Seattle City Council Governance and Education Committee 7/13/21

Good afternoon, everyone.

It is 2 o'clock p.m.

and the July 13th, 2021 Governance and Education Committee meeting will now come to order.

I'm Lorena Gonzalez, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Solano?

Present.

Chair Gonzalez?

Here.

That's for present, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much.

If there is no objection, the agenda for this afternoon will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Colleagues and members of the public, we usually do public comment next.

I am looking at the public comment sheet and do not see anyone signed up for public comment.

So I'm just asking our IT support to confirm that we don't have anyone in the waiting room.

That's correct.

Okay, excellent.

Again, we do not have anyone who is preregistered for public comment and no one in the waiting room, so we will go ahead and close out our public comment period since we don't have any folks to call on and move straight to items of business on this afternoon's agenda.

Again, as a reminder, colleagues, we have three items on this afternoon's agenda.

One, the first agenda item will be Council Bill 120120, which is a bill that would create civil service protections for public for certain public records officers in the city.

The second is a bill related to creation of an Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast.

And the last will be a briefing and discussion only on the Families Education Preschool and Promise levy.

We will hear a report from our deal partners around the school year investments for 2020-2021 that flow from those really important levy investments.

So the first two items are slated for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

And the last item, again, is just a briefing and discussion.

So without further ado, we will go ahead and move into agenda item one.

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

Agenda item number one, council bill 120120, an ordinance relating to city employment and public records officers.

returning positions to the civil service system and amending section 4.13.010 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great.

So before I hand it over to central staff to give us a substantive presentation on this particular bill, I did want to make some contextual comments regarding the legislative intent behind the bill.

This council bill would give civil service status to five public disclosure officers who process, currently process the public records requests of all elected officials within the city of Seattle, including the mayor's office, the legislative department, and the city attorney's office.

This legislation was, as I mentioned on Monday's council briefing, developed in partnership with the city attorney after engagement with Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, Seattle Information Technology Department, and with public disclosure officers themselves.

It is intended to ensure City of Seattle employees are shielded.

from political influence while carrying out their duties to respond to Public Records Act requests on behalf of elected officials.

I continue to believe this legislation is an important step towards protecting the transparency and effectiveness of our public disclosure process, especially when the request is directed at an elected official.

We will be taking additional steps in the following months to further improve the city's public record disclosure process, but this legislation is a single and first step of that broader effort.

So with that being said, I'm going to hand it over to Lish Whitson from our Council Central staff to walk us through the legislation.

Good afternoon.

Council Bill 120120 would return five public records officers to civil service.

Most employees of the city of Seattle are part of the civil service system under the city charter unless they are either explicitly listed in the charter or exempted by ordinance.

These public records officers respond to requests for elected officials records under the Washington State Public Records Act to respond to records requests for the office of the mayor to for the legislative department and one for the law department.

Civil service protection provides employees with the right to progressive discipline, just cause termination, and opportunities to appeal personnel actions and decisions related to discipline and alleged violations of personnel rules, laws, and policies.

Hiring of new employees into these positions would be guided by civil service rules that are intended to limit political interference in personnel decisions.

And that's all I have.

It's a pretty simple bill, but I'm ready to answer questions.

Thanks, Lish.

Pretty straightforward bill, colleagues, to just, again, take a first step towards making sure that we are protecting the integrity of those who we ask to be responsible for shepherding through our public disclosure requests as elected officials.

Are there any questions for Lish about the legislation?

I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Are there any questions or comments on the legislation before I ask the clerk, before I move the bill?

Okay, I am not seeing any hands raised with any questions, so Council members, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120120. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for the second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 120120. Again, any additional questions or comments before we move the bill?

I am seeing no hands raised, so I will ask that the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill pass.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Gonzalez?

Yes.

That's four in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries, and the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120120, and it will be forwarded to the July 19th City Council meeting.

Thanks, Lish, for your work.

And also thanks to my chief of staff, Brianna Thomas, who also spent a significant amount of time last month working on developing the legislation together with Lish and folks from the city attorney's office and CLIT and PDOs.

So I'm really excited about an opportunity for the full council to consider that bill.

Next up is agenda item two.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 120124, an ordinance relating to the organization of city government, creating an office of economic and revenue forecast, adding a new chapter 3.44 to amending section 3.39.010 and 3.39.035 of and repealing section 3.40.060 and chapter 3.82 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, I'm excited to be here today discussing this legislation that has been nearly nine months in the making at this point.

I believe that establishing an independent office of economic and revenue forecast will create a more open, transparent and robust forecasting process that will enhance both the council's and the public's access to understanding of the city's budgetary forecast.

The implementation of this office should also improve the dynamic between future councils and future mayors by building a stronger foundation of trust and balance and access to critical information between the branches in the context of developing the city's budget priorities.

There were 2 prominent episodes last year that highlighted for me and many others how important it is to level the playing field between the council and the mayor's office with regard to our access to information stemming from the city's forecasting process.

This prompted me, my staff and central staff to work together to look at alternative models and indeed both Washington state and King county.

utilize independent forecasting offices that are outside of the legislative and executive branches.

I also want to thank and acknowledge the work of Councilmember Mosqueda, our budget chair.

He was also a co-sponsor of that budget proposal in last year's budget and included it in her final proposed revised balanced budget for the council to consider and I'm very appreciative of that support.

King County, of course, went so far as to pursue a voter approved charter amendment in 2008 in order to create their office of economic and financial analysis.

And I'll get to the point of why they had to go to that extraordinary effort and why we do not have to pursue that extraordinary effort to effectuate the implementation of an office of economic and financial analysis.

Based on my review of the analysis conducted by our city attorney's office, again, we are able to establish our own independent office in a manner consistent with our city charter and with applicable state law under the Budget Authority Act.

And the legislation we're considering today is reflective of feedback and review by our city attorney's office.

And specifically, I just wanted to spend a little bit of time talking more about that particular analysis.

So we know that the Budget Act does address several aspects of how we in the City of Seattle engage in our budget process.

And upon reviewing the legal advice from our City Attorney's Office, it is very clear to me that this ordinance, as proposed, Uh, does not run afoul of the budget act or any of the provisions within the budget act that would water down or otherwise encumber the authority of the council as the budget appropriation authority or the mayor in her ability to propose a budget.

And so this ordinance falls squarely within the bounds of the laws of the Budget Act at the state level.

In terms of the city charter and the creation of ORF, I think it's important to remember that King County created a Budget Forecasting Office that required amendments to King County Charter Article 310 because the King County Charter, unlike Seattle's charter, by default places all executive departments in the executive branch.

Seattle's charter, again, has no similar provision.

There is no executive branch as the King County Charter uses that term in our charter.

In our case, the mayor and city council share legislative power under Seattle's charter, and that is found in City Charter Article 4, Section 1. In addition, within the charter, we see that our charter allows the legislative authority of the city, which again includes city council and a mayor by definition in our charter to create departments unless the charter says we cannot do so in particular areas.

So again, I just wanted to make sure that council members, you and members of the public understand the authority of the council to pursue this particular ordinance as we have, and to make sure that members of the public understand why we are doing this by ordinance as opposed to a charter amendment.

And the bottom line is that our city charter does allow us the authority by ordinance to create a forecast council, to create this new office, and to have it be a shared responsibility between the executive and the council.

So with that being said, I am going to hand it over to council central staff.

First, we have Tom Mikesell from our central staff and also Allie Panucci.

our policy and budget manager with Council Central staff.

So I'm going to hand it over to you folks to introduce yourselves and walk us through this presentation.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

I'm Allie Pucci, as you said, your Council Central staff.

I'll turn it over to Tom to introduce himself.

Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Yeah, Tom Mikesell, Central staff.

Great, thank you.

So I'm going to briefly describe the proposal.

I will walk through the city's current process for developing economic and revenue forecasts, highlight key elements of the proposal, the process we went through to develop it, and then highlight some of the policy considerations that are discussed in more detail in the staff memo for the committee's consideration.

And then Tom and I are both available to answer questions should you have them.

So as council president described, council bill 120124 would establish a new office of economic and revenue forecast that is independent of the executive and legislative branches of government.

Before getting into the details of the bill, I'll just describe the current process for how the city deals with revenue forecast.

The city's revenue forecast establishes the funding available for spending proposals made by both the mayor and the city council for each of the city's many funds.

The forecast provide projections of total revenues for the coming budget year and trends in income, population, construction, and other economic variables that drive the revenue estimates.

Currently, the Director of Finance in the Department of Finance and Administrative Services is authorized by code to provide economic and revenue forecasts in coordination with the City Budget Office.

But in practice, the revenue forecast is currently produced by analysts and economists in the City Budget Office with some support from FAS.

and then presented to the mayor and city council by the CBO director and their staff.

The 2021 adopted budget included two measures to serve as the starting point for forming an independent forecast office like the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council and the King County Office of Economic and Financial Analysis.

