Bev Redmond
Good evening everyone.
Good evening everyone.
Bev Redmond
My name is Bev Redmond.
I am honored to serve as chief of staff for the greatest public school system in the state of Washington.
It is my honor to welcome you this evening to a system of well-resourced schools vision for our future.
Before we begin, I want to make sure and check in with our SPS TV crew that they are ready to go.
Do I get a thumbs up?
I see thumbs up in the back of the house.
And also, do we have any board members who may be with us?
If you would stand and wave to our crowd.
Hello.
Give them a round of applause for their service.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
And also, if we could advance the slide, to welcome everyone in the house.
We don't have any illusion that everyone here speaks English.
So we want to make sure that we are serving all of our community today and welcoming all of our language speakers.
To do that, I'm going to ask our interpretation team to come up and to make an announcement.
Would you give them an applause as they come?
SPEAKER_08
Hello.
Would you repeat one more time?
I don't think everyone can.
SPEAKER_05
My name is Thuy.
I speak Vietnamese.
If you want to know more about Vietnamese, I will help.
I will be here.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Thuy.
I speak Vietnamese.
SPEAKER_01
My name is Thuy.
I speak Vietnamese.
I speak Vietnamese.
SPEAKER_09
Hello, I am Michael.
If you want to listen to Cantonese, go outside, take an earphone, and you will hear the live broadcast.
Bev Redmond
Thank you.
We are proud and happy to be able to serve in the languages of Amharic, Somali, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese.
Those are the top five languages in our district, and certainly we know that perhaps there may be needs above and beyond that, but we are very, very happy to be able to serve tonight in that capacity.
Also, for families, and if you know families who are interested in ASL interpretation, we do have that secured for our online session that will be coming up next week.
So please, if you happen to know families that have that need or would like to enjoy the presentation at ASL, please encourage them to move toward our online service.
Thank you again tonight and welcome.
Give yourselves a round of applause.
This is an amazing community.
Also want to acknowledge before we begin that we begin all of our sessions that we conduct in public with a land acknowledgement.
We would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.
And as we begin, I introduce myself one more time.
My name is Bev Redmond.
I am the Chief of Staff for Seattle Public Schools.
And we are here to discuss a system of well-resourced schools, our vision for the future.
As you will see on the slide ahead of you, that we are going to take a few moments to outline where SPS is today, our challenges, and how we build momentum throughout 2024 that puts us in the strongest position going into the 2025 legislative session, as well as positions us for even more upcoming efforts with our levies.
What I believe and what I have seen throughout our engagement and information sessions that we began last fall that we all have SPS at our hearts.
And we want the district, our district to be strong for years to come.
Our leadership team at SPS is focused on the end goal of ensuring our schools offer every student access to the academic, the social and emotional support that they need.
Again, we also hope that what we do, every action that we take in this year and beyond will be in partnership with other school districts who may find themselves in a similar situation as SPS.
Shortly, I will introduce our superintendent who is going to make the case for change.
And then we will launch into a special community conversation using a tool many of you may have seen called a thought exchange.
The thought exchange is a communication tool that allows the public to share their thoughts on any topic or a central question, and you can do so confidentially.
It ensures all voices are heard and different views are expressed respectfully and transparently.
You'll be able to see each other's thoughts as they become posted.
We will launch this together for the entire district, staff, parents, students, and community alike.
At the end of the presentation, this evening, we will have that available for you.
Many of you may have tuned in to our May 8th school board meeting where we presented and Dr. Jones presented to the board, making that case for change for our schools.
However, in a board meeting, we don't assume that the entire community is watching.
And we also don't assume that we are presenting directly to you.
Dr. Jones desire to see you face to face and to make that case as he is on his way to making a preliminary recommendation to the board later in June.
With that, I would like for you to welcome our superintendent, Dr. Brent Jones.
Brent Jones
Thank you, Beth.
It's really good to be here on the hot seat talking about things that are complex.
But one thing that I know about our community is that we all care about our schools being healthy, well-resourced, and high-performing.
And so I'm going to talk a little bit about our journey together, where we need to go, and how we're trying to get there.
But I want to acknowledge my board members here.
They're sitting in the front row, and I can feel the heat from their staring eyes on the side of my head.
No, y'all, that was, come on now.
We're gonna loosen up a little bit.
This is a very serious topic, but I'm gonna take ourselves not too seriously.
But I'm gonna walk you through about 20 slides.
And this is pretty much what I presented to the board on May 8th.
And I wanna just engage you all in the thinking of why we're trying to make these changes to become a well-resourced school.
So without further ado, next slide, please.
