, we've invested in the supports that that surround them.

And so it was, it was the way that we were enabled, we were able to reach, we were able to double the equity funding that went to those students that have the most need in the Seattle promise program, those individual support staff were able to better case manage and support their groups of students as they were facing and navigating the challenges that the pandemic presented, and so I think those are some really, really strong pride points that point to the intentionality of our design.

the investment in the support services around the scholarship opportunity really have mattered during this pandemic stress test, if you will.

And I just want to close with a personal reflection as well, similar to Dr. Scarlett.

This has impacted my own family.

My nephew, a graduate from Garfield, graduated as a Promise Scholar, went to Seattle Central, really excelled Because he found a place that could support him and where he felt encouraged to pursue his interests started off with an interest in biology and is now succeeding at Seattle Pacific University as a history major.

And that makes this, you know, humanities graduate out of ethnic studies and English, a bachelor degree program holder.

And he really, really proud to see him pursuing that in a really successful way.

And so this is changing lives.

It's changing families like ours.

And we're really grateful that we've had this opportunity to grow a program in such strong partnership across the city.

Thank you.

Wow, thank you.

Thank you, Chancellor Rosie.

Also, just want to just thank you, Chancellor Rosie.

Thank you, Dr. Scarlett.

Thank you, Leilani, our Early Learning Division Director, and Chris, you as well, our K-12 post-secondary Director and Katrina, we also thank you for being here to share some of your reflections.

And council member, before we open up for questions, I also want to just apologize to you for any confusion about that year two deck.

It was submitted as an attachment for council record.

And for this presentation, we wanted to summarize the year two results, but also provide you with an update on where We are currently as we just finished year three and we're preparing for year four this fall.

So I just wanted to just do that before we open up for questions.

Sure.

Well, thank you.

Thank all of you for being here and for sharing your reflections on how challenging the last couple of years have been.

As a mother of two kids in Seattle Public Schools, I know I was lunch lady and IT support and hall monitor and all kinds of things over the last year of remote learning.

Thank you all for persevering and for all that you're doing.

And as an anthropology major, I too appreciate the switch to history and humanities as an interest.

I do have a few questions myself and then we'll open it up to colleagues.

These are kind of bigger picture questions maybe.

And maybe I'll start with you, Chancellor.

So I really appreciate what you said about the kind of wraparound support services that are made available to students, particularly first year college students, first generation college students.

As a first generation student myself, I could have really benefited from having somebody tell me how to apply to college, how to apply for scholarships, you know, how to make a decision about where to even put in an application.

I've seen the kind of rich support and resource that is made available, particularly to a lot of kids who are in private high schools.

And they get so much help figuring out how to navigate this.

And I know that our public school students don't necessarily have access to some of that.

So I appreciate your focus on being able to provide some of that support to our students.

I do have a question about the deployment, I guess, of the tuition support of Seattle Promise versus the equity scholarships.

My understanding is that the intent of Seattle Promise is really to close the race-based opportunity gap.

And what I read in the reports is that, you know, white students were most likely to benefit from the tuition scholarships and black and brown kids got the equity scholarships.

I understand that the whole point of this is less dollar in less money in.

But it seems to me that the net effect of that is that white students had access to over a million dollars in scholarship assistance and black and brown students got 400,000.

So I'm, I'm.

I'm wondering if we have a problem here if the intent is really to support under resourced kids and getting to college and the vast majority of the available funding is going to support students who may have more privilege.

So I'm wondering if you can, you can address that.

Yeah, I'm happy to address that and I think In order to be able to make this an all access scholarship and address higher ed as a public good, that access to this, the guaranteed access to this program has made, as I said earlier, has made the road into the program a lot easier.

in the high schools.

But the reason why the spending would look the way it does is because we do leverage first for a last dollar scholarship leverages first both federal and state monies that students are eligible for.

And on a federal level, that means the lower income students will be eligible for Pell grants, other free monies like state need, well, what's now called college access grants.

