Seattle Public Schools Board Meeting - Aug. 31, 2022

Good afternoon.

We will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS-TV will begin broadcasting.

For those joining us by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony portion of today's agenda at which time your name will be called.

All right.

This is President Hersey.

I'm now calling the August 34 or excuse me 31st 2022 Regular Board Meeting to order at 416 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

Ms. Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Vice President Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sargent.

Present.

Director Song-Moretz.

Present.

And President Hersey.

Present.

This is the first legislative meeting of the school board for the 2022-23 school year and we open with anticipation.

We've made huge progress toward full implementation of the Student Outcomes Focused Governance Model.

There is the usual anticipation of the opening of the new school year and we are beyond excited to incorporate student members into these meetings beginning September the 14th.

As we make space for students to participate it is incumbent on us to ensure that this boardroom is a safe space for everyone and that we as adults work together toward a greater good.

Sometimes anticipation can create strong emotions and we want to open this evening's meeting with a clear call to everyone present.

Let's keep this room a positive place creating space where we can work together toward a greater goal.

I will now turn it over to Superintendent Jones for his comments.

Good evening Brent Jones Superintendent Board Members President Hersey and new student board members welcome.

I'd like to welcome our new student leaders Luna Crone-Barone, Nasira Hassan, and Jenna Juan.

We hope your experience sitting on the school board will bring growth and confidence to us as leaders.

Just as you are participating on the school board to add depth to the work we do, we hope that we add depth to what you're doing as well.

Your willingness serves to create a direct challenge to the adults in this room.

So we're going to be challenged to make sure that we model adult behavior that's respectful.

We'll be challenged to assume good intentions of each other to model that for you.

And especially when we when we disagree.

We'll model that we'll listen to you and each other in ways that are active and effective.

So Luna, Jenna, and Nasira, thank you for your willingness to serve.

We'll honor your service by committing to uphold civility and respect in all of our interactions.

It's important that you know that we're committed to, again, for you to have a great experience.

So I want to transition to talking about What we're doing today and one of the things that we're doing is we're trying to recognize that students unite us.

I'm wearing a pin with this ribbon made up of SPS Blue and SEA Red.

While it's a modest symbol it symbolizes the heart of our mission together.

Students unite us.

As a district as educators as labor partners our sole mission is to create conditions for students to thrive.

Thank you for all the educators who have joined us in this mission.

Thank you for your dedication teaching and learning for again this connecting tissue around students uniting us.

So we look forward a week from today Wednesday the 7th we start school.

Our educators have returned to classrooms today and they're preparing for a successful start of the next school year.

I know many of you have been following our negotiations with our education union for months now and we still don't have an agreement in place with the contract which ends today.

However I remain very hopeful that both sides can come to an agreement that best supports our students as well as our educators, staff, family, and school communities.

We support a contract that ensures salary increases for all of our educators as well as additional professional development We want to ensure students who receive special education services can learn in a more inclusive setting and provide training to the educators to best meet student needs.

We want to also add social workers to our high schools and middle schools and we know we can meet these contract priorities and still have a balanced budget that is that is impacted by a decline in student enrollment.

I want to thank the bargaining teams for working so hard to come to an agreement.

They're working night and day and on weekends.

And I want to thank our leaders at the Seattle Council PTSA for their recent statement reminding us that students unite us.

We all know that starting school on time is what's best for our students.

And please know that we understand this and we're doing everything we can to have a positive start for this school year.

Know that we'll continue to communicate the latest updates on our website.

and as well as directly via e-mails to families and staff.

So I just want to say thank you to all involved with moving us forward.

And now back to you President Hersey.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments and leadership Superintendent Jones.

We are joined today by Flow Analytics for a presentation on the 2022 School Board Director Redistricting Process.

I will turn it over first to our General Counsel, Greg Narver, to open the presentation, and we will also be joined later by Assistant Superintendent of Public Affairs, Beverly Redman, who will speak to the communication strategies to support our redistricting process.

We have about 20 minutes scheduled for this presentation from Flo and our staff, and then we'll have a brief period for some director questions.

They don't cover that in law school.

Good afternoon.

Greg Narver General Counsel.

I'm going to give just a very brief introduction to the presentation you're about to receive from our consultants flow analytics about the board director redistricting process.

By state law Seattle Public Schools has seven more volume.

Thank you.

Seattle Public Schools has seven director districts and they the districts have to meet certain criteria that as the consultants will explain are laid out in state law.

Every 10 years when the federal census is done the board is required to review the existing director districts and determine if they need to be redrawn to stay in compliance with state law.

The deadline for doing that is November 15th of this year although under the timeline that's going to be proposed to you.

We're hopefully going to get it done before that.

One point I'll emphasize and I know flow analytics is going to emphasize it as well.

Nothing we're talking about has anything to do with school attendance zones.

None of this discussion affects what school any student is going to attend.

This only impacts director districts and the significance of those are the beginning with next year's elections.

Directors have to reside in the district in which they're representing, and it affects the way that primary elections are done.

Primary elections are restricted by director district, whereas the general election for all seven districts is done on a citywide basis.

We're very fortunate to have Flow Analytics helping us through this process.

They're a consulting firm, and one of their areas of expertise and focus is helping local governments through this exact process.

the redrawing of boundaries to comply with legal requirements taking into consideration census data.

They represent many school districts and in this year alone have helped the Highline Shoreline and Edmond school districts through this very process.

And with that I'm happy to turn it over to the flow analytics.

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Narver.

Good afternoon.

President Hersey, Superintendent Jones, and members of the board.

I'm Kent Martin, Senior Planner with Flow Analytics, and I'm joined today by Gavin Hurivata.

We also have Jenna Putnam and Alex Brosh are also on this project, but they'll be more behind the scenes and you'll see more of Gavin and myself throughout this process as we give updates and get input from you and from the public.

If we go to the next slide, as Mr. Narver pointed out, We do a lot of redistricting at FLO.

We're based in the Northwest.

We're a GIS firm that does serve local governments.

We also serve school districts in a variety of ways, including forecasting as well as boundary adjustment services.

This year, we've really shifted our focus on the redistricting.

And again, as Mr. Narver pointed out, you'll see that we do have a lot of Northwest clients that we have done redistricting work for.

both school districts as well as counties and municipalities.

We've done over 40 redistricting projects in the last calendar year, so we feel like we're well experienced and we can help position this process very well for you as a board.

One thing that I do like to point out is that we're nonpolitical.

We use an impartial, data-driven approach, and we've never worked for any political party.

Next slide, please.

So why redistricting.

Well Gavin's going to talk a little bit more about the RCW you see there.

But every 10 years school districts must review their board of director districts to ensure equitable representation of constituents.

And so you know with Seattle having 7 geographic regions you'll see those in the map there that accompanies this slide.

We are going to work and actually look at today We'll be showing you the census data for what the 2020 Census shows in terms of the population of citizens in each of these districts.

Again it should be pointed out that these are the board member districts and these are not related to school attendance areas.

So we're not touching school attendance areas at all through this process.

We will be by the end of it.

having a recommendation moving forward to you as a board for board member district redistricting.

Next slide please.

You'll see that this presentation is highlighted here.

We actually didn't include this in our original scope but we think it's important that we bring the board on to these processes and so we gladly added this update for you and for the public here at this time.

We have had a kickoff meeting as you'll see in early August and moving forward we have some other meetings scheduled to give you some information for you to make a good decision as a board.

You'll see that on the 13th we're going to meet not with this board but with the district team and we'll have some initial new boundary scenarios to share with them.

These will be ones that will we will work to balance the population in each of the school board member districts by adjusting the boundary lines.

The district team will will be tasked with coming up with some draft maps to share with you on the 28th of September Meeting 3 for you to give some input on those draft maps as well as the public.

If you want to go ahead and just hit that slide again I think there's a couple of floats that are going to come in.

Yeah.

So there's a couple of criteria that we have to follow here.

And one is that as soon as draft maps are published there has to be a public meeting with notice and opportunity for input within 10 days.

And so and as you'll see that meeting 3 is September the 28th.

And so the district will need to publish those draft maps no sooner than September the 18th to maintain that 10-day window for that public hearing.

After we receive input on the 28th And we may have to make some adjustments to the draft maps.

The board may prioritize some of those draft maps and then we'll be bringing forward a final map on the October 26th board meeting that the board can discuss that you could decide to approve it at that time or you can make again some more adjustments take more input and then approve at that meeting 5 on November the 9th.

So we are scheduled employees to make that November 15 deadline that Mr. Narver discussed.

I'm going to move to the next slide.

I'm going to pass it over to Gavin.

He's going to introduce himself to you and his role on the project, and then he's going to do a little bit of redistricting 101 just to make sure that board members and the public are real clear on what the expectations and what the law says around board redistricting.

My name is Gavin.

I am a technician and I've been analytics for 3 years now.

And I work primarily in the local government and redistricting sectors as for what I'm going to be doing on this project.

I'm primarily going to be helping.

Build the scenarios for.

Each of those new those new scenarios with those different boundaries, um, we'll get into that later on.

Once we actually get to that board workshop meeting, but, um.

Yeah, so regarding that legal code, Washington RCW 29 a 7610. So there's concerns redistricting and the criteria that needs to be met.

So that criteria of being each district shall be as nearly equal in population as possible to each and every other district.

Each district shall be as compact as possible.

Shouldn't be unnecessarily thin or serpentine.

Population data may not be used to favor or disfavor any racial group or political party.

And the new boundaries shall coincide with existing and natural boundaries as much as possible.

Those existing and natural boundaries being things like major streets, roads, rivers, lakes, and lines already being used as boundaries.

And each district shall preserve communities of interest to the extent possible.

That's going to define what exactly we mean by community of interest later in the presentation.

and redistricting criteria.

So this is kind of a more visual representation of the things that I was just talking about.

So contiguity, no disconnected districts, and it's like this example over here.

So we don't want things like islands.

The main exception being real or jurisdictional islands, which then must be functionally connected by something like a bridge.

Compactness districts should not be unnecessarily thin or serpentine like this egregious example right here.

Should again kind of look something a little bit like this on the right and then existing or natural boundaries.

So we want to still try to consider major streets, roads, rivers, lakes, mountains, and lines that are already being used as boundaries.

So Another redistricting criteria, or I guess the chief criteria, is equal population, specifically total population, not to be confused with the number of registered voters of citizen voting age population, which is often referred to as the EVAP.

Washington law states that each internal director, council, or commissioner district shall be as nearly equal in population as possible to each and every other district.

And the measure of population equality is called the overall deviation, overall range, or total deviation from the ideal population, which is simply the total population of the city divided by the number of districts.

And the overall range is calculated as the sum of deviations of the most and least populated districts.

And generally, an entity should strive for an overall range that is close to as zero as possible.

And yeah, could you advance to the next slide, please?

I think we need to be on number nine if we can.

Back one.

Is that showing up for you, Kent?

Yeah, I think we need to be on number nine.

There we go.

I think we got it.

So, the voting rights act of 1965 specifically protects against voter dilution.

Um, so.

And what in regards to what that means for our process is that.

When we start the whole.

process.

We review race and ethnicity data and look for potential active minority districts that represent over 50% citizen voting age population.

Once again, CVAP of one or multiple minority groups that could form a cohesive voting block and if the above exists, we suggest that you receive legal counsel and then potentially attempt to draw those majority minority districts.

And if one or more can be drawn without compromising those other criteria we went over earlier, then there is a valid Voting Rights Act liability that should be documented and stated.

Next slide, please.

So regarding another criteria is population or census blocks and how they're used in our process.

So population is enumerated by for many geographies as defined by the Census Bureau, the smallest geography unit being that census block.

Um, so this means that that block can't be split because the census Bureau does not certify enumerations for smart, smaller geographic areas.

And what census blocks are, are essentially statistical areas bounded by visible features such as streets, road streams, and railroad tracks, or again by non-visible boundaries such as selected property lines.

And census blocks are generally small in area.

For example, a block in a city bounded on all sides by streets.

In suburban and rural areas, it may be large, irregular, and bounded by a variety of features such as road streams and transmission lines, but I don't really foresee us running into too many of those.

And so census blocks nest within all other tabulated census geographic entities, and they are the basis for all tabulated data.

And essentially what that means is that census blocks are grouped into block groups, which are then grouped into census tracts.

And I guess the main point that we're trying to get across is that these census blocks are used as building blocks to create these new district boundaries, hence why we cannot split them And then if you want to go over to the next slide, I'm going to kick things back over to Kent.

Yeah, before I do this, I just to reiterate what Gavin just shared with the census blocks, those are actually chosen and put forward by the census.

So those aren't the blocks aren't things that we can edit.

We actually use those blocks, however, to make changes.

And so the boundaries that will come forward in these initial scenarios, as Gavin said, will have edges that are on the edges of these census blocks.

So we'll have to move certain census blocks, and then we'll take a look at the statistics, which you're going to see on the next few slides what that will look like.

One thing in the law that was talked about was this idea of communities of mutual interest.

And the way that that it's it can be defined is that really it's a population within a community that shares common social and economic interests that should at least be included within a single district if possible for effective and fair representation.

And so you can see in the box there on the right we've listed a few potential communities of interest that could be brought forward either by you or by constituents for us to try and work and preserve.

within districts for this redistricting project.

Certainly neighborhoods, school attendance areas, faith communities, homers associations, and then also geographically concentrated populations as well.

It doesn't say that every single identified community of interest has to be preserved, but if communities of interest come forward then we definitely want to take a look at those and see if we can preserve them within one district if possible.

And again that will depend on your input.