I think we will all agree right now that we are in a place of, we're facing fiscal instability.
And that's just not here in Seattle, not just here in the state, but all across the nation, we're seeing that.
We're experiencing inflation and rising cost of living.
We're looking at our budgets not being fully funded.
And we're witnessing a reduction in school age population in our city.
And lastly, we're experiencing enrollment decline.
Next slide, please.
So we're making progress toward fiscal stability.
Back in January 23, as we were talking in a budget session, we mentioned that school consolidations may be one of the tools that we use to get to financial stability.
And in April of 23, the board adopted a fiscal stabilization resolution, and we tagged that as funding our future.
Later on, the board adopted a budget and we closed $131 million gap.
That was a big deal.
We made that happen.
Then as we started to work through this, we thought, how can we look at what do our schools actually really need?
So when you're in a budget crisis, you try not to waste that.
You try to look at what can we actually do?
So we asked the community, what is a well-resourced school?
And so we were going down that path of looking at budget, but we found that this isn't just a budget exercise, it's also how are we looking at our educational vision?
How are we looking at system design?
And what can we do with the transitionary plan to get to a system of well-resourced schools?
In December, 2023, the board adopted another resolution that gave the superintendent and team direction for how are we gonna tackle this budget challenge?
And so I was tasked with coming up with a proposal, a budget for how are we gonna reconcile the 24-25 budget and some ideas for 25-26.
We identified staff, we identified strategies for $105 million challenge that we have before us this year.
And we discussed this over seven work sessions.
So we were doing back and forth with our board, giving us guidance the whole entire time.
Then the superintendent presented his proposal on May 8th for a system of well-resourced schools.
Ideally in May of 25, we're gonna reach fiscal stability.
Next slide.
So we're at a decision point.
The decision point is maintain the current system of schools where we're operating with 105 schools, including 29 schools with fewer than 300 students.
We'll reduce school staffing, increase elementary and secondary staffing, class size rather, reduce and eliminate preschool, reduce or eliminate athletics and other afterschool programs, other and additional reductions in central office staff, curriculum adoptions and operational staff.
And finally, we may even have to look at renegotiating labor contracts, which we definitely don't wanna do.
Or we can look at transitioning to a system of well-resourced schools.
Facilitates expansion of elementary educational strategies.
All schools providing equitable and consistent mix of services to more students.
Consistent, stable, comprehensive school staffing.
Looking at space for special education, intensive services, and pre-K in every building.
Stable and balanced district budgets and school budgets.
So this is the decision point we're at right now.
So a system of well-resourced schools is about stability and sustainability.
Stability and sustainability.
You hear me say that quite often.
Next slide, please.
So as we look at this in a comprehensive way, a sustainable future requires a plan.
You'll see school consolidations is one element of it, but we look at governance, funding, staffing, programs and services, operations.
This is where we're gonna really achieve sustainability when we start to look at this.
Year zero of the strategic plan is the year before our next strategic plan, which commences on September of 2025. The work that we're gonna do prior to that is stability work.
So we have new goals and guardrails that are coming forth from our board.
We're looking at, we have stable leadership, We're looking at student outcome focus, governance implementation, a new governance model, as well as policy discipline.
As we look at funding, we've been working on this multi-year budget trying to eliminate our structural deficit.
One thing that's really important that we do is we pass our levies.
We have levies coming up.
I'll talk about that in a few minutes.
We must do a legislative push.
We have to make sure we're fully funding education in this state and particularly in this district.
And then we need to look at our strategic philanthropic requests.
All these need to work together as we look at funding.
As we look at staffing, think about predictable school allocations.
Every year having predictable school allocations.
Have you all witnessed the October shuffle?
we could probably mitigate that.
Also, we're looking at music, physical education, and art.
These are what are really important, as we've heard from well-resourced school engagement, that these are important to make happen.
We can do this on a consistent basis.
Also around programs and services, special education, ELL, highly capable access, and mental health.
And then as we look at operations, transportation efficiency is important as well as safety.
We even need to start talking about artificial intelligence and get in front of that before it gets in front of us.
And then finally school consolidations.
So this is what it looks like in year zero.
We're gonna be planning to bring this stability and sustainability in the year prior to our next strategic plan.
Next slide, please.
So our current situation, in 2024, our enrollment is approximately 48,000 students with 105 school buildings in operation.
Among our 105 school buildings, we currently have 73 schools that serve our students in preschool through fifth grade.
29 of these schools have less than 300 students.
Our proposed plan will work to consolidate schools serving K-5 students in 25-26.
Next slide.