And we also operated these last two years with additional federal funds through cares money, and which we did also target to those with the greatest need, while also serving other students as well.

And so what it meant is that Every student had the level of funding and support they needed, while the funding source did differ based on what was available to serve those students from those various different sources that I mentioned.

What it means is that, and I'll just use round numbers just for the sake of elegance here, let's say it costs $5,000 even for tuition for a year.

It meant that every student got that $5,000 covered.

The student with a higher economic need most likely had that covered from Pell Grants and from perhaps some of the federal aid that was made available.

The one-time federal aid is, as you all know, in the city as well, that was made available as a result of the COVID impact funds.

And then anything that might have been remaining on the table would have come from the promise bucket, if you will.

The higher income student who wasn't eligible for Pell Grant, therefore, would have drawn more from the Promise funding, the tuition funding pool, but they all would have had their tuition covered, regardless of fund source.

The equity funds allow us to, in addition to that say, for sake of explanation, the $5,000 of tuition.

In addition to that, those with the greatest need also had access to $1,000 above that.

And so really what they had was $6,000 in aid versus $5,000 for the higher income student who had less economic need.

And so that's how last dollar scholarships will function for students.

It will always be the higher income students that do draw more.

And yet, the one thing I would also say is that I believe that the stronger investment is definitely around the, the staffing level that really support students, and the way we are structured as we do concentrate.

We have through having lower case manager ratios in the schools that have the higher proportions of BIPOC students.

And so we're also, there's a stronger investment for those students from BIPOC backgrounds through that support as well.

Yeah, I will say I just, I feel conflicted about this.

I would fully support universal access to college.

That's not really the crux of the matter, but I think, you know, when we're talking about taxpayer dollars and the intent here really being to try to reduce opportunity gaps.

I don't know, I guess I would be interested to have a conversation about maybe expanding access to more students of color rather than using the money to provide access to higher income families anyway, but that's perhaps a conversation for later.

Okay, I did have a couple of questions also about the Seattle Preschool Program and I'm wondering if maybe Council Member Peterson has some questions too.

I wonder if somebody could first talk to me a little bit about the link between third grade reading.

I know one of the goals of Seattle Public Schools is to increase the number of kids who are reading at a third grade level by third grade.

And a key to that goal is kindergarten readiness.

So if somebody could talk to me a little bit about that relationship and how those two things are connected, I would appreciate it.

Sure, I can start and Katrina, if you wanna jump in, feel free.

So it really comes down to in the early years, part of kindergarten readiness is building that cognitive frame, the cognitive piece of the brain for children so that they can learn to read because by third grade, the first few years is all about learning to read and by third grade, you're reading to learn.

And so we spend a lot of time in the early learning years focusing on how we can contribute to the ongoing social, emotional, and cognitive development of children, so that by the time they get to kindergarten, it's just easy peasy for them to pick things up, including reading.

Do you wanna add anything to that, Katrina?

I would just really stress that social emotional piece and that that's why like in-person early learning is so vital to children and that they're learning that people have different perspectives than them, that people have different abilities than them, that someone learns, you know, people learn differently.

It's, you know, kids don't develop empathy till a little bit later, but these kinds of core things will allow you then to be successful in a more structured classroom if you kind of know, okay, this is when I do this.

giving space for friends to have opinions and all that.

So I feel like all of these core baseline skills set you up for much more than just reading, but I would say that's like the key piece.

So thank you for that.

My understanding is that in Washington State, almost half of kids enter kindergarten behind in terms of kindergarten readiness or learning readiness for some of those things that you've mentioned, Katrina, social, emotional, cognitive, literacy.

And so I'm wondering if anybody happens to have an understanding of what percentage of Seattle kids are or are not kindergarten ready.

And if you can talk a little bit about what role the Seattle Preschool Program plays in helping to increase readiness for kindergarten.

Yes, we do have some data and we can get our, I don't have it off the top of my head today.

