missing title

Good afternoon, we will call the meeting to order momentarily.

SPS TV will be in the broadcast.

You're introducing your guests.

Yeah, I'm for both, yeah sure.

All right, I'm so sorry for being five minutes late.

The May 13th, 2026 regular board meeting is called to order at 4.35 p.m.

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

I'll have the staff the roll call, please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Lavallee.

Director Mizrahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Smith.

Here.

Director Song.

Here.

Student Representative Yoon.

Here.

Student Rep. Mangelson and Masoodi are both unable to join us this evening, and President Topp.

Here.

All right, well, welcome everyone.

I'm going to start off, we have some special guests here this evening, so I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent to both introduce our guests and then give his comments as well.

Wonderful.

Well, we'll start with our guests because we want to make sure that they start with this.

So the Gatewood Elementary School Grant presentation.

We will have you come up first.

Thank you so much and take it away.

Hi everyone, my name is Kina Hogue and I've been the principal at Gatewood Elementary School since 2017. Our school has changed a lot since then.

With the recent support from OSPI and the RREI grant, I have learned how schools, no matter where they are in their journey, can make intentional steps towards inclusion.

We are here today to share our story of the steps we have taken to reflect on the impacts and to invite you all to join us on this journey.

We will share ideas we have for structural change within our own district that would more easily allow more schools within our system to join us on this journey.

Sorry, I'm gonna go backwards here.

Oh my gosh, I've messed this up.

I'm just gonna press ahead.

Our vision for inclusion aligns closely with Superintendent Ben's commitment to making Seattle Public Schools one of the top urban school districts in the country by ensuring high expectations, strong instruction, and access for every learner.

We also recognize that Washington State has historically had low rates of inclusive practices for students receiving special education services, and that disproportionality continues to exist both across Seattle Public Schools and right at Gatewood.

This work matters to us deeply at Gatewood and it is also part of a broader commitment happening across our district and our state, creating schools where all students are supported, challenged, included, and empowered to thrive.

One thing that has really helped move this work forward at Gatewood is that we are not doing it alone.

Through the state's inclusionary practice technical assistance network, we've been able to learn alongside schools across Washington that are also trying to build more inclusive systems.

What's been especially valuable is seeing inclusion in action, visiting demonstration sites, talking with educators, and learning from schools that are further along in this work than we are.

It reminds us that inclusive practices are not theoretical.

They are possible and they are already happening in schools just like ours.

I especially want to shout out Lowell Elementary and Chelsea Jajic's leadership.

Lowell is also part of the IPTN, and having the ability to collaborate in consult with Chelsea and her team has been a critical support to us in this work.

That being said, we've also had this feeling of wanting more of this intentional work to happen right here in Seattle Public Schools.

We've had educators traveling from all over the state to visit Gatewood, and while that's exciting, it also highlights how much opportunity there still is for us to grow in these practices right here in our own district.

The Reducing Restraint and Eliminating Isolation grant has been an important support because it aligns with the values that already exist in SPS around belonging, dignity, and access for students.

The funding gave us both resources and a framework to discuss this challenging work that is ongoing for us as a school community.

We are here today presenting to you as a requirement of this grant.

The grant is intended to have a broader impact in our state, and with SPS as the largest school district, we believe this is the perfect place to start.

I'm hoping that next year SPS can be more directly included in our RREI work and this grant.

My name is Summer Haskell, I teach second grade at Gatewood.

We used much of our grant this year to, in the last two years, to work on professional learning around Ross Green's collaborative problem solving and cementing the belief in our building that kids do well if they can.

We learned about co-teaching as a model to deliver all tiers of instruction, including embedded SDI.

We've dedicated professional development for our paraprofessionals and IAs in our building to support students in inclusive settings.

We've used it for release time to apply this learning and planning and watching it in action at other schools around our region.

And we made shifts to our staffing allocations to increase the amount of time that two or more adults can be in a classroom to provide supports in the classroom as much as possible.

We tied our special education staff to grade level teams to increase consistency and collaboration between all members of our teaching teams.

Hello, I'm April Christensen and I am an instructional aide at Gatewood Elementary School.

I'm also a parent of two SPS students.

They attended Gatewood and then one graduated from Cleveland.

With the overarching belief that kids do well if they can and in creating a supportive learning environment for all learners, Gatewood with this grant money has and updated our physical spaces.

We have sensory tools in all of our classrooms.

We have flexible seating, calm down spaces and calm down tools available to students, all students at any time that they should need them.

We also are focusing on proactive and collaborative planning.

We have specific designated time for grade level teachers and special education teachers to proactively plan instructional units with all learners in mind.

and the goal of this is to provide scaffolds in tier one and also embedded SDI making grade level content more accessible to all learners.

We've also been working and restructured part of our Wednesday early relief staff planning times so that we can focus on collaboration for grade level teams and special education teachers and they also are able to look at common assessments for students across the board.

Good evening, my name is Alden Alvarado and I am an administrative intern at Gatewood Elementary and the parent of two Seattle Public Schools children.

So the impacts that we've seen from this grant have been tremendous.

Our students have had access to general education classrooms, curriculum, and tier one instruction for students receiving special ed services.

We've also seen a stronger sense of belonging across our school community where students understand that learner variance is expected, valued, and normalized.

As a result, we have seen fewer extreme behaviors during the school day and supports for services have become normalized within our general education classrooms rather than separated from them.

The impact is also extended to our staff.

Through our early release Wednesdays and MTSS data cycles, we have strengthened collaboration around instructional practices and strategies.

Teachers are increasingly focused on how to make instruction more effective with two adults in the room by utilizing co-teaching strategies, shared instructional planning.

We have also seen less teacher attrition.

Our educators are staying at Gatewood and continuing to grow professionally here.

One of the most powerful shifts has been in the mindset that our special education teachers are everybody teachers, creating shared ownership for the success of all students.

Hello, my name's Megan Fisher.

I'm a parent of a third grader at Gatewood Elementary and I serve on our school's inclusionary steering committee.

I'm also a licensed mental health therapist in Washington State.

Seeing these inclusionary practices implemented at Gatewood has been truly profound It's been very challenging to implement.

It's taken a lot of time, a lot of effort.

But when you walk into these classrooms, you experience a learning environment that is designed for every learner regardless of their learning needs.

What this grant has allowed our school to do is to create a genuine sense of belonging for every single child in that classroom.

Students are learning that different brains and bodies just learn in different ways and that it's totally okay and normal to need different types of support.

Instead of being separated from their peers, students are supported with compassion within the classroom community itself and that impacts every child, not just students receiving services.

As a mental health therapist, I can't stress enough how important belonging is for children's wellbeing and development.

A strong sense of belonging protects mental health, it supports academic achievement, and helps children build a healthy sense of self.

The brain learns best when it feels safe, connected, and valued.

Inclusionary practices strengthen not only individual students but the entire school community.

They help children families and educators better recognize each child's strengths and potential while building a culture of connection empathy and a shared responsibility for all of our kids.

I can't stress enough how incredible it's been to watch this shift at our school and how monumental it is for parents children teachers it's incredible so important.

As well as being a teacher at Gatewood, I'm also a parent of a student with intensive support needs at Gatewood who may be relegated to a different school because of our pathway system.

But at Gatewood, thanks to the learning from this grant, my son has served at his neighborhood school with access to tier one grade level content as well as making substantial gains on his IEP goals.

He's developing deep relationships with his peers of all abilities and support staff all throughout the building.

He's seen as a valuable member of the greater community now and in the future, and he's grown his communication skills thanks to all the access he's had to typically communicating peers in his gen ed classroom.

The inclusionary practices have for sure changed his life.

Hi my name is Tana Taylor and I'm the resource teacher at Gateway Elementary and I have kids in the SPS school district as well.

So if other schools are wanting to follow this work what work do they need to do?

So first start with a mindset a belief that we can make inclusion work and continue with that mindset throughout your journey.

Build a sense of community.

It builds an inclusive community by working through this work and we want to shout out to our inclusionary steering committee which had parents and other community members as well as staff members.

Know that this is ongoing work and schools that do this work will learn a lot about their community and how all kids are capable.

Start with a flexible special education staffing and with a master schedule that focuses on kids with the most needs and build out the master schedule from there.

Take the grant.

The additional money that we received from this grant has been very impactful in enacting our school's vision and know that collaboration is imperative.

Using a professional development schedule that lends to grade level data collection and encourages improvement outcomes after studying our data together.

Next year, we're taking on the work of strengthening Tier 1 instruction and building systems of intervention through the creation of flexible learning labs, spaces, and intervention blocks at all grades.

These ideas came from visits and collaboration from other schools in SPS and throughout our state.

This work will involve bringing tutors into our school, rethinking the role of the academic interventionist, learning a new ELA curriculum in both Tier 1 and Tier 2, and building out shared data systems for our school.

This work is challenging and important.

It involves professional learning and action as well, as systemic changes related to resource allocation and scheduling.

Speaking of systemic changes, one important area is how Seattle Public Schools allocates resources and structures for special education services.

Currently, SPS uses a pathway model for some special education services, where students may attend schools outside of their neighborhood assignment in order to access specific programs or supports.

While the system was designed to provide services, it can also unintentionally create barriers to inclusion by separating students from their neighborhood peers and their school communities based on their disability.

My hope for SPS is that we continue to move toward a system where all children can belong in their neighborhood schools and access the supports they need within their own communities whenever possible.

Achieving that vision would require rethinking how we allocate staffing and resources, including how staff are assigned through the CBA, how we build capacity in both our general education and special education teams, and how we provide ongoing professional learning around inclusive practices.

I also believe it requires a clear and consistent district vision for inclusion, one that articulates not only what we are doing, but why it matters for students, families, and communities.

This work is possible.

In many ways, it feels necessary if we want our system, structure, and resource decisions to fully align with our values around belonging, access, and equity.

Thank you all for your time today.

This is just the beginning of an ongoing conversation and we are excited to collaborate with the board, the superintendent, and anyone else who's in this room.

Thanks.

I really want to thank Gatewood.

I was able to visit their school, spend some time, and really just see the incredible work that they're doing with their children.

So thank you so much to the entire team.

We really appreciate it.

Next up, I mean, this is good stuff, is that Chief South High School wrestling team.

I would invite the principal up, but I do want to say that we have two state champions in our midst, which is pretty amazing.

If Eli and Lanou, you want to come up.

I don't know if you want to introduce them, Principal.

I mean, I just saw you, which was wonderful.

So please come up and we'll take a picture and it'll be great.

Yeah, sure.

You introduce them and the coach too, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come on up.

Thank you guys, thank you all.

My name is Hope Perry, I'm a proud principal at Chief Self International High School.

I have our athletic director here, Coach P, we call him, but Coach Polycarpio, did I say everything?

And then I have our two champions here, Eli and Lanou, so let's give it up for them.

These two students exemplify not only leadership on the mats, but they also exemplify leadership within the classrooms, so I'm very proud of these two students.