So the policy that we're working from is Policy 2200, which really speaks to supporting district-wide academic goals, placing programs and services equitably across the district, utilizing physical space resources effectively, and ensuring fiscal resources are taken into consideration.
Next slide.
So our new model would mean that we would have fewer buildings to serve students in preschool through fifth grade.
However, each building's capacity would be better aligned with enrollment and will still be in your neighborhood.
While these schools will still have more students, they will not be overcrowded.
When we talk about sizes of up to 400, that's a mid-sized school.
That's not even a large school.
Most of our, excuse me, all of our surrounding districts don't have any schools under 300 students.
So this would be, we still be retaining capacity for more growth.
Any schools not in use will be secured and repurposed until needed again.
We're gonna keep our schools in our inventory.
Next slide.
So this is what a well-resourced school looks like.
Multiple teachers per grade level, stable support staff, inclusive learning for every student, social and emotional learning support, art, music, and PE teachers at every elementary school, stable operational budgets.
Again, no longer the operation, excuse me, the October shuffle.
Safe, healthy, and beautiful school grounds, and making connections to the community.
This will still be your neighborhood school.
Next slide.
So these are the criteria that we're using to develop our plan.
And so if you look down this list, we're talking about inclusive learning, special education and inclusionary practices, services for multilingual learners, expanding access to advanced learning, strengthening and stabilizing neighborhood schools.
We're gonna be considering the building condition and the learning environment.
And we're going to make sure that we're aligned with our projected enrollment, utilizing building capacity and our service area capacity, allocating resources for an equitable system, and having an equitable regional distribution of schools throughout our city.
Next slide, please.
So if you take a look at this, these are current schools in Seattle Public Schools right now.
And I don't know if you can see it because it's a little blurry, but starting on the left side, moving across to the right, we have 515 student school to 165 student school.
And as you can see the staffing allocations for each one of these, this is what it looks like when we get up to around 460 students.
we can have three to four teachers per grade we can have an ap and office assistant nurses more than one day a week special education intensive service classrooms counselors counselors and social workers full-time teachers in art pe and music so if you take a look at this this is what our current allocation is like right now and if we get to consolidated schools we can probably have the 515 or 468 allocation of staff.
Next slide, please.
Approximately 23,000 students, K-5 students in 23-24 currently served in 70 sites.
Our current site utilization is 65%.
We look at this transition to a well-resourced school system for 25-26.
K-5 students would be better accommodated in approximately 50 sites.
Evenly distributed, about 10 per region.
The projected site utilization is about 85%, and that's similar to middle schools and high schools right now.
Next slide.
Why school consolidation?
Too many schools that serve our youngest scholars are under enrolled.
Empty seats can lead to fewer staffing resources and more staffing adjustments.
Empty seats can lead to inequitable offering from school to school.
If we maintain the status quo, we will need to reduce services.
This could mean having more students per teacher, reducing core school staff, scaling back preschool offerings and others.
Next slide.
So ongoing strategies, we must secure our levies.
So we have our Building Excellence Levy, our EPO Levy, they'll be on our election, excuse me, they'll be on the ballot in February 2025. And if approved, these will play a key role in making sure we can have our well-resourced schools.
And then the Washington State Legislature, I saw the signs out there earlier.
Yes, we need to make sure Olympia is supporting what we're trying to do.
Our budget planning next fall will prioritize where we don't want to have additional reductions.
We need to have reinvestments to be made this next legislative session.
Next slide, please.
So I want to just say every student should have consistent and reliable programs and services.
I think we all agree on that.
And we have enough to do the right thing, but we can't do everything.
Every student deserves a well-resourced school.
And so I know that there's different ideas around how we can do this.
My contention is we have to do more with less.
We have to do more with less.
We don't have the resources to continue on the same path we're going down right now.
I hear over and over, don't consolidate and close schools.
If there's a better option, If there's a better option, we need to know.
I'm inviting folks to use the tools that we have, thought exchange, give us feedback.
If there's a better comprehensive option, let us know.
But right now, we have to do more with less.
I don't know if I made the case to you today, but I want to make sure that you all understand I was actually a student who changed schools four times.
My school got consolidated.
I got bused from the south end to the north end.
I know change is difficult.
I'm with you on that.
But we do hard things in Seattle.
and you have a superintendent who cares.
I'm from here, I went to school here, my daughter went to school here, my mother was a teacher in the district.
I'm gonna be caretaking us along the way.
Change is hard, change is difficult, but we do hard things in Seattle.
So I do think it's gonna be an inconvenience for a while, but I think ultimately it's for the better as we move forward.
Next slide, please.
So we're gonna have some key questions.
I'm gonna have my team come up and they're gonna speak to you around a few key questions that have been coming to us through thought exchange and other means.