We can certainly get that to you Council Member Morales so that it's more accurate.

I would say that Early learning, preschool, high quality early learning and preschool in general is a key contributor to kindergarten readiness because we really do focus on those elements that get students ready.

High quality curriculum, a six hour day to get them ready for a full day of kindergarten, being able to be around peers and you know, being in a structured environment, what does it mean to interact with adults who are teaching you?

So preschool really is sort of like it's, we're acculturating them to the classroom environments in a different way, if you will.

So it's more than just, even though we are, we pride ourselves in developmentally appropriate practice and play-based practice, it is truly about like getting them ready to be in school.

if that makes any sense.

Katrina, anything else you would add?

No, I think that was great.

I think like you can, again, as a parent, I can only teach my child so many things that I feel like he would not have been ready for kindergarten if he hadn't attended the program here.

But like being in a print rich environment where he's being even read to where he can look at books where our downtown location you know pre coated we would take the kids to the library so all these kind of experiences, specifically like help with reading but like you know, we assess them on all domains.

So it helps with even like fine motor skills and gross motor skills and just, just general knowing what to do and when, which I, again, it gets it in there kind of going, oh, okay, this is when I sit in circle so that I can hear the story versus it's, you know, this is when I have lunch, even just really simple schedule pieces of a structure helps them enter kindergarten.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you both very much.

Okay.

Colleagues, are there any questions for our panel here?

No questions.

Okay.

I don't see any.

So I want to thank all of you as a lot of information over the entire school Allender.

So I appreciate you bringing this to us.

I look forward to subsequent reports on the investments.

And I know the levy oversight committee is in the midst of some conversations about how we will proceed with future investments.

So I want to thank all of you again for being here and hope you have a great day.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

And thank you again, partners.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Very good.

Okay, um, let's see, Devin, will you please read agenda item two into the record.

Agenda item two, council bill 120335, an ordinance relating to service animals conforming the definition of service animal to federal and state law, establishing a uniform definition for service animal by removing similar terms and including the definition in the parks code, making technical corrections and amending sections 6.310.465, 9.25.023, 9.25.082, 11.40.180, 14.04.030, 14.06.020, 14.06.030, 14.08.

015, 14.08, 0.020, 14.08, 0.045, 14.08, 0.070, 14.08, 0.190, 18.12, 0.030, and 18.12, 0.080 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, Evan.

And next time I will be sure to ask you to read the short version of the title.

My apologies.

Okay, so we are going to hear from Kevin Cahill from the Office of Civil Rights.

And so just briefly for folks to understand, I'll give a quick summary.

In 2019, the Department of Justice requested that the city look into updating the term service animal as we've defined it in our human rights code, because we are out of compliance with ADA and Washington state law.

And so we're making a technical amendment here to all those codes that Devin mentioned so that we can come into compliance.

That's the short version.

Edmund, I will hand it off to you to further explain the bill and answer any questions we may have.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, and you did a great job providing that overview.

I think that really gets to the heart of the matter, even though Devin spent a long time citing all those changes, it's actually a pretty straightforward technical amendment.

I also brought my colleague, Mike Chin here, who is our Enforcement Director at OCR, in case anyone has questions about our current enforcement practices around service animals and any changes that we may expect from this change.

So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen and bear with me, this is the first time I'm doing this on Zoom, so hopefully I can...

All right, can folks see that okay?

Yes.

Great, yay.

How do I move forward?

Hold on.

So as you shared, Council Member, In 2019, the DOJ approached us based on a complaint that they received from a, um, from a, uh, community member who was out in, on a beach, um, with their guide dog and express concerns that our current municipal code was not updated to include, um, changes to our code that would reflect changes to the ADA and other Washington state law.

So we agreed to make those changes.

Three major changes were made, and you'll see that in the proposed legislation.

We removed references to seeing eye and hearing dogs.

We added in an updated definition to service animal and removed all references to guide dog and service dog.

