Michelle Sarju

Hey, so it's so it's 419

Brandon Hersey

We will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS-TV will begin broadcasting for those joining by phone.

Please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called.

This is President Hersey.

I am now calling the September 13th 2023 regular board meeting to order at 4 20 p.m..

This meeting is being recorded.

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

Miss Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Hampson here.

Director Harris.

Vice President Rankin.

Here.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director Sarju.

Vivian Song

Present.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Song-Moritz.

Present.

And President Hersey.

Brandon Hersey

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

In 30 seconds I will turn it over to Superintendent Jones for his comments.

Brent Jones

Good afternoon, President Hersey, board members.

I'm really excited that last week we welcomed our first through 12th grade students into our buildings.

And this week, we welcomed our kindergartners.

And they are the class of, drum roll please, 2036, believe it or not.

Class of 2036. We're excited to have them in the buildings.

I've had a chance personally to go spend some time with kindergartners and they are bright-eyed.

Our staff are ready to receive them.

The families were eager to release their children.

In some cases they weren't, but ultimately they came into our buildings and we took great care of them.

And we've had a really good launch to the school year this year.

So I'm really proud of the staff and what they've done and their preparedness, their readiness.

You could see it across the district from West Seattle to North Seattle, South to Central.

It's all been really good start of the school year.

So thank you for that.

One of our elements that we want to make sure that we're absolutely focused on is having a safe and welcoming environment for our schools and we want to make sure that we inform you all that over the summer my staff and I have developed new strategies that are being rolled out across the district.

You will see new visual cues as well as modification of physical spaces.

Staff also engaged in professional development over the summer to support welcome and inclusive and safe learning environments.

And so I'm grateful for the work that we've done.

I'm grateful for the learning that we've had and we're stronger because of it.

We had this last couple weeks of sessions on well-resourced schools and we've had five sessions very well attended.

We have a survey that's going out to families this week around further opportunities to comment and give opinions on well-resourced schools and our final community meeting will be held virtually on Tuesday the 26th and more information will be found online.

I'd also like to take a moment to welcome our new student board member who will be stepping into this seat in a few moments and her name is Lola and her parents are in the audience right there and I had a chance to talk to them and reassured them that we're going to take care of Lola and we're going to learn from her and we're going to be students as well.

So this is going to be a great experience.

And so we'll be excited for her leadership.

And with that I'll pass it to pass it back to President Hersey.

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

All right.

Thank you.

Do we have Lola with us quite yet.

So I will.

We'll look back whenever Lola gets here we're going to do the office.

OK.

Fantastic.

All right.

We have now come to the board comment section of the agenda.

Let's start with a huge welcome to our students, staff, and families for the 2023-2024 school year.

We are so excited to have you in our SPS community and oh, okay.

We are going to double back and get this done.

Michelle Sarju

Right on.

Brandon Hersey

Do not apologize.

Absolutely.

It took us a couple of years to even get buses to run on time.

But we got there.

We performed the Oath of Office for two of our three student members last month Luna Crom Baron and Ayush excuse me Ayush Muthaswamy.

Tonight we will perform the Oath of Office for our third student member Lola Vandernute.

Lola is a senior at West Seattle High School and we are excited to have her join us this year.

Lola will join me at the podium now for the Oath of Office.

OK so we will do this and you will just repeat after me.

I your name do solemnly swear.

SPEAKER_15

I Lola Vandernute do solemnly swear.

Brandon Hersey

That I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the state of Washington.

SPEAKER_15

That I will support the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the Constitution and the laws of the state of Washington.

Brandon Hersey

And to the best of my judgment skill and ability truly faithfully diligently and impartially perform the duties.

SPEAKER_15

And will to the best of my judgment skill and ability truly faithfully diligently and impartially perform the duties.

Brandon Hersey

Of student member of the Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors as such duties are prescribed by law and policy.

SPEAKER_15

of such of student members of the Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors as such duties are prescribed by the law and policy.

Brandon Hersey

Congratulations Lola.

We are so excited to have you on board.

If you would like to take a moment and say a few words the mic is all yours.

So take it away.

SPEAKER_15

I don't have a prepared speech but I just wanted to say I'm so so thankful and excited to be here.

I cannot wait to work with everybody and I'm so excited to get started on all the ideas that I have.