They're gonna talk about that.
But in the meantime, I'm offering to come and spend time with you all to talk about this, to hear what your thoughts are so that we can actually do the right thing by our students.
Again, I know it's hard.
I know it's difficult.
I've read a lot of your emails.
You all are passionate about making sure that your student has a well-resourced environment.
I am too.
We just have to agree to how we make it happen.
So thank you so much.
Fred Podesta
Thank you, Dr. Jones.
I'm Fred Podesta.
I'm the district's chief operations officer.
And I'll answer a couple of questions and then turn it over to one of my colleagues.
So we know that school buildings are important.
We know that school buildings, regardless of whether you're a family that sends a student to a school that the school can be, as a site, can be a heart of the neighborhood.
So what happens to the buildings if we close, stop operating at a school is important.
There'll be a short-term plan and a long-term plan.
We'll keep all our buildings in inventory while we keep doing long-term analysis about what we think our enrollment expectations will be beyond the 10-year planning horizon that we're looking at now.
And during that time, the building will be maintained, it will be secured, we will maintain green spaces so buildings can stay as community assets for use by the neighborhood.
And then we'll continue to work with our partners who use our buildings for a lot of things.
We have a lot of programs, non-SBS programs that are in our school that we often share costs with partners, often in partnership with the City Parks Department.
And we'll continue to work with those partners to find interim uses that maintain the highest and best use for the building as a community asset.
Once we see the long-range picture, over a longer term, over 20 years, it's probably unlikely that we'll need 105 buildings.
see if there are particular opportunities that any of the properties could be repurposed.
Again, with the idea of being a community asset, all our policies require a lot of engagement with the community and with our other agency partners to see if we repurposed anything, whether it's for community use, whether it's a housing use.
We will work with city partners on what that might be, but that would probably be very small number of buildings because again seattle's a growing place what we really need is an interim plan to not be operating on any during any given year more buildings than we need but we will probably keep most of the land in our inventory so as the city grows we need to plan 50 years out some of these sites may open again but in the meantime we will maintain the value of the asset to the local community particularly for the green space and community uses now that people use our gyms, people, third parties use it for programming, and we will make that available as best we can if we close the site in the coming year.
There are some buildings that we would have replaced, and if we don't need those in the short term, we probably would turn that site just into green space as an interim use until we decide if we need the site or a building there in the future.
But for each building, there will be a transition plan and a community engagement plan.
And we would ask the local neighborhood, what do they think the highest and best use of the site would be?
And then just like people are asking what might happen with our buildings, what will happen to staff?
Dr. Jones laid out earlier our financial situation and also talked about we're at a decision point.
And this question, we will need to reduce costs regardless.
We're hoping to work with the legislature and other to increase our revenues, but if we have fewer students, we are going to need to reduce our costs.
More than 85% of our costs are staff costs.
So there will be staffing reductions of some sort or another.
The decision that we're making now is If we close buildings, if we stop operating school sites, will we be retaining staff that are about keeping a building open?
If we do consolidate schools, that will have effects certainly on school leaders and some administration and mostly operations staff that we invest in to take care of the building as opposed to staff that work directly with students.
And so wherever this conversation goes, if we maintain the current number of buildings that we have, we will still need to reduce our expenses.
We will still need to reduce costs.
And again, more than 85% of those costs are staffing costs.
If we spread the reduced staffing across 105 buildings, the graph the table that dr jones showed that showed how we allocate staff from a larger school a higher enrollment school to a smaller enrollment school that will that would get even worse if we keep all the buildings open because one way or the other we're going to need to have fewer employees dealing with a smaller enrollment it's I think, and we'll be available to have conversations, but again, the cost savings are again, mostly staff related.
There are some energy costs and utility costs and supply costs in keeping a building open, but mostly there's a fixed cost for each building.
that is expensive to keep it open and it gets reduced and more efficient as the staffing and the enrollment goes up and having opening one kitchen, One lunchroom, there's a fixed cost to serving the first meal in a building, and it becomes more efficient the more you serve.
So that's true of classrooms.
That's true of school administration.
It's true of custodians.
That's true of building maintenance.
All the factors that relate to keeping a building open, just as if If any of us maintain two homes rather than one, there would be different costs.
And so we really want to focus our resources on direct services to students, not maintaining brick and mortar to the extent that we can.
And then the third question is about how we will assist families and students in this transition.
So I'm going to ask Dr. Campbell to talk about that.
She has a lot of experience in this area.
Marni Campbell
Thank you, and thank you, Fred.
Good evening, everybody.
Thank you for being here tonight.