And the basic change is pretty straightforward.

The existing definition is on the left here.

an animal that provides medically necessary support for the benefit of an individual with disability.

And the proposed definition really just adds a clause that an animal that does work for, performs tasks for, or provides medically necessary support for the benefit of an individual with a disability.

We had been interpreting our service animal definition very broadly, so I don't think this will actually result in that much change to how the law is applied, but it does make it clear that we are inclusive and that our definition is consistent with state law and federal law.

So I think that's it.

So at this point I can answer any questions.

And again, Mike Chin is here to answer any enforcement questions related to how it has been enforced or how we perceive this change may impact folks who may file civil rights complaints.

Great.

Thank you so much, Cadman.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Cadman or Michael about what we are trying to do here?

No, I don't see any.

Okay, so it's pretty straightforward.

I think the one thing I do want to point out is that in part of the legislation, it says it shall be unlawful for the operator of any vehicle to drive into or upon any crosswalk, while there is such a crosswalk, such pedestrian or wheelchair users crossing or attempting to cross the roadway.

I just wanna be really clear that it is already illegal to enter a crosswalk if there's a pedestrian in it, regardless of whether or not the person has a disability.

I believe this language is really being added as sort of additional protection for folks who have a disability.

And the other thing I just wanna say is, it is should be abundantly clear that pedestrians in every intersection whether or not it has a marked crosswalk also protected by the law.

It is unlawful to drive into an intersection if there's a pedestrian in it.

So I was struck by the fact that that language was included and that it is already illegal to do that.

I think it's important that that language is there as sort of added protection, but just want to remind everybody, if you are in a car and you're crossing, see a pedestrian in the street, you are required to stop and let that pedestrian safely cross.

Um, okay.

Any questions?

I don't see any questions.

So I am going to, uh, we are, we are a little delayed in actually getting this legislation across.

I think we were, we had tried to bring it last year.

Um, so I am going to go ahead and move that, um, we ask, uh, what is the council bill?

Uh, 1, 2, 0, 3, 3, 5. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Nielsen?

Aye.

Vice Chair Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

All in favor?

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass the bill will be sent to the July 19th city council meeting.

Thank you very much, Cadman and Mike, for being here.

Thank you all.

Have a good afternoon.

Okay, then will you please read the short title of agenda item three into the record, three through five.

Attend to items three through five, council bill 120360, 120361, and 120362, an ordinance relating to historic preservation, imposing controls upon the original Van Asselt School, the Loyal Heights Elementary School, and Ingram High School, landmarks designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board, under chapter 25.12 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Okay, I know Erin Doherty is here from Department of Neighborhoods, so I am going to hand it off to you to make the presentation.

Good morning.

I'm also joined today by Tingyu Wang from Seattle Public Schools and Jessica Claussen, a representative for the school district, is also here.

And today we have three Seattle Public School properties.

We'll start at the south end in Beacon Hill with the oldest of the three schools and work our way north through the city and progress into later eras.

As always, we bring with us the six designation standards that the board considers.

And in addition to choosing one of them, they must also determine that the property has integrity or the ability to convey its significance.

So these three ordinances are to codify the language in the controls and incentives agreement signed by the property owner and the city historic preservation officer and are the basis of the council bill language.

And these landmark nominations were all made by the Seattle Public Schools.

So this is the original Van Asselt School at 7201 Beacon Avenue South.

This was designated May 1, 2019 under standard C and D, and the controlled features of the landmark include the 1909 site shown in red and the exterior and interior of the 1909 building designed by Edgar Blair.

This historic structure sits behind the 1950s school building and is additionally obscured by mature trees on the property's edge.

However, it is easily viewed when you enter the south end of the property, similar to how you would approach the school building in 1909. The subject building is a variation on the wood framed model plan schools that were developed by Seattle School District's first internal architect, James Stephen.

The model plans were designed so that blocks of classrooms could be constructed and the school later expanded in a deliberate fashion.

