School Board Meeting April 5th, 2017 Pt. 2

All right thank you again to the John Muir elementary school recording recorder.

So I'm now going to hand it over to Dr. Nyland for the superintendent's comments.

Nyland Thank you.

This evening I want to give some highlights from our strategic plan, touch on a few of the hot topics, a little bit of the good news and some of the presentations and visits that we've been out making.

So under our strategic plan we have three major goals.

Our academics, excellence and equity, our systems and our community engagement.

We promised to the board for MTSS and EOG that by June we would have clearer definitions of what those look like.

Some brochures to go with it.

School by school reports on how we're doing and ways in which we plan to replicate the good work that we're seeing in our schools.

I won't take time to go into the details tonight but there's been several things that have happened even this week where I'm excited about the arrows that are coming together as different groups begin to align their work around those smart goals that the board has set for us.

And we will continue to bring, we don't have any tonight but we will continue to bring some of our positive outliers before the board.

Next board meeting is scheduled for West Seattle.

Our principal leadership learning day was Tuesday and we had the opportunity to introduce principals to the since time immemorial curriculum which is part of the state law in terms of providing that curriculum to our students across the district.

Kyle Kinoshita working with our Indian education department has found a way to get funding so that we can roll out that training for all of our fourth grade teachers over the next several weeks.

We also had Dr. Stephanie Freiberg here, she's from the University of Washington.

One of the nationally known researchers on identity safety and she talked about why it's important to have students have opportunities at school to see students like themselves or adults doing well in school so that they can be both comfortable with their culture and their heritage at school and be comfortable in an academic, I too can have these dreams of continuing with my education.

I also at that principal meeting had the opportunity to share with our school leaders expectations regarding testing and the opt out refusal process asking them to certainly share the advantages which we see for the assessments and at the same time to respect the students and families who wish to opt out.

And then I had a similar opportunity with the assistant principals a week ago to talk with them about our formula for success, the information that we presented to the board on March 8 and to share with them the really good news for that group.

I don't know what that group is, that group is about 80 people and the worst-case budget scenario would have had them losing 26 AP positions which would have been about a third of the people in that room.

So they were delighted to know that the board approval of restoration 1.0 would bring back 19 of those positions and then the restoration 2.0 which hadn't quite happened at that point in time will bring back a few more.

So not able to bring just like teachers were not quite able to bring everyone back but a huge move in the right direction.

And then systems, the board is tired of hearing this, we are really challenged in the budget with our initially $74 million budget gap caused by the $30 million levy cliff and the $40 million in compensation that the state has a responsibility for.

We've been kind of on a three-part journey with regard to that.

Part of it is working with the legislature.

They've gone dark a little bit right now in terms of behind the scenes negotiations between the House and the Senate.

But our staff has been diligently working in Olympia and we thank, can't thank enough our partners PTA, Paramount duty, SEA, PASS, so many of our partners that have been with us in that endeavor.

And then we've been communicating regularly almost weekly with all of our partners.

Thank you to the board.

We've done restoration 1.0 which brought back about 175 of the 250 positions that were included in the worst case scenario.

And then restoration 2.0 that we went over on Monday that made further restorations.

So again thank you to the board for lots and lots and lots of work.

Nyland.

We do anticipate with.

a fairly high degree of hope that there will be restoration 3.0 which should be the remainder of the levy cliff funds that we lost.

Both House and Senate budget do have a per pupil inflator in their budget so we are hopeful that that means a return of at least the lost 6 million that we had lost.

And then the house budget is much better than the other two budgets and we hope that there might be restoration 4.0 in terms of some additional funding coming back from the legislature.

Although none of those budgets will make us whole for this year or for the year after that.

Despite the promises of McCleary and despite moving in the right direction it looks like it's still going to be some time in the future before we get back to a place where we have sustainable budgets.

Under community engagement we had the opportunity last week to visit with the Stevens PTSA and to engage with them talk about our budget issues talk about our initiatives to provide excellence and equity for all of our students and then to take a lot of their questions.

They were particularly interested in how we do our boundaries and our enrollment.

In their case they have a waiting list for parents in the neighborhood who would like to come to their school and Leschi a neighboring school is full to overflowing so they want to know why we couldn't move the boundary and so we'll have to get back to them on some of the details.

But fairly yeah we get these questions often in terms of changing the boundaries as we know is a challenging.

is a challenge that would take more than just saying OK we'll move the boundary tonight and change it so that we balance out the enrollment.

Last night we met with Hamilton PTSA I was joined by Director Burke thank you and Duane Chappell from the city and the principal Tip Bush.

And wow, they have good staying power at Hamilton.

We were there for two hours with lots of Q&A, a lot of interest in the highly capable program, lots of interest in dual language, and lots and lots of interest in Lincoln.

So I was glad to have Director Burke there because he's been studying that in great depth.

And yeah, a lot of people hung around afterwards.

We ended at nine.

We were still there at 920 or so, so it was a great conversation.

And then Director Harris and I was at the thrive by five lunch yesterday, got to hear Jeffrey Canada, what a delightful presenter I can see why he can raise, what was it $60 million that he was raising for the Harlem's children's zone and other than I mean Seattle U is doing incredible work at $2 million and we are very grateful but same idea kind of you know 100 blocks you know what can we do to really target resources and figure out what else we need to do to close gaps for kids.

And then our family survey will be coming out right after spring break so we can look for that.

A couple of hot topic items.

We've had a lot of emails with regard to option school funding and can I explain that in a simple way?

Our option schools many of them not all rely on a number of students coming into kindergarten and then rolling up to first grade and second grade and third grade so that you keep the enrollment of the school up.

With the state change in smaller class sizes at the primary grades that means that you've got a whole bunch of primary grades at 17, 19, 20 students and when they roll up into the upper grades you want them to have the 28, 29, 30 students that were required to have on our funding formula.

So that really creates a no-win situation for all of us in that it's really hard to do business the way that we've done it in the past and we don't want to constrain the enrollment and say we're going to starve you to death by having small kindergarten classes that will then create smaller classes in grades four and five.

So the initial request from those on the WSS committee was that we staff them differently so that they wouldn't be constricted in those lower grades.

Other option schools said we don't think we like that arrangement.

So we are now, I don't know quite how to say this I should probably just read my script but we are now providing the same number of staff to the option schools as we would to any other school based on their enrollment and we are giving them more flexibility in how they use the staff.

So that may translate, we heard a lot of parents saying no no no we want smaller class size.

In many cases the schools are saying we want the teachers but we want to even out class size across K5 because we want to have a consistent pipeline moving through the grades.

So that's what we've done, we've funded them the same as we funded everybody else and we've given them more flexibility so that they can use teachers more flexibly across all of their grades.

And then ethnic studies has been, we've had several people at our meetings testifying in support of that.

The curriculum and instruction committee has looked at it a couple of times.

We continue to look at it as a staff and will be having a resolution that will come back to the board and very very good research from Stanford around it in terms of increased attendance and increased GPA.

So we're hopeful that we can be creative in our funding challenges and find a way to benefit from that research and figuring out what we do.

We are learning that we have a lot of really good things going on in the district.

We have a lot of really good things on paper that we're not sure are going on in the district.

And we just need to pull all of those together and make sure that we have a consistent coherent program district wide.

Good news and I'll just highlight some of these as we move through those.

I think we reported on this earlier that we received 3000 books from U.S. representative John Lewis that will help with our providing library materials or books in the hands of students with regard to equity and elimination of opportunity gaps.

So we're grateful for that gift.

Danny middle school had a STEM fair that was a huge success I think the West Seattle paper has a lot of those photos up on their website.

Congratulations to Danny for that.

Martin Luther King Jr. family support worker Valerie Fisher is being recognized by the Washington education Association for her dedication and commitment to supporting girls through a group that she founded girls of color.