That will depend on public input throughout this process as well.

So in the next few slides we're going to share with you what the census data shows currently for your board districts here in Seattle Public Schools.

Kevin.

So, the ideal population that we want to strive each district that each district wants to strive for will be 105,322.

if you look at your overall deviation, as it stands, it's pretty well over what we would recommend.

And in terms of how we got there.

If we take a look at district 4, we can see that it's pretty well over that ideal population at 19,245 or 18.3%.

And then conversely, over at district 7, we see that it's very well under by 11,631 for 11%.

And again, getting the sum of those, that's how we kind of come up with that overall deviation.

What that might look like in terms of how we're going to actually redo the redistricting is that we see both 6 and 7 again are considerably under the ideal population.

So what we're pretty much going to have to do is reach into District 5, which is already over that ideal population by a little bit.

We're going to have to get a little bit more from there too, which is going to put District 5 under And at that point, it's going to have to pull from three or four, which also are over that ideal population.

And it's a lot more nuanced than we could really get into over this presentation.

But once we get to the board workshop, then we'll see what specific scenarios we came up with to get that overall deviation down.

And then if you want to go to.

Second, Gavin, sorry to interrupt.

Could you explain how the ideal population was reached?

Yeah so the ideal population is essentially going to be the total population of the entire of all seven districts right.

And then divided by the number of districts so divided by seven.

Yeah so if you're if you're scoring that you know by your by yourself the census data came out and said that the population within the Seattle School District is 737,254 people.

That's not students that's people.

And so population, and so dividing that by seven gets to that ideal population of a little over 105,000 that Gavin was sharing.

Yeah, so.

Looking at the citizen voting age population data that we came up with, if we go back to the Voting Rights Act, it protects against both dilution based on race and ethnicity.

As it turns out, this conflicts in a sense with Washington redistricting law and that population data may not be used to favor any racial or favor or disfavor any racial group or political party.

So.

Looking at what we have or what the data that came up from looking at the census data or the data for Seattle Public Schools that we got from looking at the census data.

If you remember that majority-minority district a potential majority-minority district would be formed by having over 50 percent of the citizen voting age population of one or multiple minority groups that could form a cohesive voting block.

If we look at the table over here.

It's not really any group that comes close to that 50%.

I guess 1 thing that you might want to point that I might want to point out is that in District 7. The percentage or the population percentage of the Asian population percentage is 29.9%.

I've actually looked into this a little bit.

I don't believe.

we'd be able to reach that 50% just with the way that the population is distributed in a way that would not compromise that other criteria.

But it is something that I do want to point out.

And I would say, too, this is information that we can publish with every scenario that we bring forward.

So any of the initial scenarios that we share at the workshop meeting in a couple of weeks, we'll have this data.

as well as any of the draft maps.

When we do bring draft maps forward for that next board meeting at the end of next month you'll be able to see these percentages as well.

Again it's not a criteria that is a lead criteria for the redistricting process according to Washington law but it is something we take a look at as we're moving through this process to ensure that we can try to balance things and look for that potential minority majority district creation if we can.

So as Gavin said we're going to continue looking at that and we'll be able to report back and answer questions on that as well.

Next slide please.

Yeah so once again this is just the districting timeline that we put forward prior.

We're going to be Taking input from you and then I believe we're going to hear from Beverly Redmond here shortly on this next slide about the communications plan.

We take input that the district provides us from community input and especially around the area of those community those communities of interest.

And we try to work that into our initial scenarios as well to try to maintain communities of interest that have been expressed.

So, we'll stand at the end of the presentation for any questions you might have, but I'd like to turn it over to Ms. Redmond for the communication slide.

Good evening to the board, to Dr. Jones.

It's great to be here with you this evening.

Happy to be working with Attorney Narver, also Flow Analytics, and also our board office to make this particular project happen.

We had a recent conversation about what we need to do and how we need to get on board very quickly and move forward.

As we're thinking about a communications plan, we want to think about it in about four components.

One is to bring awareness really to the project and the redistricting plan to the community.

And then we will be providing that opportunity for feedback as well.

And then to share the final redistricting plan with our family, staff, and our public as well as the media so that we have full and complete transparent understanding of what's happening.

And this I want to underscore that we want to reassure and I say reassure that and it may have been said that director district boundaries are different different from our school attendance area boundaries.

This redistricting process will not impact where students go to school.

I want to make sure that we clarify which our word we are speaking of tonight.

In terms of a timeline for communications, we will be on board for the project from mid-September until approximately mid-November, and it will be our entire public affairs team that will be assisting in this particular effort to communicate the news with all of our constituents, with all of our parents, with all of our families.

This will include three phases, so we'll be in draft, plan, then we'll head into a revision, and then we'll be communicating finals.

And during this time, SPS also will encourage the community to provide that essential feedback to perfect or tweak on this particular plan.

Looking at our audiences, who are we targeting to share this information with?

Some examples would be our own SPS staff.

It's important that we understand it internally before we're heading outwardly.

Also, with you, the school board, also our SPS families, our cabinet leadership, as well as our PTSA groups, So our parent groups, our family groups, those that are formal and the informal groups as well.

SPS will use other communications vehicles that you're probably familiar with.

The SPS website will be employed certainly to host a hub for information similar to what we do with other topics.

Our Let's Talk forms will be used as feedback areas.

We'll use social media.

We'll also employ email as a traditional means.

And then we'll use our text message systems as well as our traditional press releases to head out to our media on this particular topic.

And again, it is important that we include, and we know this, we've talked about it many, many times, having that engagement loop or that feedback loop for the community so that we can make sure that this is well understood.

With that, I am happy to open it up for questions and also to include flow for any additional comments.

Okay to our partners at FLOW has this concluded your presentation.

Are we ready to take some questions from directors.

Okay fantastic.

Directors do we have any questions on this process.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I have questions for FLOW and questions for BEV.

I guess well this first question is maybe a little bit context setting for both.

In addition to this process not having anything to do with attendance areas because we are a single body board of seven I'm wondering how much we need to think we should make it really clear to people that this is also not the same as the way our City Council works where each person is really finitely responsible for and to their district, even though they work together as a body, you know, theoretically.

But that in the primary and in the general election for city council, you vote only for the district in which you live.

In the school board, This process is to ensure that there is representation from around the district going into the general election that everybody gets to vote for.

And we are not any more responsible for schools in our district than we are for the whole body.

Even though I mean there's obviously we're members of our communities you know but if there is something going on at John Rogers That's not just for me to pay attention to.

That's something that's going on in our district.

So we as a Board of 7. So I guess I'm asking how weedy you think that is or if there's a way we can really help people understand that.

Because if you look at where schools are right now Director Hersey and I have a lot more schools by numbers in our districts than than the other five.

But we're not solely responsible for just those schools.

This is you know we operate as a board of seven that that strives to make the best decisions we can for the community the district as a whole.

And so that's I think a nuance a lot of people don't understand the difference between and it comes up every time there's school board elections too because oh I don't think I can vote vote for that because you're not in my district.

Well in the general election everybody votes.

My understanding of the reason this is the way it is is to make sure that like There aren't five people whose kids go to Ballard High School sitting up here representing the whole city that we're having representation from around the city.

But it's not connected to the physical school buildings.

So any way we can help explain that also because we all do and are very connected to our individual communities and there's a sense of loss of you know my school board director when these boundaries change.

So I think it's important to understand that we will still be available and are still here to serve the whole district.

And that it doesn't necessarily mean that a person can't can't reach out to that director or that that's no longer their person.

So I don't know how we kind of thread that needle.

But so the other question that I have is I guess that wasn't really a question.

So the question I do have is since this is the first time that the school board director districts have been redistricted since the City Council went to a district system in 2015. Are we I mean like is there any reason to not just have the school district districts match the city districts.

They're they're also got they also have seven groups they have to follow the same the same guidelines about aiming for 105 and however many thousand people.

They're following the same rules in the RCW that we need to follow.

So is there a benefit to or is that something that's being considered looking at how the city is redistricting their districts because they have also been doing a lot of stakeholder engagement that rather than duplicate I hope that we can benefit from.

So I guess that's really a question for Flo, is what's the relationship, this being the first time that these districts have been redrawn in the same year, because the city, I can't remember what it was before 2015, did everybody vote on every position?

It was just a different structure.

So now that they do have this seven district, yeah, seven district regional structure, and so do we, can we, What do we think is the benefit or not to trying to align with those.

I will let Flo answer that but I will also come back to say on your first point we do have that captured in notes to help better tell the board narrative there.

Thank you.

Flo.

Yeah I will give you my explanation of it and then if Mr. Narver wants to come up and give you the legal interpretation he certainly can.

What we know based on Washington law is that every redistricting process is separate and they really should not be intertwined.

Now with that said could you certainly look at the districts as you're making decisions.

The City Council districts you certainly could.

But there's nothing outlined in the law that says that you need to follow any other redistricting result or recommendation from any other municipality or county districts.

Every redistrict process is separate.

So, Mr. Garber, if you want to comment further on that.

Yes, thank you.

Following up on the point that was just made, we have an obligation under state law to conduct our own process, receive our own input from our public, and to have the board consider those things.

And it's the board's decision as to what, how to set the boundaries as long as we're in compliance with the law.

The other thing I'd point to is that the factor that said to the extent possible you are preserving existing communities might mean something very different with respect to school communities as opposed to the newly drawn city council maps.

Because the criteria are the same, it wouldn't be a surprise to see them looking very similar, but we do have to run our own process, receive our own input, and think about our own existing communities.

So that would be my answer to that.

Helpful.

Thank you.

My last very quick question is what's the relationship between census blocks and voter precincts.

Or is there one.

Yeah there really isn't one in terms of census blocks.

Census blocks are census blocks.

So the same blocks that the city council is using are the same blocks that you're using.

But again just the boundaries that encompass those census blocks will look different.

They start out different and they'll probably end differently.

The only time that isn't the case is we see this in other states where the county boundary lines are actually the district's boundary lines as well.

And so in those instances, again, there's still separate processes under the laws that we've seen.

But the census blocks themselves with the amount of population that the census has placed in each block is the same across all of these different processes.

Hope that answers your question.

Kind of.

So the our current our current school board director district lines don't they the the lines of the boundaries don't split through any voter precincts.

And so is that something that was just that's what somebody decided to do the last time or is that something that needs to be followed.

I'm just curious about where the lines happen.

Yeah it doesn't need to be followed.

Whenever this was done back, you know, either in 2010 or the year 2000 or 1990, you know, going back every 10 years, maybe that was something that that board at that time wanted to do.

But it certainly isn't something that has to occur moving forward.

Okay, thank you.

And I'm sorry to do this, if I could just jump in.

We're also in communication with King County about concerns about precinct lines and things like that.

We'll continue to have that conversation while this process plays out and before a recommendation comes to them.

And if I could just add one thing to that.

There could be some census blocks that are cut now because the census does change the geographies of their census blocks at times.

Most of them and most instances remain the same from the previous 10 years, 2010, but some have changed.

And so if previous boundaries were based upon the previous census block outlines, there could now be some of those lines are now going across and splitting some of the census blocks.

So we do see that because the census does change some of their blocks for each census, the geographies.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm just going to start by saying, dividing our city in any manner, shape or form is problematic.

just you know on the basis of our neighborhoods and our segregation from historic redlining.

So I just put that out there to say like that that is not forgotten.

I don't think it's lost on any of us.

But by law we have to do this so I get that I get that we have very specific guidelines that we need to follow as we go through this process.

And I really I appreciate Director Rankin's explanation about how this really shouldn't be in our minds tied to our representation of the city because we represent the entire district regardless of the Please see sorry the the primary district we came out of.

And at the same time I and I appreciate that so I want to say that if we are going to live that we probably as a as a district and board need to step away from our sort of our our naming of like even on our websites under our director says we represent XYZ schools right.

So like we really need to get away from that.

if we're going to truly kind of disown this idea of we have districts.

Because I understand that.

I understand that that's how we should function as a representatives of the entire city.

So we but we don't want to send mixed messages where we're saying one thing but showing another thing like these are my schools.

So I don't know how we how we nuance that.

And I know that's not you guys deal with something to deal with.

I'm wondering though if we if we because We need to look at every decision we make from a student center standpoint and what's going to best serve our students, families, schools.

I don't know if this is a waste of time, but I wonder if it makes any sense to start with equal representation of our schools how that looks on a map.

I don't obviously it's going to look very different because Director Hersey has 21 schools so it's like he'd have to actually lose area as opposed to gain it which on your mathematics you need to gain an area some area.

But if we did that to show an actual representation of our district it would look a lot different right.

It would if we started from that and then worked towards the requirements that state law lines outlines for us to see how that would look because I feel weird just ignoring you know our our first duty is you know to serve our students in this process.

It just it feels so wrong.

And maybe I need to get over that.

But but I just wonder like if we started from a standpoint of how do we how do we spread out our students to be represented equally and have to have somebody that they can actually get you know get time with who's not, you know, trying to juggle 21 schools versus another district with 11 or 12. I don't know if that's a waste of time again, but I wonder if that's something that you might consider, again, to work backwards from the students to then meet the legal requirements.

That's all.

Thank you for that input.

So are you looking for a response?

Because it's not really, yeah, it's nothing that our partners at Flow would be able to answer, unfortunately.

But I mean, I.

Go ahead.

I understand because you're drawing up sort of some models, right?

So to my question, then, is that a waste of time?

No, it's not a waste of time at all.

I think we certainly try to provide some different themes for our decisions when we bring those initial scenarios forward.