The basic module was typically an eight or nine classroom block with four or five classrooms per floor.

But the Van Asselt school is unique because it is half the standard plan with only two classrooms on each floor.

And it's unusual because you look at the front of the building, you expect the school building to be square and plan like many others of that era.

But in fact, it's really quite shallow floor plan that you can see sort of skinny building.

The buildings architect of record was Edgar Blair, as I mentioned, he was James Stevens successor and Blair worked as the district architect for for nine years and is credited with more than 30 school buildings and major additions.

His body of work at Seattle school district includes eight landmarks among them Franklin high school West Seattle high school McGill for elementary and Cooper elementary.

The 1909 school building was expanded in 1940, adding two classrooms and offices and indoor plumbing.

But even with the addition of portable structures, there were tremendous overcrowding when the nearby Holly Park housing development was completed in 1942. So the Van Asselt School campus was expanded in 1950 with the construction of the one-story brick school building designed by Jones and Bindon.

And just as a reminder, that's what you see along Beacon Avenue South.

It's kind of the more dominant building on the site.

and the 50s building and the remainder of the site was not designated by the board.

The board has since approved a major rehabilitation of the subject building, and they approved a large two-story addition that will fill the back of the 1909 site and connect to the back of the historic building, and then it also wraps, a whole classroom wing wraps along the south side out towards the street.

And shall I pause for questions or would you like me to move to the next property?

Are there questions, colleagues, about this?

Yes, I have a question.

Yes, please go ahead.

So if the designation was, I guess, in 2019, it's been several years, so what usually happens with designations if repairs or expansions or I don't know, changes are needed in between the intervening time and now.

Sure.

So when a property is nominated, there are controls that are in place at that time.

So once something is nominated, any physical alterations or proposes a change in appearance require review by the Landmarks Preservation Board.

So the absence of a controls and incentives agreement or ordinance does not prevent people from going through the review process, that's still available to them.

What happens with the controls and incentives agreement is that it gives the property owner more flexibility for the types of things that can be excluded from review by the board, or that can be done through an application process with the staff, as opposed to going to public meetings with the architectural review committee and the full board.

So once the agreement is complete, there are just more flexibility for everyone involved.

And so we always endeavor to start that negotiation immediately.

And sometimes it just takes additional time.

And sometimes that is just the property owner needing time to communicate with us and we go through drafts.

And but no one's prevented from doing the work they need to do.

There's just different review processes in the interim.

And it's my understanding that property owners are not consulted or don't have to agree to being a landmark, right?

I mean, some cities, I believe Portland does require that.

So they have to go through additional processes.

So different need to do to accommodate in this case, Uh, population growth.

Well, I'll try to answer the repairs or whatever.

I'll try to answer the first question.

You're correct that in Seattle, a nomination can be made by any party, and the owner doesn't need to consent to that.

We, as the staff, do our best to work with the property owner through that process.

And then if the property does, in fact, get designated, we do our best to come up with a controls and incentives agreement that suits their needs.

So that's part of our job.

Thank you.

Thank you, Erin.

Okay, let's go on to the next school.

Thank you.

Okay, so this is Loyal Heights Elementary School.

This is 2501 Northwest 80th Street.

It was designated March 18th, 2015 under standards C, D, and F.

The controlled features include the site and the exterior of the 1932 building and 1946 edition.

You can see here the 1932 building and the 46th edition is at the southwest corner.

Portions of the interior of the school were also designated and those have to do with the major spaces, not the ancillary spaces in the building.

The architect was Floyd Naramore and his firm Naramore and Brady built the 1946 edition as well.

So Loyal Heights Elementary School is a modest Georgian Revival two-story school.

Originally, it did not have a single main entry like most Seattle school buildings, but rather two separate entries, one for girls and one for boys on either side of what was called the cafetorium space here in the middle.

So one entry on this side and one on the opposite side.

The cafeteria slash auditorium is now the school's library.