And as the chair described, both of those governments have independent offices that are providing this independent analysis to both branches of government to support their annual budget adoption processes or biannual budget adoption processes, as well as supplemental budget decisions throughout the year.

Currently, the city budget office for Seattle provides a forecast updates about three times per year.

So the budget actions included in the 2021 adopted budget reserved $150,000 in finance general in Finance General to fund this new office, the startup cost for 2021, and placed a proviso on $330,000 in the City Budget Office's adopted budget for 2021. That proviso is released once there's an ordinance establishing an independent forecast office.

If Council Bill 120124, the proposal before you today, is passed by the Council, supplemental budget actions will be necessary to create the positions for the new office and transfer those funds that were reserved for the startup costs.

So in terms of developing this proposal, since January, we on central staff and some of the staff in council members office have been meeting with representatives from the budget office and FAS to discuss the parameters of the new office, the makeup and responsibility of the proposed forecast council, And all of those discussions informed the proposed legislation as well as working closely with the city attorney's office as the council president described.

So the proposal would create a new forecast council, establish the process for approval of the city's official forecast, establish the duties and functions of the new forecast office, and also update certain financial reporting requirements that are included in the municipal code already.

transferring responsibility for providing financial condition reports from the city auditor to FAS and clarifying some of the reporting requirements that are already included in the municipal code for FAS, as well as establishing some regular reporting by this new office.

So the bill first would create a forecast council.

The forecast council would be comprised of the city council president, the council member who serves as the chair of the council's finance committee, the mayor and the director of finance that is part of the FAS.

Each of the elected officials on the forecast council may designate someone to attend on their behalf.

The council would be responsible for selecting and recommending approval and removal or hiring and firing of the director of this new office.

And then the director would be responsible for hiring personnel to staff the forecast council.

The forecast council would also approve the annual work plan for the new office and provide oversight and approval of forecasts produced by the forecast office.

The new office, led by a director, as I noted, selected by the forecast council, will present three forecast scenarios to the forecast council.

This is pessimistic, baseline, and optimistic.

The director will make a recommendation to the forecast council on which scenario should serve as the basis for the official forecast for that period.

And just as a reminder for the committee, typically the city has followed a sort of baseline model in their forecasting.

In 2020, the city budget office, I believe in April and perhaps in August, but it may have just been once, did present the alternative scenarios.

And we have since then been using the pessimistic assumptions.

The state, as another example, does present three scenarios to their oversight board and then selects the official forecast from that.

So the director will make a recommendation to the forecast council on which of the scenarios should serve as the basis for the official forecast for that period.

And that recommendation will stand as the official forecast, unless any member of the forecast council disagrees with that recommendation.

If they do, they can call for a vote to approve an alternative scenario.

But again, if no vote is called for, the recommendation of the director stands.

and the forecast coming out of that process would be considered the official forecast.

As the chair described, state law provides for the mayor and the city council to propose reasonable alternatives.

So the proposed legislation does account for that, only adding in a requirement that if either branch chooses to rely on an alternate forecast for any budget decision that deviates from the official forecast authorized by the forecast council, the change must be described in writing and transmitted to the other branch.

So both parties are fully informed of the assumptions and why a different path was chosen.

Meetings of the forecast council would be held in public and at minimum would take place concurrent with forecast updates.

But the number of meetings during the year ultimately would be determined by the forecast council.

So the forecast council would provide oversight to this new office.

The new office would be responsible for staffing the forecast council, performing economic and revenue forecasts, conducting special studies at the request of the forecast council, and providing ad hoc analytical support on economic and revenue estimates for legislative and executive staff consistent with the work program.

The office would consist of a three and a half full-time equivalent employees, including a new director position, a new data analyst position, a lead economist position that would be transferred from the city budget office, and 0.5 FTEs of an economic position that is currently a position that's shared between FAS and the budget office and would now be shared between FAS and this new economic and revenue forecast office.

The proposed legislation co-locates the new office within the city finance division in FAS and provides that the office would receive administrative support from FAS.

This helps reduce some of the administrative costs of establishing this new office.

In general, the new office will require about $660,000 of ongoing general fund support.

As currently proposed, about 170,000 of that is existing resources that would be transferred from the city budget office the remaining 490,000 will require ongoing general fund support.

So as presented in the staff memo, the question before the committee is really why consider modifying the city structure related to economic and revenue forecasts.

Creating a new office to provide independent forecasts and economic analyses is intended to increase transparency in the process, create a level playing field between both branches, enhance the city's work related to forecasts and other economic analysis, and creates consistency with other government agencies.

As noted, doing so does come with some trade-offs.

Moving this function to a new office and enhancing the work related to forecasts comes with some increased costs compared to the status quo.

So the policy choice really is, do these changes justify the additional costs?

To achieve the policy goals described in the staff memo, as well as those described by the council president, Additional resources would be necessary even if the forecast function were to remain within the executive branch or within an existing department.

Given some of the competing demands on the budget office staff who currently do that forecasting work, who are both doing forecasting and other fiscal policy work, it's unlikely that more detailed than regular reporting and some of the other enhancements described could be achieved without additional resources.

In addition, some of the goals may not be achievable.

if the forecasting function remains within one branch, such as leveling the playing field between the branches about when and how information is transmitted, and whether or not there's a strategic advantage in how that information is delivered.

So that concludes the summary of the proposal, and I'm happy to answer questions or go into more details about next steps.

Colleagues, any questions about the details of the bill before we go into next steps?

We'll scan the room in raised hands.

Looks like no questions.

Allie, that was really thorough.

Your memo was also super detailed, and I really appreciate all of the attention you put into the memo that we've had for quite some time now to review, so I really appreciate that.

Do you want to talk about next steps really quickly, and then we'll see if there are any general comments on the bill after I make a motion for our discussion.

Sure, happy to.

If the committee votes to recommend passage of the bill, the council could consider the legislation as early as its July 19th meeting.

If the bill is passed, as I mentioned previously, amendments to the mid-year supplemental budget ordinance that is scheduled for our first discussion in the Finance and Housing Committee on July 20th will be required.

So, if those things occur, I'll be working with the council president and with the budget chair to and with Tom to develop an amendment to implement the changes necessary to the adopted budget.

And again, it wouldn't be new resources.

It would be the resources that have already been reserved for this process for 2021 to start up this, this new office that we would be transferring as well as creating.

the at least the director position so that that hiring process can start.

Well, this would go into effect 30 days after the mayor signs, assuming it is passed by the council and signed by the signed by the mayor.

It will take some time to staff the office to identify a director as well as staff the rest of the positions.

So in the interim, The intent is to continue to work with to, to rely on the work of the budget office and on developing the forecast and starting to convene the forecast council where those where they would present 1st, the forecast council to that body until the new office is fully operating.

Which, which alley at this point, according to this timeline, we would anticipate that the forecast council would be.

Sort of set up functional, fully implemented for the 2022 budget cycle.

That's that's correct.

Given hiring timelines and that type of thing and may just do some ad hoc meetings in the interim.

Yeah.

Okay, any any questions for Ali or Tom on the legislation?

Not seeing any hands raised, so I'm going to move the bill for consideration and then I am happy to open it up for any additional comments about this particular Council bill.

So Council members, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120124. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 120124. Are there any additional comments?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I just wanted to emphasize my extreme excitement and support for this legislation.

Thank you, Madam President, for driving towards this budgetary change and the policy in front of us today.

I really want to thank Ali and Tom Mikesell as well, who have over the course of the last year and a half really identified for me a number of different ways in which comparable jurisdictions have engaged with their revenue forecast offices and I think setting this up has been a dream come true in some ways to be able to have access to more information to help our central staff, our council members, and our legislative staff, as well as members of the public, have a better understanding of the information that goes into creating the forecast and thus our budget.

So I did want to say thanks to Ali and Tom, members of the city budget's office, including Director Ben Noble and also the team at FAS, especially Glenn Lee.

And also want to thank Cody Reiter in your office, Council President, as well as Sejal Parikh in my office for their work on just ongoing conversations related to this topic over the last year or so.

I think the question posed by the central staff memo is a good one.

Do the additional costs justify the gains?

And that's exactly what we should be looking at.

And I think for me, the question is a good one.

And the answer is an easy one.

And the answer is yes.

First, as we pointed out, the Independent Forecasting Office is a similar type of work already conducted by King County, by Washington State, and I know through Tom's research, a body that many other jurisdictions across the country have the benefit of relying upon to have greater alignment across executive and legislative branches.

And I think specifically here for us in Seattle, being able to have this tool really helps us make sure that there's greater alignment and transparency in our forecasting and budgetary processes among the county and with the state legislature in terms of creating similar assumptions as we craft our budget priorities and strategies for funding those.

Second, I think that this is really a matter of transparency and accountability for the public, making sure that we are fiscally responsible and that we are using the best information at the time to make forecasts and thus fund our priorities in the budget.