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

Should we go ahead knock out this picture since we have everybody here.

Fantastic.

Michelle Sarju

th th th th

SPEAKER_07

Oh, you got it.

SPEAKER_99

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

Oh, and Miss Wilson-Jones, would you pass me the certificate at the front?

Oh, it's already over here.

Never mind.

We're good.

Thank you.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

We have now come to the board comments section of tonight's agenda.

Let's start with a huge welcome to our students staff and families for the 2023 24 school year.

Round of applause for all of our students and families that have successfully started the year.

We are so excited to have you in our SPS community and it is an honor to serve you as the school board.

I've been loving all of the smiling pictures as folks are getting into their classrooms and getting to learning this time of year bring so much joy and possibility and I wish everyone a great start to the year.

A busy fall is also underway for our board.

Dr. Jones and I met last week to set agendas for our next two regular board meetings.

I anticipate that the agenda for our September 27 meeting being posted in the next few days.

On October 11 we will have our next progress monitoring session on goals one and two.

Our goals on early literacy and mathematics.

Next Wednesday we have a special meeting which will include our first budget session for this year.

Yesterday the ad hoc community engagement committee met to resume the work that we began last year We discussed fall engagement events and the structure for the committee's work phases going forward The next meeting is going to be on Monday 918 We'll now move into our reports for tonight Do we have an ad hoc policy manual review committee report?

You don't have to

Liza Rankin

Oh, no, just we're meeting again tomorrow afternoon.

Brandon Hersey

Do we have a report from our legislative liaison?

Liza Rankin

We do go for it We are as we'll hear about later in today's agenda.

We'll be talking about WASDA General Assembly where delegates from all 295 school boards in Washington State come together to vote on legislative priorities for school board directors as an association as a whole membership body.

So in our well I'll save that for later up to come connected to that.

I'm also in the development stage now for the legislative priorities for us to approve as a board which will then provide direction to the district about our legislative priorities for state legislative session 2024. which is a what we call a short session because the state adopts their budget every two years.

But there's still plenty to advocate for and talk about.

I had the opportunity to speak with some county folks yesterday, including the director of the King County Public Health.

And a few things came up there that I think are really important for us to consider about what they're seeing at the county level of impacts on youth.

And I'm excited to talk further with him and you all about health education and about not only their efforts for gun violence prevention which has been obviously a high priority but an increasingly Pretty drastic high priority is drug abuse and overdose.

It's it's everywhere in our community.

And so I'd really like to collaborate with them and continue to have a really urgent discussion actually about how we help our students and families understand really what's happening in our in our area so that we can help protect our communities.

I also not officially as a legislative duty, but It's connected to policy and legislation, so I've been this week kindergarten started and It's very exciting as superintendent Jones said and I've had the opportunity to spend Days with kindergarten at Olympic Hills Elementary after a call from the one of the special education teachers there about a number of students they knew they were receiving and eager to receive with Disabilities and high needs who have not yet been identified for an IEP for many of them They they didn't come through preschool or they were some or they were not in the region or somehow not identified in child find which is So IEPs are for students with disabilities in K-12.

Students with disabilities are identified and have access to services prior to entering the K-12 system through preschool and other family programs.

But they're identified through a system called Child Find, so that as they come into the K-12 system, we know of their needs and are prepared to meet them.

I don't know if it's a bigger pattern, but this year at Olympic Hills, they were aware of being ready to receive kindergarten students who had high needs and were not identified.

And so our staffing is based on knowing the needs of or knowing not the needs the number of students with IEPs and staffing according to that.

But because these students hadn't been identified the staffing wasn't there.

And and so she called me and you know I said why.

not the person to fix this right away, but I can help by showing up.

And I've actually had a really nice time being with students and staff.

But what is more and more apparent to me every start of the school year, even though this start has been much smoother and more kind of normal than the last few years, the state Funding limits us so much as a system in that we're funded on a per-pupil basis, and the number of pupils is not who's there the first day, not who's enrolled for the year, but who's there in October.

And so if the district guesses and guesses too high and deploys and commits to contracting with staff, that then there are fewer students than we thought.

We don't fire people.

We keep them on contract for the year.

But in the event that there are not the students we expected, we've got then staff for which there's not revenue connected to students to pay for them.

So we're stuck in this cycle of not wanting to short schools and also not wanting to be in a position where we're overestimating and then increasing our deficit when the revenue is not there because of students.

