Seattle School Board Meeting December 15, 2021

testing okay if you are in the audience i would ask you to uh have a seat we are going to get started here very shortly i'm so excited that y'all are here especially our students who have shown up incredibly well order in a moment as SPS-TV will begin broadcasting.

Give us a second to get situated here and make sure all our directors are mic'd up.

Wonderful.

Okay.

This is President Hersey.

I am now calling the December 15th 2021 Regular Board Meeting to order at 420 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

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

We will now go into the roll call.

Ms. Wilson-Jones please call the roll.

Vice President Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Present.

Director Rankin not yet.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sargeant.

Here.

Director Song-Mores.

Present.

And President Hersey.

Here.

Okay.

We are holding today's meeting in a hybrid format with directors and staff and members of the public here in person with remote access also available through SPS-TV.

by broadcast and streaming on YouTube and by phone.

Consistent with the governor's proclamation on open public meetings.

For those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called.

I will now turn it over to Superintendent Jones for his comments which will include a budget work session today.

This work session is scheduled for 60 minutes.

Public testimony is scheduled to begin at 530 today.

Superintendent Jones take it away.

Thank you President Hersey.

Given that this is our last board meeting of the year I want to thank everyone for pushing through a challenging 2021. That's right.

I appreciate the dedication and the commitment of all parties involved from the board to the classroom and in particular students.

You know we will continue to meet the challenges head on whether these be threats or call for wellness.

We are going to continue to be responsive.

As we talk about student outcome governance I want to thank the board for your enthusiastic and challenging conversation and learning last week that we talked about during our progress monitoring.

I'm going to keep my comments brief and hand it over to Deputy Gannon and Assistant Superintendent of Finance JoLynn Berge who are going to lead us in a discussion of the 22-23 budget.

Deputy Gannon.

Thank you Dr. Jones and good afternoon members of the school board.

I'm going to hand it over to start this presentation and discussion to Assistant Superintendent Berge.

She will kick us off and we'll proceed through work session.

As always during a work session we will be working to present information but we invite you to ask questions throughout at any point.

So.

Evening directors.

JoLynn Berge Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance.

So you'll see four things on the agenda slide.

We'll talk a little bit about the budget development calendar and give a couple updates.

We'll have a participatory budgeting process update.

Again we are referring to that as PB.

We'll talk a little bit about ending fund balance details for 2021. That's going to be an important part of the conversation tonight.

And then continuing conversations about the 22-23 budget development.

So the goals for the work session are aligned with the agenda.

So on the budget development calendar we are at December 15th.

We have another work session scheduled for the week that we return January 5th.

And during that work session because of the tight time turnaround we will be talking about the WSS changes We'll ask Dr. Eric Anderson to lead that discussion about changes to the equity tier methodology that the WSS committee is moving forward.

And then we'll also have a report a PB report on results from the conversations that we've been having with them this year.

And then the last bullet we will probably not include on this agenda.

It'll probably mostly be focused on the WSS changes and the PB recommendations.

We will turn to the rest of that conversation on January 19th.

So with that I'm going to turn it over to Linda Sebring.

Good evening.

Linda Sebring Budget Director.

So I'm going to go over briefly a status update on where we are with our participatory budgeting process.

We have some bullets on this slide about we've gone through a variety of meetings with our community on our participatory budgeting process.

We started the conversation with bringing forward some of the items we were talking about last year for participatory budgeting as we continue to evolve and expand this process.

So our initial conversation with the community was on looking at ethnic studies further.

American Indian studies.

Black studies.

Restorative Justice and Policy 6114 was a new ad this year to add to the community conversation which is our policy on gifts donations grants and fundraising proceeds proceeds.

So as we went through these conversations with the community we started off with a brief overview of the budgeting process timeline where the district gets its funds and expenditures to do some level setting to help them understand where why and when the district made certain decisions in its timeline.

And as we got in further they wanted to focus on two of the areas that we brought forward.

So they have spent most of the conversation on the policy about gifts donations and grants and restorative justice.

The other ones at this time they did not want to address it this year.

So that's what you'll see in the final report that's coming out in January.

We've made some significant changes and improvements I think from last year's PB.

We have a webpage dedicated external webpage in the budget office for participatory budgeting.

We put a lot of our documents and backup details so that if community members who are not involved in the actual conversations can look at some of the details and see what's going on and and as these reports come out we will also be posting those to that same webpage.

So that's where we're at with participatory budgeting right now.

I'll just add a couple of comments.

So one of the things that was very important to the group is that they were able to work at their own pace.

So one of the recommendations I'm not sure but could come forward is that they need more time to work on the policy.

So they really wanted to gain a deep understanding with COVID.

When we talked about this before with WSS participation it was the same for PB participation.

A lot of folks just really have limited capacity and so we wanted to meet them where they needed to be met and they needed to tell us how they wanted this process to work and what worked for them.

And so the results that you'll be hearing in January are really reflective of that.

The other thing is that we're very conscientious that we don't want this to be a tokenized effort.

We want to keep slowly and deliberately expanding and improving on the PB process.

Because we don't know everything.

There's not a lot of other PB processes across the country to model after.

So we're learning together and we may have some resets.

We may make some mistakes but we're continuing to move forward and we've had really good feedback from both the students and the community members.

Any any questions about PB.

Any directors have questions.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi thank you.

Thank you for the update there.

What are our participation numbers for the participatory budgeting committee.

So we started we had about 10 people say that they wanted to join and we had I think 2 or 3 students who wanted to join.

And those timelines got kind of offset.

So the students were in their own group talking about their own things that were important to them.

And I think the conversations with them were a lot about restorative justice.

And that's where they wanted to focus.

We've had probably 4 or 5 different adults regularly attend.

So community members regularly attend the meetings.

Again we had one person say things have changed I can't continue.

So just some things like that.

But the input from our consultants perspective as a data scientist is that we're having really meaningful conversations and really digging into and getting their feedback.

Directors.

Please continue.

All right.

Moving on.

Linda will talk about the 2021 fund balance details.

Thank you.

So this is rather a complex subject and we just started out with a heading.

You know why is if we have a growing fund balance why is there a budget issue.

And we had anticipated when we were building the budget for 22-23 that we would end this year with a significant ending fund balance.

There were a lot of reasons for that and many of them were strategically planned.

So as the first bullet says our ending fund balance grew by $37 million at the end of August compared to the prior year.

We have a total ending fund balance of $186 million and we have a slide after this it's going to get into more details.

But at the high level $39 million is the board economic stabilization account.

I know everybody knows what that number is.

We've had several conversations.

That's equivalent to 4 percent of the district's expenditures from the last fiscal year.

So the board policy is to have between 3 and 5 percent of total expenditures.

If we drop below 3 percent there must be a repayment policy.

I'll just remind some of the new members may not be aware of that.

We're now sitting at 4 percent which is 1 percent higher than the minimum.

Right in the middle.

45 million is restricted funds.

So these are not funds that we can just you know choose to spend one way or another.

These are limited to grants.

There's some grants where they we get paid in advance.

So we get a grant awarded to the district.

They give us the money.

And then as we do the activities and demonstrate we've done the activities we earn the money.

If we don't earn the money we'd have to return it.

So it's like a prepaid revenue.

There's we have a legal reserve.

We have school underspends from year to year and we allow the schools to carry those funds forward for a variety of areas.

That those all total about forty five million dollars.

Thirty three million dollars of what's in the ending fund balance was money the school board set aside at the end of 2021 to help fund the current school year.

So there's money in that ending fund balance and fund balance is a point in time at the end of August that is basically revenues that we are spending expenses through against today.

That's thirty three million dollars.

That came from two different sources.

One was planned savings in 1920 of twenty one point eight million dollars and another one was capital fund transfers.

It also happened in 2021 of ten million dollars.

So the final major amount is 66 million and this is a number that you guys have been seeing in our conversations of Scenarios A and Scenario B. The 66 million is made up of 55 million that we ended last year in our fund balance and that we're proposing to use to help balance 22-23.

And $10.6 million of ESSER backfill continuity of operations that we are also proposing to use out of the ending fund balance to balance 22-23.

So once all is said and done of that $186 million we have $3 million left that we are putting a pin in and saying maybe a reserve against enrollment in the fall or it would be an unreserved not committed amount of funds.

I know I'm covering an awful lot and 186 million dollars is a lot of money.

So I'll pause.

Directors.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

And thanks for breaking this down.

That's a great way for people you know looking at a fund balance of 186 million dollars that seems like we have a ton of money just sitting there.

And it's actually not the case so thank you for that.

My question is about the last item $10.6 million dollars ESSER backfill.

Is that to back Help me understand that.

Where's that coming from and what it's backfilling.

Certainly.

So in last school year we made a had a conversation about using ESSER funds to continue to employ staff who at the time may not have been working since we were working remotely.

So we spent about 30 million dollars on the ESSER.

This is where these things start to connect.

30 million dollars on the ESSER fund where we took people off of the general fund expenditures and moved them onto the federal fund and kept them employed.

Of that 30 million dollars a big chunk of that was spent to help with last year's enrollment loss.

10.6 million was extra that we put towards our planning having conversations to put forward towards 22-23.

Does that help.

There's two pieces of this.

It was 30 million on ESSER.

Do we have the page number.

Slide 6 from last month on the ESSER presentation.

I get my so my confusion is are we backfilling from our fund balance into ESSER or is ESSER backfilling.

Thank you.

That makes a lot more sense.

I was wondering why would that not be.

No.

A good use of those.

The shifting of staff onto the ESSER fund freed up general fund dollars that we're bringing forward in the ending fund balance.

and proposing to use to help balance 22-23.

Okay thanks.

Director Sargeu.

Thank you.

For those on the phone Michelle Sargeu pink glasses wearing something red today and a colorful headband.

For my edification and probably others in the audience what does ESSER stand for.

Elementary Secondary School Emergency Relief.

It's an acronym.

It's relates to the federal emergency funds that were we the school district was given three different fund sets of a grant to help us with ESSER expenses and student outcomes.

Any other questions at this time.

Okay.

Thank you.

So the next slide is we thought we'd put this in a visual and I hope you have a color copy.

It's harder to see in black and white.

We do not but we do have one up on the screen.

Excellent.

So we're you know color costs a lot more money.

So.

How poignant.

We're in finance.

So what we wanted to show people is it non-accountants have it's challenging to understand what a fund balance is compared to deficits and revenues and expenditures.

So what you're seeing here is different slices that make up the fund balance.

So you see two historical years 18-19 and 19-20.

And again 20-21 the year we just ended is in the middle.

So it shows we've had the fund balance has grown.

What we wanted to do to display this was All things being equal, 21-22 is not going to drop significantly.

The ending fund balance will not drop significantly.

And what that means is that 66 million we just discussed, it will be passing through this year's budget to wait at the end of the year in the fund balance to fund expenses next school year.

So it's not going to automatically drop between now and next August.

So if everybody's like oh you know you said there was a real challenge and but we ended another year and we have a large surplus.

That's not how your savings account works.

You get your paycheck you know here but you know you got to pay all these bills.

You've already committed it.

So that's why I added in 22-23 to show all things being equal no major changes in legislative policy or practice or district activities the fund balance would basically drop in half.

when we got into 22-23.

And that is a fairly dramatic impact that we would have.

That was the purpose of this slide.

And then if you go to the next slide this is the picture in words.

And it shows a little bit more of the first line being the Economic Stabilization Fund over these years.

Again the first two year first three years are actuals.

And the final two years are potentials.

So if we don't use the economic or if we do use the economic stabilization to help balance 22-23 well it will still be in there at the end of August.

It will then be paying for next school year's bills.

So I've held everything constant from restricted funds school and central carry forward But you start to see the usage at the end of 21-22 it doesn't show up again that 55 million the 10.6 million and the reserve for the fall enrollment.

The assumptions are those funds will be consumed in 22-23 again.

This is helping people try to understand why a large fund balance right now does not preclude the fact that we are still on a bad trajectory.

And that is ending fund balance.

I just want to say that this is there are a lot of moving pieces.

So even when Linda and I discuss it with our team and our staff we have lots of questions just for each other because there are so many complexities to how this interacts with funding and then the the structural deficit.

So I just want to I just want to say it's it's not just that maybe you don't it's not simple.

It's not simple for any of us.

One thing I wonder in terms of presentation whether it's this slide or the prior slide is the extent to which it would be helpful to show proportionality or meaning the fund balance and the breakdown of the fund balance categories over time relative to either overall revenues or expenses or something else.

So in a percentage type of format.

Let us think about how we could display that in a way that it would be intuitive and people would be able to say oh that's what that means.

Yeah that may not be the answer but what this brings up for me and I thank you for that explanation in this presentation is just if another tweak might even provide more clarification.

That's helpful.

I wanted to also note in terms of I've neglected to mention on the prior slide the requirement to pay back our rainy day funds is one that is a state-level requirement.

Correct.

That we have to have a plan in place.

Is that correct.

It's our own policy.

It's only our own policy.

The state doesn't have any requirement for a rainy day fund.

Let me say it this way.

The state does not have an RCW or a WAC that or a Washington Administrative Code rule administrative rule that talks about what the rainy day fund should be.

However there are standards in the industry and so we are audited to those standards.

So two things happen.

OSPI runs a financial indicators about your financial health and they have financial health indicators that we started a long time ago there and they've continued that work and it shows when a district's getting into financial trouble.

So one that happens.

Two the auditors come and they look at your fund balance and they look at what's sitting in your reserve account and if it drops below 3 percent typically they have a comment.

If it drops worse than that then the comment may be accelerated.

So at minimum the state auditor is going to make a comment on our report.

Not not.

And the state will take notice.

Not until we actually drop below the 3 percent in our policy.

Then they will say to follow your own policy where is your plan if you drop below 3 percent.

Right.

Okay.

I just wanted to I was I appreciate you adding that additional clarification.

I think it's important that folks hear that and are reminded of that.

And in terms of the I mean I don't know why you didn't just do an animated demonstration of the inflow.

I'm kidding.

To clarify it.

But the other thing that I know is relevant is the timing we're having to make decisions about the budget and plan for what we're going to have next year not knowing what relief the state may or may not Give it to us and the sort of overall volatility of funding is quite extreme as I do believe that graph demonstrated that.

And that's what makes me think of the wanting to look at it proportionately to confirm that in fact that's true even when we contextualize it with the relative to whether it's revenues or expenses or how we might demonstrate that.

So the as you said I think that the time frame at which we're looking at these fund balances doesn't match up with what the ultimate upcoming need for those items is.

I think that's all I had.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

When you said animate that was actually a segue to what I was going to ask.

I'm wondering whether or not we have some high schoolers that are studying animation and some of the ways to present data more graphically.

And hopefully as well to our state legislators since we've got a short session if I recall correctly coming up.

And you know reading reading any number of media including social media.

What what are these guys complaining about.

They've got millions and millions and millions of dollars and I'm wondering whether literally showing how this moves wouldn't assist us frankly in marketing where we're at and what our needs are and then throwing all the different variables in there with the screen of question marks at best.

A number scare people.

We know this already.

We also know that a number of the folks on the state legislature are not necessarily cognizant of all the various needs and variables.