We'll ask if you want to come up, we'll take a picture with the board, we'll thank you, and then you can go do homework or something, so it'll be awesome.

Thank you.

Yes.

All right.

I assume you have a few more comments, but I just want to thank Principal Perry and Principal Hogue and the Gatewood Gators, both from District 6, so I'm a little bit proud tonight, the West Seattle, Soto, South Park area.

So thank you all for being here.

It was great to celebrate you, but I will let you go.

We will try to start public comment at 5, so just let's all keep cognizant of the time.

Thank you.

So again, starting these meetings off with such wonderful things is really just great to be a superintendent, to know all the amazing things that are happening.

But I also want to take a little bit of time to talk about what you're going to hear today.

There are wonderful, incredible educators in this room that are going to tell you important narratives around things that are happening to this district.

I have not been shy, I think, about anything, but I certainly haven't been shy around the fact that we are almost $100 million in deficit and will be insolvent in less than a year.

that's about what we're looking at.

We will have to cross that zero line, which means we cannot operate because school districts are not allowed to run a deficit.

And because we're in that stage, we are making really difficult and really, I think, decisions that we wouldn't want to make otherwise.

That we have a budget problem.

We're trying very hard to cut all sorts of ways that don't impact students, but we also know that a huge majority of where the money of a school district is spent is at schools.

If you saw the presentation last week, we cut almost $10 million from Central, and Central is much smaller of a budget in general.

We're trying our best to keep almost a three to one ratio, but we also know that we do have to cut budgets throughout the district.

and you're gonna hear from people today who I want you to listen to, people who serve our children, people who care deeply about our schools, that this budget deficit, this budget issue is impacting.

We also have a system that has money sent to schools and then the schools make decisions around how to spend that money.

Now, of course, if they had more money, they wouldn't have to make the same decisions that they're making, but there's a lot of decisions that are made at a school level, which in some respects is amazing.

Local control is great.

Who better to make decisions than the people in the school about what to do?

But it also sometimes is problematic because you end up pitting people at the same school against each other because they're trying to figure out, well, what are we going to do with less money?

And so I want people tonight to really listen to what you're gonna hear today about the impact of the budget crisis.

But I also wanna say something which, as a superintendent, I'm allowed to say, which is legal, is that what's crazy to me is, There are ways to fix this.

And one of the, in my mind, simplest ways is for the wonderful folks in Olympia to give us more money.

But there's also an even easier way to do that, which is the amazing, wonderful, terrific people of Seattle have already agreed to give us the money.

There is a rule that says they can't.

There is a cap on the amount of money that the city can give us because of the way that funding works for the state.

Think about how crazy that is.

The wonderful people of Seattle want to actually give us more money so that we can employ wonderful people, but yet we're not allowed to because of this cap that happens in the state.

I want people to listen to the stories, the narratives, the faces, the names that you're going to hear.

But I ask that we together also focus on a solution.

And one very good, very strong, very thoughtful one is to help us get this cap removed.

Because if that cap gets removed, the district will in fact almost immediately get more money that we can spend.

Now, should we be more thoughtful about how to spend that money?

Absolutely.

Should we be making sure that we are doing right by our children and our staff all the time?

Absolutely.

And I'm never one to say, oh, woe is me, I have no control.

But there are things that are true in Washington that are not necessarily true in other states.

The great people of Seattle have already authorized money to be sent to the school system, but there are rules in the state that do not allow it.

So I ask that everybody here today and your friends and your family and bring your dog We've got to figure out a way to get the people in Olympia to allow us to take the money that is already given to us by the wonderful people of Seattle.

So I say this because I see the names on the list.

I know some of these people.

I know the impacts that are happening.

and it's terrible that we're 100 million in the hole and that we're going to go insolvent.

But we've got to make decisions on the reality that we have now and fight as much as we can so that we can increase our budgets so that we can make sure that we don't have to continue to do this.

So with that, I just want to thank everybody that's showing up today, that shows up all the time to support this.

This is not going to be easy.

This is not going to be the last time we're going to have these conversations.

But just know that as a superintendent and as a board and as a community, I know that together we've got a shot to really change the trajectory of this district.

So with that, I want to thank the president for giving me time and I will defer back to you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

So we are going to move our student representative comments and board and liaison reports to after public comment.

We're going to go into public comment.

It's just about five.

But by the time I read my My paragraph, it will be five and so.

We are now going into public testimony.

Board policy 1400 provides our rules for testimony.

The board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself.

As board president, I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting.

I know many folks I'm now going to pass it off to staff to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony of the list of speakers.

Thank you, President Topp.

The Board will take testimony from those on the testimony list and will go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers.

Please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute and only one person may speak at a time.

The Board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak to.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

Time isn't restarted and the total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted.

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

And for everyone, please do reintroduce yourself when called as I may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list.

The first speaker is Daniel Shapiro.

Hi, my name's Dan Shapiro.

I'm a teacher at Cleveland High School.

I teach math and I teach a literacy class.

I'm privileged to work with the multilingual students there.

I'm speaking about a couple things today.

A lot of my colleagues are here to talk about the impacts of the changes to the Purple Book that have been made and the rifts that have been handed out, the reductions in force that people may have not heard about.

There are 20 paraeducators and eight say ops or office professionals who have been told they don't have a job at the district next year.

And some folks are gonna speak after me to talk about the very real impacts of those on our students.

I just wanna say that regardless of the percentage of the budget that we're spending on this, it's not enough.

And teachers have been underwater for years and making this kind of a change is like trying to squeeze water out of a rock.

We're already running real lean and we can't do much more.

So I hope, I appreciate you saying that you're listening tonight.

I hope that you're all listening to the stories that are gonna come after me.

And I'd like to add that I think Staff who have received a reduction in force notice, a layoff notice, who are working on the levy, who are funded by the levy, deserve a special apology because they've been on a roller coaster this year waiting for the levy to pass in November to think I have a job, to hear there's a levy cliff to then think I don't have a job, to then hear there's a transition year, so I will have a job, and then to receive an RIF notice saying I don't have a job is a horrific roller coaster that I cannot imagine the emotional stress that would do to someone for themselves and for whoever they're supporting in their family.

So I would like to see that, and I hope that you can hear us all tonight.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Isara Jimenez Guerra.

Hello, my name is Isaura Jimenez Guerra.

I use they, them pronouns.

I am an ethnic studies educator over at Cleveland, and I'm going to be reading a statement on behalf of Tony Hicks, who is a Cleveland High School junior, president of Film Club, vice president of Black Student Union, member of Pacific Islander Club, and a member of our student racial equity team.

She writes, Dear school board, the actions that have occurred within the recent years are unacceptable.

As a student at Cleveland High School, I have been heavily impacted by your decisions.

When I hear from my teachers speak about what could potentially happen or what is already happening in our district, it frustrates me.

From my perspective, as a high school junior, I feel as if you all do not care about the connections made in schools or what us students actually need.

You make decisions with the power you have without thinking twice about who it's impacting.

This past year, we lost our advisor for BSU.

As vice president of the club, it has been incredibly difficult and stressful to work our way back up to how our club used to be.

Ms. Dahm, Mr. Bobby, Mr. Hernandez, Ms. Deandra, and Ms. Timoney have been nothing but supportive to us.

Ms. Dawn bravely stepped in to take up the role as our advisor.

This year, I started a filmmaking club at Cleveland and Mr. Bobby stepped in and helped us to provide us with a space and became someone we could go to for any advice.

If you step into Cleveland's Student Success Center, you would see how much students feel like they finally belong somewhere and can feel supported as more than just a student.

it's not because of all the students there but due to the educators that open that space for us every day if you continue to cut staffing and choose to fire and displace these educators our clubs and community will have to restart we will lose our place in Cleveland a place that honestly feels like home we will lose our support systems and the people that have helped us in the toughest times please reconsider this decision thank you

The next speaker is Crystal Lee.

Hi, my name is Crystal Lee.

I'm ceding my time to Erin M.

who's calling in.

You'll need to press star six to unmute.

Hi, this is Erin.

I am from the Distinct program at Gassert.

I'm a para.

And I wanted to talk about some issues with our staffing that is projected for next year.

So in our program, outlined in the CBA, The cap on one classroom is seven students to one certified teacher to two paras.

Once there is eight students, an additional para is higher.

And at GATSERT, we are projected at 12 students and we are not projected to be hiring any additional staff, so our ratio right now is 12 students to one-third to only two paras, so we're losing one of our para positions.

We've been in contract with the district and with our program specialists, but there has been no movement to address this issue and this puts us at almost double capacity.

When there is more than 10 students, it is legally in our contract for us to open another classroom.

And this is just a huge safety issue for to distinct students.

This ratio doesn't provide an adequate level of supervision to accommodate their needs.

And this is also a huge violation of these students' rights to their education.

At this ratio, they are not going to be allowed

We reach time to finish your thought here.

Thank you.

And this could also potentially be a legal issue as our contract is being violated.

And so if we are talking about equity and inclusion, I would invite the board to move forward with equity and inclusion at the level of the minimum legal requirement.

The next speaker is McKenna Gadiant.

Hello, my name is McKenna Gadiant.

I'm a special education teacher with Seattle Public Schools and I cede my time to Hannah Isogai.

Hi, my name is Hanna Isogai and I'm a Roosevelt High School student as well as a co-captain of our robotics team and I would like to speak about the possible cutting of Roosevelt High School's engineering program which would really impact a lot of students and engineering has impacted me personally in so many different ways but I think that the most compelling story that I can tell you really is about my girlfriend.

She's an Iranian immigrant, she has an abusive father, she's never met her mother She's gone hungry a lot of nights and that generational poverty is really, really powerful and so hard to break.

And having these STEM programs in our schools which educate students for high paying jobs gives them that opportunity to step out of this and see what could be their future.

My girlfriend feels so confident that she can break this cycle of poverty thanks to Lincoln High School's engineering program.

She wants to live in New York.

She wants to buy a house there.

She wants to go to a college in Massachusetts.

And I think that that's so amazing.

But Lincoln isn't enough.

Their STEM programs aren't enough for the entire district.

My brother is on the wait list.

He wants to go there because of their STEM programs.

And I know that so many other students feel the same way.

But if you cut programs at other public schools in the area, those kids that have the money will just go to private schools.

And if they go to private schools, then they will have this huge foot up against the rest of the community and the rest of the students who can't afford that education.

And I really think that that is an incredibly important reason.

And I hope you listen to her story and consider this when you make the cuts.

We have a petition at our school with over 450 signatures.

That's about a third of our student population and I'd really like you to listen to us today.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Gerard Montejo Thompson.

Hello there, Gerard Montejo-Thompson, President of Seattle Education Association, and I cede my time to Elena Cusack.

My name is Elena Cusack, and I'm a current first grade teacher at John Rogers Elementary School.

First, I want to share that in the turn-in box for the board, there are 10 copies of a petition that has been signed by over 800 educators and community members around both a June adjustment and the changes that were made in the purple book, increasing classroom sizes.

and I also want to speak to my own experience.