This helps to really remove some of the politics of the budgetary process, and I'm excited about being able to have concrete legislation for years to come, no matter who's in these seats, so that we have a real transparent process for our community.

I think you can find sort of the details about why that's so important on page seven of the memo.

When you see the way in which the transparency and accountability requirements across the branches will benefit from the legislation in front of us.

both in terms of enhancements in the enhancement section, making sure that the city has reliable information for the incoming revenue and how we can use that to project future years, and also the leveling the playing field concept.

I think it's really important for us as we receive the revenue forecast to not at the same time receive how those dollars should be spent by a one branch of government executive who had had the chance to see the information in advance.

This really does help level that playing field so we can all come up with priorities, whether or not they're shared, but priorities on a similar timeline.

And finally, I think that this helps to create greater confidence in our forecasting processes among both members of the council And among our community that hold us accountable as well so that we can point to how we've come up with our financial positions and our forecast that then informs our budget.

So, just to put it simply, I think that this really furthers our shared goals of greater transparency access to information.

both by elected officials and by members of the public, and is really good policymaking.

So to the questions and sort of the trade-offs in the discussion and the memo outlined, I think this bill helps to accomplish many of our shared goals across branches and across jurisdictions to ensure greater transparency, accountability, and really that helps serve the public as well.

So thanks to everybody who worked on this legislation, and Council President, thanks to you for your prime sponsorship on this, and looking forward to supporting it today.

Thank you so much.

Really well stated Council Member Mosqueda.

I also want to share with you all and members of the public.

I know that you have seen some information about this in terms of Council members, but the transparency piece can't be understated.

In the past, all of the work done by the Revenue Office, by the City Budget Office, is done behind closed doors.

ability to create in this particular office and have a forecast council does sort of raise the question about being able to have these meetings done in open session, consistent with the Open Public Meetings Act, which I know is something that I personally would be interested in making sure comes to fruition and in the spirit of transparency for members of the public so that they can see exactly how the city's elected officials or their designees are looking at the revenue forecast.

And so this is an instance in which the forecast council is likely subject to the Open Public Meetings Act and bringing those meetings to a public venue to allow members of the public to really get an inside view of how those revenue projections are developed, I think is an important component of transparency.

Of course, all while making sure that we're protecting The confidential tax information consistent with state law, but I think there is a lot to be gained here in terms of the cost benefit analysis question posed in Allie and Tom's memo.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions before we call the roll?

I was going to thank all the same people that Councilmember Mosqueda just thanked.

So I will just say ditto.

Thanks to all of you for your really hard work on this over nine months to get us to a point where we're now considering this.

I think it's a solid piece of legislation that does represent a consensus agreement between us and the executive branch.

So I think we are ready to move forward on this important aspect of how we do governance at the city.

So, that being said, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill pass?

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Straus?

Yes.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

That's four in favor and none opposed.

Motion carries and the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120124 and it will be forwarded to the July 19th City Council meeting and Allie and Tom, And Budget Chair Mosqueda, I look forward to working with you all on those supplementary budget bills that were referenced by Allie and Tom in their memo.

So that will be the next phase.

Thanks so much.

Okay, we're going to move to our last agenda item.

We are moving at a clip pace.

It's only 2.35 p.m., so I'm going to ask the clerk please read item three into the record.

Agenda item number three, the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy School Year 2020-2021 Annual Update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

We have a really exciting opportunity to hear from both community partners and staff over at the Department of Education and Early Learning on this really important area of investment.

For those of us who serve on the FEPP Levy Oversight Committee, we get pretty detailed granular information on a pretty regular basis on these investments.

And so I like to at least once a year bring community partners and deal to the table here, the virtual table, to help to make sure that the council members of this committee and also members of the public understand how these dollars are being invested directly in the health and education of our kids and their families.

I want to thank Director Chappelle for being with us and to your team also for bringing many of the providers who are with us today to discuss this really important levy update on the Families Education Preschool and Promise levy.

I am definitely looking forward to hearing directly from the service providers and practitioners on how they think our levy is doing and what they're seeing in terms of impact within our broader community.

So I am going to hand it over to Director Chappelle for introductions and to kick off our presentation.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Good afternoon, Council.

As you know, I am Dr. Duane Chappelle, the proud director of the Department of Education and Early Learning.

We're excited to be here today, as you just mentioned, but really to introduce you to some of our FEPP partners and to share updates on the second school year of our FEPP levy implementation program.

And if someone could please pull up our PowerPoint slide.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

We can go to the next slide.

And as always, what I love to do is just start by grounding us in DEEL's four key results.

So today you'll hear about progress made towards the three academic results in particular, kindergarten readiness, high school graduation, and completion of a post-secondary degree, credential, or certificate.

Next slide, please.

So today's briefing, it'll focus on the most recent school year where, of course, COVID-19 really changed so much.

And you'll hear from our partners themselves about how their year went in service to our Seattle children, youth, and families.

And then what will happen is we'll respond to council questions and have some opportunities and time for discussion.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so just a brief reminder, we are in the second year of FEPP.

These investments go through August 31st, and I just want to make sure I'm clear that today is a progress update, not our normal formal annual report.

As I mentioned a moment ago, COVID impacted our service delivery and data collection this year, and we will have a fuller picture of data impacts and outcomes this fall.

But similarly, many of our grantees are still submitting invoices for the school year.

for our school year investments.

And we're actually, we will have contracts open, or should I say open contracts for the summer of 2021 services now.

And the formal annual report for school year 2021 will be submitted to our levy oversight committee and council in February of 2022. Okay, next slide please.

Okay, so now let's dive into our much anticipated panel.

Next slide please.

So I, as always, you can see I'm excited to introduce you to our amazing panelists.

They will each give a short statement and then we'll open it up for discussion.

So we have and I'm just going to just briefly introduce a few of them.

So we have Ruth Brown, Executive Director of CAUSE Learning Center in the Central District.

KAWSI is one of the first African-American-owned early learning centers in Seattle, and it actually has provided nurturing care to our city's youngest learners for decades.

Earlier this year, I was privileged and had the honor of delivering a proclamation to the KAWSI's family honoring their matriarch, Jeanette Lee KAWSI, as a pioneer of early childhood development and as a beloved community member.

We are also joined by Aaron Jeffers.

Aaron, who is also part of our DEEL team, another amazing member of our DEEL team, and is an early learning coach who supports our SPS preschool classrooms.

And then we have Principal Miguel Sansolon from Concord Elementary in South Park and I think you all know how important it is and Miguel has been an amazing instructional and community leader within his school and the community.

We're also joined by Willie seals.

Willie is the CEO and founder of the Academy for creating excellence, and he'll speak to the organization's work on engaging and educating Seattle's black male youth in a culturally responsive way.

And we also have Terry Jenster.

Terry will share their, or who will share their experience as a nurse practitioner providing clinical services through a school base and health center during COVID.

And last but not least, we have Francisco Ramos, one of the outreach specialists for Seattle Promise, for the Seattle Promise program, who is working with our high school scholars or seniors to basically to create the college going culture within our city.

So without further ado, let me stop rambling and let's stop sharing the screen so we can see our panelists faces.

And I will pass it off to Ruth.

Are you on?

Seeing Ruth, do we have Ruth in the waiting room?

Council President Gonzalez, I believe that Ruth is being texted right now and hopefully she'll be able to join on.

Okay, so what I'll do is pass it off to Aaron.

Aaron, I'm going to pass it off to you.

Okay, can you hear me?

OK, good.

Well, first of all, I just want to say, yeah, I'm Aaron Jeffers.

I'm a coach with the city of Seattle.

And thank you for the opportunity to come and talk about coaching.

I'm really passionate about coaching.

And I think although this year it's been very different, as everything has been for all of us, I feel like our team was able to still do our best to support the programs that we work with.

So yeah, so one of the things our team did was a group of us, a group of coaches, regularly works on a social, emotional, and anti-bias newsletter that comes out regularly.

And it focuses on self-care, strategies, and some examples of that could be cooking, or exercise, or reading some of the coaches' personal stories.

We also included resources on videos podcasts and articles around growth around culturally responsive practices in the education setting and personally working on that with our own growth.

This group is still meeting and we're still working on the newsletters coming out and meeting the moment and and hopefully programs have found that helpful.

And so that's one thing we've done as a team I think Personally as within my own coaching I only work with Seattle Preschool Program classrooms that are in the Seattle Public Schools.

So from September through March they were all remote.

So that involved obviously I couldn't support them in person but meeting with them regularly and supporting them to figure out their remote learning schedule whether when they would how they would do small groups or large groups with children.

I also met with them when the children weren't on the calls on a regular basis sometimes weekly sometimes bi-weekly and basically just worked to listen and support with what they needed and and what was important and valuable to them at different times throughout the year because obviously and we were kind of learning together because remote learning in preschool we probably never thought that would happen before COVID So and specifically around the high school curriculum which some of the programs we use use that.

Some of the programs use creative curriculum.