Again you know we're really trying to balance that ideal population and take that overall deviation and reduce it as low as possible but there's different ways to do that.

And certainly one of the ways would be to make sure that we know and have that outlined where each school is in the district and in which board member districts those schools are in and we can certainly Use that as maybe one of our themes to create an initial scenario that we can bring forward for that workshop meeting with the district team.

Thank you.

Because yeah you do have on the on the communities and mutual interests I think one to strive for might then be the school attendance areas which you did have on your slide there as as a population to consider.

So anyways that's what I was just what I was wondering.

Thank you.

Any other questions from board directors.

Okay.

Seeing none we will keep you updated on this as this process continues to move obviously.

Thank you to our partners over at FLO and we look forward to getting a look at those maps as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Okay.

We've now come to the Board Committee Reports section of the agenda.

Board Directors if you want to take a moment to orient yourselves if you need to pull your notes up or anything like that.

We will hear briefly now from the chairs of each of our committees.

Director Hampson Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee and Ad Hoc Governance Committee would you like to go first.

Sure.

We met on August.

Hold on just a moment I had it pulled up.

The Audit and Finance Committee met on August 22nd.

Nothing notable to report that is not coming before you all this evening.

We had a good conversation at that well now I can talk about that BAR at intro regarding the Beginning Educator Support Team grant.

And the next meeting is we have a quarterly audit meeting coming up on September 11th.

and a monthly Audit and Finance Committee meeting coming up on September 19th.

Those remain accessible to the public.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Student Outcomes Focused Governance Implementation has been meeting regularly and meets again tomorrow at 10 a.m.

And if anyone is interested in materials from that I'm happy to send along past materials and As usual folks are welcome to tune in and hear the work that Directors Rankin-Sommeritz and myself are doing to move us forward with that implementation.

Thank you Director Hampson.

We will now go to Director Rivera-Smith for operations.

Thank you.

Our our August Operations Committee meeting was held on August 18th.

We had many of our action items that will be covered today in introduction, so I won't go over those now.

We'll be talking about this later, but I will say the most notable of which was item number 14 on our agenda today.

Approval of the 2022-2027 agreement for the joint use of facilities with the City of Seattle Parks and Recreation Division.

The current JOA Actually expired in 2019 and has been given 1 year extensions ever since.

So that 1 has been a long time coming and we will get to talk about that later.

We also got a report from the city of Seattle school traffic safety committee.

We got our annual report from them.

They outlined for us the top needs for school traffic safety this year.

And I'll just read those super fast.

They are to get crossing guard vacancy rates from 39 percent to zero.

So all our schools are covered and have safe crossings.

Standardize the SDOT street improvement requirements for school projects to focus on student safety.

Comprehensively revise SPS transportation service standards to include all students in all modes and to use current technology to improve planning and service.

Focus SDOT sidewalk improvements on gaps in safe routes to school and to revise city code to reflect education as a priority for school property.

They also outline ways that the City Council can help us because it's not just on us.

The City has a role to play in this too.

So their recommendations were to update City Code to eliminate habitual departures for SPS projects and protect school budgets.

Update SDOT policy to treat SPS as a partner and focus requirements on the transportation needs of school communities.

Get active to fill in gaps in walking routes to school and direct SDOT to develop playful effective physical markers for school streets.

So if you guys didn't have a chance to take a look at that that was in the committee materials which we all received for this last month.

Please take a look at that because there are areas for us to do some advocacy with City Council.

Um, we, you know, a lot of them and we talk, so if we get a chance, um, maybe direct their attention to some of those and how they can support us there and we'll be working in the committee to also look at what we can do.

Um, but, yeah, that was, uh, well, we also to that meeting also, we got an update from the clean energy task force, which is still hard at work.

They've moved through a lot of their their process and we'll assume you're now working on developing the actions to bring to us for recommendation I believe in the winter.

So we're getting there.

Our next meeting is Monday September.

Somebody tell me how am I going to get there.

September 19th.

Yep.

Is our next operations committee meeting at 430 p.m.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Smith, Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I'm going to speak a little more generally.

As we are moving towards the implementation of student outcomes focused governance what we're finding in the Student Services Curriculum and Instruction Committee is that there are a lot of items that come through that committee that are related to student outcomes.

And so figuring out ways to make those as they should be more of the business of the full board.

So as we're moving through, you'll see some some items tonight that have come through our committee that we didn't spend too much time talking about because they are.

in our opinion, the committee's opinion, clearly supportive of our intended outcomes and, you know, no surprises.

So what we're trying, there are some, there have been some changes to our standing items as a lot of those were related to what we are now looking at through progress monitoring.

There used to be updates on strategic plan goals as standing items through the committee.

And those kind of updates will now be coming to the full committee or the full board, excuse me, by way of progress monitoring on our goals.

So trying to do some of that, shifting as we can to support us all getting a little more focused on the work of the board.

The other, you know, the big pieces that have come through that committee are the banning of isolation as a practice in SPS and limiting the use of restraint.

And that is directly tied to the Instructional Philosophy Policy Policy 0010 that we unanimously adopted at the end of last school year.

That's really the foundation of I think what our community expects and what we've committed to in terms of serving our students in more inclusive settings and with adequate support to allow them to participate meaningfully in accessing basic education and also in being fully present members of their school communities.

So I that's that's where my head is at is just kind of trying to make sure that we follow up on those as things roll out.

And I'm I'm really looking forward to actually spending less time on some of these things in committee and more as a full board because it really is the meat of what our students experience the experience and the education that they have access to and how we represent the values of our community in those decisions that we make.

So hopefully further reports will be that our agenda has shrunk.

Fantastic.

Thank you Director Rankin.

For the Executive Committee it was a robust conversation where we took into consideration the agendas that you see before you tonight.

You might notice a small change to where we are placing public testimony before any action that we take on the consent agenda.

Glad you're happy about it.

And with that being said we are always open to ensuring that we are being responsive not only to our community but to directors.

This has been I want to acknowledge something that Director Rivera-Smith has been asking for for quite some time.

And by view of several policies and whatnot we determined that it would be a good move to ensure that folks have an opportunity to comment on what they see before them on the agenda.

Other than that, we had a robust conversation to a number of special attention items, most of which being focused around student outcomes, focused governance.

And our board goals check-in 2022 school board director redistricting process and the 2022-23 director conference attendance.

The executive committee is definitely not as spicy as some of the other committees.

So if you are interested in joining us we meet at 8 a.m.

on usually the Wednesday before board meetings sometimes that doesn't always sync up.

But the next meetings will be September the 21st 2022 October the 19th 2022 November 16th and December 7th in 2022. With that being said, that concludes committee reports and we will now move on to public testimony.

We will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda.

Board Procedure 1430BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I will summarize some important parts of this procedure.

First, testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from the public testimony list and, if applicable, the waiting list.

which are included on today's agenda postings on the school board website.

Only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium.

And only one person should speak at a time.

Speakers from the list may cede their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called.

The total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers.

Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they excuse me if they are on the testimony list or waiting list.

Those who do not wish to have their time ceded to them may decline and retain their place on the testimony or wait list.

The majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about.

Finally the board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself which is high.

Ms. Ku will read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you President Hersey.

A quick logistical note.

Speakers joining us via phone please remain muted until your name is called to provide testimony.

When your name is called please be sure you have unmuted on the device you are calling from and also press star-6 to unmute yourself on the conference call line.

Each speaker will have a two minute speaking time.

You'll hear a beep when your time is exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

The first speaker on the list is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the personnel report under separations the report lists JoLynn Berge Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Carrie Campbell Assistant Deputy Superintendent.

I wish to express my appreciation for their service to the district.

On the passing of longtime district teacher and principal Jim Simmons.

Two points.

Number one an obituary for Jim Simmons appeared in the Sunday Seattle Times.

Number two Jim and Carol Simmons lobbied to have the district resume publication of the annual data profile report.

Please renew this publication and include a note recognizing Jim and Carol Simmons.

On the construction projects at Alki John Rogers and Montlake.

At Montlake the playground will shrink to half its current size.

At John Rogers it will shrink by a third.

At Alki the project is way too large for the site.

Please vote no.

On the $57 million contract for computer equipment.

The report states that the one-to-one student device program is crucial for learning.

I disagree.

Books and teachers are more important.

Please vote no.

On the power school contract, please discuss privacy issues.

On board redistricting, two points.

Number one, at my request, a court reviewed the 2012 board redistricting.

The size gap between districts was 10.6 percent.

Gaps for other governments were 20 times smaller.

Number two the district's 2022 gap target of 10 percent is too large.

Also the presentation tonight the school district is larger than the city.

So school board districts cannot be exactly the same size as city council districts.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker on the list is Olga Aday.

Olga Aday.

I have a question before I start speaking.

What I was to speak on on the agenda was removed from the agenda and I was like to speak to the bargaining situation as current and if that's okay.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Olga Agay and I'm at 5028 50th Avenue Southwest.

I was the former president of SEA from 2008 to 2012. I'm here to speak about the district proposal to modify the special education service models listed on page 85 of the 2019-2022 CBA which I have.

And to inform the school board and parents of students with special needs and the rank and file membership of SEA of an illicit modification to the high school focus service model made in the winter of 2021. During that time the district unilaterally changed the layoff and recall special education categories without bargaining with SEA to do so.

This is a mandatory subject of bargaining.

I filed an unfair labor practice against the district and was told by PERC that only the bargaining agents i.e.

SEA could file said ULP.

SEA refused and told me they had given the district their tacit approval to make these changes.

My main concern is that the secondary focus service model has been changed to SN2 mod-intensive, meaning instead of servicing students with intensive academic needs, the model can now service students with moderate academic needs at a lower staffing ratio of 9 to 1 to 1 instead of 10 to 1 to 2. Now that the district wants to increase inclusion without having done a complete special education audit to determine which secondary schools already provide inclusion to students with moderate to intensive academic needs in access or recess or access or resource my fear is this hidden illicit change to the focus service model will now negatively impact students in it.

The district proposal is clearly not just about resource and access.

Please make certain that the parents in the district are in the joint special education task force page 92 of the contract and are doing their contractual obligation of reporting out to the community.

Thank you.

Of reporting out to the community three times per year before proposing such critical changes to special education service model.

In other words do your homework and complete a audit and do the hard work of the special education task force.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Janice White.

Janice White.

Good afternoon.

I'm Janice White and I'm here today as an individual not representing the Seattle Special Education PTSA.

Using my family's experience I want to address the district's proposal to SEA that students currently in the resource, access, and social and emotional learning pathways be collapsed into a single pathway to be called collaborative teaching.

The only students for whom this proposal will result in change are the students assigned to the SEL pathway.

Students assigned to resource and access pathways are already supposed to be spending the majority of their instructional time in general education classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers.

Who are the students assigned to the SEL pathway?

In many cases, like my autistic son, who was first assigned to SEL in third grade, they started out assigned to resource or access, but because their needs were not being met, they engaged in challenging and sometimes destructive or violent behaviors.

If you simply send these children back to general education classrooms without addressing the underlying reasons that led to the unsafe behaviors, And without providing teachers and staff with tools to understand the student needs and prevent the unsafe behaviors this plan will fail.

My family lived this.

When my son started middle school he was moved from SEL into access and sent to a school where the administration and teaching staff did not understand what it would take to include him successfully.

By the second day of school he was eloping or running away almost daily.

He was suspended.

and he had the worst behavioral incident of his life leading to school refusal for almost all of his sixth grade year.

We were able to turn things around by providing the support he needed and sending him to a different SPS middle school which had adopted many inclusive practices including co-teaching where he thrived.

He is starting his senior year next week and preparing his college application.

I want all the students who are currently in SEL classrooms to experience that same success.

They deserve inclusion in schools that are ready to accept them and support them.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Marla Rasmussen.

Marla Rasmussen.

Marla Rasmussen, if you're joining us by phone, please press star six to unmute.

The next speaker on the list is Arthur Doros.

Arthur Doros.

Is it possible to get a minute or two extra?

I interviewed a lot of people in Montlake for this, so there's quite a bit I

You're more than welcome to submit any written documents, and we would be more than happy to review those.

But for the hope of equity and folks who have signed up, please try your best to keep up.

I am.

I am going to try.

And I've been trying to squeeze this down because I have a lot of neighbor feedback.

I'm trying to get a lot of information.

This is a sixty five million dollar remodel of Montlake School.

I have a K-12 certificate and family and I have been involved with Seattle Public Schools for decades and decades.

I now live near the much loved historic Montlake Elementary.

Planning is being done for welcome addition and remodel.

There's just one problem and it is big.

The school is gigantic for the site.

They're talking about tripling.

We're talking about tripling the size of the school.

from 180 students to 500 or more.

And the reason for this, it turns out, neighbors were baffled.

The reason it turns out is the district only had of late two models for school, new school work, which is a 500 model and a 650 model.

But that does not fit Montlake well.

It's the smallest, it vies for the smallest lot by far of Seattle Schools District.

and trying to shoehorn this 500 students and this massive number of buildings.

We just mentioned the playground gets cut way down.

There's a, I don't know where you can see it.

I should have had more presentation material, I guess, but it's like three quarters of the lot is covered by buildings now.

There's no play field, nothing like that for kids to, you know, outdoor space has been reduced radically.

Also, there's a huge issue in transportation because for 500 students and staff, there are no parking spots.

Statutes would demand, and they're already pushing the limits of the building, the statutes would demand 131 spots.

There are 30 right around the school that the school already uses.

There's none on site.

The traffic will be pushed out into the neighborhood.