And I know that I'm talking about a lot of different things right now, and I hope that it makes sense.

but I'm really eager to continue to talk about this, but it's not just a legislature issue.

It's not just about the funding.

We also have got to put aside fighting about whose fault things are and work together around our kids as labor partners as families as district staff as board and work on all of these things as all of our problems and how we support kids because right now the people who have the least control over any of this are the kids there in kindergarten the staff in the building who is incredible and doing their best to meet the needs of students and they just need more support because those kids need more support and they're eager and ready to provide it.

And we need to get over the finger pointing and blame and just get together and fix it because it is not sustainable.

A board director, as happy as I am to do it and as lucky as I feel to be able to have the time to do it, that is not a sustainable support for four kindergarten classrooms with children with hearing loss, autism.

There's at least three different languages besides English being spoken.

And it's you know it's it's the longer we go without addressing that the more the less access those students are having to education.

And so yeah.

Shout out Olympic Hills.

You guys are awesome.

And and I I really want everybody's commitment to actually addressing it so that our our staffing follows our kids so that we can all show up and provide what they need for them to be successful.

That's our job.

and get the state to pay for it.

Brandon Hersey

Do we have any additional liaison reports tonight?

Go ahead, Director Hampson.

Chandra Hampson

As internal audit we met last week and covered a wide variety of really important topics.

The next meeting date is still we're determining that we're trying to get it before the.

December craziness of an entirely new board.

And have the opportunity to wrap up some really critical work in particular in enterprise risk management.

We are at the tail end of having the systems in place with regular collaborative interchange between internal audit and enterprise risk management.

And we also had some excellent reports around student safety, the communications, the student safety review, the communications audit.

The transcript is available.

It was also recorded.

I know those are available.

As are the meeting as is the meeting information also a good number of those bits of information are available on the internal audit web page and we approved a one pager that describes what internal audit is and how it interacts with and serves as a check and balance and between the school board itself the superintendent external auditing entities and then in collaboration with risk management to make sure that we are have controls and systems in place so that we can effectively manage our Mission managed towards our mission and vision successfully.

We are government to government.

I serve as a liaison to the government to government committee for Washington State School Directors Association.

We are doing I think raise your hand school board directors if you've attended the training on tribal consultation.

And thank you if you have and if you have not please sign up for that.

It is critically important.

The presentation that we'll be doing is at the WASDA conference Washington State School Directors Association conference in November November 16th through 18th which is over here in Bellevue.

So you needn't travel.

It's critical that we.

participate and would encourage you all to come to that session.

I'm there with the head of the Office of Native Education, the Director of Tribal Consultation, and then the Chair of the Government to Government Task Force meeting.

We'll be doing a presentation on a deeper dive into some of the things that those of you that have done the training learned and also be talking about The development of WASDA's model policy and as well as connection to high school and beyond it kind of reviewing some of some of the things but we'll be reaching out to encourage folks that are in those 39 school districts that have the obligation to do tribal consultation because we are on the lands of the Snoqualmie I mean the Suquamish and the the Muckleshoot tribes.

and the Coast Salish people and we are obligated morally ethically and by law to do that that consultation.

Did you have a question Director Sarju.

Michelle Sarju

Is there going to be a training during that conference, or is it just a conference presentation?

Chandra Hampson

Yeah, it's just a conference presentation, but I think you'll find it useful.

And they're going to go over when the upcoming trainings are starting in January of next year, for those of you that haven't done it.

It's a really great group of people.

I'm really grateful to WSSDA for being such a great support in bringing together the laws, the governments, the implementation components of it.

There's a lot of restoration that can happen as a result of school districts taking a very collaborative and proactive approach towards tribal consultation.

that begins to undo the very thing that a very, very short time ago boarding schools in Washington state took away from Native students.

One of those first things is language.

And I do want to report and thank staff within Seattle Public Schools and to the state state of Washington and OSPI for for making this possible but especially staff from our native education staff all the way to principals.

I won't name everybody but we have three students now in Seattle Public Schools who are studying in school time studying their traditional native language and getting credit for it.

That's a first and it took a lot of doing and we have a lot of work still to do but that is a huge step.

I want to congratulate and say pina gigi which is thank you in my language to everyone who participated in making that happen.