Last year, during my third year as a teacher, I was displaced in October.

I was teaching an incredible class of kindergarten students and I spent my last week with them in a room full of crying, heartbroken kindergartners, many of them who were having their first school experience ever and for whom a piece of that was.

A month into the school year, they found out with a few days' notice that their teacher was leaving.

When I arrived at my new placement, a kindergarten classroom at John Rogers, the school was in crisis.

Every single class in the school had over 30 students, including a 31 student K-1 split.

And when I started with my new classroom, it felt like starting the year over because they had not been able to learn.

Their teachers had been doing their best they could just to keep them safe in huge class sizes.

We need a June adjustment and we need continued summer adjustments to ensure that future SPS students are not in the situation my students were in and that those same students do not continue to experience it throughout their whole education.

I am also here today to speak to the staff who are riffed or laid off.

All staff in our schools build relationships with students and help ensure their needs are met, not only certificated staff.

we must also prioritize our paraeducator and SEOP colleagues who do critical student facing work both inside and outside the classroom.

The individuals that hold these roles build strong relationships with students and their families.

Positions are being cut and staff are being laid off and these folks are educators too and are just as critical to the education of our students and miss just as much when they are gone.

Our schools would not run without our SEOPs and paraeducators.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Alex Kramer.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Dominique Pabajo.

I'm also Miss Dom.

Shout out to Miss Dom at Cleveland High School.

I didn't realize she was impacted the way that she was, but shout out to her.

And hello, Superintendent Shoulders.

Nice to see you in person, and hello to the board as well.

Hi, Vivian.

Nice to see you.

I'm over at Gatzard Elementary.

I started on March.

and I could be a couple days off, March 5th of 2025, and if I'm not mistaken, one of their previous students unfortunately lost her life up the hill at Washington Elementary School on my second day of work.

And I came in as a restorative practice coordinator.

I just leveled up, we call that a career ladder progression as a paraprofessional because there's only so many opportunities that we have to continue growing into our career.

So I was given the opportunity to become a restorative practice coordinator at this beautiful Title I school, excuse me, in the Central District.

A year later, I'm here, still trying to find a way to stay.

We've created a lot of regular programming there.

Forgiveness is our big, big component of our work.

and I know that restorative practice has become more familiar to the district and the central office as well and I'm really proud of the work that they're doing.

I just want to share in case you're not, if you're not a full-time believer of the work, I don't think that that was a coincidence that I was placed at the elementary school that they lost a member of their community to on my second day of work.

I hadn't even been formally trained for that role.

I didn't participate in that training until the summer after I took on the role.

And so I unfortunately voluntarily displaced this year because I couldn't come into competition with educators who are working diligently every single day to bring those kids to grade level.

that school has been around longer than I have.

I'm a Seattle Public School alum as well.

I had to take my son away from this district two years ago.

That was not a choice that he and I are okay with.

We're still struggling with it in his sophomore year.

And I hope that there's something that we can do as a district to show how valuable each and every single one of our students and staff members are.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

Superintendent Sheldiner I would like to thank you for spending gathering with black families last night and for your grace and your generosity.

School board directors you know I'm Sabrina Burr Cacera Ingera.

that it means, how are the children?

That is a question that should guide every decision you make.

Your recent actions for the board raised serious concerns about student outcomes, transparency, community voice, are truly driving your decisions.

The board unanimously approved introduction and adoption of a new performance-based graduation pathway policy for some of the most vulnerable students, despite long-standing best practice with Washington State School Board directors, warning against rushing major policy changes without meaningful engagement, review, and implementation planning.

You approve the policy for the class of 2026, with very few months left in the school year.

These are students the system itself acknowledges they have not adequately served.

And yet instead of slowing down, engaging deeply, building trust, the district accelerated major graduation policy decisions with limited opportunity for public feedback.

at the same time, the board reduced regular school board meetings from twice a month to once a month, cutting public testimony opportunities from approximately 50 spots to 25. That's 300 voices annually.

That matters because public testimony is one of the few remaining ways students, families, educators, and community can share lived experience, research, history, expertise, concerns, and unintended consequences before decisions are finalized.

You also moved away from student outcomes focused governance and basically ended your relationship with the Council of Great City Schools.

But the truth is, the deficit never fulfilled student outcomes focused governance.

Real student-centered governance requires discipline, requires data transparency, it requires measurable goals, it requires adult behavior changing when students are not succeeding.

Too often decisions appear driven by political control.

of urgency and optics instead of long-term student outcome trust.

These decisions are not a struct.

Student graduations without the ability to read, write, and compute without critical independent thinking is a ripple effect across generations.

Families feel it, communities feel it, employers feel it, society plays the price.

These are life-impacting decisions.

This is why the board must commit to regular governance framework where models choose rooted in accountability, transparency, meaningful engagement, and measurable student outcomes.

Our students deserve better than rush policies, our educators deserve better than performative engagement, and our communities deserve better than political decisions that include the people who are impacted the most.

Can Sarah and Jera, how are the children?

The next speaker is Ute Hawkins.

I just want to remind folks we're going to try to stick to the two minute time limit so that way we can make sure everyone has time to speak and that we can also continue our business for the evening.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ute Hawkins.

I'm a parent and I am ceding my time to SPS student Lynn Anderson.

Hello, my name is Lynn and I am a junior at Roosevelt High School and the communications director of the robotics team.

The district is cutting engineering at my school.

I have wanted to do engineering since I was 12. The district is kind of a fundamental class at my school that allows me to do what I love and cuts off a lot of access to the spaces that my robotics team uses every day.

It also funnels directly into one of the biggest industries right here in Seattle.

Companies like Boeing, Amazon, Google, all of those are going to be impacted by us not teaching what they need in the job site.

I know Roosevelt doesn't have the greatest track record for keeping our budget with the numerous fire alarms and the football team thing last year, but I implore you to find different solutions than cutting classes students love.

I have done as much as I can to advocate for my engineering class with both helping the spreading of that petition which we keep emailing you about and helping make the default format email that keeps getting sent to you.

I then tried to escalate to one of the largest programs I know of and have contact to, ACE Mentoring, which Roosevelt Engineering directly funnels into.

I implore you to try to find different ways to make up the budget than cutting engineering at Roosevelt High School.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Connor Lee, and you'll need to press star six to unmute.

My name is Connor Lee.

I'm a special education paraeducator in Seattle Public Schools, and I was going to cede to Lynn Anderson, but having just spoken, I'm ceding to Kayla Epting.

Good evening, Board.

Good evening, Superintendent Scholdner.

First, I want to start by saying thank you again, Superintendent Scholdner, for spending time in community with black families, educators.

Yesterday, we really appreciate your commitment to listen and lean in.

Yesterday I asked you, as the district plans to rift 28 roles of predominantly black staff that support about a thousand students, what is the plan to support those students, and how do you plan to account for the loss of relational capital, cultural competence, and trusted adult presence within a school community?

Your answer was mostly rooted in the dire need to correct the budget.

As a finance professional, I sat with this last night.

and this is what I encourage yourself, SPS leadership and the school board to lean into.

Restructuring an organization starts at the top and with cost saving initiatives and implementing a system that better serves our students and which will truly create a wonderful learning experience for all.

It starts with ensuring that we are providing comprehensive and thorough training around budget conversations and allocations for our building leaders and BLTs and that both bodies are in alignment.

And when they aren't in alignment, district leadership should lean into actually supporting this process by making sure decisions being made are actually in alignment with putting students first.

cuts to staffing and non-traditional learning environments and roles serving our most vulnerable youth will cause harm to students will cause additional safety concerns and will result in students fail falling through the cracks with no articulated plan for how we will support the gap that will occur with the rifts and displacements I encourage you to pause the rifts and displacements until you have a concrete and communicated plan that centers students we must make decisions and create systems rooted in data, best practice and most importantly rooted in what's best for students.

Thank you in advance for your commitment to listening and I hope you are moved to meaningful action that centers students and not just the dollars and cents.

The next speaker is Xander Houston.

Hi, my name's Xander Houston.

I'm a paraeducator at Franklin High School and I'm seating to Adam Kobul.

Hi, my name's Adam Kobel.

I am an instructional assistant, multilingual instructional assistant at John Rogers, but I will be reading a statement from Krista Schert, a multilingual educator at Dunlap Elementary.

Good evening.

I'm speaking on behalf of Dunlap, which is heavily impacted every year by poor projections and budget planning.

Additionally, I would also like to speak in favor of reviving our newcomer program to its previous format.

First, I would like to advocate for June adjustment to our 2026-27 enrollment projections and budget allocations.

At Dunlap Elementary, our classrooms are nearly all at capacity.

Many of our students are multilingual students with high linguistic needs.

Our single kindergarten class reached capacity within a week of kindergarten start, and we had to create a K-1 split.

Our current enrollment is above what we were projected to have.

Despite this, our 2026-27 projections for next school year are below the 25 to 26 projections across all grade levels.

Historically, the families that attend our school enroll late.

Please take this as well as the discrepancy in next year's projections into consideration.

and make a June adjustment to next year to avoid shuffling our kids around over a month into the school year.

Second, our district has all but disbanded our newcomer program.

We have multilingual students who are new to the country with limited English in our classrooms across the district.

With full classrooms and limited multilingual staffing, these students do not have consistent and reliable access to the language support that can make school accessible to them.

Previously, newcomer students were able to spend time in a newcomer program at specific sites throughout the district.

This program provided newcomer students with the foundational language skills necessary to be successful in general education classrooms, both academically and socially.

I'm asking you to please reconsider the way that we serve our newcomer students and to be more transparent and proactive in communicating these options to our multilingual families.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Quresh Hassan.

And if you're joining by phone, you'll have to press star six to unmute.

Quresh Hassan.

Okay, we're going to move on and we will come back to you.

The next speaker is Lucas McDonald.

Lucas McDonald.

Okay.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the proposed closing of Middle College High School at Seattle Central for 2026-2027, seven points.

Number one, the closure would violate the district's pledge to not close any schools for next school year.

Number two, the district has not provided the notice, hearings, and analysis required by state law, RCW, 28A335-020.

Number three, the district website states, quote, middle college high school is an alternative high school option to earn credits for a high school diploma in preparation for higher education in a small, caring environment.

Number four, the district noted that the school has a high graduation rate and provides college credits and that its loss would be tough.

Four-ish full-time equivalent staff FTE would be eliminated.

Number five, the closure is not needed to balance the budget.

Number six, the school closure is meant to lead the way for many more school closures.

It is a lousy start for a wrong thing.

I just got a postcard from retired Dr. Carol Simmons opposing the closure of Middle College High School at Seattle Central.

Those of you who've been around for decades may remember Dr. Simmons spent decades with the district.

Number seven, don't close schools, please vote no.

On cell phones in schools, three points.

Number one, I appreciate the district addressing the issue.

Number two, one board director suggested a tweak to also remove cell phone use in high school during passing periods.