And I'm wondering whether that couldn't be a high schooler's capstone project or an internship with Eric Anderson and your department.

Director Harris.

I will do my best to look into it.

I'm not going to be able to make any promises on that but I but I hear you.

And the additional federal dollars that we received in relief it it all makes it just adds a whole nother layer of complexity about what could you have possibly done with one hundred and forty seven million dollars.

And and why isn't it able to solve all of the problems with the budget.

So we continue to work on that.

You'll see another update on the ESSER dollars in January as well as we continue to update our budget projections particularly for health and safety.

I just want to continue to say that that remains a projection that moves on us.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Two questions.

Are in so so we have maintained the fund balance for future expenses so that we're not in a completely disastrous place in 2023 or 2022-23.

Are there other districts in the state that have not carried over a fund balance in Are they in dire straits and what do you know and like does that I'm just thinking about in context especially if people think like well you have all this extra money and that we're actually using it to plan for what we project as a problem that will need to be solved for districts that maybe haven't had the ability to do that or haven't or have chosen not to do it.

I'm wondering if there's a conversation at the state of how to solve that.

I mean if that has an impact on our outlook.

And then the second question is also I thought it was pre-filed but I was just looking in my phone and I couldn't find it.

I thought that there was a pre-filed bill for enrollment stabilization.

Oh there is okay.

And should that pass this would then look pretty different.

It would look pretty different by about 30 million dollars.

By what.

By about 30 million dollars.

That's probably our high watermark.

Let me just say that.

That that's that's the current estimate from SPI.

It was a long road for a bill to go down to get this.

Okay.

And then just to put maybe a finer point on that that money from the state has already been budgeted for districts based upon enrollment because last year was the budget year.

So should it pass.

That money wouldn't have to be found or discovered.

It's already budgeted for school districts in spite of enrollment decline.

That's correct.

Both last year's so we're under an enrollment statewide last year in 2021 and this year.

That money was already in the state budget.

It's sitting there and it's available for them to provide.

Thanks.

To your first question I just want to say that there are districts who are in trouble for a number of reasons.

We we roll with the results of our fund balance growing when we know that we're saving money for an out year.

Right.

So we've been pretty we've been good about that as a district.

It does make people wonder in the current year why why do we have these budget cuts.

You have money sitting there.

And so it's a way for us as we've gone through time to try to level set and not take on too many problems in one year.

Right.

But there are other districts.

Tumwater.

It's been in the paper.

It's not a it's not a secret.

They have a significant problem where they don't think that they can end the year with anything just about.

So there are districts that are there.

But there's a process statewide for state takeover.

So the state's not going to come and save them from themselves.

That's not how it works.

They're not going to save them.

They're going to relieve them of.

They would go into what's called budgeting receivables and go into binding conditions with OSPI with OSPI oversight.

Which still doesn't provide any necessarily any extra dollars for the expenses.

Okay.

And even with the third should the 30 million dollars come to us hopefully with enrollment stabilization that I'm just to stay out loud we still have the need to use the fund balance to mitigate against just operating costs just that it costs more to provide education than we're than we're funded for every year.

So that $30 million helps but it doesn't address the larger picture of kind of chronic and ongoing underfunding.

That would be a fair statement.

Thanks.

Any other questions.

Thank you for that healthy discussion.

Great question Director Rankin.

Take it away.

Thank you President Hersey and Director Rankin.

That was an excellent unrehearsed segue into the next portion of the work session.

I'm going to spend a couple of minutes going over some slides previously presented to the board in the work session.

I think it benefits everyone to review and understand the consistency of the materials we're bringing forward.

And with two new directors on the board I also think it will be helpful to them to orient where we sit as we have talked about potential approaches to our budget shortfall not just in the coming year but also in the years subsequent.

The out-years also have structural challenges.

So this slide represents or is consistent with other presentations we've made.

We start with in the upper left-hand corner of that slide an estimated shortfall in the coming fiscal year of $78 million.

The lines that follow bring into view at a high level those things that are potential relief to address that budget shortfall as well as the known deficits that we face.

So I'll walk you through them briefly.

First line you see there is the ending fund balance as we've been discussing the 55 million dollars.

You also see the 10.6 brought forward from a prior fiscal year using ESSER funds to again bring some relief potentially to our challenge.

The enrollment loss is the next line.

So we've been consistently since the early fall projecting enrollment loss at twenty eight million dollars.

And that continues to be our best estimate though that as well can shift and fluctuate.

The next line the Economic Stabilization Fund That represents the full amount.

So that is the 4 percent that Linda referenced earlier.

In theory all of that could be brought to bear on our fiscal challenge.

We have since the early fall been signaling that we could bring $10 million forward from our capital program to offset this shortfall.

The next line $6 million in reductions to central administration and district programs.

This is a high mark.

What is at least conceivable were we to position ourselves against a convention or a benchmark for large districts that six million dollars represents the total amount that we are over that benchmark and so we could norm ourselves back to a level by cutting six million dollars of central administration.

The next line the three million dollars the negative three million dollars is represented there as an offset because we would want to reserve some funds to invest in new priorities whether that's in response to emerging needs that the district might might have or the good ideas that come forward in the budgeting process.

And then lastly at least in enumerated lines we have proposed a five million dollar efficiency were we to make some substantial revisions to our transportation program.

So there's a couple of slides that our colleague Ashley Davies will speak to in some detail later.

So at the conceptual level all of those balance out to ninety four million dollars which were it all to come forward and we were to be successful in initiating all of those.

we would overcome the $78 million gap in the coming fiscal year.

So I'll speak to some more of that detail in subsequent slides.

I'd like to spend just a moment reminding everyone the board but also the audience of where we sit with enrollment.

So this blue line here depicts A fluctuating enrollment over the last several years going back to academic year 2014-2015.

It's fairly obvious to everyone that there's been an enrollment decline in recent years largely if not exclusively attributed to the pandemic.

But in reality that has an impact on our funding and our budget that we've highlighted here two years in particular.

Academic year 2021 we anticipated at the start enrollment of 54,000 but we saw actual enrollment of just over 52,000.

Similarly in the current academic year we anticipated and budgeted for enrollment at 52,000 but we are experiencing enrollment at 50,000.

So there's a great deal of detail and complexity that underlies this simple line diagram.

But the takeaway that I want to emphasize is right now our district is staffed for enrollment at 52,000 students.

But we have only 50,000 students participating in the educational endeavor.

This is not to say that we are overstaffed understaffed or rightly staffed.

It is based on our models.

We are staffed at a level that is not consistent with our enrollment.

And if this situation persists into the coming year we have to confront as a district whether we remain consistent to our staffing models and bring our staffing levels down to match enrollment.

If we do this or when we do this this will feel like a reduction in staffing levels at the school level because if we do that it will be staffing reduction but it will be a staffing reduction to a level consistent with our enrollment.

So as we talk about large fiscal numbers and dollars that we could potentially save I don't want to lose sight that right now we are staffed at a level that is inconsistent with our enrollment even if we hear from our colleagues throughout the district that there are not enough staff to do the necessary work provide the supports and instruction to our students.

So this is one of the hard questions that we will have to wrestle with.

The aim of this presentation is not to talk about how to do that.

That will come in our subsequent session in January when we talk about the waiting staffing standards.

I want to continue to emphasize this point that this is a hard decision that we have to confront in the very near future.

So I will pause there and let either Assistant Superintendent Berge add additional comment or entertain any questions that board members may have.

I've got a question.

Do you have a sense of the delta between or rather how much we're talking about and the difference between 52,000 and 50,000 in terms of enrollment.

Like what is that number.

And so like what is the difference in funding that we would see versus us planning for 52 and actually having 50. Is that that $30 million mark.

$28 million.

$28 million.

So in order for us to be staffed at a level that would be consistent with what our enrollment actually is going into the out years we would need to figure out a solution within our house to reduce our expenditures by 30 million dollars if we were trying to staff to the level of 50,000 students.

Correct.

That's correct President Hersey and if the board would like we can go to the next slide which offers a rendering of what that would look like in terms of overall staffing.

I don't mean to jump ahead.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

Thanks.

I just wanted to add for context since Folks who might be new to this conversation might think well if that's the difference between our formula and the number of students why don't we just change our formula.

And so I just wanted to to say that we're funded by the state on a per-pupil basis.

The state has a formula for funding school districts and it's based on the number of students that you have.

And then once districts get that funding they have other formulas and make decisions and you know in our case it includes like levy dollars that that make up a lot of funding that are not that's not covered by the state for basic education and that that formula is a way to equitably distribute funds to the buildings.

But the reason that this matters in terms of our budget situation is that the state will be providing us funding based on our actual number not the old not not our current number.

So I just that was some context I just wanted to make sure was out there.

I'm sorry to kind of roll forward a few slides.

So I just want to make sure that I understand this.

Our previous conversation was about taking money from our fund and kind of save it to kind of provide some stabilization around a potential deficit in the 22-23 school year.

And that plan deficit that estimated deficit is 78 million dollars.

Is that correct.

And so I'm just kind of looking at slide 18 I'm starting to kind of roll forward.

I'm just trying to understand the flow of the money.

That revenue number in 22-23 is that based on the lower projected enrollment number or the kind of a higher enrollment number.

The on button.

Tricky little things.

So what the way we build our budget is we start out very high level and we roll the budget forward.

So we take everything we've got this year and roll it forward with the exception of the school funding formula.

That is reset.

It's zero based.

So as soon as they give us enrollment from the enrollment department which will come to the budget office about mid-February.

We run that through our formula and that goes out to the schools.

So right now in the budget that makes that $78 million it's a placeholder.

We know cost of living increases based on the state is 2.1 percent.

Number may change.

So we roll those things forward.

Medical changes forward.

Contract major contract changes forward.

So we're rolling all those expenses forward.

And also to get to the 78 you have to take out all that one time money that helped get us through this year.

So there it as JoLynn mentioned it is complicated and depending on what comes in the enrollment will be what goes out in the WSS basically.

It pretty much evens out.

We usually call it money in money out but it is pretty close to The number of kids that we get and then we run the formulas and then what goes out through our school funding formula.

So if enrollment was held at a high number we would hopefully be also calculating that revenue for those high number.

That's usually what the budget office does.

There's not ever been in my world a discrepancy between a budget to have revenue for 52,000 and only budget to roll 50,000 through the model or vice versa.

Does that answer your question.

We haven't we haven't decreased it yet.

We have not decreased the enrollment yet.

So the $78 million deficit is reflective of a higher enrollment number just for now.

And a higher revenue set of numbers for that.

Okay.

So there potentially.

Actually excuse me.

It's based on the 4-year forecast which is.

Flat.

It would be a flat revenue or a flat enrollment.

So it's it's too high right now.

So the potential for the deficit is even more than $78 million.

It is a potential to be higher.

That's the data I'm putting together right now is our forecasted deficits over the last four years we've always come out higher a higher deficit than what we forecasted.

So it can potentially go up.

We usually try to get the majority of items in there and as we discussed legislative action could make it go down.

So there's there's some big things that can still be moving on the budget.

It's just the timing of them and when schools have to make their decisions and we have to make major budget decisions.

Let me just add one piece of clarification Director Summers.

The revenue and expenditure and the disparity and the structural deficit between them they are relational.

So no matter what our enrollment is it looks like this.

So we're not ever getting enough revenue regardless of what our enrollment number is because of the accompanying expenditures that come with that.

So they're really relational and that doesn't change as far as it continues to drive a deficit.

That's very helpful.

Can I ask a second question.

So the the $28 million kind of forecasted because of the enrollment drop in the 21-22 school year.

Is that reflective of in our I guess what is that number.

So it is the amount.

It is the value of revenue related to the enrollment number.

The actual versus the budgeted enrollment number.

And it's made of two components.

One is a current year state allocation revenue component.

And then there's some smaller piece of out-year levy revenue component where we collect revenue we collect our levy revenue based on a one-year look back for our enrollment.

So there is a small piece of it that is that would come in the 2023 school year.

But the 28 million is the overall revenue impact to the actual enrollment number being different than budget.

So that I just wanted to make sure I understand this.

The expenditures have already been spent because we're already in the 21-22 school year and we're no longer able to count on the revenues to have covered those.

That's correct.

Okay thank you.

That's correct.

Now let me just say this.

There's always some underspend that happens in this district and we account for that down in the spreadsheet where you see the 20 million dollar number and we update those estimates as we go along.

But things happen right.

We don't always have every position filled.

You have 11,000 positions in this district.

Not everyone is filled at every moment and not everybody spends every dollar that was budgeted.

And some of those dollars are grant dollars.

So there's it's the whole.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am looking at slide number 12 and concerned about the blank spaces on that chart.

Also concerned about the transportation return to three tiers.

And we've talked a fair amount about that in October and November.

Also with respect to the research that the three tiers was based on and in SSC&I last week Director Anderson was going to be checking with Children's Orthopedic.

He was surprised to hear my question to find out what the results of that study was that we were told about for several years.

And and I appreciate that there's an enormous amount of work being done to fill in these blanks.

But can you and I appreciate as well we're going to have a more deep dive conversation in January but can you talk about what senior staff and what some of the conversations leading up to that are and whether we can count on some read-aheads for the in January for What factors are going into these recommendations as opposed to a slide in a fairly dense budget presentation.

Thank you Director Harris for your question.

Let me try to answer it this way.

As it relates to transportation.

from all ends whether it's the study that you reference with a potential impact through this proposed approach to greater efficiencies.

Our colleague Ashley Davies will be speaking to that in just a moment with some detail.

Whether that's a full read ahead or whether there's additional interest that the board has in a deeper dive I'd like to ask if we could hold that until after her presentation.

because I think there is some good information that will lend some clarity for now.

The I'd like to comment on the blank slides or the blank lines on this slide.

These these are concepts that we could also engage to address either near or longer term shortfalls.

We have chosen at least at this point to not put placeholders on these lines.

Because these would have such a dramatic or potentially dramatic impact on the educational communities.

So for the benefit of the new directors the K-8 grade span adjustments that would be to consider truncating the K-8 model into the conventional elementary and middle school model and reap the budget savings associated with that.

The restructure of admin for non-traditional schools would be an attempt to find savings in that type of reduction.

Other small school adjustments and other reductions to school funding allocations are really about changing the number of schools that we would have within the district and reducing our costs and overhead allocations.

Clearly that would have impact on community.

We are not taking those off the table because if our situation persists we will have to confront those hard choices.

But right now given our time frame and given some of the other options that appear available choosing not to enter placeholders for those at this moment.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

I feel I may have missed the middle part of your question.

I guess to have them there.

have them blank strikes fear in my little heart.

And if we are going to address them then can we have a commitment that we will have a real deep dive and read aheads and the backup before numbers are put in there.

Director Harris my simple answer is yes of course and I hope With the balance of this presentation will indicate at least in the near term we won't need to engage these four fearsome line items.

We don't want to put fear in your heart.

We do have some ideas about how to avoid these in the near term and engage with community and the board and stakeholders to figure out how to address the shortfall through a different mean.

So if I can come back to that later but I of course welcome your question at the end of the presentation if I've not satisfactorily addressed it.

Any other questions before we move on.

Please continue.