I'm a longtime educator, administrator, and parent, actually, in Seattle Public Schools.
And I don't know if there are any Nathan Hale folks here that know Tina Tudor.
Anybody here go to Hale and know Tina Tudor?
So many years ago, when I was a principal intern at Nathan Hale, she said something to me that has guided my work, which is, she said, Marnie, what matters most when people come to a school is how we greet you, how we treat you, and how we say goodbye.
And as we think about these potential transitions, let's think about those things.
How do we greet you?
How do we treat you?
And how do we say goodbye?
So when I had a chance to open a middle school, which was challenging because students and families were coming in many cases from their existing middle school, some of them as eighth graders, were not too happy about making that transition.
So we spent a lot of time collaborating, and I spent a lot of time collaborating with my students and with my families and asking those same questions.
How do I greet you?
How do we greet each other?
How do we treat each other?
And then how do we say goodbye if we're leaving a community or your community you're leaving?
Fortunately, we have an amount of time next year to do this and to do it beautifully.
So as we think about whether you or your family or your student is joining a different school community or whether you as a school community are welcoming in new students and families, if teachers are moving, if teachers are joining another group of teachers, those are opportunities for us to build on our collective ethos and our collective belief in the work that we do.
It's critical then in how we think about making these transitions that we all be part of it.
I would anticipate convening school transition teams and perhaps regional transition teams to make sure that we're doing things like recognizing and acknowledging a school that perhaps we're leaving.
recognizing and acknowledging a new and emerging school community.
When I opened a middle school, a big part of that was selecting a mascot that was really important to our students.
And we talked about what that would mean for us in terms of who we were as a school community.
Those kinds of gestures and sort of connecting points as a community are really critical as we make these kinds of transitions.
What I know most of all is that our primary focus collectively is on what Dr. Jones and Fred spoke about and Chief Redmond so beautifully about our collective commitment to excellence and equity for all.
That means making sure that we are being responsible stewards of our system and of our resources.
And our greatest resource is our community and our care for each other.
So as we anticipate going into this transition, we will make sure that we are collaborating, that each school community, each regional community is going to have voice in how we make that happen, that it really is going to be highly supported as much as we can as a school district support staff and pulling on you and making sure that your voices are heard.
Thank you.
Bev Redmond
Thank you to our presentation team this evening.
We've heard a lot and there is still more to come.
As mentioned at the top of the presentation, there is a preliminary plan that Dr. Jones is to deliver to the board in June.
Part of being here this evening is for him to begin to make that case to you.
And we will also host additional meetings throughout the district throughout this week and early next.
There's staff meetings that have also been scheduled.
That information has gone out to our staff today.
So there will be sessions for our staff to also hear similar messaging and also participate in what I see many of your phones are already up and doing.
This is the QR code to our thought exchange.
Thank you.
Before you go on, may I finish?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
May I finish?
And I will give you some additional information.
Tonight's thought exchange is that chance It is a place where you can go in and answer that central question, react to our guiding principles.
What of those things resonate with you?
And then also, what would be helpful in this space?
as we go through this particular process.
It is a chance for the entire district to lift its voice in a way that we can bring in the data and the way that we can give it to Dr. Jones as he is finalizing that plan.
In addition, tonight, as you're doing this, you can stay in this space, you can surge out into the lobby.
We also have some of our team, some that you've met here, and I'm going to invite them to go ahead into the lobby and get set up.
You can lift your questions there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This is an information session.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Excuse me.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I understand what you're saying.
Thank you, I can hear you.
Now, again, you may log into the thought exchange so that you can log into your, to log in information and to share your thoughts on things that you've heard tonight and what would make our process better.
As we move forward, as we move forward, ma'am, with respect, please have a seat, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you with respect.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I heard you.
Please thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
As we are preparing, again, there are question tables outside that you may go to to submit your questions, to have some general information.
Dr. Jones will be back before the board.
in June with that plan.
We will continuously have engagement sessions.
We will continuously have engagement sessions throughout that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your input this evening and your presence this evening.
Continue to submit to our thought exchange as well as to meet us in the lobby for questions.
Have a good evening.
Brent Jones
Okay, everyone, listen, listen.
We have our team out here that has information if you want to go deeply into some of the analysis and all that type of stuff.
Feel free to come out there.
But having, see, just like this, this isn't a conducive environment to have a back and forth like that.
So come on out and we'll have a conversation out there.
Thank you.
I'll be here.
Come on out.
Thank you so much.
Bev Redmond
Thank you.
It's okay.
Everyone is passionate.
It's all right.
Thank you.
We will see you in the lobby as well as through our thought exchange.
Have a good evening.