200 students and teachers from the Seattle area including well I guess Argentina and Chile wouldn't be in the Seattle area.

But anyway including students from Argentina and Chile were at Chief Sealth International High School recently.

This is the third year in a row that they've sponsored a global issues network and I was pleased to have the opportunity to welcome the students to that event and thank you to Noah for the work that he does to put that together every year.

70 students from Ballard high school's wind ensemble will travel soon to New York City in April to play at Carnegie Hall.

And eight students from Nathan Hale high school's radio station their advanced digital media program won awards at the 10th annual Washington State high school radio conference and awards this month.

And I think I'm missing a bunch of them.

I think Nathan Hale also did well at the track meet I think.

So more of that is available on the district website.

Presentations and visits in the last week or so we had the Seattle Housing Authority here for a joint meeting earlier this week and similar you saw the head of Seattle Housing Authority in that video from Seattle U. They are partnering with us on attendance, they've helped with registration, they had early registration for kindergarten for us right where the families live so that made that much better for the parents and earlier for us.

And they continue to find places for many of our homeless students so that they can find a home in the attendance area where the child is going to school.

That's a huge gift again to the families first and foremost but also to our schools to keep that continuity for our students.

We met recently with the president and staff from South Seattle College.

And I won't remember all these numbers the right way but I think it's six to eight million dollars that their foundation has raised over the last 10 years or so for our 13th year their 13th year promise scholarships and they've expanded now from Cleveland to Rainier Beach to missing one they just added West Seattle.

Right.

So up to four schools so basically telling all of our seniors that you graduate on time and you sign up to go to Seattle colleges and you will be provided a scholarship for your first year, your 13th year.

And we know that if students sign up for the 13th year they are a whole lot more likely to complete.

We know that the 13th year is one of the markers for a family wage job and we know that the 13th year is worth doubling of lifetime earnings over what a dropout would get.

So just a huge gift and then the city.

has provided seed money for Central Seattle College and North Seattle College to expand the program to at least one high school in their region.

So the dream is that eventually we they together all of us can promise every senior and the kind of starting early every kindergarten student you can get a scholarship if you stay in school graduate and are ready to go to college.

So what a great gift around our EOG work and just a gift for all of Seattle.

And then the winners for life event that Rotary does every year is just absolutely incredible.

They identify 11th and 12th graders from across the district each of our high schools who have overcome significant challenges to get to graduation or be on track to graduate and then provide scholarships for the seniors.

So wow kind of both tearjerkers and heartwarming at the same time for the challenges that the students have overcome and the grit and determination that they have displayed.

So I got to congratulate the students in a little ceremony before the lunch and then Duane Chappell was the keynote speaker at lunch and did an excellent job of encouraging all of us as well as the students.

The last item coming up on tonight's agenda is an approval by the board for the Satterberg grant.

We've recognized the Nesholm family foundation earlier for the work that they've helped us do at Danny, Aki and Mercer.

And they reached out and recruited the Satterberg family to help provide for feeder pattern so that we could reach elementary school students even earlier and have them come prepared to those middle schools even better ready to learn.

And so the board approved a Satterberg grant earlier and as they got involved in the work they doubled down on it and came back and they said we want to do even more.

So yeah that was what I started out tonight with around our EOG work.

Our arrows are lining up internally.

We've got a lot of exciting things happening and then externally between the mayor's office and the city funding and the Satterberg's and the Nesholm's and so many others are coming together to help make that dream of eliminating opportunity gaps come a little bit closer.

There is at the back table a summary of our recent and upcoming community meetings and I believe that there's also some information back there with regard to option schools and ethnic studies.

So next week I've heard is spring break.

I'm hopeful that we'll actually have spring weather for the benefit of our students and staff and hope that the rest of us get a little bit of time to enjoy spring break.

Peters Thank you Dr. Nyland.

So has our student representative been able to make it tonight?

No?

Okay perhaps next time.

So that now brings us then to the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

Director Patu I understand that you would like to make a comment.

I am recusing myself from participating and will abstain from voting on the consent agenda because I have a relative on tonight's personnel report.

Peters Thank you very much.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

Harris I move approval of the consent agenda.

Pinkham I second the motion.

Peters Okay approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

Okay.

Seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has passed.

So it is not yet 530 which is when we begin our public testimony.

So I will now turn to board directors and see if anybody would like to begin their comments with always the option to continue their comments after we've heard from the public because we are almost always inspired by what we hear and like to respond to what we hear from the public.

So do any directors have anyone like to begin?

Director Pinkham.

Good evening.

Thank you.

I just want to probably just take this time right now just to make a few announcements for events that are coming up.

I want to remind people if you haven't heard yet the University of Washington has had its annual spring powwow this weekend April 8th and 9th at the Alaska Airlines arena or HECA pavilion.

Grand entry times on Saturday are at noon and 6 p.m.

and on Sunday at noon and they will also have a coastal jam on Friday at 5 so if you want to swing by the university to watch this weekend if you have the time and enjoy the pilots on campus we invite you to come by.

And also we want to recognize that today is the global day of the engineer.

Where we recognize the contributions that engineers have provided to this world.

And as you think about what are the top engineering achievements over these past few decades and actually the past 20th century.

You know it's the education that we are providing these students as they learn the math and science skills and then how to apply those so we can make advancements that's better for our society.

And according to the great achievements.org list we can see that the number one thing that the engineers have done in the past 20th century is electrification.

Without electricity a lot of the other things that make this top 20 list wouldn't even be possible.

So just wanted to give a shout out for that given that I work in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington and encourage students to look at STEM fields as a potential career as they move forward.

Because we do need the diverse perspectives of not just all we need diverse perspectives of everyone in the engineering field because your view and perspectives count as we move forward in this global society.

I also want to let you know I guess I can right now that my next community meeting will be Saturday April 29th.

I know it's still a ways away and that'll be from 10 a.m.

to 1130 at Broadview library.

And those are really just a quick announcement I wanted to make before we get to the community comments or public testimony and I'll save some more time to comment later.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ Thank you.

Thank you.

Would anyone else care to share some comments at this time?

Director Blanford.

I will try to keep mine brief.

Appreciation again for Gwendolyn Jemerson and the recognition that she received.

It seemed well earned and what I was most impressed with was how busy it seems that she is.

She keeps her hands in lots of different pots and I think that's a great exemplar that many in our community should follow.

Appreciation also for the Seattle U presentation that was done today.

I have the opportunity, well first off I live in the community where they do their work and I frequently see students leaving from the university campus headed to the various schools in the neighborhood and frequently hear from students and parents who live in the neighborhood as well.

about the incredible work that is done with the Seattle U students that are there so I was very pleased when I saw that they were on the agenda today to receive recognition.

Our partnerships are critically important particularly in this time when we are struggling with our budgetary challenges it is so incredibly important that we build strong partnerships with community-based organizations and then also recognize them for the incredible work that they do with and for us.

And it was so great to see the John Muir music recorders club present today.

As I've mentioned many times it is a wonderful opportunity and helps to ground us in the work.

that we have to do when we get the opportunity to see kids performing and to see the hard work that their teachers provide and what it does for our children so it was a wonderful experience.

And I will close by noting the fact that I spent and half an hour this morning in the various libraries in the neighborhood that I live in trying to secure a location for a community meeting.

Unfortunately in neither of the two libraries are there any times available on a Saturday so I am looking for other spots.

I did not have a meeting in March and so my hope is to be able to get one scheduled in April if I can find a location if not maybe we'll host it in my living room.

Though I hope we don't resort to that that outcome because I don't think that would be good for anyone concerned.

But stay tuned.

I think as soon as I have a meeting scheduled locked in I'll be sure to note that with the board office staff so that it can be publicized widely.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Blanford.

Director Patu.

I would like to congratulate Gwendolyn Jemison also for receiving the WA education support fashion of the year.

Well deserved.