All right.

So picking up the thread I would like to explain this slide by way of format and then give explanation as to scenario A and B again for the benefit of the newest members to the board.

The estimated gap column where you see the 78 million The line items underneath that corresponds to the prior slide and that represents the full ninety four million dollars of potential to address the shortfall.

Scenario A and scenario B are substantially similar but for the relief that would come from the state.

So I'll walk you through these because there are other two other minor adjustments.

The first adjustment comes on the line Economic Stabilization Fund.

In scenario A we would propose to spend the 1 percent figure of our stabilization reserve bringing that balance down to the minimum under board policy of 3 percent.

So we're at 4 percent bringing it down to 3 percent we would use 9 million dollars of reserve.

The next figure that differs from the estimated amount column is the reduction to central admin.

So I'll say that any reduction to central admin will be difficult to pursue and implement and it will constrain our ability in many ways.

But considering a two million dollar figure is at least in the view of senior staff more achievable in the near term than trying to go for the full $6 million.

We do not yet have detail to bring forward on what that $2 million would look like.

So to Director Harris's general concern we don't have those answers yet but we are working at the senior staff level to figure out how those could be brought forward and that will be a topic in our January work session.

The other figure that varies is the added costs for new work or new priorities.

So you move that up to a five million dollar figure knowing that there are many things that the district wants to prioritize including how we pursue and advance the strategic plan or recently the goals identified in the student outcome-focused governance model.

So with this We would have a shortfall in our budget of roughly 18 million dollars.

But if we were to get full relief from this state on our enrollment shortfall that's the 28 million dollar figure we would find ourselves in a scenario where we would have a surplus.

or at least a conceptual surplus, the $9.7 million there roughly equates to what we would have used from our economic stabilization reserve.

I'll pause here to say that scenario A we believe is our most pragmatic and realistic approach to our budget challenge sitting in December and looking at the budget calendar of January, February, and March.

Knowing that the legislature is about to come into session and knowing that a bill has been at least filed as a placeholder of what could be brought to school districts throughout the state.

Scenario B then by contrast is the reality if that were not to happen.

If the relief from the state did not come forward or did not come forward in the full measure so we haven't produced iterations But if the relief did not come then we would be 18 million dollars short of a balanced budget.

And we would propose to go deeper into our reserves to offset that shortfall.

That would require board action.

to set aside the policy of maintaining a 3 percent floor.

It would also require us to President or Vice President Hampson's question earlier to have at least an approach to repaying our stabilization fund.

In this proposal and recognizing the short and compressed time frame we have to build a budget What we would also then do is want to look to the out years and say how are we funded.

How are we staffing across the district.

And are there areas that we should take a harder look at.

So to Director Harris's question what would be those proposals rather than build those in a very compressed time frame without the benefit of meaningful community engagement and without a deep understanding of the ramifications to the strategic plan and what we would be able to achieve as a district.

And as well just recognizing that we are still I don't know if it's knee-deep or hip-deep or neck-deep in a pandemic as well as the crisis of social emotional well-being in our district.

It does not seem practical or pragmatic for us to pursue those deep cuts or reductions now without the benefit of engaging community and talking about it in a meaningful way.

So what we would suggest then is that we take a coming year and do that type of engagement and receive from the board the imperative to find the ways to balance our budget either by expenditure reductions or revenue enhancement.

We have not yet devised what that model would look like how we would conduct the community engagement but we we believe that we would be better situated doing that over the coming 12 months instead of over the coming six weeks.

I will pause there.

We have a slide that brings us back to a longer term outlook of the next three years and I think if if you can bear with me and come back to that portion of the discussion about how we would do the engagement how we would think about overall budget balancing across a longer span of time.

We can turn it to our colleague Ashley Davies who can speak to the transportation efficiencies that actually could be achieved in the near term.

Not without challenges and not without impact but we think that these efficiencies are meaningful and would improve service and do a lot of important things in light of our budget constraints.

So I will let Ashley Davies speak to this.

Thank you.

Hello everyone.

My name is Ashley Davies Executive Director of Operations.

And so I'm just going to talk a little bit about our current transportation plan and setup and then talk about where we came up with the 5 million potential that could be cost savings.

So currently we operate with a two-tiered system and that essentially means and describes the number of systems of routes that we have running routes in the morning and then Also running a second route after that.

So if we have two tiers that would mean we've got one bus that does tier one and then that same bus will do a tier two again.

So one driver driving two separate routes in the morning and in the afternoon.

So it does not account for a morning and afternoon that one driver would do two in the morning two in the afternoon.

And so we're currently working on modeling a three tiered system.

for the 22-23 school year which would provide the cost savings of $5 million that is allocated in that budget that you just saw as well as improved service.

So we began this school year with a shortage of drivers and then that was even before the vaccination mandate.

So if we were to move to a three-tiered system that would mean that we would need less drivers overall.

So again not only would it improve our overall budget but it would also help us improve service because we would need less drivers.

Currently we have a need for about 410 drivers to drive in a two-tiered system and that accounts for standby drivers of which we allocate for 8 to 10 percent of what we may need for any given day.

So just to give another example this school year because we started the year with a shortage of drivers If we had a driver call out that means we already weren't able to cover drivers meaning we would have to provide service with extreme delays.

So that 410 is that optimal number that accounts for some level of cushion that if we had call outs we could still cover service on time.

And so with our current two-tiered system each driver covers about 1.6 routes.

That means that some drivers cover two and some drivers will cover one.

And in the three tiered system we would account for each driver covering about 2.2 routes.

So not every driver would cover three routes.

We have a combination of probably two routes and three routes.

And so that would total us to a little under 300 drivers that we would need.

Next slide.

So I just wanted to talk about the timeline and moving forward with this additional analysis and Director Harris I know you had brought up the comments around the sleep study and that work and being able to share that.

And so I unfortunately don't have information on that to share today but that will be part of what we would be continuing to discuss as as we move forward in being able to share more information around this.

So currently we are actually at the end of our 5-year contract and we did an RFP for our next 5-year service.

We're currently looking through recommended vendors and we'll be looking to select one in the coming month.

End of January 2022 we will complete our cost analysis and impact analysis of moving to a three-tiered system.

So that will also include what the actual potential recommendation would be for what schools would move between systems so that we could actually talk about what that impact would be on students particularly of those at certain grades.

And then in January February we would bring forward to the school board our new transportation contract.

And then in the spring of 2022 is when we would need final changes in any tiers to be communicated to schools and families.

So I do recognize that as a quick timeline.

We would have to move quickly to be able to share that analysis and information with the school board so that we can have discussion and also be able to share with families so that they would understand what that impact would be.

Director Sargent.

Thank you for that presentation.

I am curious and maybe this is a question not to be answered today but for another time.

As you consider who the vendor might be do we have for lack of a better word standards well let me just get to the point.

because I was going to try to beat around it.

I think it's important that we as a school district have the orientation that when we are asking people to have care and concern for our kids to and from school that we are not complicit in poverty wages and no benefits.

I don't think there's a person at that table or on this dais that can honestly say we are willing to sign up for poverty wages and no benefits.

And so I guess what is our orientation around asking people who are doing the hardest work to settle for the lowest wages?

It's no different in childcare.

This is a dilemma in childcare.

We're asking those people to do the hardest work for the lowest wages and no benefits.

So this is something that's selfishly important to me.

And I guess what are the criteria when we're looking at vendors and how they treat their employees?

Do they signal that they actually value these employees?

Or is the bottom line about the shareholders and the owners of the company and not the people that we're asking to safely transport our children to and from school and back home.

Yeah okay.

So I can't speak directly about the RFP specifically just because we're currently in that process but in terms of what you mentioned in terms of our partner and our vendor We work super closely with our vendors and our partners within transportation.

We actually meet twice a week to talk through everything from specific long-term planning as well as anything that we're noticing during the week.

I would say even during each individual day we're connecting regularly on any specific issues that come up.

So we you know as we work with our current vendor and continue to work with other vendors you know it is our expectation that those who are providing service to students regardless of where it is in whatever form it may be is held at the highest level because everything that we do is student-centered.

I would say our our approach in working with our vendors is such that we hold them to the same high standards and if we see anything that doesn't meet that we're addressing it immediately with them.

So just just to clarify I know you're in an RFP process and so you can't talk about the specifics but as someone who has written RFPs and had to assemble review panels for King County Best Starts for Kids, we look at when an applicant is applying for grant funding, what is the difference between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid employee?

And our expectation is that the people that we are asking to do the hardest work are not working for poverty wages.

So as you select review members for this RFP to review these vendors, I think we have a moral obligation to actually take a look at that.

And I know this has been a standing issue.

I'm a 34-year Central District resident.

My kids rode the bus.

I made it a point to have a relationship with the bus driver because they're not frankly not treated very well.

And actually I wanted them to feel valued because it was important to me that my child came home alive at the end of the day and that that bus driver actually could go home and have a meal.

Director Rankin.

Going somewhat along with that some notes that I was writing down to ask that I don't expect you to have answers for right now but I just wanted to ask them as we go into preparing for hearing more about the model in January is and the with a three-tier system Does this allow for scheduling for drivers to be more stable and more and closer to full time to where they reach the threshold where they do get benefits.

Because I know that having the gap like it's a it's a tough schedule like it's no wonder that we have a hard time filling those positions because you get up at 5 in the morning to drive one tier then you have a gap of nothing and during the day and then you know you have an afternoon shift.

So my questions about that were yes having having fewer drivers drive more routes does that bring more opportunity for drivers to have that be a full-time living wage employment with that and accessing benefits.

And then having gone through as a community member the change from moving high school to start times later and having one year where we had a very very early and a very very late elementary bell time.

And then the next year going to two tiers and each each one of those iterations had different things that were good and different things that were more challenging.

So one of the things was and maybe we're talking beyond COVID now because it's field trips but the ability for drivers to be available for schools needs during the day to take kids to other opportunities.

And then the one thing I.

We'll be looking or interested to see about going back to three tiers what that proposal might be is what those times actually are.

Because our old three tiers had such a large gap.

between Tier 1 and Tier 3 that within neighborhoods it was really really challenging on families to arrange childcare and after-school activities because there were essentially two totally different schedules.

And so doing like the YMCA Boys and Girls Club anything like that dealing with between schools these different times was super challenging.

So I just hope that we're thinking about that.

And that's it for now.

I have a lot more questions about that but I know that's not really what we're talking about right now.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

I recall five years ago with the RFPs and two days of my life I'll never get back sitting with Miltrie then General Counsel and Stephen Nielsen then Deputy Superintendent and figuring out ways to give bonuses to vendors that treated their people right.

And it gave them better benefits.

And it was a great idea.

And there was serious traction from senior staff.

And only one vendor bid on the darn contract.

And then we've seen the teensters in here several times.

We've seen a strike.

And frankly rightly so in my opinion and my experience.

And I have a couple of questions.

Does the STAR funding model come into this Chief Berge or Assistant Superintendent Berge.

In what way.

Well I mean the STARS is how the state funds us.

It has in no way related to what we spend or our RFP.

Well that's what I'm asking.

Is there a connection with STARS because you have brought up several times that it's an inequitable funding model for the largest district in the state.

No there's not a difference.

It's based on on riders and how many routes.

So how many to and from which doesn't change whether it's 2-tier or 3-tier and how many routes.

Destinations sorry.

I'll speak to the overall RFP process in general.

Our responsibility as a district is to pick the most responsible the lowest most responsible bidder.

And those things are taken together.

So it's not always just about pricing.

It's also about the ability to do operations in a way that's most successful for our district.

So I'm not in on the RFP team.

I don't know anything about that but I just I do know that we take more into account than just price.

There's always other factors that get taken into account.

Well and I'd like to tag on and it's been mentioned several times before from this dais.

I would love to see us come up with a combined model of drivers and additional boots-on-the-ground help at some of our schools that need assistance or assistance in the lunchroom assistance on the playground and I appreciate we have more than one labor partner representing folks but I'd like to see us blow up the model so that our bus drivers can be cross-trained for assistance so that we don't have folks that are overscheduled and that they become members of that school community and treated like the extraordinary assets that they are.

And if we can figure out a way at least to.

Start conversations about that.

What would it look like.

Because what we're doing now isn't working so great.

I don't think.

And and these are the same questions we had 5 years ago.

They're the same questions we had 10 years ago.

They're the same questions we had 15 years ago.

And I could not agree more with Director Sargeant that the people who we entrust our students lives to ought to matter more.

And I well recall when our vendor sent in the folks from the international and we were fighting about how much money we'd get back.

They they were fairly gobsmacked if I recall a particular work session and we finally brought them up to the table and we had to ask general counsel to yell stop if we're getting into litigation territory.

But you know we keep having these conversations.

I'd like to see us re-envision for lack of a better word how we can do better.

Thank you.

Director Hampson.

Director Davies.

Reduction from 428 to or 410 to 298 drivers was that modeled based on changes in schedules just at the elementary level or at all levels.

That would be at all levels.

So the probably the most impact would be at our secondary level for a three-tier schedule.

So we would be sending middle and high schoolers to school earlier.

Well we would have to send some students probably to school a little bit earlier as well as other students to school later because we need enough time between tiers so that.

What's the earliest time that you've looked at.

So I don't have that offhand because we were still just modeling off being able to move the schools to different tiers.

So we don't have a definitive early time yet.

What's the savings if we only move elementary.

I don't we don't we haven't cost that out separately.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

So actually I understand you're still you're just modeling still so I know it's crazy but I wanted to make sure we take into account how this also how it's going to affect preschool.

I'm sorry.

I want us to remember how to think about as we model how it's going to affect preschool.

and keep that in mind especially as we want to.

I know that one of the hopes is to center you know set to have the start times you know correlate to their school as opposed to right now they're a lot of them are different.

I think we did do 3 or 4 or 5 schools this year where we did line them up I think but I think everyone wants to expand that.

So anyways conversation you have with them you're going to learn more about it than I do but I just want to keep in mind the effects on preschool.

So thank you.

Director Somerville.

Director Davies.

I'm interested in ideas that do solve some of our operational challenges like the one that you presented here where we have a real bus driver shortage and I think that's very interesting.

I'm curious if the Transportation Department considered other ways to drive efficiency.

And I'm kind of referring to I think a 2019 study that would increase ridership on our buses by looking at planning our bus routes around people who are wanting to ride the rides versus eligible to ride our rides because that would directly kind of improve our standing with the STARS 1. I'm wondering if the Transportation Department looked at other ways to address this deficit.

Thank you.

So in terms of for now this is the this is our current proposal.

There are additional I would say both cost efficiencies and overall service improvements that we're continuing to discuss.

But in the interest of being able to bring something forward that we think is feasible for 2022-2023 this is what we have currently.

But there are other things that we are discussing.

Director Rankin.

Another question thanks.

Maybe at the end of last school year I think Director Maltais from the Transportation Department was talking about I don't know if you would call it a self-audit but a review of our transportation standards and where efficiencies could be made in better service.

And that was independent of of of a budget conversation that was just sort of a.

unneeded improvements and things that hadn't really been looked at in a while.

Is that work continuing and is it intersecting with what this is about.