Number three, some screen time cell phones, AI, and other tech at school may already violate district policies against commercial advertising, possibly opening the district to lawsuits.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Jake Miller.

I would like to cede my time to William.

Hello, I am William Wagner.

I am a student at Roosevelt High School and I am here to talk about the Cuts the Engineering program.

Engineering is something that has been important to me my entire life and I would like to talk about my story of how I've been impacted by this engineering class.

This engineering class has taught me about the applications of some of my interests.

I am not a great student.

I do not do well in most classes, but having a class of something I am interested in has brought more interest for me going to school.

Throughout middle school, I would throw up a majority of days not showing up to class, which hurt my education substantially.

Having a community I feel welcome in, such as the robotics team, such as the engineering class, has helped me a lot with attendance.

Secondly, it has given me a lot more promise in my career.

I am now gainfully employed at a local aerospace business and am able to aid in machine work on aircraft, which are, you know, have been my entire childhood.

My father's a Boeing engineer.

I would love to follow in his footsteps and serve the local community in that context.

I believe that if any measures can be made to not cut the Roosevelt high school engineering program or any engineering programs like it, they should be made at whatever reasonable cost.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Timony Keegan.

Good evening, school board members, superintendent.

I'm speaking on behalf of members of the levy and student support team regarding the impact of the reduction in force of support staff at Cleveland High School.

Support staff funded through the levy and student success initiatives play a critical role in keeping students engaged, supported, and on track to graduate.

In their work as part of graduation success and levy coordination within SPS, this team has seen firsthand how consistent trusted adult relationships directly influence attendance, credit attainment, and graduation outcomes.

At Cleveland, graduation success work is deeply relational and proactive.

It involves ongoing student outreach, academic tracking, family communication, and coordination with school staff to ensure students do not fall through the cracks.

These efforts also include connecting families to resources and helping remove barriers that impact a student's ability to persist toward graduation.

When support staff positions are reduced, it does not simply reduce staffing levels.

It removes the continuity and relationship-based support systems that many students rely on.

A significant number of students are navigating housing instability, trauma, and systemic inequities.

For these students, having a consistent adult advocate in the building is often the difference between disengagement and graduation.

This work also plays a vital role in school culture.

Levy supported staff help create belonging, reinforce student engagement, and provide culturally responsive support that strengthens trust between students, families, and schools.

Without these roles, schools risk becoming more transactional and less responsive to the lived realities of students.

Families are also directly impacted.

These staff often serve as a bridge between home and school, supporting families and understanding graduation requirements, staying informed about student progress, and accessing needed resources.

When these roles are reduced, communication gaps widen and access to support becomes more limited.

On behalf of the student and levy support team, we urge the board to carefully consider the long-term impact on graduation outcomes, student engagement, and school climate.

These relationships are foundational, and once lost, they are difficult to rebuild.

Thank you for your time and your continued commitment to students and families.

The next speaker is Ashley Myers.

This is Ashley Myers.

I serve as Seattle Education Association treasurer and I am also a career and tech educator in Seattle Public Schools at Garfield High School.

You've already heard from some students who have benefited from our student leadership programs that come from our CTE programs.

I am here tonight.

First, I would like to see that the CTE plan is in the consent agenda.

As someone who's been in this district for a decade plus, who has asked for transparency and understanding of how the funding is done, I'm requesting that the board pull that out of the consent agenda and specifically ask the district about how the Purple Book funding has impacted our staffing in CTE, as well as what is the prospect of our non-staff funding that directly supports the very programs that the students are seeking.

I am concerned both for the loss of our CTE programs at the school that I'm at.

We lost our career meds program this year or the previous year.

I've heard of another school losing their career meds program.

I was here earlier this year, and what I feared was gonna happen did occur.

I went from having a co-coach and teaching one pathway to losing that co-coach, having an extra day of work next year that I have to stay after late, and having two pathways I'm teaching at the school I used to teach at, where they had lost their co-coach when they saw a full-time job.

Now that teacher also is going from one pathway to two pathways.

This is a consistent problem.

It's a long-term problem.

And I am asking for there to be consistent staffing, well-staffed.

It's hard to run these programs that they're hands-on.

They have tools.

We're teaching kids how to work with medical beds and needles.

Having the IA support to have students have full access to this is absolutely necessary.

And I really hope that we can have some understanding of what we at least, if we're the teachers that are left behind, are we gonna have consistent funding next year for the supplies that we rely on to have students have real experiences in our classrooms?

And since the students spoke so well, and if you could hear science and I'm biased on- Remarks, your time has run.

Oh, heads up, I can't hear the beeping through my phone.

That might be why some people on the phone can't hear it.

I'm done.

Yes.

The next speaker is Sam Friedman.

And I am aware the folks online speaking, they don't hear our beep, so they don't know.

So I always feel a little bit bad cutting you off, but please thank you for understanding.

Sam was going to cede to me.

Can I just go?

Hi, I'm Alice Nenderdahl.

Wait, we have to have Sam.

Maybe it's possible that he is there here and or we can come back to Sam.

We will continue on and maybe if Sam is able to attend or come in virtually, we can see time.

I'm so sorry.

Okay, the next speaker is Logan Reichert.

Hello, and thank you for the time.

My name is Logan Reichert, and I've been working at Cleveland High School for 16 years.

And I'm here to speak against the choice to riff 28 parent educators and say ops across the district.

I've had the privilege of working closely with the classified staff at Cleveland.

and these employees are an integral part of our school's interventions and student supports providing direct student services extending beyond what teachers can accomplish in the classroom alone.

Our paraeducators often have the most impactful connections to students and their families and serve as the most trusted adult on campus for a large number of our students and in particular our black and brown students.

I expect that is the same case at other schools as well.

The current situation at Cleveland is challenging and highlights some major issues with this process.

Multiple classified staff members at our school were riffed at the end of April with very little additional information given.

These positions still exist at our school next year, but our chosen hired staff have been removed from the positions by this riff process.

Today, one of our RIFT staff members showed me that their position is currently posted in the internal job listings page at SPS, but is only available to phase two open to displaced classified district employees.

I'll say it again.

A human showed me that their job for next year is on the board that they cannot apply to.

because they were riffed, they cannot apply to this job, their current job, and we have an insufficient explanation of why this has been the process.

Changes happen, process is important, and transparency is necessary to retain trust.

Why was there no published memo, news brief, press relief about the plan to make these changes?

Why not?

I urge the school board and the superintendent to make sure that this is transparently done for our staff.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Lexi Adwizic.

You'll need to press star six to unmute.

Just checking to see if we've found Sam.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

I cede my time to Dr. Ali Thomas, who I believe is there in person.

Hello, I'm Dr. Ali Thomas, esteemed members of the school board, Superintendent Scholdinger, good to see you again, and members of the public.

I am the only black physician that's worked in my medical group during hospitalist medicine for the last 20 years.

I'm a friend of Seattle Public Schools since being a volunteer on the Equity Race and Advisory Committee under the former Superintendent Scholdinger.

and I'm co-founder of the BIPOC health careers ecosystem with a mission to nurture black, brown, and indigenous healers with advanced health degrees.

And I'm calling attention to the importance of and necessity of funding health and medical CTE programs serving Title I schools and to introduce a unique partnership at one school.

When I was 40 years old, there were less black men matriculating through medical school than when I was four years old.

The American Association of Medical Colleges calls this the crisis of black men in medicine.

Less black doctors leads to more black deaths.

No one here, all of you, understands the core issues of this, and you won't be surprised that black male freshmen do not see a future in health.

Health and medical is the largest growing sector of the economy, but what many people don't appreciate is that it's occupationally segregated by race.

Black, brown, and indigenous healthcare workers are concentrated in low-level careers with low-income, poor advancement, negligible impact.

We're changing that at Franklin through a partnership with Keymakers, the BIPOC Health Careers ecosystem, and CTE.

We're raising the understanding of racial health inequities, the awareness of health and medical pathways, including public health, and the ability to advocate for racial health justice.

So I want to thank you for your unique commitment to racial health inequity through the policy 0030 and to welcome your partnership in changing the complexion of advanced health careers in the future.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Angelique Dupriz.

And you need to press star six to unmute.

I'm here to ask you to support keeping the two early childhood developmental classrooms at Greenwood Elementary.

Good evening board members.

My name is Angelique Dupree and I'm a parent of a child in the early childhood developmental program at Greenwood.

Thank you for letting me speak tonight.

I'm here because this program has changed my family's life and because I'm worried about what closing one of our two classrooms will mean for my child and for every family in this community who depends on it.

We are about to lose three educators, three people who know my child's name, who knows what calms them down, what lights them up, how to reach them on their hardest days.

That relationship cannot be replicated by simply redistributing the students.

These are irreplaceable people.

The remaining classroom will be overwhelmed.

From what I understand, we're expecting to start the school year at full enrollment capacity, and because children with IEP's individual education plans who turn three throughout the year continue to be enrolled, that classroom will likely exceed the healthy ratio before the year is even out.

I've also heard concerns that the numbers used to make this decision were pulled from a mid-year count, not end-of-year data, which doesn't reflect how many families this program actually serves.

That matters enormously.

These are young children with high support needs.

A low teacher-to-student ratio isn't a luxury.

It's what makes the program work.

When teachers are stretched too thin without additional compensation for extra hours they put in, we lose them.

And when we lose good teachers and early childhood developmental education, families like mine feel it directly.

Families are already being turned away.

Parents are being told there's no room, including families whose older children already attend Greenwood.

That's not a small administrative change.

That's closing the door on kids who deserve to be there.

This is exactly the wrong place to cut.

The research on early childhood education is clear.

Investing now saves money later.

High-quality early childhood developmental programs reduce the need for more intensive and expensive interventions down the road.

When we underfund programs like this one, we don't eliminate the cost.

We just push them further into the future.

We make our lives of our children harder now in the meantime.

I'm asking you as a parent please reconsider keep both classrooms open.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Jana Horvath.

Good evening.

My name is Jana Horvath.

I am a special education teacher at Rising Star Elementary where a reduction in force cuts are taking the pillar of our community.

The blind cutting by job titles are denying our children access to black educators and support systems in a school that is 89% students of color.

The cut staff member at my school has deep roots in our community and has supported not only my students but their parents inside and outside of the school system.

I speak today to ask the board to closely consider the impact of cutting staff at schools and disrupting our community when there continues to be areas where money is being unnecessarily spent.

The district continues to pay double the salary for staff on administrative leave for up to six to 18 months and for months after the police department has dropped their own investigation.

When a colleague of mine was investigated in 2016, it took six weeks to clear the future of any wrongdoing.

Our justice system in Washington requires citizens to be arraigned within 14 days, not months.

The district continues to need to examine its own processes before denying its children access to incredible educators of colors.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Gabrielle Gersten.

Hi my name is Gabrielle Gerstin and I'm a behavior analyst at PERCH Behavioral Health.

I'm reading this abbreviated letter on behalf of my clinical director but I put 10 copies of the full letter in the handout bin.