The impact on Native students of that restoration of things that were taken from them.

taken from their families is is incredible.

My great grandfather was a fluent speaker of his of our language and he was the last.

And now Seattle Public Schools has made it possible that should my kids choose to take their language as in through a tribally approved online course they can do so and start to rectify that that shift.

So in another related item I did attend a.

W-E-E-A-C, I've already forgotten all the parts of the Western equity and education something something I attended a session on attendance.

I wanted to I will share the links and the information.

This was specific to native students but there's one coming up that is specific to black and African-American students and.

talks about the crisis that is upon us relative to attendance post-pandemic in among our students and in particular our students furthest from educational justice, Native and Black students in particular, and we are at some The increase in attendance or in I don't want to say truancy but the increase in absences is really major and it's a crisis level.

I would say that it was a great presentation.

There was a great amount of data.

Again it's all available and I will be happy to share it with you.

The but it was very much a you know alert to me that we as a board need to.

Make sure that we are supporting looking at the ways in which we as policymakers need to support our superintendent to ensure that We are not just letting these kids fall away from our school systems.

We're not going to certainly achieve our goals if kids aren't coming to school and there are it's going to take collaboration with the whole community to solve those issues.

It wasn't as sort of data driven as I would like in terms of what works what we know works based on data.

But it did have a lot of perspective.

ideas and new information there are people from all over the West that were participating in how do we get our kids to school.

It was it confirmed a number of the things that is in the draft policy for tribal consultation.

So that was that was very helpful in that regard.

And I think that is it for me.

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

You.

Any other board engagement we need to discuss.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead Director Rivera-Smith.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Thank you.

I'm just going to give them.

Director Song-Moritz and I attended the last BEX BTA capital levy oversight committee meeting was held on September 8th.

We meet monthly with them and I'm giving the report back from that committee meeting.

One thing that we're doing now is we're kind of running, well on the agenda was obviously this committee just oversees capital projects, looks at the budgets, status reports, but they're also getting a glance at our board action reports because we requested for them to review it as the As the actual professionals in the capital projects work, it makes a lot of sense for them to look at these first.

Kind of in the same way we have ITAC recommendations based on our votes on technology purchases and actions.

So the BEX BTA oversight committee looked at two of our bars.

They looked over the BEX V approval of the constructability report and resolution.

um certifying intent to construct for the mercer international middle school project um and that was pretty i mean they had some questions on that um i think just regarding who was doing it um which which company was kind of questions they answered amongst themselves because they're the professionals um But we also had them look at the approval of guiding principles for the BEX VI capital levy planning, which we've been working on as a kind of an ad hoc committee, Director Rankin, Director Samaritz, and I.

So we had them look at the kind of a draft we've thrown together.

that we'll actually be seeing later in this meeting, so I won't go too much into that.

But they did have some questions, which again, I think I'll discuss when we're looking at this bar at the end of the meeting here and during introduction.

Because it was just actually really great to have their insight into that.

They are the people who will be working with our capital team to actually create the recommendations that we'll be approving later.

So they had some really good suggestions.

Like I said, I'll put that together when we talk about this bar later in this meeting.

But yeah that's coming up.

Director Sonneritz have something to add.

Vivian Song

Yeah I just wanted to add that during the project status reports update we did have a conversation about the hearing examiner's finding around Alki and the parking situation there.

And I just maybe a point of personal privilege.

We discussed some.

Director Best discussed some options for how we were going to respond to that.

And one of the options is to work with the architects to come up with plans to respond to the hearing.

Yes go ahead.

Leslie Harris

Because this is now in litigation you may want to seek counsel from Mr. Narver before you keep going.

Vivian Song

OK.

Just wanted to share with you that we had a conversation as a committee.

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you.

Fantastic.

So do we have any other additional board engagement.

Go ahead Director Harris.

Leslie Harris

Saturday the 16th High Point Library 2 p.m.

lasagna time.

I expect it'll be a good rowdy time.

My colleagues are invited.

I would love to see Superintendent Jones and any staff that wish to show up.

It is a terrific learning session and is fairly positive with respect to constructive criticism and questions.

Thank you.

2 p.m.

High Point library in West Seattle.

It's on 35th Avenue.

It's a beautiful little library.

And the High Point neighborhood is extraordinary because of the title hope funds from the federal government.