And hopefully I mean I know his focus was on equity and dependability and providing some efficiencies which I would think would hopefully also be supportive of changes in budget but just I we haven't heard anything about that in a little while so I don't know where that is in the process and how it's relating to this piece.

Yeah so I that ties into kind of the timeline piece and so we are still working on that but in order for us to really think about what we can plan and budget on for 2022-23 that isn't included at this time.

We also know that that work encompasses much more engagement than we can bring forward at this time.

So that work is continuing just not something that we have anything that we can count on anything that can be budgeted for.

So there's sort of two parallel processes.

One based on service and one based on budget and right now they're not connected.

So I would say the only reason.

The only reason that is is partly in the interest of time but they are they are they are connected and I would say if we weren't in a situation where we weren't dealing with a driver shortage that would have been at the forefront of what we were able to tackle at the beginning of this year so that it was completely aligned.

And again just in full transparency it's not because we've just been managing daily operations given where we started the year with.

So but as we move forward they'll continue to be aligned.

Okay so potentially there could be a whole nother set of changes if that process kind of.

Here's my concern is that this is being this is a decision being made solely on the cost and we need to think about the the huge impact that start and end times have on the whole system.

And so I just want to make sure that we're not separating those two things out even though I do understand the concern with timing and that you know we don't always get what we want when we want it.

But but I don't want us to be so focused on where to find savings that we're actually leaving out this other piece that's really important.

Thanks.

Yeah.

And I think you know the discussion that we had in the things that were brought up today really reiterated the fact that when we discuss again in January and go through some of that that'll be a core piece of our discussion.

Okay directors given that we are getting really close if not I've skirted past public testimony time.

Let's let's try to be pretty concise going forward.

Okay.

Please.

President Hersey I will try and wrap this up not because all the answers are evident and clear but just because there's more time that we'll have in the coming weeks and in the next budget work session.

This slide now in front of you looks at the longer term implications of both Scenario A and Scenario B. So the figures in the 22-23 columns under each scenario have not changed from prior slides.

You'll see at the bottom line The $9.7 million dollars if the state were to grant some relief.

And in the opposing scenario the $18 million dollars of shortfall if it does not.

What this slide is intended to illustrate is the impact in the subsequent budget years 23-24 and 24-25.

And I'll highlight that 24-25 looks the same in each of the scenarios.

Which is to say we are proposing to take some near-term measures to bring our budget into alignment but there is much more work that needs to be done.

And that as I was referring to earlier will take a greater level of engagement and thoughtful planning before we can make those commitments.

We do have an outline of a plan that we'll continue to develop and we hope to bring forward in the January time frame.

The difficult choices that we have whether it's on transportation or other scenarios that we want to invest in are really just the the initiatives that are on the margin of our larger problem.

So I want to forecast that we have an approach but we are I need to be curt about this.

We are buying ourselves time by using our reserves purposefully in the coming year so that we can look at these more difficult challenges.

Whether we find solutions on the revenue side by seeking additional funds from the state or a different methodology of funding.

Whether we look at programmatic adjustments in the way we staff our schools and administer our programs.

That is the balance that we have to find.

What I'd like to make quick reference to for the benefit of the new directors especially is slide 13 from our last month's presentation.

We don't have this to bring up on the on the but you could.

So the point I'd like to make here is that in our last work session we identified The areas where the district has made choices about how to expend its resources that are different than how the state model of allocation provides us the resource to do those choices.

These are the areas where we need to do broader engagement with community and stakeholders to determine do we want to address these big areas.

Those big areas are how can we address salaries for our certificated staff in basic education.

How do we do staffing in special education.

Director Gannon I'm seeing board members trying to get to that page 13. Let's give it a quick beep to get there.

It's on the second it's in the second tab.

Okay.

Thank you Superintendent Jones.

The simple point I'd like to make is the big areas where we can look at programmatic adjustments revenue adjustments fall in large categories that are of critical importance to the way our district provides services to students and families.

We cannot make those decisions in the next six weeks or even the next two months.

It really will take a more thoughtful prolonged engagement balanced with the imperative to find a way to balance our overall budget.

If I could make just a short statement.

President Hersey will take questions or close the session depending on the director's preference.

The short play of our summary is we should continue to seek out additional revenue from the state and in the near term find the political and community wherewithal to say that we need enrollment relief.

We need to use the resources that we have including the carry forward of the fund balance the ESSER dollars and our one-time capital offsets.

We need to evaluate our transportation restructure whether that is the right choice now or later.

It merits good consideration.

We will look at central office reductions to an appropriate degree.

Those are the steps that we can take in the very near term.

We need to be mindful that we have to staff to enrollment at some point or seek better allocation of resources to match our intended level of staffing.

We need to do the community engagement to find out where I shouldn't say community exclusively.

Community and stakeholder engagement to look at these bigger categorical areas where we can make adjustments.

And as a sub-component of this but a very important one we need to engage with our labor partners and talk about how can we bring these things forward without it becoming deeply adversarial or portrayed as a budget exercise That is only about cuts and reductions.

That is is not the disposition of the district at this point.

We want to do this in in good transparent partnership.

So that if you will is a sort of our 7-step approach to addressing in the near term and setting the stage for a longer term discussion on our budget.

Director Hampson I think you had a question then we'll go to Director Harris.

Everything you just stated makes sense to me.

The one piece that we haven't achieved yet is our evaluation of these circumstances and choices in the context of the student outcomes that we've committed to.

I feel like we're getting closer.

And but I also heard us spend an hour just now talking mostly about adults.

And my request is that we work harder as a team to we started to get close when we were talking about transportation.

But when we're talking about these very difficult decisions we're contextualizing them with the outcomes that we seek for students which we have committed to and which we're obligated to provide good governance and decision making to Superintendent Jones and his staff to achieve.

So I don't know exactly what that looks like.

As I said I believe that we're we can get there.

And I believe we also need to start to move the participatory budgeting conversations as well.

Not because we have to change the topic but how we how we talk about it.

So that's my request for the next time that we get together is how we start to link these to actual outcomes for students.

We do have data around secondary students and the impact of change and dull times on them and on their their grades.

And we want to make sure that we're making the right decisions and that that one light item about I wanted to note that those additional projects doesn't actually speak to the fact that those are critical investments that we have to make in things like interim assessments so that we can actually determine so you all can determine whether or not we're on the pathway to those outcomes each year.

So they're not throwaway projects.

They're absolutely critical investments.

And there's a lot of tradeoffs that we have to make.

We need to make sure that we're making the right tradeoffs.

I don't think we've done that in the past and this is our opportunity to do that.

That's all.

Thank you.

But thank you.

With respect to last month's slide number 13 and this month's slide number 14 if we could add an extra column to the right that says state funded and then present both of those next month I think it presents a clearer picture because you know seven nurses the 13 percent cap on on special education funding et cetera.

It's presented in two different ways but but if we could keep that paramount I think then it becomes a persuasive tool.

Thank you.

President Hersey if there are no other questions could I take just a moment to respond to Vice President Hampson's comments.

Yes absolutely.

Okay thank you.

My apologies for the confusion there.

Vice President Hampson I just want to acknowledge that our presentation today has been largely devoid of the student outcomes and that is to a degree an oversight on our part and we will rectify that in our coming presentations.

But what I would like to give give voice to is the superintendent's direction last week and this week to say just that.

That we must bring forward a budget that clearly identifies our priorities and student outcome focused efforts whether it's the governance model or the actual operational delivery of services in the district.

Our fine colleagues Dr. Pedroza Dr. Williams Dr. Scarlett are already engaged in a very careful crosswalk of how we map the strategic plan to the student outcome focus goals and bring that into our senior staff discussions about where are we allocating our resources and identifying our clearest priorities that benefit students and communities.

And at the same time we are trying to keep in front of us a very clear focus on equity and the attainment of those goals so that we don't unintentionally disadvantage communities.

And that is the very the very in the difficult set of conversations we're having as a as a leadership team now.

Difficult not because we're misaligned in how we should orient ourselves.

the difficulty is how do we set aside our embedded scarcity model and look at budgeting in a way that is truly focused on the outcomes that are most beneficial to students and consistent with the commitments that the superintendent has made to the board and to the public.

So Dr. Jones has made that very clear to all of us and that will be manifest and clear in our upcoming presentation.

I literally couldn't have said it better myself but I just want to add a plus one to what Deputy Gannon mentioned.

It may not be abundantly clear in this document but it is abundantly clear in our senior cabinet conversations and how we're doing our analysis.

So I just wanted to affirm that.

Director Rivera-Smith and this will be the last question.

Thank you.

I just wanted to when you keep talking about staffing to enrollment I'm wondering how that's going to affect class size because I'm thinking of student outcomes I think and we're pretty much are going to agree that class size has a great impact on student outcomes.

So did that have would that affect it and how and what do we do to mitigate that.

Class size would be according to both the collective bargaining agreement and to generate the maximum K-3 revenue.

So in grades K-1 to 3 it's 17 to 1. In our high needs equity schools it can be 15 to 1. And then the class sizes for 4 and 5 would not would not be changing from what from what they were this year.

I mean the class sizes class sizes would likely feel bigger if there are less teachers.

Because right now we're we're overstaffed by the numbers that we showed in the slide.

This one.

Yeah.

I hear you.

I heard what you say about it's in it's in the BDA but I know we did change it last year.

We we have we have we raised.

We did by one.

Yeah.

So I know it can change.

That's why I'm asking because I'm afraid it would go up again.

There's no more increases that are planned.

And I think that that's part of what we focus on when we talk about student focused outcomes is whether or not class size where does that rank in getting outcomes for students.

So that is front and center with our CA&I colleagues.

Thank you.

Okay thank you directors and thank you to staff for that robust conversation.

As always it is greatly appreciated.

We are going to skip past the consent agenda portion and go directly to public testimony.

We have now reached the public testimony portion of the agenda.

We will begin taking public testimony in person and by teleconference today as stated on the agenda.

For any speakers watching through SPS-TV please call in now to ensure that you are on the phone line when your name is called.

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

I will summarize some important parts of this procedure.

First testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the school board website.

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

And only one person should speak at a time.

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

The total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers and will not be restarted after the new speaker begins.

In order to maximize opportunities for others to address the board each speaker is allowed only one speaking slot per meeting.

If a speaker cedes their time to a later speaker on the testimony list or waiting list the person who time was ceded will not be called to provide testimony again later in the meeting.

As there is only one speaking slot per person those who do not wish to have the time ceded to them may decline and retain their place on the testimony or wait list.

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

Ms. Wilson-Jones please read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you President Hersey.

For those who are joining us for testimony today when I call your name if you're in the room you can step to the podium and if you are on the phone when I call your name please press star-6 to unmute on the conference call line.

And for anyone who is on today's testimony list and who has not yet made it into the room because we're short on space we'll make sure to call your name again if you're not in the room yet when I call it.

First on today's testimony list is Samuel Casa.

Samuel Casa.

Today we're here to talk about equity around prom.

As it currently is we don't have much information about prom or even if we can have one.

And there has been big talk around all every around every South End Seattle Public School.

Since prom is such a big event there will be major backlash if we don't have a prom.

And students who were already talking about prom this whole year will lose motivation if there is not prom because prom is such like a big event to everyone.

Um so many students like really use their prom or prom and other like school events to keep their like motivation and grades up uh and like going to prom or like having a prom will like drive the attendance goals for us like even more because um we can always like change prom to like have a an attendance like goal if you did not meet this you can't go to prom like sorry um and that's not like the last bit of it.

So the big thing that we really want to talk about is how North End schools will always have a problem and their PTSA will pay for it.

Yeah and even if I I mean their PTSA will pay for it no matter what because they have that money and they will be able to sign the liability insurance and that is a big equity gap because a lot of the Seattle a lot of the South End Seattle Public Schools their PTSA or Alumni Association will not be able to sign that because they just don't have the funding.

And our parents money really shouldn't determine if we have a prom especially when we sent the spent the last four years working hard doing all these events for our own prom just to have it not be able to happen.

Um, and so with COVID this year, I know that there are a lot of regulations about, um, like big events and we could always have, like, as we do in like the basketball games, um, proof of vaccination or proof of negative COVID tests within the past 24 hours.

Um, we can always take these like, uh, safety regulations and bring that to the school events.

And what's also about the equity part there is like even if we can't raise the money I feel like there should still be a district of a district venue for every single Seattle Public School to use that so that schools that don't have that money and especially because of COVID we haven't been able to raise as much money for these past two years.

There should be just a venue that every Seattle Public Schools should use or can use if they don't raise that amount of money so no students really have to stress and worry about having a problem.

Disappointed privilege as an alumni, I think of the school that you are representing.

I didn't hear what high school that you're from.

It's on my mask, Franklin High School.

That's right.

I attended a Franklin prom two years back.

And I remember how glorious it was.

And at the end of the prom, we left the prom, took our tuxedos off, and put on shorts and got in trouble.

So it was a fantastic event.

And we're going to try and make it happen for you.

Thank you.

No pictures.

No pictures.

Yeah.

So.

From one Quaker to another.

We're going to make it happen for you.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker on today's testimony list is Sebastian.

Maybe help me with the pronunciation.

School Board Directors Superintendent Jones thank you for allowing us to be here today and for creating a space to have our voices heard.

We've really been enjoying in-person school getting to reconnect with our friends and taking part in the extracurricular activities only possible during in-person school.

We are the class officers of 2022 at Lincoln High School representing the first graduating class of seniors since 1981. We've had the great privilege of being getting to create many of the traditions at Lincoln.

And we hope you'll give us the privilege of getting us to host Lincoln's first prom since reopening.

As students really we really want to have a safe prom.

This means requiring masks and vaccines as well as providing robust testing for students beforehand and at the door.

We know these strategies work to substantially reduce transmission and we know they work best with careful planning.

Right now with the district moratorium on signing of events contract of event contracts we simply cannot plan the specifics of our safety plan because we can't book a venue.

Once we sign the first contract we can immediately start creating methods to check vaccination status and arrange for COVID testing at our event.

As you all almost certainly know this has really really been a tough past 18 months and We ask that you please consider allowing us to provide a prom for our classmates.

A safe prom it really starts with just the ability to plan that prom and we hope you'll give us the opportunity to plan a safe fun and successful event to conclude our senior year.

Thank you so much.

The next speaker on today's testimony list is Jocelyn Panganibon.

Hello members of the board.

My name is Jocelyn Panganibon and I am a senior I'm a senior at Chief Sealth International High School.

As you know prom is an important milestone to many students.

It gives us an opportunity to celebrate the end of our high school careers with our peers.

At Chief Sealth while we have a caring and supportive community of people we simply do not have the financial resources to hold a prom independently compared to many other schools that are far more privileged.

This is inequitable towards our community along with many other schools that share a similar position as we do.

The only place that Chiefs that Chief Sealth can afford to hold a prom is on school grounds which we can only do with school board approval.

Our class of 2022 ASB has spent the past four years trying to fundraise as much money as we can for monumental moments such as prom and it would be unfortunate to see that hard work not get celebrated.

Our community at Chief Sealth are willing to overcome any obstacles it may take to achieve the memorable and safe prom that our seniors deserve.