So we worked on specific aspects of still working to implement what was possible remotely with with the children.

I would also let me see.

So and then in March the district shifted to hybrid.

So that was a challenge two thirds of the way through the year.

And there was lots of conversations that I had around classrooms around how that would work and how what is safe and how they would go about doing that.

Some classrooms I worked with had very little children in person some had a lot in person and very little remote.

So it really shifted and working to support the children as best we could as they were.

throughout the beginning part of the year.

And, you know, when they went in person, there was only two hours and 45 minutes, four days a week.

So working to make the most of that time, there was lots of conversations around that.

And then lastly, I would just say, you know, just in general, and I know I've heard this from other coaches as well, just how impressed I am of the programs I classrooms I work with with just what the teachers were able to do and the ideas they were able to come up with and engage the children for most of the year remotely and then also balancing the remote and the in-person and just I I've been so impressed and amazed with what the teachers have been able to do and look forward to continue to support and build and grow with them as we see what happens in the coming school year.

And again, thank you for the opportunity to focus on coaching.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron.

I appreciate you sharing those thoughts.

And Miguel, what I'm going to do is I'm going to kick it over to you.

Just share some thoughts as a principal, instructional leader, community leader, one that's over there really providing a service to second to none.

Go ahead and share some of your thinking.

Thank you, Director Chappelle, and good to see you, Chairperson Gonzalez.

It's been two years and so much has happened in the interim.

Please excuse my voice.

I'm feeling a little nervous to be in your presence and to be and to have the opportunity mostly, I think, to advocate for the neighborhood.

And it's with great responsibility that I feel that I'm here today.

As Director Chappell said my name is Miguel Santeloni.

I'm the proud principal of Concord International Elementary School.

A proud levy partner and awardee for the past two levy cycles actually.

Concord is located in the Duwamish River Valley and is in the South Park neighborhood.

And to give kind of context before I kind of talk about the school year South Park is a place that's beautiful and diverse.

It's a place that where 85 percent of our students are students of color.

We have the highest percentage of certificated staff of color in the southwest of Seattle Public Schools.

And because of that and what we know about the impact of the pandemic, we felt the pandemic in our zip code and in the Duwamish River Valley, particularly intensely when you think about broader Seattle and King County.

And my goal today is not to tell you something new necessarily, but just to say that these issues that we faced as a school community and as a neighborhood are ones that have been present and they've simply been intensified by the pandemic, which we all have experienced.

We have an 8-year shorter life expectancy in the neighborhood than the rest of Seattle.

We have a 25 percent higher rate of asthma and that's pre-pandemic pre-respiratory pandemic.

We had the highest rates of school of students visiting the health room in the 2018-19 school year in all of Seattle Public Schools.

And despite having only 40 percent of our students return to a hybrid in-person model which Erin referenced beginning in March of the 18 elementary schools that I'm most closely aligned with in Seattle Public Schools structure we had the most visits to the protected healthcare room which means that there were symptoms of COVID-19 present in students in the school.

And why do I say that?

Why do I kind of pitch all of these things?

I pitch it because we happen to be in a moment, and with this, with what Director Chappelle is responsible for, what I'm responsible for, what we're all responsible for, is we have the, I think, the power to continue doing the great things that we're doing.

Partnering with City Year, for example, continuing to work with our dual language program that that has our ninth graders achieve college credit as Chief Sealth students in AP classes because of our robust 50-50 model of English and Spanish by literacy.

The city funds a .25 assistant principal for our school which is a vital a vital piece of our work.

And it also funds a family support worker which has helped families connect to over $300,000 worth of rent monies over the past one year alone.

All of those things are really critical to the basic needs of our families in order to be in a place to think about academic achievement.

And our students have done a year's worth of learning for sure, but how do we measure what that learning is?

I think that DEEL and my school in particular has an ability to help redefine what academic success means.

And I wanna ask the city council and Dwayne and deal to use more advancements away from standardized testing.

We've seen OSPI take away standardized testing for two years, and it hasn't mattered to our students at Concord in exchange for an investment in ethnic studies, in exchange for an investment in restorative practices.

And if partners at OSPI or Seattle Public Schools need DEEL to be prescriptive, then we should be prescriptive.

And the city should leverage its substantial power to say, here's what we need to do to change the outcomes for our students of color who have been disproportionately negatively impacted by the pandemic and who need ethnic studies in order to understand why it's impacted their community more intensely.

What is environmental racism?

Why is the Duwamish River, our only river, a Superfund site?

And why is the historically Latinx community impacted in South Park in this way?

And the last thing that I want to say is the reason we moved back into hybrid models in March was because the governor said that we had a crisis, a mental health crisis in the state of Washington for black and brown children.

deal does work with mental health funding and supports and that work needs to continue.

My wondering is how do we take action to hold the state accountable to these realities that are used to put students back into buildings during a pandemic.

When my school has all the staff that I just told you about but we only have a .5 nurse full-time That's unacceptable and it's moral bankruptcy, not just in our city, but in our state and in our country.

And I think that we can advocate and we can have a different kind of conversation because right now, from my perspective, what Dr. Patina Love says is we're managing oppression.

We're trying to do the best with what we have and we're never gonna get out of that if we don't hold the system accountable and leverage our respective powers.

I appreciate it.

I know I went long.

Thank you very much.

No, thank you.

Thank you, Principal McGill.

Appreciate you for sharing your brilliance.

And what I'm going to do now is kick it over to Willie, Mr. Seals.

There he is.

All right.

Hello.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Hello.

Hello.

It's good seeing everybody.

Hello.

My name is Willie Seals.

I am the CEO slash co-founder of the Academy for Creating Excellence.

You may hear ACE Academy in some circles, but ACE is what we go by for short.

ACE was created in 2012 as a space and an opportunity to provide safe spaces for black men Young Black men in particular that are in middle school and also high school within the Seattle area.

How the relationship that we have between the city of Seattle and also South King County is that we provide a number of signature programs for ACE.

So that's our school programs, which is providing work in class work.

and advisory for middle school and high school students.

We also, what we have currently going on right now is our summer learning experience, providing space for rising eighth graders and rising ninth graders, a four week summer program to where they're learning STEM.

such as black culture and black society, and then also health and wellness.

And also what's embedded in that is leadership and character development.

The other spaces that have been supported by the city deal is what is called our parent cafe.

And the Parent Cafe is a series of network opportunities for our parents that have students who are engaged in ACE.

What we have understood and just learned over time is that students as a whole, they are connected either through their schools and or their families.

Um, and so this gave us a, this given us an opportunity to connect with parents on a, um, intentional and authentic level.

Um, and to learn from them, what do they need?

That's necessarily what their students need because we already have them in our school programs, in our summer programs.

But what do parents need?

Because for myself, I'm a parent as well.

I do not have all the answers for raising my young children.

But also it's an opportunity for us to build resources and connect with other parents as well, as far as what they need.

The last space that we have provided was a space for educators.

And so that's our Black Educators Network.

In our Black Educators Network, we have hosted a series, a four-part series, to connect with our local educators within the school community.

That's within Seattle Public Schools.

We've had guests from outside of Seattle schools within those spaces.

And all of this work over this past year has been done virtual.

And now we are currently in a space now to where we are connecting with our students and our students in particular.

And the last piece that I missed was our Fame Saturday program.

Our Fame Saturday program started last year of September 2020. and ran into May of 2021. So we did a nine month program Saturdays to where we have 50 young men from across the Seattle area participate in a virtual learning on their Saturdays matter of fact right during this time.

So it was from 9 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

They were learning everything from from STEM to sports to music, which was very, very popular.

And then how do they show up in these spaces as well?

And the great thing about our organization, our program is that it is led by black male instructors that is in these spaces.

So that way it gives our students an opportunity to learn a little bit more about themselves.

and see themselves in these positions in these spaces.

And so what has led up to a quick nugget is we have our summer learning program, which is going on currently for the next four weeks.

From that Saturday program, we have actually hired four interns from our Saturday program to help us out with our summer learning experience.

So this gives them an opportunity to learn areas as far as like youth development career opportunities, teaching profession career opportunities, And then also how to just be able to give some near peer experiences.

So that way they are not only learning, but also being able to be mentors to our ninth and eighth graders.

So this was a great opportunity that we could, that we are able to share.

And we definitely provide more information to have you now that we are in a little bit more safer space to even possibly come visit our programs and see what the programs are about.

I believe McGill just even stated it perfectly, is getting out to see what these programs are about and what we're doing in these communities, because it's a huge need, especially after the biggest year of what's so-called loss.

Loss as far as relationship, intentional relationship and building and connecting with our young people, which has been a huge miss.

And I believe going into the after the summer, and my last point, going after the summer, going back into the school year, It's going to be really imperative that these authentic relationships continue to happen with our adults and our young people, so that way we have a bigger understanding of what's happening and what's going on in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brother Willie.

That was great.

We're going to keep this going.