My name is Loretta Hall.

I'm a parent of a fourth grade student, a certified Washington State special education teacher, and the clinical director of PERCH Behavioral Health.

PERCH has provided specialized ABA services within SPS for the past six years.

I am writing to express very serious concerns regarding the proposed requirement that all contracted ABA and behavior support providers operate through Sunburst, a division of Emerges, for contract management, rate determination, service coordination, and compensation fulfillment.

My position is outlined below.

One, a merges through Sunburst is not solely an intermediary.

They are also a direct provider of special education support services within the district, requiring independent ABA providers to operate under the oversight of an entity that offers competing services creates a clear and unavoidable conflict of interest.

Two, the Sunburst model requires providers to absorb an approximate 5% fee on top of already reduced reimbursement rates, creating a compounding financial impact.

This model risks a scenario in which it is no longer financially viable to deliver services at the level of quality required, therefore forcing experienced agencies out of the market while their undertrained, cheaper competitors monopolize the field.

Three, staff turnover is expensive for the district and creates gaps in IEP service delivery.

Undertrained frontline staff such as behavior techs from large temp agencies who have high turnover rates results in lower success rates for students.

This often results in ABA providers being present in classrooms at the expense of the district for much longer than necessary.

ABA rates within the district should be standardized based on agency performance and made by the district.

In addition to these three points, Sunburst model creates a concerning shift away from SPS led decision making and adds unnecessary systems for an ideally small need.

I respectfully urge SPS to reconsider the structure of this proposal and that they scrutinize the financial outcomes for both participating agencies and the district itself while ensuring students receive the high quality service they deserve.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Tommy Townsend.

Tommy Townsend.

Okay we're going to move on.

The next speaker is Judson Miller.

Good evening.

Yeah, my name is Judson Meller.

I'm here to urge you to reverse the decision to eliminate our care coordinators in our high schools.

We say we value equity, but decisions like this send a different message.

At Roosevelt, our care coordinator, Ms. Debra.

Shout out to Ms. Debra.

She is a constant present in our students' lives.

She builds relationships, sets high expectations, supports students through one of the most important transitions in their lives from middle school to high school.

For many of our black students, she's more than support, she's representation, trust, and consistency in a system that doesn't always provide that.

I urge you to reinstate these positions for the 2026-27 school year.

Care coordinators are not extras, they're essential to all of our students.

I'm gonna cede the rest of my time to my colleague Denise Jordan.

Hello there, hello, thank you, thank you.

I wanna say thank you to everyone here, thank you to educators, thank you to certified, thank you to certificated and classified, you guys are awesome.

We are here working for students, we work with students every day, we support students, we support them.

but you guys have lost a hundred million dollars.

I'm sorry but you should be paying us for what we do.

Our work with the students is we should be compensated but you are not working with the students every day.

You are not supporting.

So what about you guys?

You can cut some yourself but not us.

Make cuts for you, not us.

We are here supporting the students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Beverly Goodman Good evening everyone and by the way my name is Beverly Murray I got married last year I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity I was always told that a picture is worth a thousand words

This is my grandson, Leon Mason Lacey,

who had surgery last year.

He has one lung.

He had the third of heart, I can't reach it.

He had the third of heart surgeries and he had water in his lung.

He is a student at Rising Star Elementary School under the leadership.

We call her lovingly Miss Eby, so that's what I'm gonna call her because I've only heard her name pronounced twice.

But this is another picture of my grandson Leon.

To me this looks like the picture of a happy child who's in a warm and nurturing environment.

It was brought to my attention that someone, and we won't say names because that's not important, says something very unkind about this woman, that she was against and did not nurture her black and brown students.

I'm here to tell you to this day that that's a falsehood.

This woman is an asset to Seattle Public Schools.

Leon having autism, developmental changes, health changes has been nurtured by this woman.

She is really initial in providing a safe and academically challenged environment for her children.

Like I said, I don't have much to say, just that I just want to make it said.

And I have a letter for you, Superintendent.

I'm challenged and I couldn't get into my email.

But this woman is, I can't say any more for her and what she's done for us.

Leon was seven years old to be potty trained.

Ms. Eby was initial in that she's attended his birthday parties so I'm not sure who said this about this woman but I am here to tell you today that that's a lie this woman is an asset to Seattle Public Schools and if more teachers were like her this would be a better school district for it and may I approach you to give you my letter because I couldn't do that

Yes, I think if we...

Can I give it to your security?

I'm not.

There's only thing in my pocket.

All right, we're going to go back through the people who are not available the first time around and then we will move into the wait list.

Kure Shusan.

Okay, Lucas McDonald.

Tommy Townsend.

Okay.

Oh, excuse me, and Sam Friedman.

All right, we're gonna move into the wait list.

Erin McAllister.

You'll have to press star six to unmute.

Iris.

We can hear you.

I will see my time to Allison.

I am still Alice Nunderdahl.

I teach seventh grade math at Meany.

Meany is a small school.

We've had two rifts and at least three displacements that I know of.

And this is close to 10% of our staff.

These changes will impact 100% of our students.

The district consistently undercounts our enrollment, leading to high class sizes at the start of the year.

This fall, I had an advisory class of 45. Four out of my five classes were an overage.

Due to the purple book changes, my class sizes will likely be even higher next year.

Thanks!

Leading families to leave and enrollment to decline.

Eventually, we will rehire folks.

Having saved no money, these cuts don't balance the budget.

we will once again be starting the year understaffed and overwhelmed.

I would now like to read a statement from one of our display staff, first-year visual arts teacher Keller Spitz.

As a displaced teacher, there are a lot of emotions running through my mind and heart at this time.

Sadness at being forced to leave my community behind, anger that my agency has been taken away during this process, frustration that this leaves my school understaffed in a position where they will inevitably have to scramble to fill the gap at the start of the school year.

In a system that is fighting every day to undo the injustices of the past, the injustice of this process is made even more stark.

Why does this happen every year in a city that is well resourced?

The district asks for quality educators, hires quality educators, then they spend their first pivotal years of their career shipped from school to school, uprooting them from their communities and accelerating burnout.

This is a broken process and it needs to stop.

And that was our final speaker.

Thank you everyone for being here tonight, for giving up your valuable time to provide public comment.

I would like to try to get through student rep comments and board comments before we take a little bit of a break.

that's part of the process here.

But we'll start with student representative comments, so Representative Yoon.

Okay, so the first update we have is we would just like to thank the WEBS team for working so hard with us.

We have a separate page on the SPS website for student representatives, and we have outlined our Instagram page and our contact information, student rep contact information.

public testimony info.

There's a direct link that will take you to public testimony signups and also FAQs such as describing what policy 1250 is just to be more transparent with students on our role and that they could reach out to us if they feel like.

The second update I have is, so last fall, Jade Mary Warren, she's the Garfield High School BSU president, she led a community engagement session between her BSU, Garfield's BSU, and SPD.

This was a very restorative conversation about what safety meant to students.

and she was very inspired by that model and she wanted to bring that model to a larger scale.

So right now she's currently also serving as a Youth Safety Ambassador for City of Seattle's Department of Education and Early Learning deal.

And she has shared her experience and because she shared her experience, staff were very supportive of, oh wait, that's a great model.

We would also like to follow something similar.

And there was a nonprofit in Oregon that actually facilitated that conversation, that restorative conversation.

It was called Talk a Mile.

So then it became a partnership between DL, SPS, our student reps, and the Youth Safety Ambassadors, and Talk a Mile.

And we have basically followed this engagement session model and are opening it to kind of the general student population.

And what we want to do is provide a student space that allows for civic leaders to also be there so that students could have kind of those honest conversations about what safety means to them.

So I just wanted to share that update.

I think Superintendent Shoulder will be attending next Wednesday as well along with other civic leaders and SPD.

So we are very excited that this is kind of, this is a really big milestone for us because it's just been very logistically challenging to coordinate among so many organizations.

So I would just like to thank all community partners who are part of this and encourage students to attend.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Representative Yoon.

And sort of a good transition as we move into board comments.

This is Representative Yoon's last meeting with us as student representative.

She has served in this role for two years and it has been Awesome Representative Yoon to watch you both grow in this role.

I think I remember a start where you're like, I don't know.

There's no rules.

There's no handbook here.

What do I do to really building out a program that is new and making it stronger and better and updating the policy and saying, what is working with this program?

What is not?

And how do we better bring student voice to this program and to the board and the school district in general?

So thank you so much for all that you have given to Seattle Public Schools.

I think that whatever happens next, and I think it's an awesome flight somewhere with language learning over the summer.

But I know you will be successful, and I want to give other board directors an opportunity to say wonderful things about how awesome you are.

Director Rankin, I know she's been asking when this is coming.

I was like, do it before everybody else leaves because I want as many people are here to have the chance to hear us recognize an incredible student.

I'm going to miss you, Sabi.

Saabi came two years ago, and we've only had the student board member program for three-ish years.

And she immediately recognized that there was room to grow, and it was time to go from piloting the program to really defining what this program is.

And I can't even tell folks how many different things she has been instrumental to that we probably won't even really know until she's gone and then go, oh, Sabi did that.

Oh, Sabi did that.

She's been a true, you've been a true joy to work with and get to know.

And selfishly, I'm glad that we have the student program so that our paths could cross.

And working with you on Policy 1250 was so much fun.

And it also, you know, we got to share frustrations of systems that move really slowly.

But the way that you embraced that and dug in and didn't give up and wanted to get whatever you could done done, was really wonderful and inspiring, and you have a wisdom well beyond your years, too.

When she inevitably runs for some form of public office, I hope that you will all vote for her not to use this as a campaigning.

I'm not using public resources to campaign.

But she's incredible and I fully expect her to be leading us all, continuing to lead us all.

I also want to take a moment to just thank Ted Howard, Sabrina Burr, and Mary Furtakis for leaning in and supporting our students.

And I know that she was able to just access more information and get on her feet more quickly in having the support of folks who know the system and who are willing to dedicate additional time to making her successful.

I'm talking about you like you're not here.

Yeah, and I know, I can't wait to see what you do next.

And I know I'm going to hear about it from you because I'm not going to let you just disappear.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Director Song?

Sabi, I want to thank you so much for your service on this board.

And we overlapped for a relatively short amount of time, but I feel really honored to have been part of your SBS journey, even if it was just the tail end.

Sabi and I and Director Mizrahi, we participated in this meeting with elected leaders from Daejeon, South Korea.

and they were really impressed with our student who did the meeting in Korean, which is very impressive, but they were just really amazed that our district was able to produce a student like Sabi with these kind of leadership skills.

She had the maturity to have a conversation with very senior people from Daejeon, South Korea City, much larger than ours, and I felt really I just really enjoyed witnessing you in that moment.

My young kids actually watch school board meetings live on YouTube from home because they like to see what mommy is doing, but they kind of want to know roughly what time we're going to be coming home.

So they very much know who all the directors and our student representatives are, and I shared with them that this was going to be your last meeting.