Also congratulations to Seattle University youth initiative for their partnership with Bailey Gassert elementary school and like Director Blanford I go by there all the time and I see a lot of kids within that area and doing some great stuff.

Also I would like to thank John Muir's student performance tonight.

They did a really wonderful job blowing those, I forgot what are you going to call it?

Yes and I realize those things are really hard to play because you have to have a lot of air to actually to make music so congratulations for the wonderful work that was presented to us tonight in terms of the arts that we really believe that it's a way for us to provide opportunities for a lot of our kids.

Also, I want to say that my community meetings is April 29 at Rock and Tour restaurant in Seward Park from 10 o'clock to 12 in the afternoon.

And I also want to give a shout out to Clover.

Clover actually attended a baseball game and she was telling me that she's never played baseball before.

You're right.

She actually did the first strike.

at the game when she actually pitched that ball so congratulations Clover for actually for doing a great job.

Thank you.

Peters Director Harris.

$60.1 million in fines at $100,000 a day for the Washington state legislature as levied by the Washington state Supreme Court.

That is higher than the gross national product of several small countries.

And it is a stunning admission of failure.

It blows my mind.

Congratulations to Ms. Jimmerson.

She is just inspiring and and to see the difference that she's made in so very many different communities.

It's something we can aspire to.

Seattle University in all of their programs and and I highlight Middle College because they are truly partners with us in that and they're doing a great job.

The John Muir recorder kids and I can't wait for them to come back next year with the Alto recorders as well.

And thanks very much to the other partners that have assisted the early music guild and the recorder societies.

Kids that do music are really good at math.

We like that and any time we can leverage creative advantage schools that's got my vote hands down across the board.

Thank you to our paraprofessionals and our librarians.

I sometimes think that they don't get enough recognition and this place in this district would not work without the high touch and the relationships with our paraprofessionals and they don't get the glory and they don't get the high salaries but they sure do get my thanks.

And my next community meeting is tax day April 15th.

I understand there are still Girl Scout cookies left and we feed you.

And that's 3 p.m.

at the Delridge library.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Burke.

I want to echo my colleagues thanks for our guests and for the recognitions.

While I don't have the same sort of history or experience with Ms. Jimerson I agree that her depth of engagement and achievements is inspirational.

I have seen regularly the Seattle University contributions and partnerships.

And when I think of you know what are the high leverage partnerships that we've got the work that we do with Seattle University is always really high on my list.

So thank you again for that.

I always enjoy the musical presentations.

The John John Muir recorders was no no exception to that.

It's it's amazing how we get so many different unique whether it's music, voice, performing arts that come before us.

It is a good reminder that there's just a lot of opportunities that are unique in each of our schools.

I want to put out a congratulations to the skill center some of you might have seen this already there was a tweet and some coverage in Como last week they did a demonstration session around their maritime operations course that's going to be starting up.

And you know with the Seattle Maritime Academy.

So this is a great new career aligned initiative that's being done through the skill center.

And you know they got students in attendance they got industrial partners in attendance and really neat leverage point as well.

I had another great interaction with some folks at one of our neighbors of the Stanford Center.

If you haven't been to the living computer museum I recommend you stop by.

I had visited earlier last year at some point last year they've in my history my past I grew up with mainframe computers doing mechanical things on computers back when you actually had to do mechanical things on computers.

And so to go in there and go through their museum collection is like a walk down memory lane.

And they've built out their ground floor with a lot of really contemporary things, artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles.

They're really connecting the past with the present.

And I wanted to bring it here because they also have an amazing educational component.

They're doing professional development for teachers.

They are creating pathways to computer science and they even have a movie night coming up.

It looks like tomorrow they are doing a movie night with hidden figures and so I recommend that you take a look at their website, visit their place.

No money has changed hands here I just think it's a really cool thing so I just want to get that out there.

And I hope that there's a partnership opportunities where the school district can also leverage some of that whether field trips or professional development.

I want to touch on a couple of topics that are coming around in curriculum instruction committee and that are of public interest.

Middle school math adoption which has been a long term long awaited thing.

Collaboration between the board staff budget office.

We've been able to turn the process into something new something innovative which is Let's start something even if we don't have an allocated budget.

This is a case where typically when we do an adoption we don't initiate the process until there's an earmarked allocated guaranteed budget for it.

But we've had troubles with guaranteed budgets as folks have heard.

And since an adoption process typically takes a year to a year and a half it means that we don't really get it off the ground.

So we've turned that around.

provided a really small amount of seed funding to allow a committee to do their work with the recognition that if we don't have the money we don't get to adopt it until we do but at least we will be as they say in the construction industry shovel ready when we identify a funding stream we will be able to have some instructional materials identified by this time next year in middle school math.

So that's really exciting to me.

One of the other areas of work that's been a pretty heavy lift for the staff is an assessment policy.

The district and the Seattle Education Association have already done a lot of work around this building a partnership committee to identify what assessments to the district is giving and putting them on a calendar and providing an advisory structure when the district is looking at changing that.

And so we are trying to codify that as well in policy so that when we identify assessments that they are targeted, that they are effective, that they are stable and that we can sustain them.

And that's a that's a fairly interesting body of work.

There's not a lot of districts that actually have that at the policy level.

It's very common to have instructional materials at the policy level less common to have assessments.

So there's there's some new ground being broken there and I appreciate the hard work of everybody that's doing that.

You know the partnership with SEA the work of the staff and feedback from the board as well.

And then I just want to touch on the ethnic studies resolution which Superintendent Nyland mentioned.

That's come before the curriculum instruction committee a couple of times and we have a draft resolution that's in process that our intent as a committee was that that was going to be presented to the committee actually at our meeting this week.

This week?

This week.

It's all a blur.

But unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time for individual directors to review it.

So we postponed that for another month and the draft of that resolution is being worked on by the board and by the staff.

We are committed to bringing forward a resolution But the critical element is we don't want to create a promise that we can't fulfill but we recognize that it's an important commitment.

So finding that how we deliver on the vision without impacting the budget in a way that we are already stretching it is the work that's going on right now.

I want to put one, this is just a follow-up note sort of a public service announcement.

Again standing on the shoulders of giants this is celebrating the work of people over the last probably the last five to 10 years.

There was an item on the consent agenda using some underspend funds from our levies.

to look towards energy enhancements or energy reductions or some solar energy sources and the board received an email from our partners at local 609 this was a document that was generated by the I believe resource conservation department of Seattle Public Schools.

And it was just a little big a big summary of the energy use index of all of our buildings.

And I won't go into the details on it but if we highlight it talking about the there's an energy star rating an energy star score that's a score of 100 maximum national average is 50 Seattle Public Schools average EUI score of all of our buildings is 84. So this is a tribute to the work that's being done by the capital projects team by the previous board boards with their guidance in the green resolution.

And I just wanted to make sure that that was in the record in the public eye that it's a big deal.

We spend a lot of money on energy here and we're committed to reducing that.

And that's being done at the infrastructure level.

In closing I'd like to say I have a meeting planned.

I are booked.

I don't have the date yet but I have three of them planned.

One of them will be a community meeting and then two of them will be on Lincoln High School.

The community meeting I'm trying to line something up in April and then two meetings on Lincoln high school in May one of them for students and prospective students and then the second one will be for families and I promise promise promise I will get some dates out and get them posted on the calendar within the next week.

Thank you very much.

Peters Thank you Director Burke.

I just have about two more minutes left.

Well I'll say a few things then.

On the ethnic studies issue I know we'll be talking about that some more I'm guessing.

It is definitely a hot topic.

I was visiting some universities in Los Angeles this past week and sure enough there was a whole seminar about that topic at one of the universities.

So it's a very important issue especially in these times.

Regarding the assessment policy.

Thank you to Director Burke for bringing that up.

Be great to hear also from the community about this component that I would like to bring to it as well is the student and parents rights portion of how we do assessments in other words making sure that we let students and parents know about what assessments are being administered and getting results to them in a timely manner so they understand the purpose and the value of these.