I know you care deeply about students and families and the schools that thrive with community support.

I believe we know it is better not to keep walking in shoes that are too tight for us.

Rather than pushing a formulaic district proposal onto this tiny slate and situation, with your support and actions, good sense and relations can prevail.

So I talked, there's supposedly going to be a meeting, hopefully going to be a meeting with capital funding people who said that, who suggested the meeting actually to talk about the reduction in size of the school and the budget could be moved around to other projects.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Hi, my lovely council.

My name is Alex Zimmerman and I want to speak about agenda number eight about racial non-balance.

Yeah, as President Biden, absolutely right.

We have a fascism.

And sometimes fascism comes to very aggressive with Nazi-Gestapo principles.

This is exactly what I see in Seattle for many years.

So right now I will give you a couple of examples so you know about what I am talking about.

So months ago, chair of South Transit Board, a black man from university place, gave me trespass for 90 days.

Why?

Because for a hundred times, as I go to this meeting, I talk about sound transistory.

It's a pansy's ham, a hundred billion dollars.

And people who use this like this committee, sound transistory, is a pure criminal.

That's number one example.

Another example.

Seattle council and Mayor Harrell, who are black men, invite another council, who are brown.

You know what this means?

Give me trespass.

for twelve trespassers.

Please speak to the topic that you indicated you would like to speak about.

Exactly.

Twelve hundred days.

So this is a pure fascism tube.

And you always interrupt me, black man tube.

So right now I want to speak to children.

So there's fifty-five thousand...

Please speak to this topic.

Don't interrupt me because it's exactly Nazi, black Nazis.

It's exactly who you are.

It's exactly why I come here.

please this is a fundamental of racism because nazi is a fundamental of racism why black brown mix not mirror color is metal mentality why you interrupt me because you stupid don't understand about why i'm talking is a part of racism is this black nazi racism

Catherine George.

Can you hear me.

Can you hear me.

Let's let's let's continue with public testimony and then immediately after if we could take recess.

That'd be great.

Sorry please forgive us for for that moment.

Please continue.

Catherine, yes, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Thank you.

I just emailed a comment letter signed by myself as vice president of a nonprofit group called Attorneys for Education Rights, also by Arzu Perot, who's director of Washington Autism Alliance, and also by the board of the Seattle Special Education PTSA.

I'm going to just quickly read the comment letter as quickly as I can.

We are advocates for students with disabilities and their families.

As you know an appropriate education depends on consistently delivering the services needed for a child to learn and participate in school.

We are disturbed by the existence of wait lists for special education services in Seattle.

According to records obtained through the Public Records Act last school year the school district maintained at least two wait lists.

One for contracted applied behavior analysis services and another for Tier 3 supports.

These wait lists starkly illustrate inadequacies in special education staffing staffing threatening long-term harm to vulnerable students.

Fundamentally, the service delays reflect a lack of political will at the state and local levels to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

The records production is not yet complete, making it difficult to know the scope of the problem.

We hope you agree that any waitlist for special education services is unacceptable and must not be repeated.

in the 2022-23 school year.

We ask that you immediately investigate and address the problem so that Seattle students do not spend another year waiting for the services that are legally and morally required.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Danielle Rice.

Danielle Rice.

Danielle Rice if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next speaker on the list is Sherilyn Crowther.

Sherilyn Crowther.

Hi I'm Sherilyn Crowther and I am the President of the Seattle Special Education PTSA Parent Teacher Student Association.

Yesterday our group provided feedback to the district and the union on educating students with disabilities or special education.

However I am not here to talk about line items on that.

I'm here to acknowledge that this system is not broken and I am part of the problem.

We all are.

The system of education in Seattle Public Schools or in any public school works as it was designed.

It was designed to exclude or minimize students with disabilities Students learning the language of this system.

Students who have a skin tone different from mine.

And still other students.

I'm reaching —.

I'm —.

Can you speak closer to your mic.

I really want to make sure that we can all hear what you're saying.

Bonus time.

Well hello again.

I'm Cheryl Lynn Crowther president of the Seattle Special Education Parent Teacher Student Association.

And yesterday our group provided feedback to the district and the union on educating students with disabilities special education students.

However I am not here to talk about those line items.

I am here to acknowledge the system is not broken.

Not broken.

And I am part of the problem.

We all are.

The system of education in Seattle Public Schools or education in any public school in this country works as it was designed.

It was designed to exclude or minimize students with disabilities.

Students learning the languages of this system.

Students who have a skin tone that is different from mine and still other students.

I'm raising a kid with a disability.

And I can only speak on special education.

Blame feels like action.

Blame feels like action and trauma is real.

But there is no single person, there's no one team, and there is no side that has the right approach in the current system.

And that's the good news.

Acknowledging our roles and perpetuating the existing system is a first step.

The first step to making change is admitting there's a problem.

Even though none of us built this longstanding system, we can't simply push it to different parts and expect wholesale change.

and wholesale change is what's needed.

The known, even painful, is more comfortable than the anxiety of the unknown.

But guess what?

We have changed.

Look at the last two and a half years.

Three years ago, what contract would we have written?

What would we have accepted for what was ahead?

What could we have envisioned?

Everyone here, let's get honest about our roles in the system.

Let's build trust with one another.

Our students need a new system.

I and the Seattle Special Education PTSA are ready to help.

Thank you.

The last speaker is Samantha Fogg.

Samantha Fogg.

Samantha Fogg if you're on the line please press star-6 to unmute.

Okay.

I am Samantha Fogg co-president of Seattle Council PTSA.

Our families want school to start on time with excitement enthusiasm and stability.

We want our students to know that our district and our teachers look forward to connecting with them and that teaching staff and administration issues will not get in the way of student learning.

The CBA between SPS and SEA primarily concerns employer-employee issues.

However there are elements of this bargain that do impact our students and families.

And you as our elected school board directors are charged with making sure that the voice of community is honored.

We understand that one of the barriers right now is a discussion of how special education is delivered.

Civil rights are not up for debate.

The Rehab Act was passed in 1973. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975 and that was reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. Since these civil rights laws were passed we have learned and grown and what we have found is that some things that were done with the best of intentions have unintended racist and ableist impacts.

We have been encouraged by the progress we see you make and that you share the values of community.

Board Policy 0010 shows that you know that the least restrictive environment is the general education classroom.

Best practice for all students is inclusion.

Our families want all of our students to have the opportunity to stretch and grow into their individual areas of strength while at the same time receiving support in their individual areas of need.

Our families want best practices implemented and for our teachers to have the support training and time to collaborate that they need in order to make sure that all students have the opportunity to excel as their whole selves.

This past fall we saw our teachers in the special education PTSA hold a needs not numbers rally bringing home the point that our teachers and our families are united in wanting to see education that focuses on the needs of our students.

We support the demand that we have a system that meets the needs of our students.

We must move from current practice to best practice so that every child in this district has the opportunities that they deserve.

Thank you.

Before we conclude today's testimony, I just want to try Danielle Rice again, if you're on the line.

Danielle, if you're on the line, please press star six to unmute.

And this concludes today's testimony.

Okay, thank you very much.

The board will be taking a brief 10 minute recess.

We will return at 547. Thank you very much for your patience.

Directors if you can hear me it's clock forty seven.

See Director Somer is.

Director Rankin.

Anybody know where Director Rankin is.

In the restroom.

Right.

Okay.

Before we get back to the agenda, I am going to give a few moments to General Counsel Narver to address some of the events that have taken place in the last few minutes.

So please.

Would you like me to wait until Director Rankin's back?

Yeah, I think it would be appropriate to wait for Liza.

She'll be here.

You don't need to go there.

Sorry.

Excuse me.

All right.

Welcome back Director Rankin.

As stated before I'm going to give a few moments to Chief Counsel Narver to address a couple of things that have transpired.

Thank you again Greg Narver General Counsel.

Tomorrow it will be three years to the day that I've been General Counsel here at Seattle Public Schools and I have.

Thank you.

This evening at today's meeting we did something we have not done in the entire time I've worked here.

and that is terminate the comments of a member of the public.

When we set up this podium and invite public comment, it's with the understanding that the people coming to speak to you have the full range of rights protected by the First Amendment, and that protects a lot.

People can come here and they can say nice things or they can be critical.

They can give you a piece of their mind.

They can even be rude and offensive, but they are speaking to their elected officials about matters of public importance.

A lot is protected, but there's a line that you cannot cross.

We have a policy that provides that our buildings are safe and welcoming environments.

We have free, we have public comment guidelines that talk about the expected civility of all participants in this process.

This is a space that often has students and children in it as well, who are here to benefit from being part of this public process.

And we have guidelines that President Hersey stressed that the purpose of this public comment is to help inform your decision making.

And that's why we ask people to say what item on the agenda or what business of school, Seattle Public Schools business are you speaking to.

It is not a forum for people to come here and just engage in pure hate speech and try and pick a fight and all the things we saw.

And so tonight we saw a line.

And that's why we took the very, very unusual step of doing what we did after President Hersey twice gave the speaker a chance to refocus his comments on an appropriate item on the agenda, which he refused to do.

And that's why we did what we did.

And we will continue to be vigilant about taking necessary steps to make sure that this is a space where there is vigorous debate, where the public can come in and have at it with its elected officials.

but not engage in the kind of speech we heard tonight.

And I will ensure that we are taking all legal steps to have this dialogue, this forum, and this First Amendment protected space be one that is one that we can all be proud of.

So, thank you.

Thank you, General Counsel Narver.

I would be remissed if my family would be furious with me if I didn't say at least something to what just transpired.

I am a generally very happy person.

I try to come into as many spaces as possible with a good attitude, try to bring people together and whatnot.

And I'm also from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which comes with all the context that you can imagine being a Black man from Mississippi comes with.

When you see on full display the racism that occurs and the trauma that is inflicted, not only on me, but on Black women, women of color, men of color, women in general in this system, for volunteers who at our core are here to serve children.

It is wildly unacceptable for any person to have the gall to come into a space like this and run amok of this American system.

I would be so sick to my stomach if in the same day we welcomed three students, women of color, to this dais to have an event like that happen in front of them.

There is no solution that we can take greater than legal recourse.

But I have to be honest when I say this is what we go through on a daily basis in private, in public, for volunteering to give time away from our family and friends, to be here and to be accosted based on the color of my skin for trying to uphold a system that we are all working together to protect.

This has got to stop.

We have to do better.

And this is by no fault of anybody in this room, but it is laughable to me.

Absolutely laughable to me.

That that is the line.

We've all heard what he has come in here and said before.

That was the line.

The only thing that is a silver lining in this situation is that our student board members were not here to be exposed to that.

The only benefit to that is that I was able to take what that man served and thankfully he will hopefully not be able to inflict that kind of trauma on the students that we were adding to this board.

What a way to start this year.

In that vein, that is a really good reminder of why every one of us is up here.

Because we chose to be here and I will continue to sit here and I will continue to serve as president of this board and representing my community in District 7. That is a really good reminder of what our students are facing on a daily basis without recourse.

That is a fantastic reminder of what our students are experiencing on a daily basis inside of our schools.

So when we are up here thinking about how we are going to improve the system to be squarely focused on student outcomes.

That is a reminder of why we doing this.

And in some ways I'm thankful that it happened tonight and in other ways I'm absolutely furious.

But I hope that we can all collectively in this moment of trauma really just find it deep within ourselves to be focused on what is most important and that is improving outcomes for students because there are people like that everywhere and they have the gall and our students are facing way worse than some mean words at a podium.

So That's all I'm going to say about that.

We are going to get back to celebrating what a momentous day this was and continues to be.

So with that, we have come to the consent agenda.

We will be reviewing the, hold on, I am so off the game.

Give me a second.

President Hersey, I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Thank you.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by and by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

Do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda.

Director Harris by all means.

As noticed to yourself President Hersey I remove 6 7 and 8 from the consent agenda because they're intro and action and in the spirit of transparency and accountability I believe our public and voters stakeholders need to have explanations.

Thank you sir.

Absolutely.

President Hersey I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

The consent agenda as amended has been moved by Vice President Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

We will first go to item number 5. Vote on that.

Oh sorry I'm tripping.

All those in favor of the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

Any abstentions.

Passes unanimously.

Now we will turn our attention to Director Harris you said number 5 and 8.

I said 6 7 and 8 sir.

6 7. 5 has been taken off the agenda.

Okay 6 7 and 8. Okay so Do we need to take a motion for 6 before we hear from it or yeah.

Apologies yeah.

I'll make that motion.

I move approval of the acceptance of the Assistance League of Seattle ALS gift donation for Operation School Bell Shopping Spree to close Seattle Public Schools Elementary and Middle School students.

Okay.

Moved and properly seconded.

Director Harris we'll first go to you and then if we have a staff member that can speak to this.

Just for context for all of our items tonight staff are actively engaging in bargaining and so we will likely have some staff members present and likely not for others.

And so please keep that in mind as you're questioning.

Please.

Good evening Pat Sander Executive Director Coordinated School Health.

This is a yearly gift in partnership with the Assistance League to clothe and buy school supplies for our students in our elementary K-8 schools.

The amount is $475,000 that would be given to the school district and so that we can have those funds available for the start of school.

We have the introduction and action item this evening.

Thank you so much.

Directors if you have any questions now is the time.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

I wanted to note that we did discuss this in the SSC&I committee and it was recommended for acceptance to the full board and that it is an annual item.

And one discussion piece that came up that I have an email ready to go to our superintendent but I'm holding off while everybody's in the thick of bargaining.

is that something that has come up in our committee regarding this item and other similar items is how best to recognize our partners and contributors when when we receive these gifts and acknowledgement from us.