I appreciate you, Willie, for what you and what you and your organization have been doing for these young men throughout Seattle.

And I've known you for quite some time, and I appreciate every moment of it.

Next, what I'm going to do is kick this over to Francisco.

Francisco, if you can come on and share some of your expertise and engage us.

Awesome.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Francisco Ramos and I'm an outreach specialist with the Seattle Promise Program.

So my role really involves helping our high school seniors in applying for the Seattle Promise Program Seattle Colleges everything that goes into enrollment and onboarding so everything that would be required for them to show up on the first day.

So typically before COVID my role would be to be embedded at high schools to serve as a resource for students.

both in classroom presentations and in counseling centers.

And with COVID the entire role has kind of shifted in the way that we as Seattle Promise Outreach Specialists support our students.

I think the number one thing I've learned from this is that our high school seniors and are very resilient.

Education stopped for them but also turned upside down and began again at the same time.

And so Connecting, we had to learn new ways to connect with our students.

Since we're not there, we weren't there in person to physically support them.

Some of the challenges I guess we face is being on Zoom to do like financial aid.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the FAFSA or the WASFA, but they are hard and challenging, especially if you're a first generation college student or you don't have that social capital at home or English isn't your first language.

And it's a lot to walk through on Zoom versus being there in person with a student where you can help them and their family with that.

Also, we saw a lot of the students I worked with picked up working either part-time or full-time, sometimes becoming the sole or main breadwinner for their family.

And so it was harder to connect with them on the times that like we operate on business hours.

And of course, we saw students furthest from educational justice, I think, were disproportionately impacted by this transition.

But we did learn some things and that allowed us to adapt and to meet students and to still help them through this process.

I think a big one was being consistent and where information was located and how students could access resources with us.

we, part of this information accessibility was instead of how we would offer these workshops at the high schools all the time, and that was there, and it was at that specific time, we started offering them, but also recording them and then making those PowerPoints, making those presentations available on our website, making sure we were communicating to students how they could access those.

I know plenty of times, especially during the pandemic, I'll get like 2 a.m.

emails like, hey, I just watched this video.

I'm on to the next step.

what do I do, even though I'm not going to respond until 8 a.m.

the next day, but it gives students an ability to work on things at their own pace, especially with just how different life has been.

Also, just our live sessions, changing them all throughout the day from the morning to the afternoon to the later part of the evening, and making sure that we had, which was really cool we were able to do this year, is we had interpreted workshops for financial aid with the six most common Seattle Public Schools second languages.

So that way those are recorded and available to students as well.

And in avoiding kind of long e-mails which is not exactly the most helpful when you're trying to walk through very complicated things.

We learn like infographics work better.

Short.

Sweet.

To the point.

And so in connecting students who needed the most support, make sure that we're not just emailing, we started utilizing text messages.

It's really funny if you put a high hand wave emoji, you get a lot more response and students like see that and respond a lot quicker, calling, doing multiple follow-ups.

You said students had a lot, seemed to have a lot going on, many of them working, watching, taking care of siblings or grandparents, parents.

So making sure that you have those multiple touch points with them was really helpful.

And then also another really cool thing that we got developed this year was a solid a more solid parent engagement piece.

So we were able to get parents emails and phone numbers so we could give them text reminders call reminders email reminders on how on what their student is working on the Seattle Promise process and how they could best support them.

And we were even able to, at our Readiness Academy, which is like a small orientation, we had a family engagement component that we had.

So students, guardians, parents, supporters were able to join and really learn how they could best support their student through this application process.

And I think that's really cool because in addition to partnering with high school staff and like CBOs at the high schools, we're also bringing in families because really does take a community in getting students through these like I'd say challenging forms especially financial aid and things like that.

And so really looping that all together.

And I'd say just lastly I think what's makes Seattle Promise so successful both in person and through this last year is like I was a first generation college student who went to a university and I felt like just a number being kind of pushed through.

I didn't really have any touch points like in the enrollment process but.

or once I was in college, but Seattle Promise operates so differently and in a way that's so cool in that students are supported all the way from application to graduation, and they have someone there who's touching base with them.

We see them as people, and we know that we can support them.

And so it's really nice, I think, that students, that we're there for students, and they have someone that they can go to whenever they're confused, from applying to picking classes to transferring on to whatever comes next.

Thank you, Francisco.

Appreciate you for what you do.

And I like the support that you're providing.

You just mentioned providing support from students from A to G, application to graduation.

That is extremely important.

Next, what I'm going to do is pass this over to Ruth Brown.

Hello, everyone.

Good afternoon Dr. Chappelle and distinguished council members.

I am Ruth Kazi Brown Director of Kazi's Learning Center in Seattle.

Kazi's has been a Seattle preschool program provider since the program inception.

My staff and I were very concerned about our preschool students needs when the pandemic struck in March of 2020. Preschoolers, as we all know by nature, are explorers, scientists, artists, experimental learners.

They are learning how to engage with the world.

So when the pandemic hit and learning shifted online, I and my team recognized that preschool students were at risk, missing the opportunity to develop those important social, emotional, and pre-academic skills.

because he's offered online daily Zoom classes.

But I wanted to share with you today is that in addition to the online instruction, our team transformed our school bus that we have.

It was originally purchased for field trips and outings, and we turned it into a mobile classroom compliant with all the COVID safety precautions.

The students brought their tools and activity boxes which we had supplied to them earlier at the beginning of the year, the teachers brought their tools, experience, and enthusiasm.

There is where the magic began.

Our home visits were a success.

By September, all families enrolled wanted to be on the visit list.

It took a lot of creative scheduling to make this happen because we didn't think everybody was going to sign up.

In addition to constant Zoom classes, our newly created mobile program provided in-person comprehensive early learning lessons, which included math, science, physical education, and emotional support.

We also administered student assessments that would typically be done in classrooms to measure important learning indicators.

Some families did not have internet access, And we were able and were unable to attend the Zoom classes, so we delivered educational activity packets during the home visit, which enhanced their students' development skills and matched a weekly theme.

These packets also included at-home activities.

Parents could return the packets during the next home visit.

In December, our teachers delivered holiday supplies and gifts to spread hope and bring holiday cheer to many who were experiencing unprecedented financial hardship, anxiety, and grief.

Providing these additional services enhanced a sense of school community, like family, and ensured that all students felt motivated to learn and fully capable of participating even through the academic problems that we were having.

Kazi's Learning Center is just one of many SPP providers who adapted our classrooms and our programs to provide remote and small group hybrid in-person instruction throughout the pandemic.

We educators are a dedicated community who are taking this new normal one day at a time and hoping to shed light where there may be darkness.

I'm building upon my mother's legacy by providing a support system to Kazi's educators and ensuring that the center continues providing children with high quality and early learning education.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ruth.

I appreciate those words.

Now what I'll do is, Terry, you can close us out.

Thank you very much and thank you for inviting me shared experience with a lot of the other community members.

I'm a nurse practitioner at Ingram high school school based clinic.

And as I'm sure, you know, the school based clinics provide a variety of services to adolescents in the high school.

And the beauty of it is ease of access, no barriers, no cost to families.

Students can come in for regular services or they can seek confidential services and it's a safe place for them.

In March of 20, when the pandemic hit, there was cheering and hugging in the hall that they were being sent home to social distance, and we had to shove them out the door.

But it pretty soon settled in that this was very isolating and mentally difficult for adolescents to be away from their peers and away from all the support they needed to reach their goals for next level, for college, or they were losing their sports opportunities, their drama, their graduation.

So there was a lot of loss, and I would say mental health needs were a super high priority.

I'm a nurse practitioner, medical provider, but each of the school-based clinics has a mental health provider also, and they've been quite busy through the pandemic.

What we did was the schools were virtually closed or literally closed to everyone from March until September.

So we packed up boxes and put them in the trunks of our car and then got on the phone and connected with our community partners.

In my case, it was North Public Health.

I went to the WIC office there and was able to store my boxes, do visits virtually with students when we could, but sometimes we had to see them.

They were new students and we needed to and get some labs or do some exams before we could provide medications for them.

And so those clinics were kind enough to offer us those space to see students.

Still volumes were fairly low.

At every visit, we took the opportunity to screen for mental health issues to try and normalize, not is your family affected by this, but how is the pandemic affecting your family?

What's the hardest part for you?

How are you coping?

Connecting them with other community services that we knew about, whether it was grocery supports or how to get tested or how to understand the social distancing they needed to do.

We decided because we didn't have a normal spring where we usually wrap up and tell students how to get services during the summer that we would remain available throughout the summer.

And so we basically were on call seven days a week throughout the summer of 2020. And sometimes met students in parking lots of libraries or grocery stores or other things to provide them medications when they needed it or other in-person things.

And then when the schools opened up in the fall, the principals, as you likely know, in Seattle schools, invited the school-based health staff back into the schools.

We all entered via the janitor's door and had to attest that we didn't have symptoms or exposures, and they allowed us to bring students in that same way.