And so You know everybody's on board and also to keep an eye on how much time we're spending on assessing our students that in you know balance it out with how much time we're spending you know instructing our students.

Let's see.

couple of housekeeping items there's going to be a boundary changes meeting at John Hay elementary on this Thursday tomorrow I believe it is at six o'clock and that has to do with the opening of Magnolia elementary and so there's going to be a number of community meetings for the various communities on the Queen Anne Magnolia neighborhoods so we can move forward on some plans that are the least disruptive for our students.

And then as far as my own community meeting I'm planning to have something after the spring break.

I will also post that soon it's likely to be at a cafe.

Libraries are getting harder to book and hopefully hopefully around the 21st or so is when I'll have my meeting.

But in the meantime I am definitely working on attending some PTA meetings at some of some schools and that's always an option in terms of meeting with directors.

So I guess I'll leave it at that because we are now at 530 which is our public testimony part of the evening.

And before we begin tonight please note that there are handouts on the back table regarding option schools and ethnic studies.

Now as far as the rules, the rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers be respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on items related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Ritchie.

will or actually we have a okay Ms. Ritchie will read off the names of our testimony speakers.

Thank you.

Ritchie.

Michaela Carlos and Devin Harris.

After them is Yasna Vizmel Male and Scott Conch.

Any of those speakers here?

Honey Ahmed.

Oh you are?

Okay.

Hi I'm here to express my opposition to increased enrollment at option schools.

This decision represents the worst in district planning.

You have a false choice communicated at the last minute with zero parental involvement for a decision that is effectively already been made.

I can't tell you how frustrating this is.

The plan makes no sense for the school that my daughter attends Salmon Bay K8.

If a 21 to 22 ratio makes sense for a neighborhood school then why does it not make sense for option schools?

I understand there are some unique situations for higher class sizes like language immersion schools.

But this will be a huge disruption to our school and several other option schools that I'm aware of.

I want to add that the community at my school has been tirelessly advocating for public education and McCleary funding for many years.

We've attended town hall meetings, sent letters and emails, hosted meetings with legislators at our library and driven to Olympia annually to make our case on focus day.

The biggest issue for which we've advocated is reduced class sizes for everyone in this state.

How do you think those families feel now?

Please adjust the plan so that option schools are enrolled the same as attendance area schools.

Perhaps a waiver application policy could be implemented to address the needs of those few schools that could benefit from higher enrollment.

I'd ask that you reach out to option schools and see just how many of them want to have lower class sizes.

I'll bet you'll see that the majority will prefer that.

And ask parents.

our school in particular we have wait lists at every grade.

And the description that you gave earlier is doesn't apply to our school.

So I hope you reach out and get more information on this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Honey Ahmed Gustavo Brerho and Gon Rosario is he here today?

Yeah Gustavo?

I stand here today to present a proposition made by the NAACP to implement an ethnic studies class in the Seattle school district and abroad.

Back in late January the Seattle Times printed an article explaining that the NAACP wants Seattle schools to integrate ethnic studies into classes at every school in hopes that the ethnic studies class will eventually become a graduation requirement.

Initially the NAACP asked for a proposition to be made to implement an ethnic studies curriculum into the incorporated and be incorporated into existing courses.

With that said the objective of the NAACP according to Rita Green the Seattle King County NAACP education chair is to have an ethnic studies class separate from other classes to be implemented by fall of 2020. According to the same article if Seattle Public Schools accepts the NAACP's proposal Seattle would join a large growing number of districts as you guys have mentioned earlier that have been developing ethnic studies curricula such as Portland and LA school districts.

The state of California right now is currently on board to incorporating a required ethnic studies curriculum by the fall of 2019 putting them ahead of the state of Washington.

According to a study done by scholars at the Stanford graduate school for education a high school ethnic studies course examining the roles of race, nationality, culture and identity and experience boosted the attendance and academic performance of students at risk of dropping out.

And some of these examples that these ethnic studies courses would do is make in some cases it helps improve the GPA of some students by increased by 1.4 grade points and have full credits earned.

I'm going to skip part of it and just go to the end.

At my high school, sorry, I did a survey where I went around during lunch asking students what they thought about ethnic studies class.

Over 50 students that I interviewed only two of them said that they didn't think it was a good idea and the reason why they told me was it was simply that they felt that implementing ethnic studies as a separate class would interfere with possible elective options and create frustration among students needing to take into account that they would now need more high school credits to graduate.

And.

Peters you can send us your comments if you like.

All right to the board.

Thank you.

I'm sorry this is OK.

Two minutes is not very long.

Thank you very much.

Honey did you walk in?

Okay that's it.

Gian you're after her.

Good evening school board members.

My name is Hani Ahmed and I'm a junior at Rainier Beach High School and I'm part of the.

Speak a little bit closer to the mic.

Sorry.

Good evening school board members.

My name is Hani Ahmed and I'm a junior at Rainier Beach High School taking the full IB program.

I'm here to speak about the Rainier Beach school's IB program.

The IB program has been successful since its initial launch in 2013. In 2012 our graduation rate stood at 59.6% but after the IB program was implemented the graduation rate increased by 21.9%.

In 2015 the graduation rate was 81.5% which is well over the Seattle school district's average 76.7%.

It has also increased our student population from 404 students in 2012 to 671 in 2015. And all these statistics are from the OSPI website.

It is a shame that the Seattle school board is not funding the IB program.

The IB program is once again at risk because the grants that are funding IB program the IB are set to expire the following year.

If the school board doesn't fund the IB program at Rainier Beach high school it will strain the resources that Rainier Beach high school receives.

This may not be the best time to demand funding to go into IB with the 50 million dollar shortfall but in the future hopefully as soon as early next year this school board would commit to fully fund the IB program.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Gian Rosario.

Good evening school board members my name is Gian Rosario and I will be speaking about Rainier Beach High School's dire need for renovation.

So the paper that I gave you was from the SPS website it was a main report from August 1, 2014 and I will be highlighting some of the deficiencies of Rainier Beach High School based off of this report.

So some of the deficiencies start with but are not limited to the elevator was installed in 1961 it is past its expected lifespan and is not ADA compliant.

VAT and carpet are original and in poor condition.

Some VAT and carpet have lifted and seams are opening up.

Door hardware at many rooms is not ADA compliant.

Original windows are not energy efficient.

Original panels are past their useful life.

Original branch wiring and devices are past their useful life.

The little theater dimmer board is past its useful life.

The exterior windows are original single pane metal system.

They are not energy efficient.

The linoleum flooring is original and is in poor condition.

It has delaminated, is worn, scuffed and seams have opened.

Service panel is past its useful life and the building is heated by two gas fired steam boilers installed in 1961. The south walkway along the east side of the building is deteriorated and should be concrete Timbers are rotted and falling apart along planters at main entry building.

And most importantly there are no fire sprinklers in the main building except the auditorium.

In 2013 Rainier Beach High School students staged a walkout and I hope this time our school board school board members will take action.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay the next three speakers are Miriam Abraham, Sokena Keo and Chris Jackins.

Hello my name is Mariama Ibrahim I'm a student at Rainier Beach high school and today we will be talking about how the budget cut is going to impact our school.

So basically I feel like if you guys are doing a whole big budget cut I feel like it's going to be impacting a lot of students because like A lot of grants help many students because like a lot of like many students deal with all types of stuff and the counselors and a lot of programs help the students to connect with them and stuff.

And like all these grants that came to our school helped a lot of students have hope to go to college and like have a dream and stuff.

So I feel like I should rethink and like not cut a lot of money for my school because we're already going through a lot.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening school board members my name is Sokina Q and I'm a senior at Rainier Beach High School.

As for the renovation we need to stay on the BEX V and be on top of that list.