And the children's outdoor play courts were also separated by gender.

The architect, Naramore, employed a similar planning and stylistic approach to another Seattle landmark, Montlake Elementary School, which was completed in 1924. In 1946, Naramore's firm designed the A classroom addition and gymnasium at Loyal Heights, transforming the symmetrical plan into L-shape.

The new wing, along the east side of the property featured a curved projecting bay that was used as a reading area for the kindergarten room and was a unique feature to the school.

That expressed volume is still visible and now adjacent to the school's main entrance and occupied by the school office and reception area.

In 2018, the school was more than doubled in size and the overall orientation changed to enter from the east side of the property rather than from the north.

So now you enter the property here.

And this is an older site plan, what it looked like when it was designated.

But now there is a major addition that fills the majority of the site here.

And there's a small courtyard that's left in between.

And then the green sort of park and outdoor play area was preserved.

Floyd Naramore.

The architect of the subject property was the third and last major Seattle School District internal architect.

He is credited with designing 20 major Seattle School buildings, of which 13 are landmarks, including the Roosevelt, Cleveland, and Garfield High Schools.

And I'll pause if you have questions about this property.

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

Great.

Lastly, I am going in the wrong direction, I apologize.

Lastly, we have Ingram High School at 1819 North 135th Street.

This was designated by the board on October 4th, 2017 under Standard D. Features of the landmark include the exterior of the gymnasium building, which is here, as well as the exterior of the auditorium and the associated lobby and foyer.

So it's built in 1959. And for the previous property, Loyal Heights, we were talking about the school district architect, Floyd Naramore.

Mr. Naramore went on to partner with others to create his own firm, MBBJ, stands for Naramore, Brady, Bain, and Johansson.

And that firm still exists today.

When the Landmarks Board considered this property, they were struck by the unique structural forms and ingenuity of the thin shell concrete construction employed in the roof forms of the auditorium.

You can see here.

using the hyperbolic paraboloid shape, which is basically a complex curve or a saddle shape.

So it curves both in this direction and then in the other direction.

And then the gymnasium building uses thin-shelled barrel vault concrete construction.

These were cost-effective dynamic designs to achieve long structural spans and open interior spaces without the need for columns.

These buildings are a collaboration between MBBJ and structural engineer Jack Christensen from the firm Worthington Scaling Hellion Jackson.

Mr. Christensen was one of national acclaim and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

the highest honor an engineer can receive in this country.

Although the subject building is among the smaller projects within his portfolio, it highlights the signature thin shell concrete technology that he helped promote throughout the Northwest.

The remainder of the school has been altered in a number of ways and the board elected to not designate it or the site.

Any questions?

Thank you so much, Erin.

I know when we met earlier this week and had a little bit more in-depth conversation, we were remarking, you shared with us that MBBJ really was part of several schools in the area, designing several schools in the area, which is incredible for us given the international stature of the firm.

So thank you.

I did not know that schools were built with separate entrances for boys and girls.

Only some of them.

So great.

Do colleagues have any questions for Erin about this?

I don't see any questions.

So thank you for the presentation.

Colleagues, I am going to to my script.

I will move that the committee recommends passage of these three bills.

Council Bill 120360, 361, and 362. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Kevin, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Vice Chair, Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

Four in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that council approve the legislation will be sent to the July 19th city council meeting.

Okay, thank you so much, Aaron, to see you again.

We've got one, two more items.

Devin, will you please read item six and seven into the record?

Agenda item six and seven, appointment 2253 and appointment 2254, reappointment of William H. Southern Jr. as member Community Involvement Commission for a term to May 31st, 2024 and appointment of Marcus White as member Community Involvement Commission for a term to May 31st, 2023 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Perfect, thank you so much.

And we have Alvin Edwards here from the Department of Neighborhoods.

Alvin, please go ahead and introduce our candidates.

Sure, sure.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm so honored to be here.

My name is Alvin Edwards.