When it became apparent that that was pretty stigmatizing for the students, they let us bring them in another door.

But we only brought them in one by one and we did not see ill students.

And that actually made it be a more safe place for students to come.

When sports started in the winter, some families would not allow their students to go to the regular doctor to get a checkup or anything because they were so afraid they were going to be exposed to COVID and they had not been vaccinated.

So, we began to see more students in the winter.

And then, of course, when school opened up in the spring, you may know that probably only 60% of the students chose to come back.

And for those students, I think it was really helpful for their mental health.

And the students that didn't come back, interestingly, would look for opportunities to kind of peek in the school.

I think next year what we have to realize in the fall is we're going to not only have all these ninth graders that don't really know about high school, we're going to have a bunch of 10th graders that don't know the building, they don't know the staff, they don't really know a lot about the high school experience.

And so we're going to be faced with 50 percent of our students not really, you know, knowing high school.

And so We're working with the school already to try and plan some things that will make them feel more comfortable to be more integrated.

Some of them showed up at the vaccine clinics that the Fire Department and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance provided in May for COVID, and they were just peeking around.

They were dying to know what their teacher, you know, where they were and how big the gym was and where the office was.

So there's a lot of needs there that they'll be faced with in the fall.

Well thank you.

And I just want to close out by saying that we really admire all of you for your services that you provide.

We know that all of our Seattle scholars truly benefit from the love that you just exhibit for them.

And I just want to personally thank you for being present for our students and families and just making a positive positive impact on the ecosystem that they're that they are operating in.

So with that said, Council President, I know we're short on time.

I'll kind of pass it over to you and you can let me know how you would like us to proceed because I know we still have a presentation for you.

Yeah, just really quickly, I do want to respect the time of our community partners here who have really important work to continue doing important work that we just all heard about.

But I do want to offer my colleagues on on the committee an opportunity to ask any questions or make any comments to our community partners who have just been really critical to our ability to deliver the promised services and educational justice outcomes that we have committed to deliver on behalf of our families in Seattle.

And I'm just really, really proud of all of the work that we've just heard about.

And for each one of you, there are many others in our community who are doing equally important work in shared spaces in communities.

So really grateful for that.

Any comments?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President and Chair.

I don't have any questions, just a moment to say thank you to Miguel Francisco Ruth Terry Willie, you are doing the work on the ground that is so needed for our community during really hard times from turning school buses into mobile classrooms and ensuring that our students who are having a, Terry, just the way that you explained it there on the first day of the pandemic, the excitement of going home and then how that really impacted people and their mental health over the last year during such a critical development time.

I just can't thank you enough.

Thank you for being on call seven days a week during the summer.

Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for this work.

Those are my comments, Council President and Chair.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.

Any other comments or questions, colleagues, for our community partners?

All right, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

Thanks again for taking the time to be with us and for sharing a little bit more with us about the important work you're doing in partnership with the city and DEEL in particular.

I, a couple years ago, had an opportunity to actually tour many of the FEPP levy investment sites and was just so inspired by the work in sort of in the buildings on the ground that is being done every single day.

Really, really impressive work, actually.

had an opportunity to tour Concord as well.

And it's just such an impressive space and learning model.

And I'm very excited to have an opportunity to get back into these public spaces where we can continue to learn together on how to continue to best serve our youngest learners and our future presidents of the United States of America and future entrepreneurs, all of whom You all are already nurturing and teaching in your own program, so our gratitude for all of the work that you do every day.

It's been a challenging, challenging year, and you all have been on the front lines of lifting up and doing your best to make sure that our families are surviving and able to continue to thrive.

A lot more hard work to be done ahead of us, but this crew makes me really confident and hopeful that we can deliver.

So thank you everybody.

Thank you.

Director Chappelle you want to take it away with that presentation.

Yes we'll do.

So if whomever is driving the PowerPoint slide if you can pull it back up for us that would be really helpful.

So she'll get it going here.

Okay.

So there it is.

So what I'll do now is I will pass it over to our phenomenal early learning director, Monica Liang-Aguier to take us from here around early learning division updates.

Great.

Thank you, Duane.

So glad to be here.

So glad to have listened to that really inspiring panel.

And what I was just thinking about is how we as a collective have really worked to just bring up some really great innovation during this year.

Flexibility was the big theme of the year.

And I think even as challenging as it was, it's just evident that brilliant minds working together really come up with some great innovations that don't all need to go away, right?

So I hope that Ruth continues her mobile bus somehow on my preschool classroom.

That's just a brilliant innovation that came out of this.

And I'm confident that we've learned a lot that can carry forward.

So if you can go to the next slide, please.

I just want to sort of highlight some of these sort of pivots and flexibility and adaptations that we did sort of behind the scenes for our preschool programming.

You know, it was obviously a year like no one ever imagined.

I mean, I think if you'd asked me two years ago if preschool children could learn virtually, I would have laughed.

And so that is completely absurd.

We actually, you know, encourage children not to be on the screen and here we had children, actually quite successfully with the under the guidance of really skilled teachers with excellent coaching have productive sessions online and with, you know, significant impact or support from their families, it worked.

It's not necessarily the preferred model, but a lot of good came out of it, and we learned a lot also in how to support families.

So anyway, so the school year 2020-21, we offered three different preschool models.

We had 100% in-person, which about a third of our programs offered for the majority of the year.

We had another third of our classrooms were 100% remote.

That was mostly the Seattle Public Schools sites through March.

And then another third, approximately a third, were in hybrid sessions.

So we offered a lot of flexibility, not one size fit all for all providers, and they all made it work for their communities.

And then we also really had to think, you know, our deal, our priorities were helping the families, supporting families, and also supporting our providers.

And we have to balance those two.

and make sure that we could help everybody get through this situation.

So for families, one of the things that we really focused on was just the tuition piece, knowing that economically families were really in a hard situation.

We waived tuition completely for families that were getting remote services and just across the board, just reduced tuition by 50% for any other family attending hybrid or in-person.

We also wanted to make sure that we were in line with the state and eliminated child care co-pays.

For six months, we did that, and then we reduced it by 50% for another three months that just ended in July.

And then we also really took to heart the idea that families are the children's first teachers, and we wanted to support them and provided quarterly learning packets for families that were delivered through their programs so they could support their children's learning at home.

And for our providers, you know, we wanted to make sure that they also had the means to to navigate these additional expenses.

So we gave our providers COVID stipends per classroom to just buy all the sanitizing equipment and the PPE.

And we also made sure that some family support dollars that were new last year, we just gave a lot of flexibility on that because our providers know best how to support their families.

And we wanted to make sure that there were no strings attached and that they were able to do what they needed to do to support their families.

You heard Aaron talking about virtual coaching.

That was an incredible innovation and success.

So going to 100% virtual coaching actually had some benefits because once we worked out the technological pieces, they were so much more accessible and they spent much less time in the cars driving from site to site and were able to actually support teachers more directly, more quickly.

They also piloted a very innovative robotic camera system with some of the providers so that they could do observations and live observations, give feedback.

And that is something that we'll be carrying on next year as well.

And then all of our professional development was also 100%, which again, 100% virtual, which again, you know, has its drawbacks, but in terms of accessibility, once you get the technology done, all the teachers could attend so much easier than having to cross town to get there to a workshop.

So, you know, again, these are areas where we learn some things and we're going to keep some of those practices in place because we actually found out some of those benefits.

And then I think, you know, we are also decided that we're going to extend the contracts by a couple months so that On a voluntary basis, our SPP providers could say, yeah, we want to, because we know this year was less than ideal.

We want to extend for a couple months.

So actually, SPP is running through the month of August this year, instead of ending in June, as it usually does to give additional time for children.

And then finally, we focused our process evaluation this year on how to deal respond.

We want candid feedback from our providers, from our families.

from teachers to see actually, you know, how did we as an organization, as a city agency respond to this crisis, so that we can learn also and improve our processes in the future should we ever need to.

manage such a situation again.

So those are some of the adaptations that we put into place.

Next slide, please.

Some of the highlights for this year, you know, I think the FCC mentorship program is, you know, an addition to the SPP under FEPP.

It is, despite a really inopportune year to launch it, it actually was, you know, quite, quite successful and we had more interns this year than we had the previous year.

So that actually, they were able to target, they were able to pivot very well also to the to the virtual program, and we can certainly provide a more in-depth update on that in the future.

And then, very, very proud of our Children, Race, and Racism Institute, which is a yearly professional development institute that the early learning department puts on.

And this year it was just it because it was 100% virtual it just had the highest attendance ever across from from attendees from across the country.

We had nationally renowned speakers, as well as local experts who provided three days of professional development and inspirational um uh uh content for our um for all of our teachers that beyond early learning it was really accessible to all of our um through k-12 and and the focus was um uplifting the black black boy brilliance and and how do we elevate that and that was such a a content a theme that really resonated with um with all of us and all of our um all of our educators um and was Very, very successful.