So that's I will put more in writing to you to consider how that might be done.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

Not the first time that's come up in SSC&I and other times I I've suggested that perhaps this district is losing its soul and that when folks like the Assistance League the Satterberg Foundation and the Nesholm Foundation and other folks are working with us collaboratively and assisting us in our mission and not just with the millions of dollars that these groups our CDOs are helping us with not to bring them up here.

to acknowledge them in person to give them a real plaque that they can put in their lobbies and put in their annual reports as opposed to frankly recently nothing.

And if something crappy little pieces of paper and little cardboard tagboard folders that I'm sorry I am beyond offended by that.

I am not looking to go back to seven years ago where we spent 45 minutes of every board meeting standing up congratulating ourselves and taking photographs.

That's not what I'm asking for at all.

But I think we have more class and soul than that and I am begging you to change this.

Thank you.

Any other directors of questions.

All right.

Thank you.

We will now move to the vote.

Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Sardieu aye Director Song-Wen aye Director Vice President Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Rankin

Aye.

And President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Moving on to Item Number 7. May I have a motion please.

I move approval of license and subscription fee sorry BTA V approval of license fees and subscription fees for PowerSchool platform maintenance and support for $5,863,937.81.

Second.

All right.

This has been moved and properly seconded.

Please take it away.

Good evening President Hersey Directors Superintendent.

The purpose of this board action report is to approve the enterprise license and subscription and subscription fees with with PowerSchools.

PowerSchools is the name of both the vendor and the student information system.

PowerSchool platform is both the database and the authoritative data source for student demographics.

courses, teachers' assignments, grades, class schedules, attendance, discipline incidents, transcripts, GPAs, and other reporting data to the states.

At a high level, this enterprise agreement will give us the PowerSchool suite, which is the student information system that does the data storage for housing student data.

PowerSchool enrollment registration, that's the student registration module.

with added language support.

We have Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

And I'm proud to report that we're adding Somali to the mix.

Schoology, which is the learning management system for educators and students.

Unified Insights, which is the identity and track of student needs.

Conduct Minors Innovations and the review of the MTTS framework.

Performance Matters, which is the student assessment software.

Our special programs 504, which is the tracking and reporting of the module 504 student data and professional development subscription that was going to be given for our technical guys to learn some new traits within the system.

A little bit of background and the history of PowerSchools.

The vendor in the past was, we had modules with other vendors that we own.

And PowerSchool started buying these companies and been working to creating a unified system.

Over the past couple of years, the team has been working with the vendor to integrate and realign these modules and have the billing and invoices under just one main enterprise agreement.

To this, to bring efficiency within the vendor as far as the billing and accounting processes.

So instead of processing multiple invoices, the acquisition folks will have, you know, possibly just one.

Similar to the Microsoft Enterprise License Agreement that we have with multiple products with only one license.

We pulled the most recent student registration count in July from where we drew the number of licenses needed for this quote and this agreement.

And just in time to bring it up to committee in approval to the board today.

We are bringing this board report to authorize the superintendent to execute a three-year agreement with an option with the option of two additional one-year extensions.

This is to give room in the future in case if requirements changes we can go for RRSP looking for other products.

At this moment there is no other platform in the market that integrates SPS student information systems with our schools.

They're already being used by students educators and staff.

So this agreement will be done as a sole source base with the quote provided.

As I mentioned, the contract expired today.

We are requesting interim action of this board and this board meeting requiring this critical system to be available for the process, you know, registrations that are happening right now and later on to be utilized by educators and the students.

We have a mitigation in place with the vendor in case that we don't get the approval today.

Although we believe immediate action of this this food wax is in the best interest of the district.

On this new 36-month approved agreement, the district is having an annual 4.5 Upchurch fee waive and the opportunity to revise the number of licenses in December for a monetary adjustments in case there's any drop in registrations or if it goes the other way.

The physical impact is breaking down in your package.

And it's funded from BTA V, BTA V, which, you know, past February, the voters nearly voted about 80 percent to approve this levy.

There's no alternative systems in the market.

This is our student system of record.

And given our requirements, investment in infrastructure, there's no feasible solutions out there.

From the equity analysis, the Department of Technology participates in racial equity outcomes.

based on the board policy 0030. In power schools in that policy they said that we provide every student with equitable access to high quality curriculum and supporting facilities and other educational resources.

Power School Enterprise suite does exactly that.

It provides the digital equity access to support the academic resources used by the students and educators.

From the community engagements over the past couple of years During the pandemic, we heard feedback from the community and educators about the need to provide enhanced systems integration, data reporting to families, and better user experience.

This feedback has been instrumental in how we plan for and realign these technologies successfully, so duplication is minimized.

There's a need of use by the user, and the language support is addressed.

iTech also reviewed this report on August 22nd and provided their support for his approval.

They mentioned that the families have become very accustomed with these tools and they got a word from the chair of the iTech saying that everybody's kind of gotten used to the Schoology based setup.

Now it will be incredibly disruptive to change technology on people.

Also, the digital learning specialist team was involved in evaluating the platform with educators.

And it has become widely widely understood and utilized due to the available professional development that has been provided to educators.

They recommend the continuation of these schools.

And lastly, our SPS legal team review the Power School Main Services Agreement and deem it appropriate for the district.

Some of the questions that came out during the committee, Director Harris asked, we knew this was coming.

Why would we wait until August to submit into intro and action.

This is just a matter of timing.

When we pulled the student registration count for Power School, that was in mid-July, to ensure that we had the most accurate, close most accurate count of registrations for 2022-23 school year and ready for the operations committee just this past week.

As I mentioned, we have another opportunity to assess the number of licenses in December for any monetary adjustments.

Director Harris also asked if the school is required by the district.

As it was mentioned during the committee although it's stated not stated by policy HR has pointed out that power school is a common practice by de facto as to the tools for secondaries to provide assignments, registrations, grades, schedules, etc. that are hosted on this platform.

Director Rankin also asked to provide explanation on how consolidation of licenses affect family in their system and the use of the system.

The consolidation will consolidate the licenses, but it also increases the family use of the system.

This change will align the student count of licenses for the Enterprise License Agreement, but also as far as the technical consolidation of the system for accessibility for families.

PowerSchool has been acquiring the tools and integrating them and aligning them as one.

Our team has been working hard over the past year with the vendor to ensure the application, talk to each other.

Although we have a little bit of work that still needs to be done to bring the entire suite integrated.

To address the concern for Mr. Jackins, we do treat the student's data very seriously.

And we adhere to our systems, to the Family Education Right Privacy Act, FERPA.

and all their ADA requirements.

With that, I open it for your questions.

Thank you so much for that robust report.

Director Harris, take it away.

Thank you, sir.

And I might say that it's delightful to see our executive directors and directors presenting to us.

And it just shows us what kind of extraordinary world-class talent we have.

I'm pleased and was very pleased with your presentation to SSC&I as well.

But you know 5.8 million bucks is not chump change.

It is real.

This is the backbone system.

I would like and this is probably the exact wrong time to say it.

At some point in the future to have the guts to work with our teachers to in fact tell our students and our families what's going on in their classrooms syllabi assignments etc.

And I appreciate that probably a large majority of our teachers do in fact use it in that fashion but it is not required.

And I dare say it won't be required for another three years but perhaps if we can make it even more user friendly folks will come along.

But again, many, many thanks, sir, for your hard work and your team's hard work.

Appreciate it.

Any other questions?

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

And I had, I actually did have some questions.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend the SSC&I meeting.

I do have questions about the data privacy, because I saw in the materials that We just use the template one that PowerSchool.

We don't have like anything customized for our district regarding that.

Has there been any data concerns or breaches since we have them for going on 10 years now here?

Has there been any concerns in that respect?

See, we have a pretty good cybersecurity program in the FERPA as well.

Under my I haven't seen any.

I'm actually pretty proud over the team on how much controls they have in place for ensuring the security of the data.

Is it a, is it a, is it a customary for our district, our IT department to do any pen testing on the software we use?

Because I see in the contract that we're not allowed to do any on theirs.

So is that, are we at a loss because of that?

Or is that just standard that most of these don't let us do any kind of penetration testing?

We do continually test the network and our cybersecurity team is always looking for testing what vulnerabilities are in the network.

PowerSchool resides inside the network, so they are protected by de facto.

Okay, so we do on other ones, but PowerSchool specifically, we don't do the pentesting because it's not allowed, but that's...

We do the pentesting on the network, not on the system.

Not on the system specifically, okay.

And again, so I'm asking, like, do we customarily do it on other, like Schoology, any other systems that we use?

I'm just wondering if we're at any kind of loss because we cannot do it specifically on there.

No, no, no.

We are protected on the boundary of the network.

online systems for any nefarious acts inside of them.

Got you.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you so much again for your for your presentation and no further questions.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

Any other questions from board directors.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Director Sarju.

Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye and President Hersey aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you very much.

May I have a motion for number eight.

This is for BTA V approval.

I'm sorry.

I move approval of BTA V approval for of computing science sorry computing services and support contracts through RFP request for proposal number 012238 for the purchase of computer refresh equipment in support of teaching and learning and equitable access to digital resources for students and staff district-wide.

Does we have moved and properly seconded.

Please take it away Mr. Devaney.

Thank you.

The purpose of this board actually is to approve the purchase of the student and staff devices through this contract.

We are bringing the motion forward.

We ask them for a three-year I'm sorry yeah three-year from 22-24 with additional two one-year extensions.

This is to give room in the future for also to be the RFP.

We are requesting the introduction and action of this contract, which expires also tonight.

We have the mitigation in place if we need to wait until next meeting, but we believe immediate action of this is in the best interest of the district.

Background, during the BTA V levy planning process, we use historical data and analyze and plan the equipment necessary to provide the highest level of computer services and support for the districts.

As SPS currently is a one-to-one student device environment and gives every student a device for learning, we need to be able to maintain these devices through the procurement of new equipment to replace devices due to loss, stolen, and accidental loss, along with the sustainment of a four-year tech refresh cycle on the devices.

The contract with Thunberg Computer services provide the acquisition vehicle to facilitate the purchase and maintenance of student devices and computer services.

This RFP was recently completed with Thunder improving their offering and being selected.

Improvements from the last contract was put in writing was the option to fall back to other vendors if we need to.

That's because some devices might not be available from these vendors.

So we have that opportunity.

We didn't have that in the past.

Vendor Resolution Assistant with Thunder.

A 16 local presence within 20 minutes, they have a warehouse in Arbor.

Professional learning credits for our technical folks.

Green recycling materials, better quality of the devices, you know, more powerful memory processors, you know, durability.

A potential short-term, three-month storage of devices until the district is able to provide deployment.

Sometimes the warehouse We're competing against nutritional services, you know, and owners.

And when we bring out pallets of computers, there's no space.

So we got that as a temporary storage.

Better quality of devices in comparison to the competitor.

Fiscal impact of the source and revenue is $57,400,000.

And the funding is also for BTA V capital levy, which voters pass it nearly 80 percent last February.

Equity analysis, the Department of Technology and Teaching and Learning participates in ratio equitable outcomes.

And we did an equity analysis.

It was performed back when we had it in the program in two to one back in 2019. And it's still hold true through the pandemic.

And we saw the need for devices during the pandemic.

It just proved true and and better now that we are one-to-one.

Computer engagements, ITEC reviewed this board report on the 27th.

They provided valuable feedback on the development and shared their support for the approval.

The digital learning specialist team was involved in evaluating the devices for the teachers and students in the classroom.

And they are supportive of this equipment.

Also, the legal team reviewed the service services agreement and being appropriate for the district.

Some of the questions that came up during the committee, Director Son-Merez asked about what ITAC's inputs were.

And ITAC was in agreement with the execution of this contract and we're concerned about the accessibility to multiple devices and their durability.

Back in during the summer when we briefed them back then again, I mean, first time that we briefed them, they are actually wanting to see that the devices match the requirements.

And we have many requirements.

They made recommendations about the specifications of the equipment, insurance addresses the user requirements.

Some equipment might not be suitable for certain, you know, individuals.

The student devices might, they're not the same as the eye devices or, you know, for example, a system technology for 504 completely different devices.

And we want to make sure that we have the vehicle to buy, you know, whatever device that we require.

Also, Director Summeritz asked, you're able to give us more detail about the vendors who submitted the bids and the strength of the vendor who wanted.

We received six bids.

And out of those, only two surfaced to the top that met our requirements.

Thunder and Micro K12 were the ones.

Selection was made based on the competitive pricing, local presence, warranty offerings, the professional development credits, and the durability of the systems that were most superior.

Also, another question from Director Sumaritz, how much coverage is planned for allocating devices, specifically as it refers to assisting IAs with the appropriate equipment?

During our analysis that we did when we put together the levy, we actually talked to IAs and principals to understand what are actually, what are the requirements.

And we are locating the first purchase, which will be late this, late this year.

to address those requirements for IEDs.

They're going to be first in line so we can provide for them.

Director Harris asked how many computers were lost, stolen, or broken?

And will those Dell computers be warped from the warranty, from the past contracts warranty?

As I reported last year, we had about 22% loss.

Nonetheless, I'm proud to report There was a significant improvement in the collection process.

And as a result of all the hard work of DOT's team in collaboration with school leaders, educators, staff, and community volunteers that helped us on this, we have significantly reduced that percentage to 5.5% this year.

And we continue to work to bring that number down.

We identified some issues on the devices.

not being an inventory or a system inventory, which is destiny.

Due to tags during the pandemic, they got worn out.