We urge you to take our story and circumstances under consideration when implementing a decision that will impact how many students of Class of 2022 will remember their senior year.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Dylan Kearney-Woods.

Dylan Kearney-Woods.

Hello.

Oh okay.

Hello I'm Dylan a student at Ballard High School.

As a member of Students Against Sexual Assault I want to thank you all for the support you've shown towards this movement.

Today I'm here to address Ms. Song-Wa Ritz.

At the last board meeting you stated and I quote, I need to examine the data particularly desegregated data.

I need to hear from the community.

Well I'm here today because the community has spoken.

This testimony is for you.

I conducted a survey that was taken by 665 SPS students.

Over 63 percent of these students are female.

77.4 percent of these people have been sexually harassed or assaulted yet only 22 percent of them have reported this to their school.

I had them rate the reporting experience on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being horrible and 10 being amazing.

89 percent rated the school's response below a 5 on this scale.

This statistic does not surprise me.

How do you expect students to come forward about their experience.

If 89 percent of them usually are further traumatized by the reporting process only you guys can fix this.

Separate from student victims 77 percent of us do not feel safe or protected from sexual assault at school.

Only 49 percent of us have an adult we feel safe talking to about our experiences in our school.

If you're not convinced our demands are valid I can help with that too.

90.9 percent of students said they would benefit from a sexual assault specialized therapist in their school.

84.1 percent would benefit from monthly training for mandatory reporters.

94.6 percent would benefit from a revised flash curriculum and 73 percent would benefit from the Title IX revisions.

We're going to provide you all with printed copies of this survey and we highly recommend that you take some time to examine it.

No matter what challenges you hand us we will get through it.

Any uncertainty you have we'll fix it and any questions you have we will answer them.

As you all requested the community has spoken and we will not stop until we get justice.

Thank you.

Next for testimony is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on today's board work session on the budget.

Two points.

Number one please use the full qualifying amount of twenty one point one million dollars of capital funds for operations.

The district had done this the last several years.

The general fund budget could be in better shape now.

Number two returning to three-tier transportation would mean three different school start times.

Please add transportation to out-of-attendance area schools so that families can choose schools to start times that fit their schedules.

On the three action items four points.

Number one three items are being introduced for a vote at the same meeting which limits review.

Number two the report on the teacher diversity contract provides no data on the previous two years.

Number three the calendar item would make January 27th a make-up day for the canceled school day on November 12th.

The board has never responded to the fact that nine days prior to November 12th the district knew of a giant lack of substitutes.

Number four please permanently drop service learning as a mandatory requirement requiring students to work for free is similar to indentured servitude.

On final acceptance of the Bagley project I have questions about change orders and about place-based turned into church parking.

On the Lincoln project the guaranteed maximum price is increasing 1.1 million dollars but the overall project budget is increasing 7.3 million dollars.

Why?

On the approval of courses perhaps if the district had had access to Philippine X American U.S. history the board would have prevented the demolition of the Decatur Annex at Thornton Creek.

Thank you very much.

Next for public testimony is Emma Medicine White Crow.

Emma Medicine White Crow.

Good evening Superintendent Jones Board of Directors Mara Araway OCO and then the Medicine Wyko Comanche Cherokee and the President of Native Education Indian Parent Committee Indian Parent Advisory Committee.

And I'm speaking about adopting new curricula but not requiring accountability or training in classrooms for already adopted curricula.

Indian Parent Advisory Committee asked me again for the third time to come before you to make these three asks.

I've already emailed these three asks in a letter so you should have them in your inbox.

We know that this board is reactionary to grandstanding loud voices.

These asks excuse me.

We however as an Indian Parent Committee wish to be your partner.

The IPAC is a required part of our Native Ed federal grant.

We ask and our task is to provide Seattle Public Schools the opportunity to fulfill the federal trust responsibility.

We are again affirming that as your partner we want the best educational experience and opportunities for our children and we will help them to be successful in their life journey.

Require one our first act is require that all teachers not only take the STI training provided by SPS Native Ed but make it a requirement on the annual evaluation for principals.

It's a law.

Reinstate the Native education leadership position from manager to director.

And number three stop tokenizing Native Americans one time per year Native American Heritage Month.

We are Native all year and we appreciate the day but prefer a place at the table.

The IPAC insists that school leaders ensure and require their teaching staff attend STI training and implement STI curricula in the classroom.

We also are asking that Native students are still being that we stop harming Native students.

Native students are still being exposed to racist dangerous and harmful teachings.

The current manager Gail Morris of the Title 6 Indian Education Program helps to positively impact the community relationship.

We need strong leadership position at SPS.

Gail Morris the current program manager the Native educator who has proven to be a strong leader and exceptional trainer STI and a trusted dedicated value member of our Native community.

We are Native American Heritage Month yet we continue to hear from parents who have come before us who have their children come home for Thanksgiving break wearing pilgrim hats and construction paper feathers.

By taking the above actions Seattle Public Schools will better respect their relationship with the people on whose land they currently reside in.

And we will not lose valued staff to other districts because you continue to devalue them.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Dr. Pio DeCano.

Dr. Pio DeCano.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak before the board.

I want to show you this because this sign here is student outcomes.

That's what we're looking for.

We want to make sure that the kids that go to school with the new Filipino-American curriculum will be will not be part of this or will be avoid able to avoid this.

I spent I left I retired from Nathan Hale High School as a school counselor in 1997 and so I'm and I worked in curriculum as a administrator running federal programs.

And what you're doing with respect to the secondary school curriculum with focusing on the Filipino-American experience is really important.

My my father had a Washington State Supreme Court decision of that let Filipino Americans own property in the state of Washington.

And this is the 80th anniversary year of that Washington State Supreme Court decision.

He fought it on his own.

And this is a kind of of a sign that Filipino, Filipinos recently arrived from Stockton or this was taken in Stockton, but it was happening all over the United States, especially in California and here in Washington, given the nature of my dad's victory in the Supreme Court.

So again, I worked in education for 25 years and I've been retired for 27. But the steps you're taking today will are appropriate for this anniversary year of my dad.

Next is Cynthia Mejia Giudici.

Good evening Superintendent Jones and the board members.

My name is Cynthia Mejia-Judici a proud daughter of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines and I'm a published author oral historian and Philippinex community advocate.

I'm also a former Seattle Public School teacher sign language interpreter and consulting teacher.

I was also the Filipino club advisor at Roosevelt High School.

I'm here in support of the Philippine Act's American history, but also for the women of color comparative literature, Arabic class, and Black world studies proposals in which you'll be voting for.

I learned my roots from my mother and father.

I'm very proud of it.

And I also did research on a book called America, Filipinos in America, 1998 to 1974. But this is me.

These were not my students.

These were not the students that came to the Filipino club.

They just wanted to eat lumpia and pancit.

And I asked them what do you know about your backgrounds and they said I don't know.

I just know lumpia is really cool and you're going to offer it again next time.

And it really saddened me.

Seattle is a hotbed.

It is a place where students can visit.

Places that like history in Alaska, canneries, the labor movement, agricultural, Chinatown ID, the churches, the Filipino clubs.

And this is something that they are not aware of.

And yes, they know about Doug Baldwin, Cheryl Burke, Manny Pacquiao, Leah Salonga, but nothing of their history.

It saddened me. that their knowledge was so limited but was also the duty of their parents to give them that.

But what if the parents themselves don't know about their own Filipino-American history in the United States.

My timeline events in my book ended in 1974. Think of the events that have occurred since then.

A new wave of Filipinos.

And not only that let us not forget the greater community of our mixed race are African-American Latino Indian Caucasian blood mixed with the blood of Filipinos.

This is the new Filipino community.

Please as a fellow educator I strongly support the proposals for your vote today.

We this group of supporters ask you the Seattle School Board to vote yes.

Thank you very much.

Next is Devin Cavania on behalf of Dolores Sabanga.

Good evening.

By day you know me as Devin but tonight I speak as Dolores.

The Honorable Dolores Sabanga is the first Filipino-American lawyer in Washington State.

Dolores is also the first woman of color ever elected to the Seattle City Council.

She also ran for mayor in the late 1980s and she is safely at home at 90 years old.

Dear school board members this is to urge each of you to vote for new course content particularly Filipino-X American history for middle school and high school.

I am Dolores Sabanga a former Seattle elected official and retired attorney.

I graduated from Bailey Gatzert Grade School Washington Junior High and Garfield High School.

I have a Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Washington.

And not once in all my years of formal education was I taught about Filipino-American history.

Now my adult grandchildren are eager to learn about their heritage but like me their source of knowledge comes not from Seattle schools but from organizations like the Filipino-American National History Society.

Filipinos have been in North America for 400 years.

in the Seattle area for 140 years.

We number 178,300 in Washington State as of 2018. There are more than 5,000 Filipino children in Seattle schools.

If we are forgotten a rich and vital part of our children's education is missing.

Please vote for new course content and the inclusion of Philippine Ex-American history.

Thank you.

Dolores Sabanga Esquire.

Next is Janelle Lardizabal.

Janelle Lardizabal.

Dr. Jones senior staff directors.

Garfield High School is reeling.

In the past month we've had two bomb threats that evacuated the building.

A shootout on campus just one after one hour after school let out while many of our student athletes were still present.

And last week a lockdown when unknown individuals entered the building seeking to harm a student.

We understand we're not alone and that there have been threats and incidents at other Seattle schools.

These are large urban high schools with open campuses and we simply don't have the resources we need to meet this surge in violence.

We're here tonight to urge you to reallocate funds to immediately support the following critical needs at Garfield High School.

First integrated student support.

Garfield has over sixteen hundred students and only four counselors.

We ask for additional counselors and a social worker trained to work with youth who can conduct needs assessments implement prevention programs and coordinate a range of community supports for our students including mental health services.

Second security specialists.

Garfield is a nine acre campus with two buildings three parking lots a track play fields and only two security guards.

We ask for a third security specialist to monitor doors patrol the premises and respond to incidents.

Most importantly any steps to improve safety and security at Garfield must engage the students who go there as well as their families.

We need to empower our teens to be part of the solution.

Dr. Jones senior staff directors we invite you to join us tomorrow night for a community meeting at Epiphany Parish at 6 p.m.

And as you work on next year's very challenging budget we urge you to find the money and to make our students safety your priority.

We don't want to become a national statistic.

We don't want to look back and say all the signs were there but we didn't act with enough urgency to protect our kids.

Please act with urgency.

Thank you.

Next is Christy DeVader.

Christy DeVader.

Good evening.

Kids do well if they can.

That's the guiding principle of Dr. Ross Green clinical psychologist New York Times bestselling author and founding director of Lives in the Balance.

A group that provides resources and trainings on collaborative and proactive solutions.

An evidence-based model that helps schools and families work with kids to identify and solve problems that cause challenging behaviors.

I'm a mom to three Seattle Public School students and co-chair of the Restraint and Isolation Committee for the Seattle Special Education PTSA.

None of my kids have been restrained at school.

They've never been isolated or suspended or expelled but they do struggle to do well at times especially my oldest who has an IEP for a disability that's mostly invisible and who does often get labeled lazy unmotivated or checked out when he struggles.

I took this board position to amplify the voices of parents who are begging our educators to understand that behavior is communication.

Full stop.

Kids do well if they can and teachers do well if they can when we provide them with the right training and tools to understand support collaborate with and sustain our students learning behavioral challenges and all.

Our students teachers and families deserve this support and I want to find ways to provide it which led me to reach out to Dr. Green who's worked with so many who's helped so many families including mine.

Dr. Green offered to bring his trainings to Seattle Public Schools at no cost to the district.

He's doing similar work with the Department of Education in Maine and in Fairfax Virginia to help bring their schools into compliance with restraint and seclusion bills they've recently passed.

Trainings are both district-wide and web-based as well as intensive and in-person for schools most in need.

I conveyed this offer to Dr. to district leadership and the school board on December 6th and offered to arrange a meeting with Dr. Green to discuss it.

I received an email last night from Dr. Torres letting me know his team is reviewing and vetting the resources and info provided.

I so appreciate Dr. Torres taking this request seriously as I'm only a parent but one who has experienced the value of this work firsthand.

I welcome school board directors to connect with Dr. Green as well.

And we'll leave a copy of my letter and his books here for you to review.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

quote we're about the business of students.

We can't be about conflict end quote.

Thank you Director Sargeu.

Director Harris.

Trying to defend a nomination you are willing to assassinate someone's character for a situation that you did not have all the information and you stated untrue information.

You stated there was an appeal and that is true.

But when you stated there was a lawsuit that's not true.

You should be glad as a school board director that Vice President Hampson is willing to stand up for what is right.

But when you said there's a lawsuit as you should know and you know from your law background you should understand the impact that this wrong decision can make on the other 294 districts in our state.

And I understand this from other school board members from other districts and education government agencies.

You are you so tired and scorned that you are willing to assassinate someone's character for a vote for someone who does not have the history skill or ability from a public facing viewpoint.

My daughter watched this with me and she said this is even worse than her ghetto school comment and I am so glad that there are not youth on the school board yet.

Her other observations made me proud of her insight and awareness but extremely sad of what she observed unacceptable and shameful.

This policy was a board policy that should have been in the hands that should not been in the hands of staff.

That was the problem.

Community work stories of pain and trauma that our students experienced were woven into this BAR and the work.

It was replaced with something unrecognizable.

This is the work.

If this is the work.

This is the work that had two accountability documents.

One for building leaders and one for students.

I talked about it on King 5 move.

Something student-focused centered in community got hijacked and became about adults.

And if Director Hampson And Dr. Wolfe had the experience.

Anything like I did you should be defending them.

They are guilty only of asking them to do their job.

A job that should have been done by the board but Juneau wanted to win on the first anti-racist policy.

Forget the students.

And at no time did anyone on this board acknowledge or defend the Native culture and heritage.

If anything From everything that I read you would think that a white man and a white woman against two Black women.

This is the ancestral land of direct former Director DeWolf.

The investigation is a snapshot of years of work that was started with Director Hampson as the Seattle Council's PTSA president.

Director Slye Dr. Jones and Dr. Petrosa.

Work that made her join this board and families of sexual assault and district harm do not have the tools to hold the district accountable because student focus work became about people and positions.

We must do better and be better role models and not make decisions on emotions and feelings.

Feelings change.

Facts don't.

Vice President Hampson.

Thank you for being unapologetic about getting it right for students.

This is life and death work and we all must do better.

The next speaker is Kayla Epting.

Kayla Epting if you're on the phone you can go ahead.

Can you guys hear me.

I can hear you.

Awesome.

Good evening school board directors Superintendent Jones and community.

My name is Kayla F. King.

I am a parent at Garfield High School as well as a PTSA president.

In recent weeks our school community has experienced a significant increase in on and near campus violence.

I am here to ask for two things to help ensure student and staff safety.

One we need the robust.

Mental health support the district named in its back-to-school plan for the 21-22 school year.

A three-month wait for services simply isn't cutting it.

We have to have the tools to address behavioral issues mental health support and trauma support for staff and students facing school-based violence.

If our students and staff are to be healthy and thriving this is something that can no longer wait.

Two we also need an additional security specialist at our building.