So they wish you congratulations, best of luck.

And I would say myself as a parent to Asian American students, it feels It's really wonderful to have a role model like you.

I think as myself as a young person, I didn't have a quarter of the leadership skills that you have.

So thank you for being an incredible role model to our students and please keep in touch with us.

We are huge cheerleaders for you.

Any others?

Well, Vice President Briggs.

I'll keep it short, but I can't really say it any better than it's already been said, but you really are exceptional, Saabi, and I do hope you'll run for something.

Please let it be president.

But I'm voting for you no matter what it is.

Director Mizrahi.

I'll just add quickly it's been a pleasure to serve on the board with you and I think you often ask the most insightful and pointed questions on the board and I'll just one memory is when we were dealing with the two lunch issue and we held a meeting and President Topp and Director Clark at the time and myself were like, who is going to lead this meeting?

And you stepped in and you led the meeting for us and you did a great job and you handled a really tough situation, but you handled it professionally, but also showed a lot of empathy and care for your fellow students.

And I think that's a really special skill and one that we can all learn from.

So thank you.

Well, thank you, Representative Yoon.

And as a small token, we have a little gift and a card for you, and I think it's at your seat somewhere.

Perfect.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

I just want to thank you for all your kind words, but also it's truly been an honor to be entrusted in this role.

It's been really hard to be in this role, but I think with the support with Mr. Howard and all the board directors and people at Saab, it's been really easy.

I'm getting very emotional because So much has happened in this role and I think when I first had my board meeting here I was kind of confused on what the student rep comment was and here I am now just blowing through everything and I know everything and I know what needs to be fixed and I'm glad I spent a lot of my time and personal time dedicating to making this role better and for students.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is when you're up here, you're not, I just take off my hat as sobby.

I'm not sobby anymore.

I want to think I am the 49,000 students.

It's hard to bring all 49,000 student voices, but you can always listen to them.

And when I say listen, not just saying, oh, what do you think?

And not just that, it's just going back to that conversation and saying, hey, I heard you say this, but and it wasn't reflected in a decision or it wasn't reflected in a conversation, but saying, like said this and we could still go back to it.

I think that was really important to me is like following through and being able to look at things in a different way.

There are a lot of times I have conflicting views with people and I don't always show it but I think that's kind of the beauty of this role is that you learn a lot from that and it's tough but whoever is in my role next year I have a lot of hope that this program will continue to grow.

And again, it's just been a big honor to have this opportunity to take it as a learning experience, but also represent my fellow peers.

And there's, again, a lot of work to be done, but I'm just very thankful and grateful that I was the chosen three students to be in this role.

So yeah, I just want to thank all my peers, community members, board directors.

And yeah, it's been a rough journey.

And I think it's, yeah.

Thank you, Representative Yunnan.

You're not done yet.

We still have a whole board meeting here to go.

So with that, we'll go to board director's committee reports and liaison reports.

I know our committees have been meeting, so Director Song.

I have a finance and audit committee update.

We met just this past Monday.

Is that Monday?

Yeah.

Last Monday.

May 4th.

Our committee reviewed with staff briefing papers on categories of spending and kind of decided as a committee which ones we want to do a deeper dive in.

So I invite my committee members to help me compile questions that we can submit to staff.

and hopefully get answers on what we're spending money on in those categories.

We have a May 18th meeting.

It will be audit themed meeting.

We will be getting the state auditors exit conference and we will also be reviewing a couple of completed audits that are school based including one that needs a corrective action.

and we will be reviewing our work plan for internal audits.

I know some committees have already suggested some potential things that we could add to our work plan so I look forward to that conversation and kind of just a preview we will be updating our public advisor role description because hopefully we will be posting that up for application.

So I invite interested community members to consider applying and being a part of our committee.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Song.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah I'll keep it short because it's a topic on the agenda but the policy committee continues to meet and talk about how policies become policies so it's you know like a mirror facing another mirror but it is but we were very productive and we actually have a policy that we're bringing forward to the board tonight so looking forward to talking about that once it's on the agenda.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah for the Operations Committee we reviewed the upcoming standing agenda items that are going to come before the board and started to be able to ask deeper questions about those.

Some of those are in this meeting some of them will be posted in a later meeting.

We went over our work plan and started to review the needs both of policy and of the committee around the student assignment plan and student assignment transition plan and how that plays out and what the roles are within those.

within the BEX committee there was a presentation last Friday on energy uses throughout our schools and what we're doing as a district to work on reducing our energy intake across our schools to be compliant with both city and state goals to become more energy efficient.

So really looking at how our new schools are measuring and kind of what we're regularly looking at that on a district level both across our old buildings and across our new ones.

Thank you.

Any liaison reports.

Director Rankin.

Yeah just briefly Council of Great City Schools representative at the federal level the I think I mentioned at the at our during our budget work session that for at least the next school year there was approval from Congress on a budget and home and security and all of those things are back up and running and there's continuing conversations about various funding streams.

But the one major thing that impacts us that was part of that is that for grant title grants that districts receive from the federal government even though there's restructuring slash elimination of the Department of Education for at least the upcoming school year grants will still be distributed to states through the Department of Ed.

They're trying to move some of those grants to Department of Labor Department of Interior or some other things as they attempt to dismantle the the institution but I don't know if I can't figure out quite how to do it or what other barriers are but for at least this coming school year those grants should be coming to states as previously scheduled which is great news because what it means mostly is that we won't have delay.

A year ago there was questions about where how the money would be distributed.

So for next year we should be getting those as expected.

I attend a monthly call with other Council of Great City Schools district board directors and urban districts across the country are all dealing with a lot of similar things that we are just aging facilities that were built post World War Two that now people don't have necessarily the fund the funding to maintain them and the national trends and declining enrollment with fewer fewer children.

So it's interesting to hear about what we have in common and what is different.

We're really lucky that we have these huge local grants.

But other districts are looking at how they use their facilities and how to balance the needs of their community with their available resources in a lot of different ways.

Philly is doing some really good look at their facilities.

and Cincinnati is actually utilizing some underutilized spaces in really good ways to serve the community.

One example that they gave was creating a resource hub for homeless families.

So families experiencing homelessness who have students in their system have actually a place to store their things to get some resources.

I know I can't remember if they're actually spending the night there but it's there's there's more things that school building can be.

than a school and there are a lot of needs that our community has and other school districts are stepping up in ways to meet those needs and we could we should be paying attention to that.

One last thing Broward County in Florida was one of the first districts to do a cell phone policy maybe five years ago.

And I'm just flagging for you superintendent if you hear about her I can reach out and get more information.

They had some interesting things about tech in the classroom that were some things that we hadn't haven't really thought about in terms of just just information about how it's being used.

So I will try to get more information about that.

But you know lots of districts going through similar things and the more we can be connected the more opportunities we have to solve them here.

Any other liaison reports.

Director Smith.

For the scholarship committee the gazing report nothing new but I do want to give the reminder and invitation again that the scholarship presentation ceremony honoring the awardees is May 28th.

So that's this month at 7 p.m.

at Franklin.

All right we will take a break.

We will take a recess till 625. That's eight minutes.

We'll have an eight minute break.

We have a lot to go through still tonight.

So we will be back here at 625 for our business items.

All right, I've got a quorum.

Folks are running late.

There we go.

All right, so we are back at it.

Thank you.

All right, welcome back, folks.

We are on to the business action items on our agenda.

and that will start with the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

Do directors have items they want to pull.

I have a clarifying question on an item that I don't need to pull but I want to ask the question.

OK.

For the CTE plan.

it's 2026 so that for the school year we just left or the school year are entering.

And then in terms of the budget setting we have information about how the budget has been has been spent.

Where is the opportunity to talk about or ensure that the future budget aligns with meeting the needs of the program.

So if there's.

A quick answer to that.

That would be really helpful.

Thank you so much for that question.

I would like not to pull it.

Sure.

Thank you so much for the question.

The question I would have is if We're not pulling it, but we're now having a conversation about something on the consent agenda.

There's a little bit of a question about, can we even have this conversation?

So I'm happy to.

I just want to defer to the president.

Can we answer the questions quickly, or do we?

Oh, we can absolutely answer the question quickly.

Dr. Michael Strausski, do you mind inviting your team up to answer that question, if you would like?

Thank you.

And to Ben's point, apologies.

This is bad board behavior.

Not at all.

Mike Strotsky assistant superintendent of academics.

I would like to call Dr. Perkins to quickly answer your question.

Questions.

It is a confusing term.

The plan is for what's happening this year.

The board does have an opportunity to review the CTE budget and the plan through the overall budget process that you approve.

Thank you so much.

Are there any items that folks want to pull from the consent agenda.

All right I'll go to the student representatives representative Yoon for your advisory position we advise pro thank you now for the vote all those in favor of the consent signify by saying aye aye aye aye aye aye Thank you those opposed say no.

All right seeing none we have the consent agenda has passed.

Okay we're moving right along to the action items on today's agenda.

The first one is approval for closure of middle college instructional site at Seattle Central College beginning in the 26-27 school year.

Motion for the item.

I move that the school board approve the closure of the middle college instructional site at Seattle Central College.

Second.

OK the motion has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

Superintendent Shoulder do we have any staff who.

I mean I'm happy to answer and or talk about it as you saw there was a presentation with the principal of Middle College just as a clarification we are not shutting down a school we are shutting down one location of that school that principal will still exist that school will still exist those students will be able to go to the one campus that is on North Seattle College which is a college that has been very very supportive of this work.

I'm happy to answer any more questions that you might need to have.

Thank you.

OK questions or discussion from board directors.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, I know that there were, I forget the exact number, but a certain number of kids who were most impacted by it.

And at the last presentation, we were told that they were still in process of finding placements.

I don't expect to have the answer tonight, but it'd be great to continue to get updated as a board about making sure that all those kids got placed in good places.

Absolutely.

It was about 10 students, most of whom can either go or choosing to go to North or any other high school in the city, but happy to give you an update.

Director Rankin.

Thank you this is actually for Director Mizrahi maybe but also for the public as the chair of the policy committee just that I think there's opportunity here this makes sense to me it's the closure of a site not a school the school is middle college the site is this one place but I think there is there is maybe not even growing, but a longstanding need to clarify between a school, the building, a school, the student population, a program, a service.

This is not the first time that this sort of question has come up.

And so I would just encourage us as we're looking at our delegation policies and some of our other things that we're working on for the governance manual that we think really clearly about.

you know state law is state law.

We the board can also say we require board approval for X or we the board are defining you know this and that that clarity would be really helpful.

Other board directors.

Okay I will go to our student rep representative Yun for their.

We did a motion in a second.

We advise pro.

Okay, thank you.

And then I will ask for the roll call please.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Smith?

Aye.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Moving right along to the approval of the 26-27 regular board meeting dates.

May I have a motion for this item?