It it's a rocking community.

Thank you.

Chandra Hampson

I just wanted to add it's the Western Educational Equity Assistance Center WEAC at West Ed.

It's the chronic absence of webinar series and I sent you all the link and the one for black and African-American students is on October 11th.

Brandon Hersey

Awesome.

Thank you.

We have now reached the public testimony portion of the agenda We will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda Board procedure 1430 bp 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's website.

Only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium, and only one person should speak at a time.

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

The total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins And the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list Those who do not wish to have time ceded to them may decline and retain their place on the testimony list or wait list The majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about.

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

As board president, I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by board procedure 1430BP.

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

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

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Good evening for those joining by phone today when your name is called.

I'm blanking on the star star.

Please press star six to unmute on the conference call line.

The first speaker tonight is Chris Jackins.

Chris will be followed by Faisal Mohamed and Kevin Pratt after that.

SPEAKER_00

My name is Chris Jackins.

Box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. On the personnel report under separations the report lists manager of financial forecast Kevin Kent.

For decades Mr. Kent has been a reassuring presence at board budget work sessions.

I wish to thank Mr. Kent for his service to the district.

On the approval of guiding principles for the building excellence 6 levy 12 points.

Number one these principles need to recognize long standing problems.

Number two the Wing Luke project wasted money by knocking down a six million dollar 13 year old building.

Number three there is a 10 million dollar cost overrun on the Rainier Beach capital project.

Number four the district is in the middle of deals to trade away Memorial Stadium.

Number five I accompanied retired Garfield principal Roscoe Bass when he spoke to the city landmarks board about saving the historic Garfield auditorium where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke.

The district tore it out.

Number six the school district sold off Queen Anne High School to developers.

Number seven projects at Alki and Mott Lake have zero on site ADA parking.

Number eight the district has been dragging its feet on providing emergency notifications for the deaf and hard of hearing program at TOPS.

Number nine district projects are shrinking playgrounds.

Number 10 district artificial turf contains dangerous forever chemicals.

Number 11 the oversight committee has become a fig leaf to hide problems.

Number 12 mega schools will be used to close schools.

Please do not close schools.

I appreciate the attempt to talk about the information from a public meeting about Alki.

Thank you very much.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Faisal Mohamed.

Faisal Mohamed, please press star six if you're on the conference line.

Faisal Mohamed, I think I can see you on the conference line.

Please press star six if you're there.

Moving to the, oh.

I'm getting a notification but oh we can hear you now.

SPEAKER_01

Hi can you hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes we can hear you.

SPEAKER_01

I apologize it wouldn't let me unmute it first.

Thank you my name is Faisal Mohammed.

I am with East African Community Services and a non-profit organization that has been in the New Holly neighborhood for 22 years.

Today I am here to speak about an affordable housing and wraparound services project that we have underway.

The project site is located right at the Rainier Beach light rail station, so Martin Luther King Road and Henderson Street.

We are currently at a stage where we've submitted our application for public funding.

And as a part of that public funding, as many of you are aware, we have to update the school board about the project.

So this is our first meeting in doing that.

And we hope to continue to update the school board in future meetings.

The project will be comprised of 68 Affordable housing units, a majority of those units will be family size units.

So, 3 and 4 bedroom apartments.

On the ground level, we will have child care, as well as office space for the nonprofit organization, which provides after school homework help, as well as referral services and workforce development services for the immigrant community in South Seattle.

Thank you.

And I would also like to add that the seventh speaker on the list, Amir Salkin, is my colleague.

And since I came to update the school board about the project, he will not be dialing in.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker on the list is Kevin Pratt.

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

Kevin will be followed by Katie King and then Earl Richardson.

SPEAKER_02

Can you hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes, we can hear you.

SPEAKER_02

OK, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

My name is Kevin Pratt and I'm honored to stand before you today as the CEO of J2 Housing with great enthusiasm.

I share some exciting news about our newest venture, the Beacon Hill Project in the beautiful Seattle neighborhood.

The Beacon Hill Project is an extraordinary initiative with great promise for our community in the South Seattle.

With 151 units, this project aims to address the pressing workforce housing needs of our neighbors in a way that fosters inclusivity, sustainability, and lasting positive impact.

At J2L, we firmly believe that community involvement is crucial in shaping our workforce, housing, and new developments.