So, when they brought them back, there was no way to scan them into the system.

So, they have to do it manually.

But we're still working on some of that.

As far as the warranty, it depends by the piece of equipment.

Some equipment has a warranty of one year.

Some of them has up to four years.

Those are still within warranty from the last contract, they will support.

Also, Director Rivera-Smith asked about the feasibility of obtaining insurance.

As I reported last year about the feasibility of obtaining insurance on devices, you may recall we had insurance in a small portion of those devices, but the insurance did not met their obligations of the policy.

And it was canceled by mutual agreement.

And it was deemed the most, it was deemed that it was not cost effective for the district.

all the premiums were returned.

Our team double checked with eight neighboring districts to see what the approach was and find out what was followed, what they followed similar.

We find out that they follow similar protocols as SPS, no insurance on devices, and the yearly fees for repairs.

We also checked with OSPI and Washington Department of Enterprise Services, our counterparts, And they also do not have any loss, damage, or vandalism insurance that we can tap into it.

With that, I'm open to your questions.

Thank you very much.

Directors, questions?

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you again for the great recap of the item.

We did see this in Operations Committee and did pass it with a recommendation for approval.

One last question that I did have that I didn't ask at the time.

I know when the pandemic happened and we were doing the one-on-one, one-to-one, we did have some schools that were doing, that were encouraging a bring your own device.

What is our current sort of policy, not to be confused with board policy, but kind of current practice regarding one-to-one devices, sorry, being your own device at schools?

And if we're still doing that or encouraging it, do we realize any cost savings from that?

Or is it just, or is it kind of negligible?

I can tell you that during the pandemic, it was a great help because we didn't have the number of devices and we were stuck by, you know, the supply chain.

So that helped.

Nevertheless, when we did the review for the BTA V requirements, we ensured that every student have a computer so we can get away from the bring your own computer.

So everybody, so it would be equitable for everybody at schools.

So we're going to be revising, starting this fall, the policy about that and also the policy about the fees to ensure that we are, you know, in line with moving forward.

And then we're going to be moving towards not encouraging.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

No further questions.

Director Rankin.

My 7th grader somehow managed to close his hand in one and break it the last week of school.

He was fine.

I don't know what he was doing.

Not knowing where his limbs were.

My question is more for just like reaffirmation clarification that since this is part of BTA levy, this money what is expected to be spent by voters and as part of the package that they voted to approve.

And so what we're being asked isn't so much a hey should we spend money on computers or not but it's it's more of our fiscal oversight that this money is being expended at this time.

Okay.

And then the other clarification you mentioned assistive technology that comes from something that's different that's to support students as indicated by need in their IEP or 504 and is not part of this is that right.

No, it is.

Oh, it is?

Assistive technology is part of it?

We do the analysis for the equipment that is required.

We coordinate with assistive technology on what do they need, and then we go and do the purchase.

So is there any kind of funds reimbursable through the state in serving students with disabilities that comes from that?

Well, I know 504s don't have any funding with them, but...

I'm not aware of any.

What we do have, what we do have, we purchased a computer so the ability to tap into the E-rate system by the FCC, which gave us a 50% reimbursement in some items, not all of them.

Also, there's another program, sorry, CFC, something.

that we can tap also into it.

But that one has like a limited amount that they're running out of money.

The E-rate is a continuous.

Okay.

No, I actually, I think that's great that we can get assistive technology so that all students have the access they need to one-to-one devices.

That's fantastic.

More I was worried about if there was a limitation that we weren't able to get enough assistive technology.

So that's great.

Thank you.

When we did the analysis, we ensured that a And we went, we did a lot of lessons learned from the last contract back in January.

And one of the things that we thought is, hey, we have different areas that requires different technology.

Let's make sure that the vendor allows us to tap into those resources to do the purchases.

Inclusive thinking and action.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much.

Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Song-Moretz aye.

Vice President Hampson aye.

Director Harris aye.

Director Rankin aye.

Director Rivera-Smith aye.

Director Sargeant aye.

President Hersey aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you so much.

Okay we will now head into introduction items.

All right.

Item number one.

Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction OSPI Beginning Educator Support Team Best Grant Approval.

This came through A&F on August the 22nd for approval.

Please at your leisure take it away.

Good evening.

My name is Dr. Sarah Pritchett Interim Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

I'm joined at the podium by Shelley Hurley Voting Teacher Program Manager.

This board action report tonight being presented tonight details the OSPI Best Grant Award that would provide $376,000 for our Professional Growth and Educator Support Consulting Teacher Program which is essential to the support of our new and novice teachers.

This grant ensures that we can continue to support consulting teacher FTE.

funding for new professional teacher support continued novice teacher support and support to ongoing implementation of peer assistance and review.

We have received this grant funding for the past eight years to support our work with first and second year teachers.

The board action report contains full details about how we have used the funding and how we intend to continue to use the grant funding accepted.

I'd like to invite Shelley to speak briefly on the types of support that and work that the grant will fund.

Hi good evening.

So the this money is used to support as Dr. Pritchett said first and second year teachers but it also helps to support teachers that are continuing and off the performance schedule.

We start each year with our new teacher orientation which just happened last week.

which is one day of our Foundational Beliefs Day, and actually I have a poster to give to you guys when I'm all done here, of our Foundational Beliefs Day.

And then they get to meet their consulting teachers.

We have right now 19 consulting teachers that work with anywhere from 17 to 20 new to profession educators throughout the year.

supporting them in observations, professional development, taking them on site visits, helping to plan with them, doing model teaching in their classroom if need be, meeting with them when they have admin meetings, helping with goal setting, you name it, anything that is in a teacher's life, the consulting teacher is there to help support that for that, the year.

In the past, it was one year, one and done, and now because we are in PAR, teachers can have up to three years of that support, depending on whether or not the consulting teachers, after assessing them through the same system that administrators assess them through, decide whether or not they are ready to exit PAR, whether or not they need some more short-term support, or whether or not they need extended support, which would be another full year of support with the consulting teachers.

So that in a nutshell is kind of what we do.

Any questions.

Thank you very much.

Directors do we have any questions on this item.

Go ahead Director Hampson.

No questions but just a note to say thank you again to Shelley for your excellent presentation that we had in the Audit and Finance Committee and for entertaining my question about how this connects to our goals and our guardrails and the strategic plan.

And this is one of those moments where it was ringing in my head oh this is directly connected not just to those but also to an interim guardrail which I was trying to come up with a number really quick and I didn't get there yet.

But so it is directly related I think as we can all imagine to student outcomes which is where we want to get to you know spending the bulk of our discussion about how the superintendent is deploying his staff to make sure that we are in fact doing the work that we believe and have data to indicate is going to demonstrate significant improvements and outcomes for for students.

So it's I appreciate that conversation and having the opportunity to make those connections in this moment in time from the dais.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right we will be now moving on to Introduction Item Number 2 Approval of the New Behavioral Institute Contract.

This came through SSC&I on August 23rd for approval.

Thank you.

Hello.

Good evening school board.

I'm here today to present the school the school board action report for the Behavioral Health Institute contract and this board action report seeks approval from the district's contract with Behavioral Institute in the amount of $1,732,838 and will provide the necessary ABA or Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy for 12 students as required by the students IEPs for the period of September 1st, 2022 through August 31st, 2023, which is this coming school year.

These services are part of the students IEP programs and failure to implement this would represent exposure for the district and the reason that we're bringing this bar forward is that this is in excess of the $1,000,000 essentially.

That we would need, so we would need to get approval from you all to move this forward.

So I'm open to any questions that you all may have regarding.

Behavior Institute ADA therapy the contract the process any of those sort of things.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Any questions directors.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

I I'm going to ask a question that I already know the answer to but for the purposes of well and I know you're probably needed somewhere else maybe so this applies to items 2, 3, 4, and 5. And we did have Devin Gurley with us in SSC&I committee answering some questions.

But I'm hoping that you can tell us a little bit more about how this supports student outcomes for these students and how what the inner what the cross crossover is between these contracts and serving students in less segregated environments and how we're making up for some services that haven't necessarily been available to them.

The question the actual question embedded in there is we some of these expenditures are not likely to be ongoing because they are making up for missed instruction, or they are likely to be ongoing because these needs will exist?

It's a little bit of a mix.

Some of it is related to recovery pieces, so we're still doing some of that.

And some of it is this is what is mandated by the IEPs for these students.

And when we think about post-pandemic world in a lot of ways, we do note that there is an increase of behavior across the district.

We've also seen an increase in the number of one-to-one paraprofessionals we've had to provide, and that's well, from our assessment, totally related to mental health, honestly, post-pandemic.

And so to answer your question, it's a little bit of both.

But the other piece of this is that it is not easy to find ABA therapies and take fine behavior checks, BCBAs, BTs.

I'm sure I've heard there was some testimony about this a bit earlier about the waitlist.

And so I just want to also share with you all that we are grateful to our providers for being able to do this for us because There's a national shortage in this area and so our ability to do this is important and mandated but just wanted to put that into the space so you were aware as well.

And this also something that we talked about was these are outside contracts but this isn't something that's happening outside of school hours away from our schools.

These are actually support professionals that are coming into our buildings to support our students.

They follow the policy and practices of Seattle Public Schools and our expectations around restraint.

and et cetera.

And and this is also this is for behavior really for behavioral support so that students can access instruction with our educators.

Yes yes yes yes.

So at a bigger note when we think about a lot of the inclusionary push we're doing this directly supports a lot of that work.

Yes.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

I might be opening up Pandora's box as I want to do.

Items 2, 3, and 4, we talk about ABA therapy.

Isn't there sort of a philosophical polarization about whether ABA therapy is appropriate or mandated?

How much input in our IEP plans for ABA therapy are our families given?

Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Director Harris.

Yes, there's always, and I think I would say that for education anyway, there's always two sides of it.

And there's educators see it one way, another group of educators see it another way.

When I think of this specifically, these are IEP mandated services.

So what that means in general is that that means that the team has met and this is what they determined is needed for that specific child.

So part of that team meeting always involves parents who are legally not allowed to even make a recommendation or move without having the parents involved in that decision.

But my understanding of IEP teams is that we don't necessarily have PhD's or EDD's and folks that are staying abreast of the peer review literature.

And I'm not sure that we would expect our parents to be apprised of these philosophical swings.

So I got some concerns here on our transparency.

Okay.

I hear you and I also want to share that in general, when we have students that are moving to get to this level of support, at that point, the central office is usually always brought into the process.

And so our team is sitting there to at least coach or inform what's going to go on.

And we, meaning me and the rest of my team, make sure that we keep our teams up to date on what's going on with research and the such.

I will not say that we're always all the way up to date on what the newest things are that are going on, but we do actively engage them in research and then they are involved when it gets to this level of need and support for a child.

They are involved in that process at some level to make sure that what's going on and what we're going to put forward from the district level is appropriate.

You're welcome.

Hi, thank you.

You mentioned briefly the public testimony speakers' comments regarding some waitlists.

Can you put that in some context for us?

I'm just curious to learn more.

So, similar to what you'd be hearing around teacher shortages nationwide, another big one is going to be BCBAs, which deal with behavior, their behavior analysis professionals and behavior techs.

And that is a national shortage right now as well.

Honestly, we are in a bit of a lucky space in Seattle.

I talked to some of my colleagues across the country that are way farther in a hole.

And that's not to justify or to minimize where we're at and what we're doing for our kids.

It's just a reality.

And so contracts like this are important because they help us get those services in for our students.

But it's just a national shortage right now.

If you were to look at a lot of the universities that provide those programming, they're doing lots of recruitment, trying to get a lot of graduates out with those certifications to be able to do this level of work.

And I think it's also a recognition that on top of what the Great Recession has brought to this country, we also have the other piece around the mental health issues that I was referring to that are coming as we're starting to get out of the pandemic.

So you put those two things together and you run into the conundrum that we've been facing in special education across the country.

And Seattle Public Schools is not immune to that either.

And so that's part of what's going on.

And I hope that helped clarify a bit or expand on your question.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to item number three, approval of the new Maxim Healthcare contract.

This came through SSA&I on August 23 for approval.

Okay.

Here we go.

This board action report seeks approval for the district's contract with Maxim Healthcare in the amount of $3,361,680.

This contract will provide necessary ABA therapy for 25 students including three students requiring two-to-one supports and two students requiring BT only support as required by the student's individual education programs for the period of September 1st, 2022 through August 31st, 2023. We bring this before the board because the amount of this contract does exceed a million dollars for your consideration.

And please, I'm open to any questions that you may have on this.

Thank you very much.

Any questions on this item?

Thank you.

We will now move on to number 4, approval of the Perch Behavioral Health Contract Amendment for 2021-22.

This came through SSC&I on August 23rd for approval.

So, this board actually report details the district's contract with perch behavioral health and the amount of 512,000 dollars that provides necessary therapy or applied behavior analysis therapy for 15 students as required by the students individual education programs.

And this is actually for the period from September 1st until today, which is August 31st, 2022. So the original contract was in the amount of $716,000.

And then as we moved out through the year we knew that we were going to it ended up being that we had to add more services for some students at which point put this contract over the million dollar mark which is why we have to now bring it before you all for consideration.

And so at this point I'm open to any questions you all might have about that as well.

All right.

Directors have any questions on this one.

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to item number 5. Approval of Perks Behavioral Health Contract 2022-23 SSC&I August 23 approval.

Okay this board action report seeks approval from the districts from the district to contract with Perks Behavioral Health in the amount of 2.7 million dollars.