Is it really required for me to read each and every date?

yes okay cool get ready everybody buckle up I move that the board approve the following 20 20 26 27 regular board meeting dates August 26 2026 September 16 2026 October 7th 2026 November 18 2026 December 16th 2026 January 17th 2027 oh sorry January 27 20 27. February 24, 2027, March 17, 2027, April 21, 2027, May 12, 2027, June 2, 2027, July 7, 2027. Special meetings of the board will be held in addition to these regular board meeting dates.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Do I have to second each of those dates or no?

Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Vice President Briggs and a second by Director Mizrahi.

My notes say I'm gonna pass it over to Superintendent Schuldner, but I can also talk a little bit to this item.

I am happy to defer to the President of the Board.

So this is essentially the calendar for the upcoming year.

It looks somewhat similar to this year.

We will have one regular board meeting as required by state law.

We also have a special meeting each month.

It is calendared out.

Superintendent Shoulder I and the board staff worked really hard on these dates making sure that we space them out.

So staff had enough time to get us materials to what we looked at holidays.

Hopefully everything works out all right and we don't come into the situation where we have this year where we're voting to change a date because of a FIFA match that conflicts.

I know that there is interest from board directors to create a more structured calendar.

I think going through this process this year was really interesting to see how difficult that will be because of changes needed.

but I think that that is a great thing that the policy committee should discuss to see if there is a structured cadence in which we want to have.

But other than that, I will open it up to questions or comments.

Director Rankin.

Yeah, you already touched on it a little bit, but I am actually super frustrated with the calendaring process.

It shouldn't actually take a lot of time of the board president, superintendent, and staff to juggle where do we think there should have meetings.

Every other district says our regular meeting is the first Wednesday of the month, our regular meeting is the first Tuesday of the month, is the second Wednesday of the month, and has a policy that says if this falls on a holiday, this happens.

This is just like one of many and sorry if you're tired of hearing me harp on these things but I got a year and a little bit left to do that and I'm really so exhausted of having the same conversation over and over.

Now if I'm the only one that thinks something and we want this conversation off the table somebody needs to tell me that but otherwise it feels like there's this work that's happening there's these conversations that have been had and then we get to a point where we just make the same decision that we made the year before and it is exceedingly frustrating.

we should have, and this is also for us in the policy committee, a board procedure that sets the expectation for when we have board meetings.

one regular board meeting a month is required by law but we the board can decide it's the first meeting of the month it's the whatever law requires that we determine that ahead of time for the public for transparency so that they know when to expect a regular board meeting special meetings there's a little bit more flexibility in terms of OPMA and scheduling we don't have to approve those meetings ahead of time but It took me way longer than it should have to figure out why we have different types of meetings because nobody ever talked about it.

And so I don't want to put our new colleagues in the position of just going, I guess I just have to check my calendar for when I have a meeting, or I guess we have to do whatever staff says or whatever the legal team says.

We were elected.

We actually do have authority.

And that authority is robbed from us when we don't know what this job is. and so the calendar is an example of yes there's state statute that requires certain number of meetings but then we the board can and should decide how often we're going to meet and how we're going to structure those agendas.

This is work that a considerable amount of time and effort was put into by more than one board director and that just disappeared in the last couple of years and so yes let's talk about it in a policy committee but also like oh my gosh Annually, we should be looking at our own regulations for setting board meetings, looking back and saying, did we follow it last year?

Did it work?

Do we want to continue that going forward or do we want changes to our own procedure?

That's a board conversation.

That's not a staff conversation.

And so I'm obviously on a bit of a soapbox and I'm just so frustrated with this, a lot of things.

And I don't want future boards to have to take the time talking about the calendar when they should be talking about students.

and I don't want future board members to wonder when they even have a meeting or why.

Can I ask you a clarifying question, Liza?

What is the problem?

I'm just not sure.

So what did we not do last year?

Or what happened last year that specifically, was it the unpredictability of our special meetings?

Just of every meeting.

Because I did actually have the experience of looking at my calendar and being like, oh, I didn't expect to see that there.

That for sure happened, but I guess I didn't know the behind the scenes why.

So do you have insight into what was going on there?

That's kind of what I'm addressing is the problem, is that you're part of the board, you're required to show up at board meetings, and you have no understanding of why these decisions were made or the opportunity to provide as a member of the board.

any input into that.

But it's the irregularity and then also the confusion around, and it even just came up in public testimony, around there used to be two regular board meetings a month.

Per state law, those had to be set and announced at the beginning of the year.

So even though we decided to move away from that, Everybody knew when the board meetings were.

You didn't have to check your email, check the, you know, community members didn't have to check the board calendar.

The regular meetings were set.

We moved away from two regular board meetings with the understanding we would continue to have two meetings a month.

that the second one would allow us some more flexibility to actually, and this is again, different board, different superintendent, but the intention behind that was not to reduce the number of board meetings.

The intention was to allow more flexibility with the second meeting being a special meeting to go out and have meetings in the community.

We have a superintendent who's much more embracing and proactive of the idea of community engagement, so that mechanism maybe is not We don't need to force that through board meetings anymore.

But my point is, we need to decide as a board, what do we want to hold meetings for?

When are they?

And then the calendar needs to be set based on that so that we make sure we have the time to get our work done.

And also, I don't know, maybe members of this board, this is just total conjecture, it should be a discussion of if we would like to have two regular meetings, if people want to have public testimony more often, that's the main difference or not.

But I feel like every board member should have the opportunity to participate in that rather than just roll over whatever was before.

And I think the bigger issue is really understanding where our time needs to be spent in our meetings.

So I just want to, I'll add and clarify a little bit.

These this holds a pattern of one regular board meeting and one special meeting.

these dates will be set so there is some consistency so hopefully you don't run into this problem.

All the dates for the regular board meetings and the special meetings are set so you can see next year when they are happening.

I do think that if we want a different cadence this would be an opportunity to talk about what that different cadence if we want a different day that's why it's on the calendar here we can make amendments and we can make amendments from the diocese of how we would like to see things differently and also I think call up staff a little bit on why they suggested these days because they're looking at both staffing calendars, holidays, school breaks and those sorts of things.

The goal was always to have one regular board meeting and one special meeting.

I think Superintendent Shouldner and I talked about how it would be nice to have this special meeting before the regular meeting each month.

That doesn't always if you're looking at the calendar that doesn't always happen from a date perspective but that was the goal in sort of deciding the dates.

Some inquisitive looks of like why special meetings you can introduce items that could then be voted on at the regular board meeting.

So it just provided an opportunity there for ease of work.

Further questions or comments.

Director Song.

I think that it's a good idea not to put this special meetings set in stone because I like having the flexibility of having more or less I don't want us to just have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting.

But it was always my understanding that the reason we switched to just having one meeting a month is because part of student outcomes focus governance is that we were trying to be more intentional about our time.

So I guess I'm not sure what the objection is that we're not being properly notified about why we're having a special meeting.

I'm confused.

No, no.

My objection is, and I agree, the whole point of having the second meeting being a special meeting was so that we could have more flexibility without having to re-approve the calendar.

There still continues to be confusion about the board reduced how many times it meets.

and we didn't do that.

We didn't reduce how many times we meet.

I still hear that from people.

Oh, I see what you mean.

You don't have as many meetings anymore.

And it's like, no, we do.

What changed was this.

But I think there's also just my experience of, oh, we have a meeting.

And what are meetings for?

does align with being intentional about how we spend our time.

And we, I mean, even when there used to be two regular board meetings a month scheduled, if there was no business, it didn't happen very often, but if there was no business, it would get canceled and you can always do that.

I have a, yeah.

Yeah.

Director Lavallee.

yeah just based on what you said I do have a little bit of concern of stacking the special meetings next to the regular board meetings just because if something's being introduced there having the time to sit and process it and discuss the item that's being introduced before it goes for action not having it come for action an hour later

No, weeks before.

Sorry, I thought you were saying stacking them right next to each other and I was like, oh no, absolutely not.

If you look in the bar, there is the sample calendar and it's color-coded with a special meeting and then usually a week break is the goal and then a regular meeting.

That way there's also some time for a community to organize if there is an issue.

The way that that had just been said, I was like, oh, absolutely not.

But that was my own misunderstanding.

Director Smith.

My comment is along the same lines of some concern around the special meeting being in the same month having inter items and then voting for them in the regular board meeting.

I definitely see the value in being able to move a little bit faster that way.

But my experience on the board so far is that we have an intro item, we have some discussion and then like the week of the action item we get floods of email, tons of feedback and it feels like it's really too late to do our due diligence and really address the concerns we're getting.

That is with the whole month ahead so it's not just about how much notice there is but being able to better communicate to the community like what's happening.

So if we have a shorter gap between intro and action, I think we would have to be really intentional about finding ways to clearly communicate like this issue is coming up so that we can get the community input.

I'd love to get input before the intro item because that's when we actually have our chance to discuss.

and hopefully some of that is pulled into the policy committee or not not the policy all our committee work because people will be more aware of what's happening because it's happening in our policy committee so they know what's coming up and how to be involved that is the goal of some of the committee work I would say

Yeah, just in response to that, I think.

Director Mizrahi.

I think one, I think you hit on this, but I think people act urgently when things are urgent.

So I think you could have three months notice and people are going to send you the emails right before the meeting.

But I do think that I've seen other districts do more, have more discussion and conversation on first reading, which we tend to treat first reading as like a bit of like a pro forma, like now we've read it, let's on to the next thing.

And I think actually front loading some of that conversation early in a first reading, which we don't have to change any policy to do, we should just do it actually gives the public more sort of insight into what we're thinking where each director is coming from and also just gives us time to like work through issues so we're not scrambling at the end to try and amend things or whatever.

So I think that we could probably control that more through our own behavior than anything we change here in policy.

Other questions?

All right I will ask staff for the roll call please.

Director Smith?

Aye.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

President Topp?

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

And I'll ask board staff to send out all the dates, calendar dates, for both the regular and special for the upcoming year so that we have them all in our calendar and then also posted easily on our website so folks are aware.

And on special meetings, if we don't have any material, which I have a whole list of stuff from Superintendent Schultner, what he wants to talk about in work sessions, so I don't see that happening anytime soon, but if it does, we will definitely cancel a special meeting.

Approval of the 26-27 regular board meeting date.

So that's this year is next on the agenda.

May I have a motion for this item?

Wait, we're, oh, oh, okay, sorry.

Approval to amend, approval of amendment to the 2025-2026 regular board meeting, oh, pfft, oh my gosh, sorry.

I move that the school board amend the 2025-2026 regular board meeting dates to change the date of the July 2026 meeting from July 1st, 2026 to July 8th, 2026. Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Okay, I have a motion from Vice President Briggs and a second from Director Mizrahi.

So this is our approved dates from last year.

I'm suggesting we move July 1st to July 8th because there is a FIFA World Cup game on July 1st and I imagine that traffic and the city might be a little crazy about right here in this area.

Thank you to Chief Operating Officer Podesta for flagging this issue for us.

but any questions or comments from board directors?

Director Smith.