With the size of our building and number of students two security specialists simply isn't enough.

An additional security person is essential for the safety of our staff and students.

In closing I would also like to call out that this increased violence is not unique to Garfield but has been seen district-wide and without the additional support Specifically concerning mental health and security across the board we will continue continue to see these issues rise.

I believe we are at a pivotal point and we cannot wait to act until something tragic happens.

We have to be bold creative and intentional because there will never be enough money.

Our kids and staff are depending on us to get this right.

I hope that you will keep these things at the front of your mind during your ongoing budget conversations.

Thank you in advance for your partnership and swift actions in addressing our current and urgent safety issues.

The next speaker is Velma Valoria.

Velma Valoria.

Velma if you're on the phone please press star 6 to unmute.

Velma Valoria.

Moving to the next speaker Josh Solorio.

Josh Solorio.

All right.

Superintendent Jones Jones members of the school board.

First I just want to start by thanking you guys for giving me the opportunity to speak here today.

I also want to personally thank board member Hersey and Hampson for coming out and addressing me and my members personally outside.

So I'm a union representative for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302. We represent over 700 750 members in the Seattle School District that work in custodial culinary security and alarms.

So the reason that we're here today currently we are in negotiations to address some of the below market wages that many of our members are being paid right now.

We have a lot of members that are being paid a lot less than the surrounding school districts in their respective positions.

And we just want to highlight that fact to you and hopefully get your guys' support in these negotiations with the school district.

We think that these negotiations are moving in a positive direction but we just wanted to highlight the fact that these negotiations are ongoing and that a lot of our members They're forced to go to the food bank every week because they cannot sustain on the wages that they're being paid right now.

We have members that work in this district that cannot even afford to live here and that is just unacceptable in a district like Seattle.

So I really appreciate you guys giving us the opportunity to speak.

We have plenty of members outside that came out here in the rain and the wind.

to just let it be known that we hope we have your guys' support.

Like I said we really think these negotiations are moving in a positive direction but we would love your guys' support in this fight.

So thank you guys so much.

I appreciate you guys giving me the time to speak here today.

All right.

Have a good rest of your night guys.

Thank you so much.

Checking back one more time to see if Velma Valeria is on the line.

Velma if you're on the line please press star-6 now to unmute.

President Hersey that concludes today's testimony list.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much Ms. Wilson-Jones and a huge thank you to everybody who shared their time and perspective with us but none more so than our students especially our students from Ballard.

Your continued courage coming out here and addressing us on a regular basis is very seen and much appreciated.

So thank you for that.

Okay so we're going to get back on track with our agenda.

We need to move back to the consent portion.

I'm going to find the page on which the consent portion is.

Okay we're good to go.

We have now reached 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 Hampson and seconded by Director Rivera-Smith.

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

Okay.

Seeing none we will now move to a vote on the consent agenda.

All those in favor please signify by saying aye.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Thank you for that very quick movement.

Okay.

We have now come actually would y'all mind if we say board committee reports and lump them with comments at the end.

Does it does it make a difference to anyone.

Okay.

Let's move right into our agenda so that we can get staff out of here if they if they need to go.

So.

Say again.

I'm sorry.

Yeah so if we can move those to the end.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Cool.

Okay.

Give me one moment.

Pages sticking together.

All right.

We will now move to the action items on today's agenda.

The first item that we have actually do not have.

Oh here we go.

Okay.

So the first item that we have is approval of the renewal teacher diversity contract between the City of Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning deal and the city or excuse me the Seattle Public Schools SPS to diversify the educator workforce.

May I have a motion for this item.

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute the renewal of the teacher diversity contract with the City of Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning and accept the funds in the amount of $3,865,701 over five years for the purposes of advancing diversity among the educator workforce and to take all actions necessary to implement the contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

This item has been moved and properly seconded.

Do we have a report from staff on this one.

Oh on the phone.

Fantastic.

Take it away.

Good evening it's Mike Simmons.

Apologies for not being there in person.

Can you hear me.

We are working on it.

We can hear you but you're stopped.

Give us two seconds.

continue.

Thank you.

Okay thanks.

Again Superintendent Jones and school board thanks for allowing me the time to share a little bit more on the City of Seattle deal contract renewal.

Again Mike Simmons Director of Talent Management reporting.

Noah Treat who's the Executive Director of HR.

We certainly recognize with this contract we must be mindful of the ongoing alignment with the district's goals and guardrails as we continue this work.

As indicated in the previous statements there we're looking for introduction and action due to the complexity of the city's contracting process because the funds are obviously needed immediately.

We're moving from the year-to-year contract to the five-year multi-year agreement as stated in the motion there.

The first two years of the contract 2019-20 and 2021 We certainly met the performance goals and received the performance targets there and received that performance payment to at the 100 percent level.

The report out for this contract to the city is three times a year.

The first time for this year 21-22 will be this week.

The contract really represents the partnership with the city's Department of Early Learning.

Primary areas that we really focus on are tuition assistance As we want we don't want that to be a barrier if you will to any of our participants in the contract and at our local schools.

The other piece is mentorship and professional development.

The programs specifically targeted with this contract partnership is the AA programs at Seattle Colleges Central and North Seattle BA programs at City U Central Washington and University of Washington including the SEHI program which is Special Education High Incidence Programs.

And then of course we have a bilingual and ELL endorsements of our current teachers.

And then we have a partnership with the Seattle Teaching Residency through the alliance.

We also have a non-monetary coordination and collaboration with University of Washington's My Brother's Teacher program.

And it also funds our ARE Program Manager position which is currently occupied by K.O.

Wilson.

72 percent of this contract goes to tuition assistance.

We apply the last dollar aid approach which means that every participant must fill out the FAFSA form and whatever and then the specific school or respective schools will address that whatever is left with scholarships and that's where we come in.

So that's what the last dollar aid piece is.

Currently participating in our programs we have about 250 and 72 of those have binding contracts.

that are slated to be in SPS classrooms in the fall of 2022. From a demographic standpoint students of color make up 72 percent or 180 of the 250. 92 are males 152 are females and 6 are non-binary.

Of those 150 of those 250 I'm sorry 148 are SPS graduates or 59 percent.

So those are graduates who desire to come back to the district where they graduated from and participate as teachers of record.

So therein lies the overview if you will of the City of Seattle Deal Contract Renewal and I can take any questions.

All right.

Do directors have any questions at this time.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Let's go ahead and move to the vote on this.

Okay Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Sarju aye Director Song Marie aye Vice President Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Rankin I. President Hersey.

Proudly I. This motion has passed unanimously.

I'll just say thank you very much.

Thank you for your continued service.

We really appreciate you Mike.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Let's move on to action item number two approval of an update to the 2021-22 school year calendar.

May I have a motion for this item.

I move that the school board approve the updated 2021-22 school year calendar as attached to the board action report with any minor non-substantive additions deletions or modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Item has been moved and properly seconded.

We will now move to some comments from staff.

I believe we are hearing from Mr. Boyd.

Or just to discuss the change to the school calendar.

As you know the school boards one of your many responsibilities is to set the school calendar each year and that is detailed in Washington law.

And this change is a result of the day off that we had to take as an emergency measure when we did not have enough staff to cover with substitutes the day after Veterans Day which was November 12th.

Originally we had indicated that we would likely add this to the end of the school year but upon further kind of thought we determined that that probably wasn't the best solution as it would result in a one-day school week tacked onto the end of the school year and that one day would have fallen on a Tuesday because of it's a holiday weekend.

We received suggestions from staff and received feedback from our labor partners that January 27th is likely the better choice as it's currently a day off between semesters.

And that would then allow us to have a complete full year complete school year meeting our 180-day requirement and not have that awkward one day at the end tacked onto the end.

So if you have any questions I'd welcome them.

Directors have any questions on this.

Okay.

I see Director Rankin and then we'll go to Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Will so if it's has been or it's calendared as a day between semesters and my remembrance is that that's also sometimes used as a potential snow day makeup day.

So that's it's not it's not totally unusual that this would become.

a makeup day for something although snow tends to happen after after that day passes which I've always thought was kind of funny.

But my question is does that day become the last day of first semester or the first day of second semester.

So when I looked at the calendar originally the last day of first semester was considered January 26th.

It's my opinion that because we lost one day within that first semester that then that now means that January 27th is now the last day of first semester keeping our semesters.

That makes a lot of sense.

Thank you.

Yes.

And then that does kind of beg the question is if we had added it on to the end of the year.

So without the missing or the kind of pause day teachers will have and students will have their first semester classes that day and then the next day would be second semester class schedule new schedule all that.

Yep they would start second semester on that Friday.

Thank you Ronald.

I and I asked at this point it's going to be exact.

I asked what was the plan.

Should this happen again.

Was there was there have you guys talked about what how to prevent this from happening again.

Because it will happen in 4 years and 2025 we'll have a Tuesday Veterans Day so another potential for a 4-day weekend there.

But and you explained some of some of the talks in bargaining that are going to be done.

But I guess maybe what I should have said too and you can give you can give that again here.

But I think a greater question is.

How are we addressing that our staff have the need there's such a great need to take that day off.

How are we addressing that burnout with staff and that need for just some respite that you know they get they're going to get right now we've got a lot of schedule but but there's clearly a greater need going on.

And the answer I don't even think is giving them more days off it's also just how do we help them through the year help them support them so they don't get to the point that they need so many extra days off.

I know it's a huge question but.

I guess that's probably what I should have more said at that meeting but because I appreciate your answer regarding the operational changes and things like that which you can share again if you want.

But like I said the other question is how are you how are we helping so staff aren't so desperate for extra days off that they're having to come in such great numbers for things like this.

Yeah I think that's an excellent question.

And I know that in the next bargain As well we've been contemplating and brainstorming ways that we can potentially take things off the teacher's plate.

Of course I think I've even seen memes about this where like like it just that doesn't happen it's always about adding to a teacher's plate.

But I believe that that is that is something that we're discussing.

What can we look at as far as doing that.

And I think that there is also really making sure that our our staff is aware of the resources that are available to them through our Human Resources Department to work on mental health and things like that.

Things of that nature and that support that we can provide.

But I think it's a very difficult question.

I think it's very difficult to to find an answer to.

But it is something that we have been discussing and hopefully we'll be able to working with our labor partner SEA come up with some good solutions.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Sorry I yeah.

Thinking forward to future calendars this is an item that is under the purview of the school board and typically it kind of comes to the school board at the end of discussion for with the assumption that we will say looks good.

What process can we engage in that doesn't interfere with the bargaining process about looking ahead to the calendar dates and and you know engaging more around and sooner what potential days might pop up that would make sense to adjust or what families are interested in.

I'm just it's it's become a conversation that's tied only to bargaining and it's actually should be more of a community conversation.

I agree.

I know that you know with this date in particular I know that James Bush was in communication with the Seattle Council PTSA and I think that that may be just as I think about it just at the dais here just maybe an avenue in which we do engage further.

You know this route you know we really did just you know kind of we informed of kind of what we were thinking and kind of you know invited feedback but I think that there is room to potentially do greater engagement there.

And I just kind of at the top of my head I think that's likely one of our best options that I'd say for now.

You Director Rankin and thank you Mr. Boyd.

Okay.

So we will now move if there are no other questions to a vote on this item.

Milsom Ms. Wilson-Jones will you please call the roll.

Director Sargent.

I think I'm voting aye.

Is that the right vote.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

It sounds like that that's what you would prefer.

Is that correct.

Okay.

Aye.

Director Song-Murrett aye Vice President Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye President Hersey aye.

This motion passed unanimously.

We will now move on to our next order of business.

Action Item Number 3 is a partial waiver of Board Policy Number 2415 High School Graduation Requirements to Suspend Service Learning Requirement for Students Graduating in 2022. May I have a motion for this item.

I move that the school board temporarily suspend the provision in Board Policy Number 2415 High School Graduation Requirements Requiring that graduating students complete 60 hours of service learning for graduation from today's date until August 31st 2022. Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

We this item has been moved and properly seconded.

We will now hear from Mr. Perkins.

Thank you President Hersey.

Caleb Perkins Executive Director for College and Career Readiness.

I'm here on behalf of Dr. Keisha Scarlett the Assistant Superintendent for Academics.

This BAR as you heard is to suspend for the class of 2022 the service learning requirement requiring 60 hours of service learning for our graduation requirement.

We developed this BAR in close collaboration with the board and we want to thank the SSC&I committee as well as the Executive Committee for all the guidance that you've given in October and November.

We wanted to point out that this is something that is a local graduation requirement.

It is something that the board has suspended throughout the pandemic for the class of 2020 and the class of 2021. And after again a careful analysis engaging with a number of school leaders as well as community members that I think have reached out to both you and to us we are bringing back to you this this BAR to request another temporary suspension for the class of 2022 around the specific requirement.

We have included in the BAR as always an engagement analysis and a racial equity analysis which indicates that students of color furthest from educational justice are most likely to benefit from this waiver.

And we do agree and strongly recommend the approval of this given the need for our students to focus on their academic and social needs going on during this year.

As has been brought up at SSC&I this does warrant a larger conversation around the future of this requirement.

But again this BAR is only for this year and for the class of 2022. And we appreciate your consideration.

And again in consultation with the board we're bringing it for intro and action so that schools can plan accordingly their second semester with as much time as possible.

Thank you very much.

So I see that we have Director Hampson.

Do any other directors have questions at this time.

Please take it away Director Hampson.

Will there be capacity this year to look at this policy.

It it may be that it's something the board might decides to take action on regardless.

The policy is quite dated in my opinion and certainly did not have a particular equity framework in mind when it was developed.

I know it's a lot of work to put together these BAR's and would so two two part question one what if any plans to engage around this.

I do want to know what students think.

If not then any perspective about how you would see it how staff would see this moving forward to come to a conclusion about the policy.

And then I lied it's three parts.

The are there students who have completed a service requirement.

Some students we're making this partway through the we've already started the second quarter so some students have already completed this.

I feel a little bit bad for them.

I don't know if you want to address that but those are my thoughts.

I think on the last part our understanding is that the school leaders and counselors and others have weighed that that downside and said that the the upside is much much outweighs that significantly.

We can also reach out to the school staff members to see if there's other ways to honor that work.

I don't know what that would be off the top of my head.

In terms of the larger conversation I think we would be interested in having that larger conversation.

The challenge as you alluded to is in terms of doing enough engagement.

I think Director Rankin has indicated an interest as well as the you know and so the it gets into a number of other areas of interest.

Things like work-based learning internships you know other areas that we've been engaging and really try to devote our energies to.

So I I believe staff including myself would be interested in having that conversation.

I think the level of engagement would need to be determined to see if we could actually resolve it by the end of this year.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Do we have any other questions at this time.

Okay.

Is it a question.

Go for it.

I just wanted to add a little bit more context of the conversations that we've had around this policy in committee and and also you know that came about during the conversation of Do we approve this waiver again this year as we have in other years.

And so just to tag on to what Vice President Hampson said there is there there has not as far as I can tell been any sort of update or revisiting of this requirement since it was first presented 20-something years ago.

And And there's definitely a lot of value to be had I think in having a conversation about what the intent actually is and who has access to the opportunities.