This contract will provide necessary ABA therapy for 15 students as required by their IEP's and this contract is for September 1st 2022 through August 31st 2023. As the contract is in excess of a million dollars, we bring it for you for your consideration, and I'm open for questions that you all may have.

There's questions on this one.

Thank you very much.

Number six, approval of contracts for private schools.

proportional share services RFQ 05-2259.

The provision of equitable services to private school students eligible for special education.

This came through SSC&I on August the 23rd for approval.

Okay this board action report seeks approval of contracts for services for parentally placed private school students under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act for a total amount of one point two million dollars.

I move that the School Board authorize Superintendent Jones to execute the contracts with Spring Academy in the amount of $950,000, Hamlin-Robinson in the amount of $100,000, Hampton Tutors in the amount of $125,000, Ryther in the amount of $66,780, and FaxEd in the amount of $10 as a placeholder, and Catapult Learning in the amount of $10 as a placeholder.

As this item is, Over a million dollars total, we bring it before the board for approval and open to any questions that you all may have.

Okay, thank you very much.

Question from Director Rankin.

I don't remember seeing the placeholder before when it came through committee and maybe I just forgot or missed it, but is that because we anticipate there being services there and we just don't know what they are today?

Potentially, yes.

That's the point of that, yeah.

And can you just I heard not to speak for you Director Hersey but when you were reading that there I heard a question mark about what what this means.

So this is for the parentally placed a discussion that we had in committee was parentally placed just means, and I asked about could we change that to guardian or something, but it's parentally placed because that's how it is codified in other, in state statute.

So if we change the wording, it wouldn't make sense.

But basically it applies to, we have students that we, that the district fully pays for their education at an outside institution if it's determined by the IEP team in the district that that's what's necessary for the student to access education.

So this is for families who have, chosen on their own to go outside of the public school system, but they still have entitlements to be provided with services for special education.

My question in that is that do students come to our schools to do that outside of school or do we have staff that is like itinerant and doing covering the private school services?

It's a mix and it depends on what gets established with the family.

But essentially, I'll talk about it a little bit at a higher level so that people kind of get what it is.

But what happens is that by law, when we have a student that is a Seattle resident, and the family chooses to put them in a private school by law, we need to still hold some of our funds aside for special ed services.

And that's what it says.

So that's what the purpose of this is.

And then within that, it is slightly varied depending on what we determine what the family want to do.

So there are times where the services will happen at the school that they're attending.

We do the option would be for them to come and do some stuff with us if the family really wanted them to.

So it is it varies depending on student and family essentially.

And then a funding question.

We are required to serve the needs of these students and hold a certain portion of funds to meet the needs of students with disabilities who are not in our school system but do live in Seattle.

The funding for them that comes from the state I assume would not be subject.

We do not receive any of the student enrollment multiplier for these students because they are not enrolled in Seattle Public Schools.

Is that right?

I would have to check on that because I'm kind of guessing that maybe we're obligated by the state, but there is not a mechanism for us to actually request funding to serve these students specifically from the state.

I would have to check to be honest with you.

I would love to know the answer to that.

Yep, we'll find out.

We'll get you an answer to this.

Thank you so much.

State statute, yet another unfunded mandate from our happy legislature.

And folks that are in charter schools, private schools, religious schools, etc., then can come shop and determine that they want to go to Hamlin Robinson instead of one of our local schools.

Is that a fair comment?

I don't know if I would say it's a fair comment, but I would say that it does align with what the statute says.

Yeah, parents can choose to go to another school.

Is it a realistic comment?

That it happens, that yes.

I mean, that's why we have this coming forward, is that there are parents that are indeed enrolling their students in those schools, and that's why they made it to the list.

Fabulous.

And when will we know what the $10 placeholders are for these two places in this resolution?

When we know that, How do we report back?

I'll find out.

Yep, I'll find out for you as I'm looking for the answer to Director Rankin's question.

I'll include this so I'll get something to you all within the week.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hey, thank you very much.

I think the last few items we're going to be hanging out with Mr. Podesta.

Hope you brought some comfy shoes for it.

Next up is Item Number 7 Building Excellence BEX V School Construction Assistance Program or SCAP and Distressed School Grant Resolution 2022-23-3.

New in lieu replacement option for the Alki Elementary School addition and renovation.

John Rogers Elementary School replacement and Montlake Elementary School addition and modernization projects.

Came through Ops on August 18th for approval.

Mr. Podesta take it away.

Thank you President Hersey.

This first action is purely as an administrative task as are many of the items before you.

The state requires that the board attests that construction assistant program funds get used to replace buildings in lieu of modernizing them.

So this action adopts a resolution where the board attests that for the Alki Elementary Replacement Project, the John Rogers Elementary Replacement Project, and the Montlake Elementary Replacement or addition that the new construction is in lieu of modernizing.

We're demolishing space in the existing buildings and adding new construction.

And which is just something we need to assert to be eligible for these funds.

Any questions on that one?

Director Harris?

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

So just to be clear too because because it all runs together in this.

Montlake is not new in lieu of that is just a that to clarify right that's.

The construction is new construction, but it's not.

Yeah, I do.

We're not taking down the whole building because it is a landmark.

Yes, there are spaces that will remain and there's new construction that will be added.

Yes.

So, regarding in light of the public testimony we had regarding this project.

Did I understand it sound like the person had said that there is a meeting planned to talk about.

the size of this project the Montlake specifically?

They're you know the project is in design so our capital team always works with the community on design advisory teams and we'll talk about the design and certainly are willing to enter into discussions about space.

We that would be a fairly kind of broad systemic discussion because we do have an educational standard a spec for elementary schools And so you know I wouldn't say that we have a meeting set up to decide about changing the design of the school just yet.

But we certainly want to hear from the community about the design.

And you know at some point if the district wants to rethink its strategy about educational specs because there's the size of buildings and then there's the staffing needed to make an elementary school work.

And so there's interplay between the two of those.

If any, if any changes were to come, that should come from the community speaking in those meetings and interacting with staff there.

Yeah, that could be an outcome.

Again, this would kind of had broad systemic impacts.

We have a lot of small buildings in that part of the city, and then we're really going to have to wrestle with the issue.

of can we support small buildings can we have an EdSpec that support small buildings both from a construction and a staffing standpoint.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

And to say again this did come out of operations with recommendation for approval.

Thank you.

Beres.

Lee I know that I am quite critical of our legislature but this funding has come with extreme push from our local legislators is that correct.

The SCAP funding.

Certainly our legislature helps us yes get this funding and we appreciate it in our projects.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other questions on this item before we move on to number eight.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

The small school ed specs that you just mentioned and thinking about capacity and thinking specifically about student outcomes and how we support adequate staffing.

Where is the crossover and looking at and maybe this is what maybe there's not one right now and this is what you're talking about with small school ed specs.

But we're right now in a enrollment you know lowering but the projections for growth of the City of Seattle are going to go you know we're going to be over a million people by I don't I can't remember but within like the next decade or so.

We're like this is maybe a way bigger question for right now but maybe there's room in a small school ed specs about the crossover in needed increase in seats based on projected density of children in the area?

What am I trying to ask?

I guess, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna cut myself off and just say that the development of a small school ed spec seems like something that's really worth looking into and I hope that it will crosswalk with not just the physical space, but what types of schools we want to be able to provide to the students of Seattle and how to maintain them to make sure that we're supporting the services that they need to get the outcomes that we want.

Yes and I'm way out of my lane but how the staffing standards and enrollment interplay too because it takes more than the building to make a school work.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to number 8. So items eight and nine are both resolutions, are both actions relating to racial imbalance.

We are required, again, as a result of state funding, to do an analysis about whether the project that's being funded will lead to either create or aggravate a racial imbalance with regard to enrollment at the school.

There are very specific parameters for how this analysis is done.

We have completed that analysis for the with respect to Alki Elementary and the project will not create or aggravate a racial imbalance and this action adopts a resolution to that effect.

All right.

I believe that will also satisfy for number 9. So if you have questions on number 8 or 9 please now would be the time.

All right.

Seeing none moving on to number 10. And

These are our favorite actions, so final acceptance.

This is final acceptance for work performed by CDK Construction Services at Magnolia Elementary.

The work was a two-story, six-classroom addition.

It was completed in August of last year.

The work has been approved by our consulting architect and change orders associated with the project were reasonable at 3.7% and mostly related to adjusted construction operations due to COVID and how the how the worksite was being managed.

Thank you.

Questions, concerns?

All right.

Number 11 is also final acceptance for the Wing Luke Elementary School replacement project.

This work was performed by Jody Miller Construction, was building a new 75,000 square foot K-5 school, redevelopment of the parking lot, play fields, and utilities.

The work was completed for the 2021 school year, but given the way we were operating schools that year, we welcome students in the following fall.

The work has been approved by our consulting architect and Change orders again were reasonable at 4.34%.

Also largely related to some COVID operations at the construction site.

Thank you.

Any questions on this item?

Fantastic.

Number 12.

This is a final acceptance for installation of playground equipment at the Schmitz Park interim site.

It's currently housing students from West Seattle Elementary while construction is going on there and then we'll house students for the Alki Elementary project.

The work included instruction replacing all the existing playground equipment.

The work was completed in March of this year.

There were no change orders and we would recommend accepting the contract.

Any questions on this one.

All right.

Number 13. And our final acceptance for this evening is for work at Franklin High School, re-roofing the gymnasium at Franklin High School and making seismic upgrades.

The work was performed by Wayne's Roofing at the school.

It included roof replacement, seismic improvements, and masonry repairs and mechanical and electrical repairs that were needed.

The work was completed in December 2021. And the work has been approved by our consulting architect.

Change orders in this case were significant at 15.4% of the contract.

So it's noted in the operations committee that this was largely related to unforeseen masonry repairs.

The original scope of the contract called for us to make tile masonry repairs on the outside of the building where those tiles were adjacent to the roof line or near the roof line.

as the project was being undertaken and saw there was significant damage to the tiles on the south and west portion of the wall, much further from the roof.

So we chose to add that into the scope of work since we had masonry workers on site.

It was a safety issue, so we needed to get it done quickly.

And also, given that this involves the installation of tile, if it gets done all by one contractor, we'll end up with a more uniform product in terms of its appearance and also that it's all installed at the same time.

So it was a it was a good outcome and we used project consistent contingency money to fund it and in the end is more efficient than a second project.

Fantastic.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

So all of these ones we just went over did come out of operations with the recommendation for approval.

I'm sorry for the feedback.

And I just want to give thanks to Assistant Superintendent Podesta and staff to get us to where we are with these final exemptions.

It's not a small thing.

It's actually a really big deal.

Because there's a lot of work that goes many years work and many people's work that goes into getting us to where we are for the final acceptance approvals here.

So somewhere there are somewhere there are people breathing big sighs of relief.

I don't know for us it's just a technicality but I know it means a lot.

So thank you for all your presentations.

Thank you very much.

All right number 14 approval of the 2022-27 agreement for the joint use facilities with the City of Seattle Parks and Recreation Division.

This came through office on August 18th for consideration.

Thank you President Hersey.

The Seattle Public Schools and the City of Seattle's Parks and Recreation Department have been cooperating on the joint use of of space and buildings for more than 100 years.

This has really been codified into agreements over the last few decades and this action extends the current working agreement for another five years.

I think it's worth noting the context of the partnership that the district and the Parks Department have.

Just some things that sometimes we take for granted but it's worth noting that more than a third of our schools are adjacent or very near parks property.

Eleven of our elementary and K-8 schools do not have a playground that we use the parks playground as the school's playground.

Eight secondary schools do not have athletic fields.

There again, we are relying on the city-owned property to serve as fields for those schools.

We have swim and dive teams at many of our high schools we don't own and we have not built or do not own an aquatic center, which from a efficiency standpoint and a management standpoint is a really good thing that we can use someone else's pools All our high schools have tennis programs.

We own three tennis facilities but not nearly enough to cover those.

So just day-to-day this partnership is really important to us.

The basic structure of this agreement is Seattle Public Schools uses parks facilities at no cost.

So all those things I mentioned are maintained.

constructed by parks.

In exchange for that, we extend the reach of the City as a recreational provider by letting the community have access to our facilities.

And the scheduling for that is done by the Parks Department and which I think is an efficiency for us and also kind of a benefit for users of these facilities so they can shop in one place to try if they're looking for a soccer field they can look through one catalog.

We generally charge fees for use of our facilities.

That money is collected by Parks and passed on to us.

We do pay some administrative costs to the Parks Department to operate that.

That net revenue from that is typically about half a million dollars a year, which goes to the maintenance costs of our properties.

The hours of utilization, the last kind of normal year we had pre-COVID to look at how we use these facilities.

Seattle Public Schools use parks facilities for about 38,000 hours during the 2019 calendar year.

The community use our facilities for about 19,000 hours.

You know, overall, this is a good partnership.

I think it's good for the community.

It's good for our district.

It's good for taxpayers that we're both working together to optimize the use of these facilities.

And I think it was noted, Director Rivera-Smith noted that the existing agreement was executed in 2016 for 16, 17, 18, 19 years.

The agreement has a provision for administrative extensions which we've executed since then.

We are bringing it to the board because we have made some changes.

It's very similar.

There have been huge changes but enough that we wanted to seek board approval again.

And the highlights of those are it moves the start of the school year to August 1st.

which mean which for the purpose of the agreement because we begin practices during the month of August so it makes it much easier for scheduling assuming our athletic field use starts in August.

It extends the time on the field at the end of the day for the district 15 minutes.

You know the way this generally works is after the closing bell time from then then until 7 p.m.