I just have a question about how this fits in with the regulation or the requirement to be approving the whole calendar a year ahead of time like we just did.

So if this goes down then we will all be fighting traffic on July 1st.

All right I'll ask for the staff to call the roll please.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Smith?

Yes.

President Topp?

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

and I have made an error.

I've not been looking at my script.

For both of the last two, I did not go to our student representative.

So I'm gonna go back real fast.

So it's the student representative for the 26, 27 calendar, the advisory position, please.

Advise pro.

And then for the next, for the changing of the meeting date, the student advisory also pro.

Thank you so much.

I'm so sorry.

All right, then we're going to move on to approval of revisions to board policy number 1,220 board officers and duties and board meetings, 1,240 committees, 1,310 board policy manuals and superintendent procedures and 1,400 board meetings.

May I have a motion for this item?

I move that the board approve revisions to board policy numbers 1220 board officers and duties of board members 1240 committees 1310 board policies manuals and superintendent procedures and 1400 board meetings as attached to this board action report.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

I have a motion from Vice President Briggs a second from Director Mizrahi and I'm going to pass it over to Director Mizrahi to present this item.

Yes, yeah.

I'll walk through it and would love the help of my fellow committee members as well if I miss anything.

But this is the inaugural policy from the policy committee.

Very exciting, I know.

People have been waiting a long time for this.

And you know, in true form to our name, it's actually a revision to like five policies.

But you know really we wanted to tackle first and foremost the question of how policy becomes a policy, how we revise policy and it was not super clear and it was also you know somewhat of a nebulous but maybe like gatekeeping policy or practice as well the way that that would happen.

So we wanted to get really clear and have a really clear process so anyone can understand how a board director or someone else could bring a policy to the board.

So I'll walk through it just like how it's going to work.

So the way that it happens now will still be a method of getting a policy onto our agenda, which is the president and the superintendent in their agenda setting meeting say, we're going to put this on the agenda and it gets on the agenda.

So that still remains one method for a policy to get on the agenda.

The other is for it to pass through committee.

So if a committee says this is a policy that we think, as we're doing right now, that the policy committee thinks should be a policy, that is one way for it to get onto the agenda.

The same would be true for the finance committee or the operations committee.

If there's something within their purview that they think should come to the full board, they can send it to the board from the committee.

and more on that in a second.

The third way would be for a board director to bring it up as an amendment to the agenda and then it would be voted on as an amendment and it would need to receive four votes.

So anytime there's four votes for something, it can get added to the agenda.

So I want to just clarify a few things here.

So on the passing through committee and how something comes from committee to the full board, we still have our first and second reading structure.

That's not in state law.

That's just something that we've adopted as a board, but is I think considered to be a good practice as we just talked about it.

a minute ago, our recommendation in this policy would be to say that if it gets a unanimous vote out of committee, then that would then bypass first reading.

So then it could go straight to action at the full board, because that means it already has three board member support, it's gone through committee, hopefully been vetted and well discussed in those public committee meetings, and then is then voted on by the full board just for action at the next meeting.

We already have lots of exceptions to the first and second reading structure.

if it's something that we deem to be urgent.

So this would be another exception to that.

So that's on the committee and how that would work.

If it just comes out of the committee with only two committee members supporting it, then it would just come to first and second reading to the full board.

the second thing I wanted to bring up on this amendment issue so the other thing that we're clarifying in policy is that it is appropriate and possible for board directors to make amendments from the dais so that would be anytime we're discussing any policy not even something that comes from one of these policy committees that as long as it's sort of structurally in line with the thing that we're talking about, board directors can make amendments to a policy that we are currently discussing.

And then the way that would work is folks would vote on the amendments to the policy before voting on the underlying issue.

So because we're clarifying that, that's also why we can make amendments to the agenda because the agenda is something else that we should be approving.

So we would be able to make amendments to the agenda to add something the agenda, that would still be, if you're amending an agenda to add a policy item, that would still be only a first reading.

So it would just be an information item at that point and then we would be taking action on it at a subsequent meeting.

So those are the big changes.

The other minor change is where it got very confusing.

We are changing the language from policy amendment to policy revision because every time we change a policy, we refer to it as a policy amendment.

But then we're also talking about amendments, which means that we end up talking about amendments to policy amendments.

So now if we're changing one of our own policies, we're calling that a policy revision.

And when we talk about amendments, we're talking about amendments that we're making to whatever item we're discussing.

Yeah so that's the really broad strokes of it but as you can see it kind of touches with these tendrils a lot of different board policies.

That's why there's the change to the board officer roles, the committees, the board policies and our board meeting structure.

Anything for my fellow policy committee members?

I'll go to the policy committee first.

Director Rankin.

Yeah I just wanted to add again this is my soapbox for the evening I guess.

This is where historically the district has basically treated the board as a danger and taking control of things that the board actually should own.

So we are told you can't do that you can't bring forward this nope nope nope.

and mechanisms that actually don't apply to us are applied to us.

So this is a bit of a baby step to separating policies of the board that direct the district in alignment with state law and agreements or policies, procedures, practices.

We may want to call it something else just to help separate.

In state law, it's bylaws, but that gets into a whole Robert's Rules definition thing.

we have the authority as a board to decide how we want to do our work.

And obviously we comply with the law, but the law allows for and directs boards to establish its own ways of working as a board.

Now there's a lot of assumptions in that that are that we all know what we're doing.

and we don't and we've been allowed as a board, I don't mean us specifically personally, just the Royal We Seattle School Board has allowed itself to be driven by staff and to be frustrated by it too.

I don't think anybody's done this on purpose.

It's inertia and we have to really clearly define our work and our expectations for ourselves and how we're going to do things like something as simple as setting a calendar.

And if you look at pretty much any other district in Washington State and across the country, you will see district operational procedures and boards Some people call them bylaws.

I don't know.

I don't think anybody in Washington State calls them bylaws.

But they will be called board processes or governance processes or something that defines.

Because between board meetings, we don't exist.

we only exist when we're here and so because of that we have to have agreements about how things work so something as simple as making an amendment which is not only allowed is a necessary part of the democratic process we've been told we can't actually do and that is a huge problem and that's because we don't have ownership over our own operations as a board not as a school district as a board so this is kind of a step towards hopefully getting clarity around we actually don't work for anybody in this building.

We as a body, employee a superintendent to run this building and the whole district.

And so that does mean that there are limits on us.

That does mean we have to, you know, create and maintain commitments to each other, to the public.

But we have to be able to do our job as representatives of the community.

And the only way we can do that is by taking control of and understanding governance processes so that we can do that effectively.

Other board directors?

I will I will say I'm excited for the clarity I think part of this is what how we operate and it provides a clear understanding I hope for all board directors on how something gets onto the agenda and I appreciate the work that the policy committee did in in doing this work and I think that as there are questions we can also ask our legal counsel about how things operate or what is or is not allowed but otherwise I think this is great work from our policy committee.

Yeah I just want to echo my appreciation too because I feel like this is something we've been it's been very muddled and we've gone around and around trying to get clarity on it and have failed and it's very frustrating because it feels like it should be straightforward so I'm just grateful that you guys finally figured it out.

Any other comments or questions?

Then we'll go to board staff for the roll call, please.

Oh, yes.

I'll go to our student representative for their advisory position.

Be advised pro.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin.

Yes.

Director Smith.

Yes.

Director Song.

Yes.

President top.

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Love it.

Very exciting.

So we're going to end pretty early tonight, which means our executive session can't start till 830. So we're all going to have to- Wait, wait.

We still have introduction.

Yeah, I know.

We're still going to do introduction.

We have only one last item on the agenda.

It's an introduction item.

We will take a little bit of time to do that.

But we have some extra time.

Well, we will have a little bit of extra time before our executive session begins at 830 on the performance of a public employee.

So with that- We will move into the introduction items on today's agenda, which is the declaring 3020 East Ciesler Way residential property as surplus and authorizing the district to market the property for sale.

I think I'm going to Director Lavallee.

Yeah, thank you.

So in the introduction of this item, the approval of the sales of residential property located at 3020 East Yesler Way, it was given to the school district and to be used exclusively to benefit Leschi Elementary School.

The district has gone ahead and looked at all options that the school might be able to utilize the property for, and it has been decided that it is in the best interest of the district and of the school to go ahead and sell the residential property and use the funds to benefit Leschi Elementary.

We did discuss this a little bit in the Operations Committee as well, asked a number of questions about it, and I know this had been brought up in the BEX Committee, which myself and Director Song were in and listened to as well.

There is no way legally to have it benefit the entire district.

This was exclusively gifted to the one school.

The sale of the property is were priced to provide the sale of at least $855,000, 90% of the appraised value.

Anything under that would need to come back to the board for approval at this point in time.

I believe I got everything.

Are there any questions or Superintendent Scholdiner, did you have any statements?

I mean, my only statement was I was hoping this was going to be the superintendent's house, but I appreciate that that's not OK.

So just for everybody listening, exactly as was said, this was a wonderful gift.

We wanted to benefit the elementary school.

So thank you.

Are there any director questions?

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I understand that somebody donated this house specifically to benefit last year, which is awesome.

What limitations are on the type of support?

Like, I guess, where's the determination of, or have we not gotten there yet?

But what type of benefit?

Like, because it's property, does it have to be capital expenditures?

Does the community, does the Lusci community, are they going to be included in what they think would benefit their community most?

This is just a really unique that I don't remember having encountered before.

So I'm just curious how and who will be deciding what the use actually is.

That's a good question.

I don't have full clarity on that.

I believe that it is anything that goes to the benefit of Leschi Elementary and there is no restrictions on that so long as it's going to that school.

And that is my understanding.

If staff wants to jump in here.

Yeah.

I just think it does have to be capital.

It does say capital.

Okay.

Excuse me.

Yes.

I missed that.

I apologize.

Capital eligible.

Yeah.

I was just noticing that it says that.

So that could include like playground, but they couldn't use it to fund staff, for example.

Correct.

It's a capital expense.

OK.

So that's a limitation placed on it.

But within that, TBD with the school community, I see?

Yes.

I think we need to know how much we're talking, and then we can have a conversation about what a playground might cost or what lighting or what have you.

But certainly my hope would be that it would be involving the school, the community, et cetera.

But it would have to be capital expense.

Okay.

Thanks.

And there will be a public hearing that staff will be putting on the sale.

And I know since this is Director Song's district, she will be in attendance, but other board directors are welcome to attend as well.

Director Song.

I would be interested in some ideas that we could do to show our gratitude and memorialize this very generous donor.

I don't know what that looks like and what is permissible within our policies, but I think we should do that.

It's a great idea.

Others?

All right that was the last item on our agenda.

I will just a housekeeping item is that graduation season is upon us if you haven't seen in your email the graduation schedule along with your needed size for your gown.

to attend and certify the graduations.

So just please make sure you have filled that out and get that information over to board staff.

But there being no further business to come before the board, the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 710. We will come back together at 830 for our executive session.

See everyone shortly.