How we sort of rate activities as being qualifying or not and all that kind of record keeping.

And I know that for I know that there's data on waivers of past years and what students have requested waivers and demographic data related to that.

And so I just wanted to just highlight that I guess that we've talked about it and that it is on in conversations about next year's work plan for student services curriculum and instruction.

It's there as sort of a placeholder with the hopes that we can address it.

And it does overlap with quite a few few other things.

So more to come I suppose.

Wonderful.

Okay so any other questions on this item before we move to the vote.

All right seeing none Miss Wilson-Jones.

Director Song-Moretz aye Vice President Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Sardew aye President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you everyone.

So that completes our action items.

Let's get ready to move into intro items.

Okay.

So the first intro item is approval of courses with new content as defined by Superintendent Procedure 20-26-SP.

Who will we be hearing from.

Mr. Perkins.

Thank you again.

Again Caleb Perkins Executive Director for College and Career Readiness.

I just want to thank you for the opportunity to present this exciting board action report.

As we heard from public testimony there's a lot of interest in the specific courses we bring to you tonight.

We bring this BAR annually so that we can add courses to inform the registration and course enrollment process for 22-23.

that begins in January and February.

And as context every year we review the course catalog to ensure in particular in light of our strategic plan and our focus on students of color furthest from educational justice that we're making efforts to improve quality equitable access and ensuring offerings are actually sequenced towards readiness.

So with this as was noted by President Hersey that this per 2026 we bring all courses that are deemed having new content to the board for their approval and that involves five courses this year.

Arabic 1 and 2. Black Studies World History 3 and 4. Philippinex American U.S. History 11 that we heard in public testimony and Women of Color Comparative Literature and Composition.

We're excited about all of these course offerings.

This comes from a collaborative effort from the community from educators and from our central staff.

And in each of these cases as you can see in the racial equity analysis we believe these will be helpful in enhancing pathways to graduation and providing new ways to include diversity and inclusion in our courses and ensuring that our courses are in fact serving our students of color further from educational justice.

Just a little bit more specificity on each of these courses as was shared at SSC&I.

Arabic 1 and 2 came from a collaboration and interest from East African and Somali families, specifically from Denny and Chief Self.

Obviously, the Philippinex U.S. History course, you heard about some of the involvement, and I just want to thank Devin Cabanilla and many of the other community groups that helped put that together, along with Alex Ray, our Program Manager for Ethnic Studies.

Black Studies World History 3 and 4. I want to thank Anita Coyier-Mwamba our program manager for Black Studies along with Leta Stewart and the other team members that worked on that.

And then Women of Color Comparative Literature and Composition I want to thank Amy Noji from Roosevelt High School as well as Kathleen Vasquez in putting that together among many others.

And we are thrilled.

to be have the opportunity to bring this to you.

During our SSC&I committee there was a robust discussion about how not only to add these courses but to ensure enrollment in these courses and we thank you for that input and we assume we will continue those conversations because that is critical.

And with that I will take any questions.

Thank you Dr. Perkins.

Do we have any questions.

Director Harris.

You alluded to our robust conversation and my hope is is given our tech improvements given our additional comfort if you will with online learning that these courses can be offered system-wide so it doesn't matter what your zip code is to have an opportunity to take these courses.

And as I believe it was Director Sargeu said how do we sign up.

If we're going to cast our nets wide and we we heard some Really compelling testimony tonight from folks of the Philippine Ex community.

If we could do these online we could do a great service to this whole community no.

The the wonderful piece about this of course is that we started in the pen I mean one brief small silver lining of the pandemic is that that enabled us to do some experimentation starting even last year with our Black History US History course that that Alex Ray actually taught.

And we had 60 students from across the district participate.

The question is how do we do more of that.

And I think that's exactly the right question.

I think some of the challenges that now students have come back is that those were offered during zero period and eighth period which just There's more logistics when kids are both attending in person and doing things virtually.

Can we solve for those logistics.

I believe we can.

And I definitely hear the interest in the board in doing so and we share that interest.

Any other questions.

Thank you Dr. Perkins.

All right we will now be moving to intro item number 2 BEX V approval of budget transfer and authorization of the superintendent to execute the guaranteed maximum price amendment for the Lincoln High School Phase 2 project.

Mr. Podesta take it away.

Thank you Fred Podesta Assistant Superintendent of Operations.

So as the board is aware we reopened Lincoln High School in the fall of 2019 and The there was always been a Phase 2 plan for the project to modernize and do seismic improvements and to make improvements to the buildings on the east side of campus the gymnasium the Performing Arts Center and some spaces used for career and technical education.

This board action does accomplishes two things.

It adjusts the budget to the actual scope of the work now that it's fully understood and it allows us to amend our alternative public works contract to fix the guaranteed maximum price.

So for big pro the district is allowed by the state in the public works process to enter into what are called general contractor construction management contracts.

And those are different than most of the construction projects you hear about in that we hire the contractor up front to help us manage the project.

So the board authorized that contract in December of 2020 at a price and then we bring the contract on board during design and while the project is fully scoped out and then we're required by the rules that govern public works in the state of Washington to then amend the contract with approval by the board for the actual final fixed price maximum fixed price that the GCCM will deliver for us.

So this action does that.

And then the at As you know I think in high school these buildings were built in the 50's.

As we were investigating the modernization of those buildings and some of the seismic improvements on the rest of the campus there was some hazardous materials discovered and some additional scope in terms of improving the building envelope to mitigate water intrusion moisture intrusion and some access improvements that really need to be made at the gym and the Performing Arts Center.

So we've adjusted the budget accordingly using the program contingency for BEX V. So this really allows us to move forward at this point.

Happy to take any questions you might have.

Okay.

Do directors have any questions at this time.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Oh thank you.

Assistant Superintendent Podesta.

I had a couple questions that when we saw this at committee I don't know if it's coming from.

When we talk about the subcommittee I had a couple of questions regarding the BAR.

You have the tiny one about your title being the old title still at Mike McDowell but in the you can find it in here the fiscal impact there's I just thought there was confusion where it says first in the third line as noted above additional funding.

I was taking.

I'm looking at the wrong one.

What about the transfer the 1.5 million dollar transfer it notes it twice in there so.

That was my.

Thank you.

We'll go back and make sure that those corrections get made.

And then those pages are still not legible later in the BAR.

It's at the end of it now I believe.

That big sheet.

page number it is but the last page basically there but it's still not legible.

Did we figure out how to make that legible.

Not reproduced at this side that's probably in your packet.

We'll make sure we post before this goes for action the larger sheet that will be more legible.

Yeah I appreciate it being there for transparency but for that if we cannot read it.

So yeah if you can figure out how to get that legible that would be great.

No other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

Any other questions before we move on to the next item.

Okay so we are now moving to intro item number 3. BEX IV BTA IV OSPI K-3 Class Size Reduction Grant Resolution 2021-22-5 Final Acceptance of Contract P5177.

with Lighting Construction Incorporated for Daniel Bagley Elementary School Modernization and Addition Project.

Thank you.

Again these are our favorite board actions to bring from capital the final acceptance of a completed project.

This project renovated the 1930's era Bagley Building.

It modernized building systems and added a 8-classroom addition and converted some other space into classroom space.

The contractor successfully completed the scope of work.

The project was completed in time for the 2021 school year.

Of course we didn't utilize the building as we expected that year but it's occupied this year and the building is performing well and we're glad to put this one behind us.

We are also glad to put this one behind us.

Any questions from director.

Okay seeing none.

Thank you Mr. Podesta.

We greatly appreciate it.

All right we are now going to double back one last time to committee reports and then board comments.

I will say that I'm not going to hold you to two minutes but please keep it concise.

With that being said let's go ahead and kick it off with the SSC&I committee.

Do you have comments you'd like to share.

Yeah sorry just for clarification.

We're doing committee reports.

And then.

We're going to board comments after that.

So is the.

committee and liaison assignment.

Oh did I miss that I'm sorry.

Oh it's a subcategory.

Okay.

Yes.

Yes.

Now I'm remembering.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay yeah let's do that now.

And this will be largely a quick discussion if I'm not mistaken.

This is just we're not assigning committees here and now.

I am hearing if there is interest in these particular committees.

So let me see.

Do I have a list in talking points or is it on the agenda Ms. Wilson-Jones.

Okay.

It is on the agenda.

Oh it's a separate doc.

Thanks Superintendent Jones.

Okay.

So.

All right.

So the quick question on process here.

Are we only talking about the liaisons or are we also getting feedback on what committees folks would like to serve on currently.

President Hersey the process the board has used in the past is to go director by director and just ask folks to share the committees and any liaison positions they're interested in.

You might wish to review the opportunities first if directors need that.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that clarity.

All right we'll start with Director Harris at the far end of the dais.

What are you interested in.

I live for SSC&I and the scholarship committee and I have enjoyed my participation with the city with respect to the FEPP levy.

Thank you sir.

Director Rankin.

I would excuse me very much like to continue in my role as chair of the Student Services Curriculum and Instruction Committee and I'm actually very interested in jumping from the Operations Committee to the Audit and Finance Committee.

And I also have great interest And I feel like it aligns and makes sense with other stuff in being the board legislative liaison.

Thank you very much.

Director Hampson.

I would be very excited to return to the Audit and Finance Committee as a chair of that committee.

As far as the liaison roles I would be very interested in the state federal WSSDA liaison position and the Tribal Nations liaison positions.

I did want to note that I had appointed Director Rankin as the WIAA representative this last year.

That's an under appreciated role.

I am was elected as the as a representative to the WASDA I forget the name of the committee.

It's the Inter-Athletic Committee which is a different role than the WIAA representative.

My personal opinion is there should We need to understand more about WIAA like that they actually cover music and theater.

So I think it's probably better to have a separate person.

It's easy for me to do given that I'm already in that.

role but I also would encourage as many board members as possible to understand more about athletics in our state and how that plays out in our district and access.

So and then as far as Council of Great City Schools I'm happy to continue in whatever capacity you as president need me to play whether it's as the representative or just subbing when you can't make it.

Wonderful.

Thank you for that feedback.

Superintendent Jones do you want me to give you any more responsibility.

Director Sargent.

I would be honored and interested to serve on the Student Services Curriculum and Instruction Committee.

In terms of liaisons I would be interested.

I think there can be more than one.

Council of Great City Schools.

I'm interested in knowing more about the WIAA having being the mom of former athletes and watching the leadership of that organization not behave in the way that you would expect adults to behave.

I'm not willing to work with somebody if that's the same person who's still not behaving like an adult, to be quite honest.

I don't know.

This was a long time ago.

I don't know who's still there.

But I would be interested because that organization sorely needs some training around equity.

And what it means to serve a diverse group of students in a way that's equitable.

I would entertain anything that doesn't have to do with money.

There are other board members who are experts in the finance arena.

So I'm open.

But my my deepest interest is in curriculum instruction and I am committed to making student focused outcomes governance work for our district.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

I think it went away.

Can you hear me okay.

Okay great.

Yeah I would I would very much like to be on the Operations Committee and happy to chair as I have been doing for my interim role.

I'm interested whatever sounds like a good one is in the Student Services Security and Restriction Committee.

I'm going to have to duke it out for that one but I understand that you know there's a lot of people to place.

So that's my other interest.

Yeah I am.

Yes why yeah.

So I guess it's cool.

It's fine.

I almost forgot about that one.

Yes thank you.

You know I'll be there.

And for liaison roles.

I have the BEX the capital change order which I'm happy to stay on unless someone else wants to fight me for it.

Those are those have been great.

And I also very much enjoy my Head Start liaison Head Start program role.

I've got a good relationship with the staff there so I'll stay there if I have time for that.

And it looks like that sounds good to me.

Thank you.

Thank you for your service Director Rivera-Smith.

Director Sommeritz.

What can we give you to do.

Yes I respectfully request to be on the Audit and Finance Committee and the Operations Committee.

Those were my interim assignments and I'm happy to lend my assignments back on to those committees.

Relatedly I see that there's two school board directors that can serve on the Capital Programs Oversight Committee.

I'm interested in that role and would potentially be happy that with Director Rivera-Smith.

Yesterday I along with Director President Hersey and Dr. Jones attended a meeting for Mayor Alec Tarrell's transition team and I'm interested in continuing some of the conversations that we had yesterday.

So I would be interested in being the board's representative with FEPP.

Thank you.

Thank you everybody.

I really appreciate your feedback.

I'm sure that I'm going to be able to entertain much if not all of this.

But official committee reports will be emailed or shared in whatever appropriate format.

So yes Director Hampson.

I believe Friday the Council of Great City Schools is putting out their list of cohorts that are going to be open.

And so that will be something that you'll want to have folks considered as well.

Meaning the same opportunity that I had for different like there's one for a new board member I believe as well as the president cohort which is the one that I did last year.

So there are those and those are very time intensive.

So just want to make that note that there will be some other opportunities you can give to folks in that regard.

And Julia hopefully will be doing it as well.

Awesome.

Thank you for that and thank you for highlighting.

Yes.

Much work to be done and you know what they say about many hands.

Okay so now I don't think we need to take any additional action on that.

Let's go ahead and move into committee reports and we will begin with SSC&I.

Thank you.

Let's see.

Close my laptop.

We the SSC&I committee met last week.

We discussed some items that we have heard about already today.

And an update is a specific topic I would like to flag for folks that may not have been able to join us for committee or or see the minutes is our continuing work around increasing inclusionary practices.

We will be.

I guess keep an eye out for upcoming policy work to increase inclusive language in some of our existing policies.

And there's also we discussed there's a current task force between district staff and SEA and there are a couple of family representatives on there as well to examine the current program model or service model for special education.

And so they're looking at that.

We also have I am very grateful for the support of some folks from Cashel's team who are doing some research into best practices and models from from other districts and other parts of the country.

And so I really look forward to bringing work from those two conversations together and thinking about how we can do do better in inclusive practices.

And I also just want to make sure to say while I have the opportunity that inclusion is not a special education initiative it's a general education initiative.

So this does not just apply to teachers who serve special education students.

and students who receive special special education services.

Inclusion is something that is for everybody and it's a mindset shift and policy all kinds of everything shift.

But I'm very excited that we have board support and staff work is aligning to really make some progress in that area.

Our district and our state are are pretty far away from best practices in terms of serving students with disabilities in inclusive settings.

And I'm just really excited about about seeing that being part of seeing that seeing that and making that progress.

So if that's something you're interested in definitely keep an eye on that work going into or kicking off the new year.

That's really probably the biggest thing we're talking about.

And of course the excitement around the new course offerings that we heard about this this evening.

That was a and thank you so much to everybody who came out in support and took the time to write us.

It's really critical to support our students in this way and let them learn about themselves and each other.

And so clear that this means a lot to the to the broader community as well.

And so that was just a great part of of committee this past week.

And I can't think of anything else off the top of mind.

Thank you very much.

We will now go to the Operations Committee.

Thank you.

We had our operations committee meeting on December 2nd and we we start with our work plan.

We updated it to remove items related to board policy H13 which the board had eliminated in the previous action.

We had our capital programs monthly summary reports.

We had two because Melissa had not presented them the month before because of year-end activity.

So we had two of them.