How inadequateable is it that to use a rating system to prevent a full renovation of our school?

You built a completely new building for Southlake an alternative school for students who are behind in credits.

Are we not worth that?

We are located across the water and can't help but think that the private interests are trying to close our school down for monetary interests.

Please hear me out.

Rainier Beach High School direly needs this renovation.

It is equally as such that our IB is just as valuable.

We need them both.

We will fight for this and other resources that would help me and other students at Rainier Beach High School receive a quality and equitable education.

We need the school board and the powers that be to fund the IB program at Rainier Beach High School as it will strain the finite resources that Rainier Beach High School receives.

This may not be the best time to demand funding to go into the IB with the 50 million dollars shortfall.

But in the future hopefully as soon as next year this school board needs to commit to fully fund the IB program at Rainier Beach High School and the other two IB schools as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the Magnolia construction project seven points.

Number one the district must certify that the project will not create or aggravate racial imbalance.

Number two on February 1st district staff asked the board to approve a resolution on Magnolia toward obtaining such certification called the D5 form.

Number three I asked the board to not approve the resolution because the resolution did not seem to comply with state law.

Number four by a vote of seven to zero the board nevertheless approved the resolution.

Number five I wrote to the state attorney general and the superintendent of public instruction OSPI.

Number six the attorney general's office stated quote before it approves the D5 form OSPI is asking Seattle Public Schools to address the concerns you identified in your letter unquote.

Number seven I continue to have questions about the adequacy of board and district oversight.

On the elementary school feeder grant the board report references gap closing successes but the report does not reference any statistics on gaps.

On the budget transfer of BEX 2 BEX 3 underspend for implementation of an energy efficiency project.

BEX 2 had to borrow from other levies.

How can BEX 2 have had an underspend?

On school board elections I favor having lots of candidates run for school board to get a public discussion of issues.

Three positions are up for election this year.

Number four number five and number seven.

The candidate filing period is May 15th to May 19th.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Shek Next three speakers are Eliza Rankin Catherine Lehrman and Xin Yang Gilbert.

Hi I have a sick kid at home so my thoughts are not super well composed but I'm signed up today in support of ethnic studies and I think supporting ethnic studies is something that is pretty something that we can pretty simply all agree on.

I don't think it's a hard sell to say yes we need ethnic studies.

So when that part is behind us the hard part is what does that look like?

How is it implemented?

And the key piece for me is who's accountable for it.

Making sure that it's not just the checkmark on the resolution that it's actually something that actually happens.

I also going beyond that as important as it is for students to learn their own histories and hear each other's stories.

We also need to reflect that out.

to the adults.

We need a district full of adults who see and hear these stories, value these students and students and educators that learn and understand their role in the dominant culture and how they can if they're part of the dominant culture how they can work on dismantling barriers that keep us from achieving equity in our district.

I see a lot of educators doing this work already.

There's equity teams and people working in teams and buildings.

Students are engaged and there's message coming from above.

But the part that's missing is the part in between.

And that's where I think a lot of accountability gets lost with other issues.

And that's the part that I want us really to focus on that we need cultural competency at all levels.

We need building leaders and administrators between here and the buildings that understand how cultural competency or lack thereof affects discipline, curriculum, school culture as a whole, how kids feel when they're at school, their sense of community and whether or not every child is honored and accepted as a full member of that school.

So what I hope that we can take the ethnic studies resolution as a tiny tiny piece in a much bigger picture of making sure that we're creating school communities where all students are valued have pathways to success not in spite of who they are but because of who they are.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Kathy Reedy-Lierman I'm a parent and vice chair of the site council at Thornton Creek Elementary which as you know is an option school and option schools are slated to be enrolled at higher class sizes than all attendance area schools for the 2017-2018 year.

So I want to reiterate what the first speaker said that this is an equitable and unjust if 22 to one is good enough for attendance area schools why is it not good enough for option schools?

The decision-making process through which this decision was made was clandestine did not include any input from the families directly impacted and this represents another example of the district breeding ill will from the community against them.

So if the district truly wants to have the parent communities collaborators we need to have input on decisions that affect our children.

We apparently have no choice but to move forward with this reality and so concessions were thrown to us as flexible staffing in the form of additional flexible staffing and while this will help mitigate the challenges of increased class sizes we need safeguards and guarantees in place that this funding isn't going to be pulled out from under us next year.

We don't need a one-time funding we need this funding to track the cohorts of increased class sizes as they matriculate through all of elementary school because enrolling K at 26 to one is a six-year commitment at best.

Our third point is we remain hopeful that the McCleary will be funded in the near future and when this happens we fully expect to be enrolled in line with McCleary and does the district have any plan in place to go from 26 down to 17 because attrition alone is not going to get us there.

So we would like to encourage and participate in a plan for getting our option schools from this increased class size down as soon as possible.

Our fourth point is that we're hearing from the district that option school demand is high and that is part of the reason why we're being enrolled at higher class sizes.

And if that's so then why would we not replicate the system rather than deprecate it by diluting the success rate by increasing class sizes at option schools.

That's not a solution.

Instead of increasing class sizes at some of the most successful schools.

Why don't we replicate the programs elsewhere.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sing Yang.

After Sing Yang is Marian Wagner and Alexandra Storm.

Hi my name is Xing I'm a junior at Roosevelt and this is why ethnic studies matter to me.

As things are history classes at Roosevelt and in much of the US are told from a white narrative.

All four of my AP textbooks are authored by white men.

You might ask is this narrative by white men alone adequate?

My peers and I have come to understand that it isn't.

My teachers at Roosevelt have made every effort to bring historical figures of color into our radar but what is deeply discouraging to me is that the curriculum itself does not allow for them to do this sufficiently.

It is riddled with holes that undervalue and isolate students of color.

Our core textbook has single paragraphs sprinkled throughout titled African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos whereas the bulk of the text holds white men as if they were the standard.

As if single paragraphs were enough to express the ideologies the oppression and the successes of entire ethnic groups.

This is the essence of white privilege when the history of colored peoples is not woven into the history of America but forcibly removed and taught as an afterthought.

It is not just in my eyes to require students of color to sit with their white peers learning Eurocentric history and then not entrust knowledge to both of them about the histories of colored peoples.

For this reason it is critical that Seattle schools protect the time for ethnic studies in the classroom.

I believe that filling the academic gap will engender mutual respect among communities and individuals and I know that it will strengthen all of my peers regardless of their ethnicity.

I am both Caucasian and Asian.

As a white woman I know that much of the censorship in our modern textbooks is for my comfort and that by learning the history that may make me uncomfortable I can better understand the inequalities that permeate our society.

As an Asian woman I would like to learn history and read literature that both represents and empowers me my peers and my sister.

Thank you.

I'm next right?

We have some documents.

I'm Marion Wagner and I'm a fourth grade teacher at Salmon Bay school, national board certified teacher and I'm on the Seattle education Association board of directors.

I'm here today to bring the voice of stakeholders that were not heard in the recent decision regarding enrolling only in option schools at high class sizes.

I share Dr. Nyland and the board's values of openness, fairness, transparency to find the best solutions for our schools.

These values are the basis of trust.

In this decision however stakeholders were not heard, principals were told.

Staff, Seattle education Association and parents have just found out about this.

The staff of Salmon Bay schools you see in the letter there have written to express our opposition to the district's blanket plan for higher kindergarten through fifth grade class sizes at all option schools.

Salmon Bay we are adamant we do not want larger class sizes K-5.

We want class sizes that are commensurate with neighborhood schools.

We understand some option schools want larger kindergarten cohorts to mitigate attrition.

We experience very little attrition in our school and never have trouble filling seats in upper elementary when there are seats available.

Not all option schools have the same needs.

By forcing a solution on our school when we don't have a problem is creating a problem.

If the school district would like us to create more classrooms to manage capacity demands then build those.

Open more option schools if that's what parents are clamoring for.