I am with Department of Neighborhoods and I am one of two of the Community Involvement Commission liaisons.

We're here today to recommend the appointment of Marcus White and reappointment of Bill Southern.

Bill is not on the call today, but we do have Marcus here.

So I'll kind of give a little couple of highlights from Marcus and Bill, and then I'll pass it on to Marcus to kind of talk about anything else he would like to highlight about himself.

So Marcus is a commission appointee.

He becomes highly recommended by current and former commissioners.

He has shown interest in being on the commission for years, but due to delays with COVID and other things and the appointment process, he has not officially been on the commission.

He has also shown dedication to the commission and communities in Seattle without an official title.

And then Marcus brings a young perspective and has shown interest in taking on a leadership role in the commission.

And with that, I will pass it on to Marcus to say a couple of things about himself.

Hello everyone, I'm Marcus, I just want to start off by saying I want to give honor to all the council members and all the people that are on the call today.

The reason I want to join this commission is just to help the city.

I'm 28 years old and I'm from Atlanta I just feel like Alvin said I can bring a fresh, fresh eyes and fresh perspective to the problems that are in the city there's a lot of pernicious problems going on.

And also too, I wanna speak to the second person who gave a public comment today is just, if you have any problems, we would like and just formally or cordially invite you if you'd like to come to our July 18th meeting, we would like to actually try to work out this problem that you may have with us respectfully.

We wanna be responsive to any problems that come up.

I was a part of the, I read the former administration informally And the pandemic kind of served as a watershed moment.

So we were kind of mediocre if I'm being honest.

And I just think that with the new administration, we're going to try to really be responsive to the needs and desires of the community and really try to act with a sense of immediacy towards the problem.

So I just want to say that we want to help the city and not just talk about it and just try to help any way we can be kind of an adjunct to a council if possible.

Thank you, Marcus.

And for Bill I'll kind of read a little bit, a little bit about him since he's not here, present to talk about himself.

So Bill Southern was originally from Rhode Island.

He moved to Seattle in 1978 and lives in the Meadowbrook Wedgwood area.

Bill has a background in media, public affairs, community relations, and outreach.

He worked for Washington State Department of Transportation and as an affirmative actions officer, later promoted as the public affairs officer for the $1.6 billion Interstate 90 completion project, where he gained notoriety as the department's spokesperson during and after the sinking of the I-90 bridge in 1990. Bill has been serving on the commission as the district five appointee since December 2019. So he has one partial term and one full term.

Bill is always looking at who is missing from the conversation and finding ways that things can be improved.

And with that, I will pass it back over to Council Member Morales.

Thank you so much.

Well, Marcus, I really appreciate you responding directly to the commenters.

We have lots of folks in the city with very strong opinions, as I'm sure you've experienced, and really just appreciate your willingness to serve and to provide support to council and to the city as we move forward addressing the many things that we have to address.

Yes, you're welcome.

And her consternation was palpable, and I wanted to address that.

Sure, thank you.

Colleagues, any questions for Marcus or for Alvin?

Well, I just had a, you had me at fresh perspective.

So at some point, not now, it is interesting for me to know what folks from other cities, what fresh perspectives they have, or just what their thoughts are.

So welcome to Seattle and thank you for being willing to serve.

Thank you.

Terrific.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, if there's no questions, then I will move that the committee recommends approval of appointments 2-5-3 and 2-2-5-4.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Devin, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Nielsen?

Aye.

Vice Chair Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Four in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council approve the appointments will be sent to the July 19th city council meeting.

Marcus, you're certainly welcome to join, but you are not required to be there.

So we will take it up, take up the final confirmation at that time.

Okay, thank you very much for being here, Alvin.

Colleagues, that does conclude this meeting.

We've gone through all our agenda items.

Our next scheduled meeting of this committee is August 12. So I want to thank everybody for attending.

It is 11.02am and we are adjourned.

Thanks so much, everybody.

Have a great day.