And each month Melissa Cohen presents those to us as a dashboard that reflects all the financial activity within the capital program.

And so this month we saw that for August and September both and we found that we heard about how she does a magnificent job explaining it every month.

And it's amazing how much she gets in there.

We saw that our capital fund is healthy.

As of well as of August it was $236.8 million.

As of September it was at $243.3 million.

Melissa explained some of the overages that we saw were not to be worried about.

They were just We talked I think one of our one of our introduction items is about a transfer.

We make trans makes transfers from other programs and so those haven't been done by by posting but we're looking good with 21 million is still available at the end of the fiscal year.

Then we had two items for action that we saw today didn't show.

So a great meeting.

Our next one is next month and I wish I had a date in front of me but early January I assume.

January 13th.

So thank you.

Thank you.

This month I had the distinct honor of chairing two committees.

Thank you Director Hampson for that.

I am very excited to not do that next month.

But for the Executive Committee much of what we approved in the way of the school year was present on today's agenda.

We also had some pretty robust updates on external board communications and student focused outcomes governance.

For Audit and Finance we reviewed the renewal of the teacher diversity contract again as you saw on the agenda earlier in tonight's meeting.

And we had a quarterly audit meeting where we received the internal audit update and response.

And I just want to give a huge shout out to Andrew Medina who lifts up an immense amount of work.

I highly doubt that Andrew is listening to this so if you see him in the hallway pat him on the back.

Seriously.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Probably not actually.

So or actually probably so.

But again just putting the focus back on Andrew a lot of the work that his office does really keeps the district accountable and helps us know how we need to improve in a number of ways.

It is not exactly exciting work but it is critical.

So again Andrew if you are or aren't listening we really appreciate you.

Okay we will now move to board comments.

So again not going to hold you to two minutes but it's 730. So anybody any volunteers.

I am definitely willing to go full second grade teacher on all of you if I need to.

Going once.

Going twice.

Director Rankin you're up first.

I was just going to say I'm just going to say everybody is tired and and I feel hopeful sitting up here with you all in ways I do not feel when I am when there's other stuff going on.

And so just thank you to my colleagues and to everyone and anyone who is an educator supports an educator is a student is a parent.

We I don't need to rehash.

We all know that there's some really rough difficult stuff happening out in our communities and for our kids right now.

And so I'll just say that I hope the winter break can bring some relief and rest and restoration and and just yeah have a have a safe and restful holiday.

Period.

Period.

Thank you.

Anyone else.

Any volunteers.

I will call you.

If you don't want to just say I have no comments at this time.

Yeah.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you everybody.

I I usually like to respond to our speakers and I'm the only one of which is still here.

They're just sticking it out.

But some might be online.

Either way thank you to the students definitely who spoke.

We had I think we had four different schools.

Chief Sealth and Ballard students from all those schools it was so great to hear them and hear their voices and and their great messages.

I again I'm trying to be quick here.

I also I'll just touch on too.

I had a community meeting on Saturday.

And the topic was about school safety and a lot of things going on right now.

And and that is something that I know that we are working very hard on.

Superintendent Jones and staff are all working with our partners and the Seattle Police to figure out what it is you know what what our role is to do what our role is to to mitigate and help with these efforts.

And it's all about student health.

And one speaker we had tonight kind of said the phrase I've had in my head this last two weeks about all this is like behavior is communication.

So what are our students telling us what's happening.

What is that unmet need that with all of our money we're putting in SEL and all of our attention there.

What are we missing.

What's what's what's still a need that they have that that students are behaving the way they are and and acting and doing the things and some of this isn't students right some of these students are outside of our community but they're still affecting our schools and every time this happens it affects student learning and affects our staff who are also traumatized when they have threats against their schools and their safety.

I just implore us to have that conversation.

I appreciate the parent who was working with some educator that maybe talked to us and sounds like Rocky's going to be looking into that which is awesome because you know we're I think we're willing to try anything right.

We're willing to do this because this is about the student safety which has to be first has to be paramount in everything we do.

We can't teach students we can't they can't learn if they're not safe.

And I don't feel safe.

So we're having those conversations.

I hope we continue to do that.

And I will end it there I guess for tonight.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you.

Any comments Director Harris.

First how much I appreciate everybody in this building and all 104 of our buildings.

and all of the bus drivers and the whole system.

It's we can say it a thousand times and still not get through what a wild frightening stressful couple of years it's been.

But seeing those young people tonight that'll keep me going another six months.

Easy.

Because Because that's why I'm here.

And before anybody wants to try ever to speak for me or to suggest that Sabrina Burr doesn't have a right to say what she absolutely has a right to say please don't bother.

I respect the hell out of her.

I respect her right to stand up and tell her truth.

I got no problem with that.

And there have been some folks lately speaking for me and with all due respect they can pound sand.

And I hope everybody has a phenomenally good holiday and gets outside even in the rain because we've all been cooped up and it's just too dark getting up in the morning and coming home in the dark.

And whether you got dogs or kittens and I still want a school board dog and cat page because we're actually real people.

I know that some people don't believe that but I think we can have a sense of humor.

Anyway it's an honor and it's a privilege and be safe and be happy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I can guarantee you that Kodak is ready for his 15 minutes of fame.

Any directors on this.

I just want to start by thanking the Filipino community for coming tonight and sharing really powerful testimony and for the emails.

Just really so excited to see this opportunity for our students.

You know in particular Dr. DeCano's testimony about his father.

And as a daughter of immigrants What really makes this country special is our hard-fought freedoms, and I'm really excited that our students will have an opportunity to learn about the contributions from our Filipino community, in particular, Dr. DeComas.

On Monday I held my first community meeting so I want to thank the parents that came and spoke with me directly.

Some of the issues that they brought to my attention are ones that I think we're all familiar with namely sexual assault.

concerns around gun violence prevention in our community.

And so I just want to acknowledge that it's very helpful for me to hear directly from the parents what they're seeing and experiencing.

I also want to thank Dylan who heard me and delivered what I was asking for.

This is really so exciting to me.

The reason why I think data is important is because it gives us the scale and the nature of our problem and we can work with this.

We know what the work that needs to be done when we have the data.

And so I'm really excited to work with Dylan and our students and our staff to advance this.

And finally I just want to wish our staff students and family a restful winter break.

Thank you.

Director Sergey do you have any comments.

I actually am I have been reflecting on what's happening nationally with school boards particularly for Black and Indigenous school board members the threats.

I have a colleague in Oregon who has a police escort because he's been threatened with lynching.

Yes, in 2021, the idea that volunteer positions have to have a police escort because their lives are threatened for doing a volunteer job is reprehensible.

I think we live, at least in this district, I have observed an example of how we should all be engaging in civic discourse.

particularly in discourse that centers students.

So I'm thankful for the people that signed up for testimony and I'm thankful for their passion.

It is okay to be passionate.

It is also possible to be passionate and respectful.

We don't have to always agree on every single point but I do believe we have to respect one another and we have to give opportunity for voices of people who are the most marginalized.

So I I feel honored to be serving in this district because so far what I've seen is we are modeling what it looks like to engage in civil discourse and engage in things we are passionate about when it comes to all of our children.

So I thank you, Sabrina, for coming tonight and engaging in civil discourse and speaking truth to power.

I want to thank the students who came again and spoke about sexual assault.

We all know how the last board meeting ended and it ended with my comments being completely taken out of context.

And for the record, I have had a conversation, an hour plus long conversation with the writer who was extremely receptive.

I'm excited to support them in their work, but real damage was done.

When we're talking about sexual assault, those types of conversations should be handled with care and concern.

I don't regret making my very public statement.

I do not regret it.

I do think it's unfortunate that my comments weren't held in context.

And that said, this is something we can do.

Right, the data, no surprise to me, right?

I have always said line up 75, in this case, pregnant women, line up 175 will raise their hand that they have been the victim of sexual assault.

The data proves that, right?

It's no different than it was 25 years ago, sadly.

So as we enter this holiday season, I ask that we keep those whose pain and suffering we cannot see.

There are so many in our community who are struggling for food, who are struggling for shelter, who are struggling to have their basic common humanity acknowledged.

And so while we go about doing the work of school board members, we cannot forget those people whose voices don't come to our community meetings, right, who don't feel welcome and invited.

And so I hope in 2022 that we will come back ready to exclusively center students.

That's why we were elected.

The voters elected us to be the union for our children.

Thank you Director Sergey.

Director Hampson.

That's what I get for not speaking up sooner.

Going to go after Michelle and those amazing last words.

I do want to thank Emma Medicine-White Crow for her letter and for speaking today.

The month of November is always a difficult month for Native people.

Thanksgiving is always a very difficult time for Native people.

Our staff here at SPS do everything they can to help shift the narrative towards the actual truth about the history of this country and the place of Native people in that history.

But it's a hard time to go to school.

It's any U.S. history is class is often a hard time for any marginalized student but particularly Black and Native students whose history goes so far back and is so poorly represented.

And I know that at any time that a student or the child of a parent or caregiver experiences a standard Pilgrims and Indians story about Thanksgiving it's disappointing to say the least but particularly because we have such robust state and district mandated curriculum that is available to our teachers and and yet those things continue to happen.

So we we have some important conversations to have about what's what is the board's role in making sure that you know we approved some important curriculum tonight and it's not included entirely clear to me what our role is in approving and mandating curriculum and I know this the historically the board has struggled to be effective in that way and to do so in a way that empowers the superintendent to make sure that that monumental task and very expensive task of providing the tools for staff to have but then also making sure that they are trained which by and large they have been when it comes to since time immemorial but then also making sure that they use it rather than going a different pathway in a way that then ultimately is extremely damaging to students.

So that's a that's a hard conversation.

I hope that over the course of this year we can gain some clarity on our role.

when it comes to curriculum and how we support the superintendent in that.

As far as one thing that I would like ask my fellow board members to think about if you would so that we can talk together about it this idea that the things the lack of safety in our buildings and this is sadly ubiquitous throughout the country the experiences Lack of safety among school board members.

Lack of but more importantly lack of safety among our students whether it's sexual assault or what we're now being heard referred to as behavior.

And that for me is really problematic because I believe that it's a form of communication that our students are using to let us know that things are not okay.

And I am seeing the gap between adults and and young people grow wider as things become more intense and and they are about to because Omicron or Omicron however you want to say it is at our doorstep and we're going to have to be ever more diligent and and the impact on students and their readiness to compromise and do whatever they have to do so that they can have prom which they absolutely deserve to have and need to have to look forward to.

How do we within the confines of what we're required to do by the state so that we can get that revenue.

How do we lift some of the weight off of the shoulders of our young people so that they can So that those quote unquote behaviors aren't aren't the sole source of communication that they feel like folks will maybe hear.

I think it's really critical that we as a board figure out how do we communicate to families to the adults in our students lives to help them better understand And our teachers union is key in this too because I know our teachers are experiencing this in real time with their students and our administrators as well.

And I think the gap is is growing rather than shrinking and I know Superintendent Jones has made clear how concerned he is about it.

Weeks ago had made comments about student safety and You know we need to admit that we don't know the answers and and but somehow we got we we need to start the conversation and we need to start the conversation with our communities because every adult and every student's lives has a really critical role to play.

I'm sure I know a lot of us are feeling pretty helpless right now and we need to feel helpful and I don't have any answers but I hope that we can come back after the holiday and have conversation about a positive role that this board could play.

And I'm so grateful we have a teacher at our helm to help us do that.

So with that Pįnagigi my gratitude to everyone for their commitment and their hard work during this year and I hope everyone gets some rest over this break and I will turn it back over to you President Hersey.

Thank you.

I'll keep my comments brief.

I was on the phone with my dad yesterday just telling him about all the stuff that we're doing.

Good old Roosevelt.

And I was like we're doing you know this transition to student focused outcomes governance.

I told him about some stuff I'm doing at work personal life and all that.

And the first thing after listening to me go on for about 15 minutes say it sounds like you need to get somewhere and sit down.

You can tell that there are a few households where that's a very common A very common statement.

And I mean I think that that's just really good advice especially as we're getting close to this respite is we all just for a moment need to get somewhere and sit down and just be still and just just take a minute.

I really want to acknowledge our educators.

You know it pains me every day that I am not in my classroom.

I miss my students like crazy but.

What I what I really just want to say is that for our teachers who as Vice President Hampson put it who are experiencing all of these things in real time right.

So like we've had this conversation.

We're up on the balcony looking at the dance floor.

I don't think nobody dancing right now.

You know what I'm saying.

I think a lot of folks are are exhausted.

We've been at school for like 20 minutes.

We've still got like nine nine more months to go.

And so if you're listening out there and you're a parent call your teacher call your child's teacher tell them thank you.

And if you're listening out there and you're an educator and nobody's told you thank you today thank you.

And we see it.

I think the difference is we're not experiencing it in the same way but we see it.

And if our teachers are exhausted I can only imagine what that means for our students.

And so as we as we come to this brief respite for us as a leadership team I just want to say A, thank you for the way that y'all have been showing up lately.

Personally stepping into a role as the only man on this board and as the only person sub no longer sub 30 I just had a birthday.

I find.

Hey.

Hey.

Hey.

I am reminded often of and reflect often on on the immense pride and joy and humble nature that I need to bring to just support y'all in whatever it is y'all want to do on the board.

And however I can be a resource to y'all please do not hesitate to reach out.

But what the reason that I say that is because You know we've been throwing around the term we're the most diverse board in Seattle Schools history.

We're currently trying to fact check that to make sure that's accurate but you can say it here first.

And with that comes a ton of responsibility.

Like there are a ton of opportunities and there are also a ton of opportunities for pitfalls and equity detours and not listening to the youth.

I think this has been exacerbated by the amount of violence that we're seeing throughout our city most notably on the south end and the central district.

And the school district has a huge role to play in that.

I think in addition to that we as leadership have a bigger role to play in the conversations that are being had but more importantly the action that needs to be taken to do everything that we need to do to keep our kids safe right.

And we've been keeping our kids safe in a myriad of ways whether it be safe from COVID safe from gun violence safety from you know all of the atrocities that some of our children are still experiencing in our buildings both physically and mentally.

And Unless we are well and take the time to make sure that we are well the system will not be well.

So as we are at this this opportunity to take pause and to take breath and to be with our families please I'm asking you as a friend and as a colleague take advantage of that because the moment we get back here in January it is all cylinders go.

All cylinders go.

And I have high expectations for everyone as I know everyone does for everyone else on this board.

But if we are going to throw the term around that we are the most diverse board in history.

We are going to throw the term around that we are heading in a new direction for Seattle Public Schools through student focused outcomes governance.

Can't just be taught.

We've got to show up show out.

So take this opportunity to get somewhere and sit down.

Cool.

Thank you.

We have to adjourn.

Wait wait before you do that.

Before you do that before you do that really quick.

I wanted to just read a quote that relates to what you were just talking about in our work of the new year.

Bell Hooks passed away today.

And.

And so you know make sure you rest in peace rest in power.

But I a quote of hers is love is an action.

Never simply a feeling.

So as we rest and recoup we've got to come back with that love in action.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for that.

So with that reminder we stand this meeting stands adjourned at 754 p.m.

Have a good break.