But don't structurally start with high class sizes at all of those schools because 1.2 teachers per class the offered solution with 26 students doesn't equate to one teacher with 22 students.

We expect you to listen to this reasonable request and enroll option schools with the same class sizes as neighborhood schools unless they specifically request otherwise.

To not honor this it appears we are being systematically undermined and ignored as to what we have expressed we need.

This is the only equitable solution for students and educators.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you.

Shannon Crowley, Susan Stahl and Daniela Hall.

Good evening my name is Shannon Crowley I am an intermediate teacher at Sanislo Elementary School in West Seattle and according to a Seattle Times article this past summer it is the most diverse school in the state of Washington.

And that's what brings me here this evening as you consider your position on ethnic studies in the Seattle Public Schools.

Several years ago when there was a rush to adopt the common core state standards I was interested and I looked up in the common core what the standards were for social studies in the grade that I teach and I was alarmed that there are none.

According to the common core social studies is taught grades 6 through 12. And ever since then when I've heard the phrase career and college ready it's been like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard to me because don't we want our students to be college career and civically ready?

And that starts with social studies and ethnic studies.

According to the curriculum standards in this book which was written the first time about 20 years ago students in the early grades should be able to learn about students around the world and how they learn and grow.

This is the national this is from the National Council of Social Studies.

And furthermore the research shows as some other people have mentioned that When students are immersed in histories that reflect their own cultures they succeed.

They do better in schools and we need to empower our students of color with histories that include their kings their queens their philosophers their teachers their doctors everyone that is important to them that can make them see who they can be in the future.

And if a kindergartner can say to another kindergartner on the playground why is it that you wear a hijab?

Not only are elementary school students ready for ethnic studies but they are primed with curiosity.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Suze and I'm here to talk to you about the potential and urgency for a mandatory robust ethnic studies program to counteract negative messages that our students are internalizing every day in our classrooms.

I've been teaching in SPS for 10 years and I'm now an instructional coach and a teaching assistant in the University of Washington secondary teacher education program.

Yesterday I observed in a school that houses a highly capable cohort or HCC.

Most students in the HCC classes were white in contrast to the Gen Ed classes.

A teacher told me that her students regularly regularly refer to Gen Ed as the dummy classes and HCC students as the smart kids.

Over the years I've heard similar comments at the mostly white high school where I teach inclusion also disproportionately populated by students of color while AP classes rarely have even one student of color.

In this de facto within school segregation system white students are internalizing messages of superiority and students of color are internalizing messages of inferiority.

With thoughtful implementation ethnic studies could help to disrupt this insidious pattern.

According to the SPS website there are currently seven full-time staff members devoted to advanced learning.

while there are only four in the Department of Equity and race relations.

This reinforces the superiority slash inferiority messaging I just described.

Perhaps most upsetting this situation is not new.

Staffing formulas like this along with inequitable discipline curriculum and pedagogical decisions and practices have been giving disproportionate advantages to white privileged students for decades.

Sorry I'm skipping down.

Bureaucracy continues to hinder the growth and development of our most vulnerable students.

Students who have the most to offer our educational system in terms of leadership cultural flexibility and justed oriented scholarship.

Please move swiftly to develop and implement ethnic studies in our high schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening everyone.

My name is Daniela Hall and I am a parent in the district.

I'm also a teacher at a private school for middle school kids in social studies.

Interestingly enough I'm finding this conversation very interesting.

And I am also the secretary of the special education PTSA and I also am a SEAC member special education education and advocacy council.

And I've been involved with SEAC for quite some time now.

So I'm here tonight to just share with you some of the things that have been going on with special ed to inform you about the great work that we've been doing.

I am part of a handful of parent volunteers that have been working really hard in the last year to create a much more collaborative working in the spirit of collaboration.

Our kids are primarily in the younger grades so all of us are relatively new to special ed and new to the district.

But I just want to share with you some of the stuff that we've been doing.

And the reason I'm here tonight is because since I'm both part of the PTSA board and I'm on SEAC I report back and forth so I listen to parent concerns at PTA I bring them to SEAC and then I report about what SEAC is doing to the PTA.

So, one of the things that we've been working on for the last year and a half in SEAC, I don't know if you all have seen the change of schools guide, I can leave my one copy with you but this was developed, we have a four page change of schools guide for parent and parents and a nine page guide for teachers that we developed through SEAC with a tremendous amount of community input.

The change of schools process has been extremely challenging for special ed families over the years and we feel like working with the district we are making some great strides.

Also to put on your radar that school tour dates have been very challenging and we are very encouraged that there is recognition in buildings and the district that the tour dates need to be moved earlier.

and need to be advertised more widely so that our special ed families can be informed and be able to make.

Really?

Is that two minutes?

Dang it.

OK.

Sorry.

Two last things really quickly.

Inclusion culture in buildings is different from building to building and it's really important that we have some standards and look at what's happening that's working well in buildings for treating our special ed students and families like first class instead of second class citizens.

What's that?

I'm sorry I have to ask you to conclude your remarks.

Okay that's it and I have one more thing and put on your radar also that with HCC they need continuum services and right now they are mutually exclusive but get ready I'm an HCC teacher in a private school you're getting more kids that are going to need more accommodations and you just need to be forward thinking about it.

And I'll be back.

Thank you.

Rebecca Burrito, Craig Seasholes and Melissa Taylor.

Rebecca?

Craig, you're up.

I'm Craig Seasholes I gave this to 100 learning leaders yesterday and I have to say I appreciated walking in tonight to hear complimentary remarks.

This is school library month and I appreciate every board director that gets into a school library this month to be seen.

Dr. Nyland was disappointing yesterday when I read we do need to continue investing in our libraries.

And I asked the 100 leaders who remembers that letter from June 7th last year and six of the 100 stood up.

at a budget time of year.

Now I know it's a long meeting and they have to sit a long time but I was hoping for a few more people to recall that they want to keep in mind equitable funding for library materials.

I also hope that as the budget replacement in the levy cliff refunding happens that the positions that we lose to librarians some of the librarians that are half time in our schools the other half is made up of PCP if they lose those positions that school loses computer technology education going forward because the gold book the WSS has not addressed that.

That's an explicit loss to the school and we don't want that to happen we want full Full-time librarians in every Seattle public school we want equitable funding.

Of course we want it from Olympia but we want it sooner than that.

Okay so I appreciate that.

I want to mention and remind people that Portland board and then PTA addressed that issue with the 33% over $10,000 that the PTA raises goes to an equity fund that goes to all schools.

That's Stopgap but that's Seattle and that came from the school board in Portland.

So I thank you all you know I gave you plenty to read and link and I look forward to seeing you in our libraries.

Melissa Taylor parent of a second grader.

The topic of ethnic studies is so critically important right now.

It reflects the nexus of a number of my current experiences.

As a parent I am struggling to explain the full context of police brutality deportations and domestic terrorism to my 8 year old.

As an admin in a very unwieldy Facebook group of about 26,000 mostly white Washington activists we spent a lot of time educating fellow adults about racism and a lot of these basic concepts and history.

As a co-chair of a social justice committee studying the detention of youth in our community I was told by a judge that they don't control who shows up in their court.

Where the reality is that children of color are far more likely to show up there and be detained essentially advising me to look upstream and our school system and our school discipline systems are part of that upstream impact.

And with all of this context I have to tell you that ethnic studies feels as relevant and perhaps even more relevant than all of the other subjects my daughter and her peers study.

I realize funding is a challenge to put it mildly.

I've been to Olympia three times in the last three weeks advocating for more funding.

I know it's a problem.

And that being said spending reflects our priorities.

And I think it is critical that we prioritize dismantling racism as an urgent issue for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right our last three speakers tonight Chris Ledford, Maria Anciano, and Iman Wilderfield.

Chris?

Iman?

Good afternoon to you all here today.