And again, one of those silver linings in this because probably if we'd held it in person, it wouldn't have had as far a reach as it did this year.

Next slide, please.

So just to sort of show you actually the number of children that we served, as you can imagine, our enrollment was lower this year than expected.

We did have to reduce our available seats because of social distancing requirements.

Most providers lowered the number of children that they were able to serve per classroom.

But despite that, we served roughly 1,500 children.

And you can see across the three years, You know, it's held consistent in the percentage of children who are BIPOC or come from BIPOC families.

So that was encouraging.

And we also continue to grow during this time.

And we're really looking forward to next school year where we are planning for a 100% in-person program for next year.

Still allowing some flexibility for providers if they know their communities and if there's some particular community needs, we're allowing some flexibility as we transition back to 100% in-person.

But we hear our enrollment is approaching pre-COVID.

pandemic rates.

So families are feeling more confident about sending children back to preschool.

So that's really exciting.

And we plan on serving about 2,000 children next year.

So all things are a go for next year.

And then finally, if you go to the next slide, this is just, we know that council is interested in understanding better of who we are serving specifically.

And so this is a breakdown of the different race and ethnicities of our children in the Seattle preschool program.

So you can see that the 28% of our children are black African-American, 22% are white, and it goes down from there.

And if you go to the next slide, it actually breaks down those different subgroups into further detail, because that is the direction that we're going with our data.

We want to make sure that we're able to disaggregate it more finely so that we can really understand who we are serving.

So that concludes the early learning update.

I will let my colleague, Dana, talk about K-12 and then we can do questions then.

Is that the plan?

I think that's the plan.

Yeah.

We'll go through the presentation and then council members will have an opportunity to make any comments or ask questions once we get through the presentation.

Perfect.

Thank you.

That sounds great.

And good afternoon, Council President and Council Members.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be in front of you today.

And Vy, if you are still helping us, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

You can go ahead on to the next one.

I'm going to speak a little bit, as Monica did, to some of the incredible adaptations that were made by our staff and our partners this year.

As you've heard through the panel and through what's been shared so far, This was just an incredible year of resilience, endless amounts of creativity, and tremendous dedication to serving students and families through this pandemic.

It was a year of adaptation and modification, not just once as the school year began and we figured out what it was going to look like, but multiple times as public health circumstances continued to evolve and the school year progressed and we had to evaluate and reevaluate constantly as the circumstances on the ground were changing.

As you've heard others say, I just want to give my credence to the many, many partners that we have that did this incredible work this year and that kept to it.

It was no easy feat and we're forever grateful to them.

So I'm just going to speak here to a few of the adaptations that took shape in the K-12 and post-secondary space.

One you heard Terry speak to earlier was the change in the way that we delivered health services.

And so not only when we were thrown into virtual environments, not only did we pivot to providing telehealth services, we also were able to get back into school buildings through partnerships with public health and also with our Seattle school partners.

to make sure that that in-person, in-school-based health center option continued, as well as extended into community.

And our community clinics continued to be a space where students and families could go and access medical and mental health care, which was no small feat and also required constant adaptation as public health circumstances on the ground changed.

So a real testament to those who continue that work this year.

Another example I'll highlight of adaptations was around all of those across our many investment streams who made it possible for families to continue to access resources by setting up pickups and drop-offs, by compiling resources, whether that be food assistance, technology resources, learning materials, and making them available, sometimes at a coordinated school drop-off point, sometimes at a park, sometimes directly to students' and families' homes.

And it just, again, is a testament to their resilience and dedication throughout the year.

That happened not just through our school partners, but through our community partners, our family support provider programs, and elsewhere too.

I also want to call out specifically some of the adapted services to continue academic supports for students this year.

Here again, endless amounts of creativity from our educator partners in schools, we saw Examples of this take shape as tutors and academic success coordinators creating individualized learning support plans, doing check-ins with students in online context over text, via email, with a phone call, just to let students know that they were cared about, that they were missed, and that they were supported.

In very specific terms, at Lowell Elementary School, we saw staff work absolutely tirelessly to meet the needs of their student community, which has high numbers of students who are experiencing homelessness.

So connecting families to resources to meet basic needs, making sure that students had safe places to access in-person support and nutritious meals.

They worked with community partners to create very specific educational enhancement sites that included transportation to and from so that students could be supported in their remote learning.

So it was just an incredible effort by a lot of partners around a dedicated goal to make sure that services to students continued and that their academic progress continued.

And one more call out there to our colleagues over at Aki Kurose Middle School, where we saw partners implement some really powerful practices around restorative justice and the work of our coordinator partner over there, September Clark, who grappled with staff around racial equity issues and really worked to build in and facilitate community building circles with students, build their leadership capacity to such a point that they're going to be poised to take it on themselves as we enter the new school year.

So those are just a few of the many, many examples of the adaptations that were made across our partners and our partner sites throughout this past year.

I could go on all afternoon, but I know that our time is limited, so V, I'll ask you to move us on to the next slide.

Here again, this tugged at my heartstrings to be able to narrow the number of highlights, to be honest, but I do want to call out a couple of remote learning highlights and a couple of those in our culturally specific and responsive programming space.

So around remote learning, I think, as you heard Monica speak to just a moment ago, we really learned a lot and were pushed in a lot of ways to make sure that we were engaging families, not only more frequently, but in new and different ways.

And we know that we will continue a lot of this work heading into the new school year ahead.

Whether that be through home visits, more frequent types of support.

We saw some really interesting and intriguing models of how parents were being worked with.

Creation of academic support and academic parent teacher teams that had intentional connection to student work and student work in both home and school contexts that will absolutely continue.

We saw our school and CBO partnerships really come together to provide one-on-one and small group support in very specialized ways, again, around individualized learning.

Some of that will also help us continue great services to students in new ways as we head back into in-person environments more frequently.

We saw, to the credit of many of our colleagues across both elementary, middle, and high school spaces, the creation of opportunities for kids, not just for their academic health, but also for their creative outlets, for their just social emotional wellbeing.

New enrichment programming clubs took shape after school opportunities were created.

We saw some very cool drama clubs pop up and the space for students to really still express themselves and have a chance to have a release in what was a very tense year.

And then lastly, as I mentioned before, we saw numerous partners make sure that resources were in the hands of students and families through very intentional creation of not just materials themselves and project kits, but also some very necessary needs, such as food and clothing and other basic needs.

On the culturally specific and responsive programming side it's really exciting to say that we not only figured out how to adapt but we also figured out how to expand.

And so in our Kingmakers of Seattle program we saw them adapt to virtual contexts and not only continue to provide that relevant identity affirming experiences for our traditional four school partners with Kingmakers but also to create the Kingmakers of Seattle extended program so that Kings across the district could access and connect with Kingmakers mentors and facilitators.

We also saw multiple mentor provider partners create virtual, in-person, near-peer, one-on-one, and small group opportunities for students to connect with one another, with caring adults and caring friends, which was so critical to their health throughout the year.

And then lastly, in our educator diversity investments, here again, we saw the adaptation to virtual spaces, and we're still able to expand.

So very exciting to expand not only the Academy for Rising Educators pathway, but our other pathways as well.

And to see the first graduating class for the Academy for Rising Educators that just happened this last June, here we saw over 30 rising educators from Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities earn their AA.

They were honored at this event, and they will go on into certification programming this fall.

So again, just a few.

There are so many more that we could speak to about highlights from the K-12 and post-secondary work this year.

Vi, you can move us along.

And similar to what Monica shared, I do want to give you a sense of who we serve specifically.

So here in access to services, and I want to call out as Dwayne shared at the beginning, this is a progress report, not a culminating report.

So I want to acknowledge that this is preliminary data and not all programs or programming is yet included.

So we expect more to come.

But to give you a sense here, you'll see themes across what I share.

that speak to the persistence, the resilience, and the continued growth, even through what has been a very challenging 18 months.

So in our school-based investments, that top row there, you see over the past three years, as we transitioned into FEPP from the previous families and education levy, we were able to increase not only our numbers, but the percentage of BIPOC youth that we were able to serve, which is very exciting.

In our health investments, we've continued to expand.

We are now in 29 school-based health centers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the district.

And lastly, and you also see what I just spoke to, which was the expansion of our educator diversity footprint, even more participants taking advantage of multiple pathways to earn their certification and to become educators representative of our student population in our schools.

Go ahead, Vi.

Here again, similar to what Monica shared, we know it's so important to think about who we're serving with the racial equity perspective in mind.

And so here you see school-based investments being represented.

We were able to support thousands of students across 30 partner schools.

And you see that breakdown by race and ethnicity with the highest percentage represented here as our Black and African American students.

Go ahead, Bea, you can move us along.

And similarly, again, here, you know that we are very hard at work to make sure that we continue to disaggregate in ways that give us more and more information about how well we are serving students and families and how our implementation progress needs to adapt and change to serve them better to reach our goals.