All fields are accessible to us.

That used to be $6.45.

And these fields are all oversubscribed in the community and for us.

So 15 minutes matters.

That limitation does not apply to Lincoln or West Seattle High School because they don't have dedicated fields.

The district and the city have always kind of collaborated on waivers of fees to help underserved communities.

But it's been kind of an informal process and it wasn't really recognized in the agreement.

So this is our first stab of putting in such a waiver process and codifying kind of how the analysis for that will get done.

There's more work to be done on that front, but it's a good start to get it on paper in the agreement.

And then this also identifies facilities It may has more explicit language about joint capital planning identifies facilities where the district is really the primary user of a city facility and kind of starts identifying a list.

So as we do plan our capital levies if we want to help fund improvements on fields that mean more to us than they more than the city it gives us influence over how that goes.

I would like to recognize the team that makes this thing work.

Our Executive Director of Athletics Pat McCarthy who I think is here with us this evening.

Frank Griffin our Director of Facility Operations.

Pat really speaks for the schools and the needs of our athletic programs.

Frank and his staff work on how we prioritize maintenance and those issues kind of for our shared jurisdiction.

And then Capital Projects and Planning Director Richard Best who is works on an ongoing basis with the parts department on a joint development and capital program.

So with that I will open that up to any questions you may have and I'm sure our colleagues would love to answer questions if you want to get into the details because they they do the real work.

And Director Harris noted the Signature pays had the previous superintendent of the Parks Department.

We actually leaned on our parks colleagues to do the drafting of this document.

So we assume when they as we traded versions back and forth so we assume when they send it over for signature they will put the name of whoever is the current superintendent of the Parks Department.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you Mr. Podesta.

Yes thank you very much.

One thing that I noted at the Operations Committee meeting was that the Appendix E1 did not have information regarding Montlake or South Park.

It still doesn't.

Is that going to be corrected?

Sure.

I will work with my colleagues to see if that you know what that means in that agreement.

And those those are the kind and sometimes schools for whatever reason in particular fields come in and out of the agreement.

Those are the types of administrative administrative changes that the staff make on the annual scheduling program.

So I'll make sure that that's not an oversight in the overall agreement and again some facilities go in and out for if they're we've had field construction at Ingram High School for instance so it the its parameters need to change while that's going.

Yeah okay yeah and let's just take the reference you come out of that document.

And then yeah we had a really good discussion at operations regarding this one.

I will let the other directors if they want to rehash some of the questioning we had there.

But this was moved for approval.

A recommendation for approval.

I believe yes.

And I'm trying to think of one of our biggest sticking points where I know that clearly the previous version did not take into account Lincoln, which is now opened again.

So there are also updates regarding a prioritization for communities of color uses of the fields and scheduling.

So I applaud that we've made those changes to the document.

And yeah, I'm trying to recall the big discussions we had, but it was it's it's very hopeful that we can get this going.

Obviously, we we are at a great advantage with this agreement because we don't have the skills we need.

And we do and we have a partnership.

It's it's encoded in this that we work together on developing more spaces.

So it I mean, it is really good to have parks as a partner because our primary mission is not And this obviously subject to the board's priorities is typically not to be a recreate a general purpose recreational provider.

And so working with an agency that that is their primary mission helps us.

No further questions.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

Any other questions on this item.

Director Harris.

Yes.

I would like to see us both from an athletic department standpoint and from a future standpoint A recognize that athletics keeps our kids in school and that it's a hugely important and I do see that as part of the mandate of this district.

But what disturbs me is we still haven't figured out how to get club sports no cut sports in.

or unified sports or inclusionary sports and and figure out how to do that.

Sports that that gender issues are involved.

I I'm old enough to have been a jock believe it or not before Title IX.

Oh no no no no no.

I swam for 10 years.

And and I I had web feet they said.

But but.

And I appreciate that the Parks Department is underfunded and over-mandated just as we are.

But but when we just did a philosophical instruction piece right.

I'd like to see us do a philosophical athletics.

Athletic philosophy.

and figure out how to get unified in there.

Figure out inclusion.

Figure out gender issues.

Figure out no cut team sport.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate those comments Director Harris.

I don't I and those are all great points.

I don't know that that would change the structure of this agreement which is you know really about sharing time.

How whatever our priorities are you know with this agreement the way it is we can do that.

We need to decide what our goals are how how we want to use the time we have.

I think in this general relationship we can do that and we have to keep thinking about those priorities.

I I don't disagree.

Thank you.

I think that's board work right.

Okay.

So thank you Mr. Podesta.

I am so sorry.

Director Hampson please.

I remember.

So these are questions my commenter feigns about the joint use agreement.

So and one of them I forgot to ask you earlier Fred which was about whether or not we've satisfactorily clarified when conflicts arise and then within this joint use agreement.

Did we approach that at all in this current draft.

I don't think...

I mean, there wasn't really anything there before.

I don't believe there's new language.

Okay.

I'm going to have to lean on my colleague, Pat McCarthy, to talk about how we settle.

And by conflicts, I don't necessarily mean about who gets to use the field.

I was...

I interpreted your question as scheduling conflicts?

No, about other properties where there's more ambiguous use or inappropriate use and who's responsible

That we have, we have had those discussions.

I'm sorry, gentlemen, I misunderstood the question.

It's not really an athletic.

We have had, we have had those discussions about that we need to have a common standard about how we, and agreement about how we, what uses acceptable behaviors are on our joint use of property.

I think we have good support at the staff level and have some support.

But I think that in part there'll be a little bit of an elected official discussion as well.

But I would say that's our discussions along that line have been encouraging.

But we did not put it on paper in this agreement quite yet.

Okay.

And I don't know if it's appropriate.

I guess that would just be my query because then it's not dependent on the individual Superintendent and Mayor or had I guess as we were we ended up which was the Superintendent of Parks.

There's some codification of a at least a step one step two resolution process that might get us further than where we got to this time around.

Maybe it's an inevitability but I just wanted to raise that point.

And then the other of course is my belief in terms of expertise around equitable access is that we partner with the King County Play Equity Coalition Superintendent Jones to since I don't know how to make these systems work equitably and they've put together a model joint use agreement to support throughout King County greater access and hope that they get a chance to weigh in on on where the district and the and their relationships with the Parks Department and the district are longstanding they have their their hands in everywhere but they are the researchers the PhDs who are looking at how to create greater access so that that would be my only other comment which you were kind enough to respond to previously but didn't know if you wanted your colleagues or Superintendent Jones to respond to that at all.

I think I think we will get the joint team together because we want to make sure that that parks and the district are on the same page.

And again parks ends up being the front door you know administratively to this whole process.

We really want them to want to make sure that we share values.

I think you know they the structure that they have set up to more codify our support for underserved communities and how they do analysis on the back end.

I'm encouraged by where they are so I think we would get traction with that but we'll keep working with them.

Director Rankin.

It's short.

I have a question actually about the document itself which is that it almost reads to me like a policy and procedure together.

So my question is about the access of usability on our end for principals that this is The intent of this document is to outline our joint use between two entities but then it also has the forms for principals and whatnot.

Is there and I'm thinking about this mostly in terms of equity of access for students that our principals and staff have to follow so many different processes and different forms and whatever.

Do we have like a more user friendly version of like when you want to reserve a field here's what you do and here's the form.

Or is this.

I think the athletic directors in schools are pretty well schooled on this process.

I doubt they turn to this document to know what to do but maybe here I will ask Pat to weigh in.

I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't know that they would either but I'm mainly wondering especially when we have new people coming into our system it puts our students at a disadvantage when when the processes for doing these things to support our students are not as easily as accessible.

So for people who are new to the process just how do we make it more easier and more consistent between buildings so that we're not in a position like with club sports where you know one school is like oh yeah we do this and this and this and this and another school saying oh my gosh we've been trying to get co-ed soccer going for you know five years.

Just how we can make that more of a common commonly accessible process.

I believe the process is fairly formalized the one athletic directors and working with our athletics department.

And these are typically not always really ad hoc events but scheduled practices and games.

And so there is kind of a quite a scheduled building party at the beginning of every season.

And I do believe Pat's department does a great job of supporting athletic directors and schools.

Maybe my question is really more along the lines of Director Harris.

Yeah.

And then I think well and I think those points are well taken.

that may not necessarily about the mechanics of how we share space with parks, but you know, how do we allocate our needs for space?

Whoever owns it, I think is a slightly different discussion and probably one I'm on very thin ice to talk about.

Thank you.

We good?

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Podesta.

As always, it is greatly appreciated.

All right.

We have reached the board comments section of tonight's agenda.

If you have comments you just raise your hand and I will call on you.

There's no order.

So anybody burning to get to the mic.

I gave my comments earlier so I'm not going.

Director Harris.

Too much tonight but I do want to try and get a community meeting.

in West Seattle at one of the libraries but their forms have changed and I will let the board office know and send out the heads up and one and three lasagna.

We do well.

We're rowdy.

We're respectful.

And hope you all come and I hope two of my colleagues come as well.

And maybe some senior staff too Mr. Superintendent.

All right.

Any other comments this evening.

So is that a no.

Okay.

Director Rivera-Smith please take it away.

Hi thank you.

It's good to be back for the new K-pop for New Year with everybody here.

I will talk closer into the microphone.

I want to just made me think of something our we have a public speaker mentioned Jim Simmons and I appreciate the acknowledgement there of his passing and where he went to this district.

Another person passed away actually back in January that.

was very dear to me.

His name was John Preston, and I don't know if anybody here remembers him, because I don't know if anybody here is long ago enough, but John Preston worked for Seattle Public Schools in 1973. He actually had spent some time as the acting principal of Garfield High School.

And he passed away in January.

He was a dear friend and fellow church member at my church.

I'll just read this shortly from his obituary to give a little more context here.

While working on his master's degree, John started his professional career as a social worker in Richmond and Solano County, California, where he went on to become a social worker.

For the Berkeley Unified School District, John was then recruited by the Seattle Public School District and worked in the Seattle Public Schools Administration Office for a few years, at which time he was recruited to be the acting principal at Garfield High School in 1973. After completing his work for the school district, he joined the City of Seattle's Personnel Department working under Mayor Wes Ullman from 1973 to 75. During John's time working for Seattle Public Schools, he met Barbara Anderson, who was also employed here.

They continued to work together at the city, where their friendship grew and their loving lifetime relationship began.

They were married.

John and Barbara started Evergreen Computing, Evergreen Computer products becoming one of the first african-american and women-owned businesses in seattle um, they're amazing contributors to the community and I you know, we've got people come through several schools all the time right and they come and go and we We're so a lot of us don't get the pleasure of working or knowing them while they were here And I had the great pleasure of knowing john um in the last 10 years and I'm still sad that he passed but um I am glad that he contributed to our district at a time.

No further comments.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Director Sharkey.

I'm going to keep it brief because I'm not sure I can keep it held together.

First of all I I appreciate my colleague Greg Narvar for his comments earlier and for making the right decision.

Those of you who are watching may see me exit when that individual gets up to speak.

I'm usually listening and I just don't want to look at him.

And when I, I exited and when I came to the door, Leslie Harris, my director colleague, was coming through.

And I thought I heard what he said, but I actually couldn't really reconcile that I was hearing that.

And I said to her, what did he just say?

And she repeated it.

For President Hersey to have to speak the way he did highlights our daily walk no matter where we go.

And I I feel like I need to make it really clear that we cannot tolerate narratives of racism, whether they're jokes or not.

There was a comment made, and I'm not calling anybody out, but I don't joke about racism.

It's not a joke to me.

It is a daily personal experience.

I've had to take extreme security measures because of the skin that I'm in.

So it's not funny.

And I'm gonna ask my colleagues at every level to consider what some of us may be encountering on a daily basis.

Not just here at the school board, but I work for King County government and This is a daily experience for me.

So it's not funny.

It's painful.

I ran for kids.

I've said this before.

I have no political aspirations.

This is not politics for me.

This is life or death for some of the kids in our district.

I represent Black families and I speak for no others.

I'm not Asian.

I'm not Latinx.

I'm not Pacific Islander.

My community has asked me to speak on behalf of, in consultation with, them.

That's what I do when I come to these meetings.

This is not performative for me.

What I say and what I do is not to position myself for re-election, but I will fight to the death of me to ensure that when I leave this seat this district is more equitable to Black and Brown students.

That's my work.

You all may have other work.

Those kind of comments are more than just dings to our soul.

They rip some of us apart.

And I knew that they were coming, and we're living in a particularly hard time.

And so my emotions got the best of me today.

But my soul is bruised.

And so for those of you who are still listening, I ask that you stand in solidarity, not performative, but in action.

that you speak against injustice.

These incidents, thank God the students weren't here.

We heard one of our young people give a personal testimony about a very personal experience that no young person or any person should have to experience.

They need us to fight for them in action, not in words.

This is not a popularity contest.

At least it's not for me.

I'm just going to speak for myself.

I'm going to use I statements.

I don't know what I'm going to do after this.

I mean, I'll likely go home and just break down because I'm tired.

I'm really tired.

I got three years and three months.

I don't want to be counting three years and three months.

I want to have the kids right here front and center.

That's why I sit on this dais.

It's for them.

So I hope that as we move forward this school year we are laser focused on nothing but outcomes for students.

Full stop period.

We have a lot of work to do.

We all have a part to do and we need to do our part.

Thank you Director Sargeant.

Any other comments from directors this evening.

All right.

Going once going twice.

Seeing that there are no further there's no further business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 7.33 p.m.

Thank you all have a wonderful evening and we'll see you next.