My name is Amon Welderfield I'm a student, I'm a secretary at Garfield High School's Black Student Union and I will be speaking on behalf of the BSU.

Marcus I'll be speaking in support of ethnic studies.

Marcus Garvey once said a people without the knowledge of their past history origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

All of our lives in school we have been taught that can completely whitewashed history.

We have been taught that the greatest contributors to the world were white.

We have been taught that the first people to discover this country that we live in were white.

We have been taught a history where white people are glorified over everyone else.

We have been taught so many lies and subliminally this perpetuates the idea of white supremacy.

This totally disregards the greatness of original people all around the earth and strips the roots from human life.

This ill idea of white supremacy is the reason why there is an intentional misrepresentation of history in the education system.

It is in fact a power tactic.

Why would you want to deny a people of their true history?

Ethnic studies classes are paramount to building up the self-confidence of original people who are poorly represented throughout the history that is taught in the system to the youth.

Ethnic studies classes gives knowledge of how much worth work other ethnicities have put in for this world that we live in today.

It is absolutely important that you all implement these classes as mandatory and give teachers the proper funding for training and equipment.

The city has no problem creating a new youth jail and giving money for that but they cannot fund an education to keep youth out of those jails.

Ethnic studies can in fact help to keep kids out of jail by showing them that they in fact do have a strong and powerful history and that they themselves are a great people and can accomplish great things.

Thank you.

Our Southlake student has arrived so if Michaela Carlos can come up and then we are done.

Hi I'm not really prepared for this but I was told that I'm here to speak on behalf of Southlake and I think everybody has been talking about ethnic studies and I don't think that's something that has to be worried about at Southlake because I'm really nervous but with the very small school we have a very strong support system and the staff make sure that it's making sure that everybody feels included and they feel that and I feel that everybody's history is respected because not only in the past month we have had a speaker who came with a traveling museum with a traveling museum on the history of Africans and African culture.

We also had we also had oh my God I forgot her name but a woman she came and Erin Jones there she came and she spoke to us and I think that everyone really appreciated it.

We have also our career specialist has also made it a priority that we have a guest speaker every week who comes and I feel that everybody has a very tight, is very supported in the school and I just want to say thank you for the funding and It's not, I know that everybody at Southlake is working on rebranding because when you think of Southlake students you think oh they're bad but they're not.

They just need people who care.

And that's what we have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Rebecca Brito and I am a parent in Northeast Seattle.

This summer I participated in the Cedar Park race and equity analysis team.

During the conversations district staff said over and over again we are hesitant to open another option school and we are concerned about the demographic shifts that took place in West Seattle.

This was reiterated to us over and over again but we didn't have the data in front of us and I continued advocating for an option school to avoid segregation across Northeast Seattle just in case you forgot.

So after that decision was made I had time and I went through and I copied demographic information from the OSPI website and I saw what they were talking about in West Seattle.

there's a huge shift in demographics that took place in about five years where I only know the term white flight for what took place where you have an isolation of Caucasian families in one area and interestingly also African-American students were congregated in certain schools and additionally Latino families were separated into different schools so that's a huge demographic shift that takes place when we bring about option schools.

Choice is not equitable, it's not available to everybody, we've had this conversation more than once.

The lack of transportation service is not equitable and it means that people don't have the access that they need.

In North Seattle the demographic shifts might not be as obvious but now at the other side of that decision we have a challenge at places like John Rogers with the concerns about will we have engaged and active parents in the next few years.

I bring this point up tonight in the conversations about the weighted staffing standards and class sizes at option schools because there is a resistance to accept higher class sizes at option schools and I think that is because there is not enough explanation for the demographics and those shifts.

So thank you so much I appreciate it.

Well that concludes our public testimony for this evening.

Thank you all very much for coming.

We always appreciate hearing from the community.

So I will now return to my colleagues on the board and see if anybody would like to either add or begin their comments.

Director Geary.

Thank you.

Thank you to everybody who came tonight as always.

In my year and a half or not quite year and a half, year and a quarter I guess that I've been on the board it is really nice to see that we've seen a continually growing number of students coming and testifying before us.

And I think that that is Wonderful.

Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for taking the time to be engaged.

I appreciate it and will always appreciate your presence.

And it's hard because we want to give you everything you ask for.

But as you know we were always balancing a lot of different things.

So but I just want you to know it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

Thank you Gwendolyn Jimerson for coming or for all of your dedication and being the educational support professional of the year.

I did hear that you were interested in one day being on the school board.

Certainly our school district could use many many people that would bring your dedication and energy to all the different work that needs to be done.

Thank you to the school paraprofessionals and librarians I know from watching my own kids how important the school librarian can be and the paraprofessionals and all the support that they give to a school they make it run.

They allow the teachers the time to do their work and without them it doesn't run smoothly and I recognize that and we all need to thank them and I know we appreciate them and the budget cuts don't always reflect how important they are.

And so we do need to work to make sure that we are providing those critical services to our schools.

Thank you to the John Muir music program and coming and showing us what the creative advantage program can do.

And I want to thank that program in particular for its inclusivity and finding a place for everybody within that program.

And you could see the joy of all of the different members of that group in their performance before us and I think that is just a lovely picture of all kinds of different kids coming together in an activity.

Anybody who thinks that any type of extracurricular activity shouldn't include everybody and doesn't have a place for everybody only needs to visit the John Muir music program to see that that isn't true.

Thank you to all of our community partners, Seattle University youth initiative, the Satterberg foundation, Rotary, Seattle College, there's so many partners out there, everyone playing an important part in our district and so thank you to them all.

until we are fully funded clearly we need you.

And it makes me think of the fact that on the one hand there are people who are saying that we as a district need to be more centrally focused and then it's against the pressure of of all the work that we have to do in the individual schools and our partners bring that individuality to all our schools that we as a district have to continue to make sure that we are open to receive.

And so that is a very, it's a tough tension and I, you hear people make the arguments on both sides of it and yet when I see these partners I realize that we need to continue to welcome them in our school and that takes a certain amount of flexibility and willingness on our part to recognize they bring unique gifts to our unique communities.

And I want to thank thanks to all the parents who are traveling down to Olympia on a regular basis to testify on behalf of our schools.

Whether it be for ethnic studies whether it be funding for CTE you are too some of our important partners so thank you so much for taking that time.

It's a lot of effort to go for just a few minutes in front of people who sometimes feel like a very hostile audience to our cause but it's necessary that we show up and I know that it's not easy making that trip so I particularly appreciate it.

Since our last board meeting I've had a chance to visit a few schools, visited Wedgwood elementary today with my colleague Rick Burke and had the pleasure of spending some time in that community.

Also visited Nathan Hale and sat with their principal Jill Hudson to learn about the project-based learning and mentoring that's going on in that school.

It is a wonderful example of a very inclusive community that is working diligently to recognize and appreciate every single type of student in their community.

Everybody is an individual at Nathan Hale and it was just a pleasure to go visit.

I've had the chance to go on two field trips one with Ballard high school the oceanography class to NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one with Laurelhurst elementary fourth graders to visit the great migration series at Seattle art museum by the series by Jacob Lawrence.

I hope that we I know I have heard repeatedly that our field trips have become very difficult.

The paperwork is burdensome.

So first I want to thank any of the teachers who are willing to go through the steps necessary and the parents who are going to fill out the bevy of paperwork that goes along with it.

And I I recognize fundamentally that these are educational experiences that our kids love and get so much out of and reinforce the learning that they're doing in the classroom.

And I just wonder how equitably we're making that available and what we as a district staff can do to help the schools that are having difficulty with the high burden of field trips to make sure that they're that their student populations have them available as well because there's such a wonderful resource for our kids.

My community meetings I have met with people from the Magnolia Queen Anne area and the Thornton Creek parent population.

Thank you as always for your willingness to participate and come and talk to us.