So here's a disaggregation by some of those race and ethnicity subgroups.

I'll let you take a look for just a moment before we move on.

Thank you, Vi.

Go ahead and move us along.

Here again, still on our K-12 investments, you heard me speak a moment ago to Kingmakers of Seattle, which is an exciting example of culturally responsive programming specific to Black and African-American youth.

Here, we see that we were able to expand the number of Kings served through the Kingmakers program.

And I'm very excited to say that just this past spring, we ran a funding opportunity to expand this, and we will be beginning services in two additional high schools come fall.

We also, speaking of growth and expansion, we also were able to still start in a remote context, a brand new investment strategy, which was our opportunity and access investment strategy.

This began during the pandemic year, school year.

We have 14 partner organizations here serving over a thousand students.

And this is everything from academic enrichment-based expanded learning opportunities to college and career readiness experiences.

And also some restorative justice work for both youth and adults.

So more to come in our final report there, but very exciting to be able to launch that during the pandemic.

And lastly, speaking to some of the family support services that we were able to provide through the FEPP levy.

Again, you see expansion in terms of the number of students that we were able to serve.

Here, the incredible people doing this work on the ground worked tirelessly across nearly 20 schools and through the Native American Education Program at SPS to make sure that students had that care coordination, had access to the things that were non-academic, but were going to make sure that they're more successful in their academic pursuits.

This is absolutely necessary work.

We're grateful to all of our partners in that space.

Go ahead, Vy.

And then into the post-secondary environment, where through Seattle Promise, once again, we see those same themes of persistence, resilience, and growth.

We saw the largest beginning-of-year enrollment to date this past fall, where we welcomed over 840 Promise scholars in their first and second year.

And that was shortly followed by the highest number of applications received to date in the spring of 2021. Many of whom will go on to become Promo Scholars this fall.

So really exciting to see come to fruition that college-going culture that Dwayne mentioned earlier that we have been working to cultivate in partnership with our Seattle College partners, our Seattle Public Schools partners, and community members across the city.

One thing to note here, again speaking to that growth and expansion, is that From previous school year to this one, we saw expansion in the number of high schools that were welcomed into the program.

So we are now able to accept graduates from 17 high schools, which is really exciting.

And again, speaks to the testament of the city to develop that college going culture across every part of our city geographically.

Go ahead, Vy.

Again, here we see who is taking advantage of those services.

So this is Seattle Promise enrollment represented by race and ethnicity here.

Our largest subgroup was our white students, which represented 26% of the total students enrolled, followed by our Asian students at 21% and our Black and African American students at 18%.

And B, if you move us along to the next side, similarly as what you saw before, you'll see this reference out further or further disaggregated by racial subgroup here, which is again, a data point that we intend to continue to track and to make sure that it continues to inform the implementation of services going forward.

And with that, I hope that I've left us at least a little bit of time to not only thank all the council members that are present today, but to reiterate thanks to the panelists that were able to join us.

And I think we're able to take questions if that's right, Duane.

Yes, that's right.

I'm kicking it back over to council president to see if there's questions or comments for us.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, any comments or questions?

It's a very thorough presentation.

I really appreciate an opportunity to do a deeper dive.

And also just wanted to say, I know Council Member Mosqueda has brought this up several times around the disaggregation of the ethnic and racial data, and really appreciate having an opportunity to finally see that implemented on the presentation.

I know you all have been hard at work to accomplish that.

So it's really useful to see that disaggregation.

So I just want to say thanks for for having that reflected.

And then I would be remiss in not acknowledging that this is Dana's last time in our committee.

She is leaving the city family for other adventures and journeys.

And Dana, we have had such a wonderful time getting to know you as the division director here, but also just as a longtime staffer at DL and really appreciate all of the work that you've been doing in the K through 12 space.

And we wish you Lots and lots of luck in your next adventure and hope that you won't be a stranger to us and our community partners.

Thanks for all of your public service to the children, the family and the people of our city.

Thank you so much.

That's so kind of you to say it's a it's definitely a mixed emotions.

I've loved being a part of the deal family and you are in very good hands going forward, but thank you for acknowledging that.

Of course, of course.

Any questions or comments, colleagues?

I know this was a very long presentation, really well done.

I wanted to just ask one really quick question here, and I know that Council Member Mosqueda is going to have to leave us a little early to get to another commitment, but thank you so much for being with us through the entire presentation.

You know, one of the things that is interesting about The implementation and evaluation plan in particular for the levy is that is that it does require that underspend dollars be spent for early learning.

And I think I think what we experienced in this this unprecedented year last year was that the underspend that we had in the FEP levy actually came from the area of early learning.

And so just wanted to.

give you Monica and Dr. Chappelle and me an opportunity to sort of just talk about the department's thinking around how to address that moving forward, or if you anticipate that the underspend complexities that we experienced last year in the area of early learning are going to effectively self-resolve, given that we anticipate that we'll be at 100%.

in person starting next school year?

Yeah, I'll start us off and then Monica, you can take it away.

I can tell you that we are trying to be intentional in what we're doing as we're moving forward.

And it's going to really just take some deeper thought for us as a team to really look and say, OK, this is what it is that we want to do.

And I think it's going to be ongoing.

And Monica, if you wanted to share a little thoughts or words at all for us.

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we have learned is it's really hard to predict exactly how you're going to spend your dollars.

Right.

And and we're grateful that we had underspend to redirect to unexpected unexpected demands this past year.

I think.

I think, I do believe that our spending will go up this year.

I fully expect that just because a lot of the special programming didn't come to full fruition.

But we are, we're thinking about all the different ways and all the different learnings that we've had in this past year and how we might, you know, it's not back to normal.

Everything's not back to normal this year.

Our providers are still, going to be recovering financially for a while.

And we want to make sure that we are supporting them properly and really thinking about the long and waiting to see what the long-term impacts are on our families, on our providers, on student learning.

So it's definitely, as Duane said, it's a process that we're looking at carefully this upcoming year.

You're on mute, Council President.

Thank God.

Sitting in a house all by myself on mute.

That makes no sense.

I also wanted to just ask a quick question about the investments around homelessness in particular.

So one of the things that we prioritized is both investments in addressing housing instability for children in the K-12 system, but also created additional support and opportunity for investment in access to child care services, specifically for families that might be experiencing homelessness.

And just wanted to get a sense of any trends you all are seeing in those investment areas.

Dana, I'll let you take it.

Yeah, I can speak to that.

Yeah, it's been a really interesting year.

Just as you said, this is a new investment area for us and one that was co-designed with multiple partners, including colleagues of ours at the YWCA, over at Seattle Public Schools and over at Human Services Department here at the city.

And it continues to be a collaborative venture where I think we're learning a lot about how to best access the students that we're looking to serve Through this particular investment stream, we had a pretty narrow target audience.

We were looking for students and families that were in housing insecure circumstances, particularly those who were in doubled up environments.

And to your question about trends, one interesting thing that we've experienced throughout the year has been some hesitancy, and I think some very real and acknowledged fear about changing circumstances.

and hesitancy to leave what feels like a temporarily stable environment for a potentially unstable future.

And so we've worked really hard to take that feedback, to adapt and to adjust the types of financial supports that we've made possible to families.

And I think we will continue that absolutely for the rest of this calendar year.

In addition, I think some of the trends that we've seen is the type of resource that families are seeking has largely fallen in the food assistance, the clothing, and some other basic needs, not always in housing, which has been interesting.

And again, this is specifically for some of our school-based partners through the McKinney-Vento office.

And so I certainly think that we have a lot of learning growth to continue in this space, and we look forward to continuing conversations with our oversight committee, with our council members, and others to make sure that we are able to get resources to the families who need it most.

I think from the child care perspective, Pretty much we just saw that families need higher subsidies and they needed for longer.

So, you know, current policies are being are being evaluated because recovery is just going to be much take much longer.

And then the other thing that we're trying to do as, you know, with all of our child care subsidies is. aligning with the state.

So the state is changing its policies very rapidly.

And so we need to respond accordingly so that there's not a gap or that there's not a complete misalignment.

So we've been working all year long to stay aligned with the state, both in our CCAP programming as well as with the homeless voucher.

More support, I think that's going to be the key as we continue in the next few years is longer, longer subsidies as well, longer and deeper.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay, but you're not seeing the same sort of trend in terms of hesitancy or or.

Some of the some of the trends that that Dana described, I haven't.

I haven't heard that, but I can verify.

Okay, great.

All right.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments for Deal?

All right.

I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Well, I want to say thank you so much for the presentation and for incorporating community partners into the presentation today.

It's always helpful to hear sort of from folks doing the work in and on the ground about how things are going and how these investments are making an impact, so I really appreciate it.

I don't think we have any other business to come before the committee, so if there is no further business to come before the committee, we can be adjourned.

And I want to thank you again all for your time.

We're adjourned.

Enjoy the rest of your day.