I hope that we are getting the message out that we too would love small class sizes of course we want small class sizes for our kids.

We need to make sure that we are Enrolling our students in all of our schools in an equitable fashion so that every child has the best ratios possible that we can afford for them.

And to the extent that there was any miscommunication about the option schools taking on that burden unduly.

I hope that that gets clarified soon and that that doesn't actually come to pass on the ground because I don't think that was anybody's intent.

And my last thing about the special education issues, I want to make it clear to everybody that special education is merely a tool to get kids to the basic floor of educational opportunity that we provide.

And that if we as a district are going to define the basic floor of educational opportunity to include something greater than than just standards.

So if we are going to offer smaller class sizes, if we are going to offer more enrichment, if we are going to offer more relationship building services, if we are going to offer these things to our students that we need to make sure that it is understood that that is the basic floor of educational opportunity for Seattle Public Schools and that special education is just a service to make sure that every student has access to that basic floor of educational opportunity and that this floor of opportunity for special education families is not different than the floor that we are offering to every other student.

And so I will continue to make sure that that is what we are doing here.

And I need to hear from anybody out there who believes that that's something different than what we are doing.

Because I will take that upon myself to continue to work on that particular issue as we roll forward.

So my meeting I'm working to schedule it on April 22 I don't have a place locked down I've been trying to use that library scheduling service but for some reason it will never confirm what I've asked for so I'm working on it and I'll let you know the place and then I'm going to continue to do my Thursday morning coffees.

And I will hold the one tomorrow at Zoka on Blakely at 730 AM and continue if you want to participate on the weeks that I don't announce here you may go on my Facebook site and I will indicate whether or not I am going or not because sometimes there are things that prevent me from showing up.

But I will be there tomorrow if anybody wants to come and sit down with me I'd be happy to do that.

Thanks everybody.

Peters Thank you.

Is there anybody else who would like to add any comments?

Do I have to pick up?

I do want to go back and congratulate Gwendolyn Jemerson for being a valuable asset to not only Seattle but across the state.

And also thank you to Seattle University with their youth initiative.

Good to see that they are able to engage with students and let them know that it is possible for them to achieve what they want to achieve.

The only The thing they have to do is really believe in themselves and I think having that mentor provides them that motivation.

I want to recognize again all the librarians for their commitment to that.

Yes what can we do to make sure that each of our schools has a full-time librarian and for someone to have a halftime or something like that again doesn't seem very equitable for our schools and our students all around.

Thank you to John Muir and their presentation with the recorders.

It's one of the instruments I never was able to play but I'm not very musically inclined so very impressed that elementary students are able to make that achievement and for their instructors to carry them on to learn these musics and again it's just something I was never able to do so I'm very impressed.

And as far as the ethnic studies and what's going on the students are asking for this and this is needed because when we look around schools and what students need to feel is accepted at a school feel like they belong at the school and that they have a sense of community at the school.

And that's something I feel that ethnic studies can provide because we are a very diverse community here in the city of Seattle.

So we need to accept all the students are there.

Not for what we want them to be but for who they are.

And we need to make sure that they belong they feel like they belong at the school when they can look around and see oh I'm represented either some fashion or form in the school buildings that they're at that we send our kids to.

They need to be able to look around and see themselves and I get the feeling that they feel that hey I can see myself I'm represented in this school they then accept some responsibility themselves to make sure that they will attend school and do well in school.

Make them feel like they belong and I think we will see a fantastic return.

And last that community that we do need to make sure that those students are supported Oftentimes students from places where maybe they don't have that support at home, they need to build that community at the school.

For me at the university we do have to see about how we provide that community.

Sometimes students bring that community with them, sometimes they have to let it go and we need to be able to help them either reestablish that community, make a new community for them, but they need to know that there are people around them that believe in them.

support them and that will carry them through.

And I truly feel that ethnic studies is one way to do that.

And also the civics so people are aware that my actions impact others and how I see others also impacts myself and how I interact in that cultural competency that some of our speakers talked about.

It's not only that but also cultural responsiveness.

What they do when they see people that may not difference in a bad way but they're different.

They view things differently have different perspectives.

Because it really reminded me when I look at what happened with the natives in boarding schools experience where their mission was to kill the Indian and save the man.

And our students now are saying hey I'm not being taught who I am.

Where I come from.

And if we're missing that in our schools and let's see what we can do to make sure that students again we accept them for who they are not for who we want them to be.

And I'll close right now just as far as we look at things student involvement versus student engagement.

Students are showing that they want to be involved in their education and now it's up to us to engage them in that.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you.

Would anyone else like to add any remarks?

I have a few that I will add.

When we talk about ethnic studies I'm thinking back to my years in school and I think we've always had a problem with inadequate textbooks.

And my best teachers were the ones who always supplemented what the basic textbook provided.

I think it's been a challenge for a long time and whatever we decide to do needs to be very thoughtful.

I'd like us to not have to reinvent the wheel and not have to just supplement but develop something where we have solid materials from the get go that might even begin with a reading list.

The other thing that occurred to me was listening to everybody tonight was what I'm hearing really is what we need to do as a district and as a nation is tell the whole story.

And we just haven't been doing that.

We've just been telling part of it.

And so if we could do that and if we did it right we might not even need a specific ethnic studies class because it would be part of everything we do.

It should be in our literary studies it should be in our history it should be in our civics we should know everybody's stories.

So again I have seen teachers do that, I have seen teachers even in language arts classes bring writers from all different parts of the world, all different perspectives to their students awareness.

And I want to give a shout out to the teachers who are already doing that.

What I'm hearing is we need a more formalized approach and we need a more formalized commitment to recognizing the value of ethnic studies.

And so I think the challenge now is going to be okay how do we do this in a way that is going to be organic to what we're doing as a district that's complementing what's already happening, filling in any gaps and also within our budget.

So we're going to need some creative ideas and one idea that comes to mind for me is let's take a look and see if there's districts or universities that have already developed something that we can we can use or you know crib from.

so that we can move forward in our current budget situation.

So those are just a few thoughts I wanted to share.

Along similar lines I understand that there was recently an identity safety training here in the in the auditorium I think was for our principals I understand it was really valuable training and it just reminds me that it would be great if the board could also be privy to some of that sort of training maybe we could bring some of it into our one of our board retreats and even invite the public to be a part of it because it's another one of these topics that we'd all benefit from.

Another issue that where Seattle has been doing a good job is on the issue of adolescent sleep and health and there's going to be a national conference on adolescent sleep health and start times April 27 and 28 in Washington DC.

And what's interesting is Seattle is considered a national leader in this and a lot more districts are taking a look at what has been done and wanting to do the same thing.

In other words have the bell times correspond to the best biological outcomes for our students and also in the needs of our students and with the goal of having academic and social emotional outcomes that will play out well for them.

So it's great to be on the cutting edge of something and that's one example.

I'd like to also encourage everybody speaking of the arts which we did talk about a little bit tonight is to go and see the Naramore art show which presents fantastic work by students in Seattle school district and that will be at the Seattle art museum from April 5 to May 28. As we all know the arts are a crucial part of education and just being a whole person.

And then that of course brings me back to the John Muir elementary music recorder group that we had this morning at the beginning of the meeting.

And I just want to acknowledge the fact that they did a fantastic job staying in tune because I do remember when we were taught recorder and I think that is the first instrument you usually taught in school.

It's sort of the gateway instrument to other things.

It's a tricky instrument and it's hard to keep it in tune and they did a great job and they were absolutely charming and we always appreciate having that sort of introduction to our meetings.

So I don't know, oh just one funny note so while I'm up here my phone rang and it was Seattle Public School District calling me.

I think it was a reminder that we have spring break coming up.

So I just want to pass that along to everybody.

So the board is now going to take speaking of break if anyone else has anything to add.

No.

OK then we're going to take a 15 minute break and we will we will reconvene.

I know it's 6 50. Thank you.