We value your input immensely, which is why we are thrilled to announce that there is an opportunity for every community member to offer their perspective and insights on the proposed Beacon Hills project.

Your voices are vital in creating the development that genuinely serves the needs and aspirations of our community.

Our vision for this project extends beyond constructing a building.

It is about building a strong and thriving community.

We are committed to working closely with local organizations, school boards, and communities to ensure that our project catalyzes positive change.

We are actively engaged in community outreach efforts, seeking to understand even more so our neighbors' unique challenges and aspirations as they exist today.

Listening to the voices of the community is not just a token gesture, but an integral part of our decision-making process.

We've dedicated to incorporating your ideas and suggestions into our plan, ensuring that the Beacon Hill Project reflects our community's hopes and dreams.

The population we aim to serve through the project is diverse, but vibrant, just like the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

We recognize the importance of providing affordable housing options that cater to the needs of individuals and families from all walks of life by creating a safe, equitable, and inclusive environment.

With our new development, J2 Housing aspires to foster a strong sense of belonging togetherness among our residents.

J2 Housing and its partners are committed to transparency, collaboration, and accountability as we progress with our B2ML project.

And we understand that each of you holds valuable insights and experiences.

And we want to assure you that your input will be genuinely heard.

Thank you for your time, support, and commitment to our community.

And let us seize the opportunity together as we embark upon this exciting affordable housing journey together, a brighter future for the Bikini Hill community.

Thank you for your time.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Katie Kang.

Katie Kang, please press star six to unmute.

Katie will be followed by Earl Richardson and then Moumar Hermanstein.

SPEAKER_10

Hello, everyone.

This is Katie Kang, the director of real estate at South Effect Development.

Today, I'm very excited to have the opportunity to present our project, the Rainier Park 5 affordable housing development project in Rainier Valley.

I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Rainier Court 5 affordable housing development project is more than just a building, it's a home, it's a vision, and it's a hope for our community.

This project will promote a sense of community and transform underused brownfield into a pedestrian-friendly space, seamlessly integrating with our previous four series of Rainier Court apartments right next to this site, this new project site.

Rainier Court 5 places a strong emphasis on supporting families in our community who are in need.

We recognize that the challenges that they face in finding affordable in this neighbor, and we are committed to providing them with a solution.

This development will not only offer affordable housing, but also provide access to essential community resources and support services, fostering an environment where the families can truly prosper and grow.

We've got a firm belief that community involvement is a key core mission to complete this project successfully.

We invite all community members to share their input on this project.

So we are opening the door to your input, your concerns, and your ideas as we are here together to create a bivalent and inclusive community.

We were engaged with the local organization, neighborhood associations, and community leaders to make sure our project aligns with our dreams of our Rainier Valley residents.

We are committed to weaving them into our development plans.

We will be hosting a series of community meetings, open houses, and information sessions to give you all the details about the project, These events will be your platform to share your thoughts and concerns directly with us.

We are creating collaborative spaces where every member of our community feels heard and empowered to shape the future of our community.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Thank you for your support.

The next speaker is Earl Richardson.

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

Earl Richardson.

Muammar Hermanstein.

We can hear you.

SPEAKER_03

Hello, can you hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes, we can hear you.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

My name is Muammar Hermanstein.

I'm honored to stand here before you today representing African-American Community Land Trust.

I'm thrilled to share these two incredible projects that will leave a lasting impact on our community, the Africatown Community Land Trust Youth Achievement Center and the Curipon Youth Family Housing Project.

So first, I'm going to begin the Africatown Community Land Trust Youth Achievement Center with the groundbreaking initiative that aims to create a nurturing environment for our youth by providing 50 units of housing specifically designed to cater to their unique needs.

We understand that our young generation holds the key to our community's future, and the Youth Achievement Center will serve as a catalyst for their success.

Moving on, I would like to also introduce the Caribou New Family Housing Project.

This project, this development is a testament to our commitment to serving families in need of affordable housing.

With 173 units, the Caribou New Project will offer stability and security to families, ensuring they have a place to call home.

We recognize the challenges faced by families in our community and we're determined to provide them the support they need.

Both of these projects are located right here within our community in the Central District.

By bringing these developments to areas in which they're most needed, we aim not only to provide housing, but to revitalize and strengthen our community as a whole.

At the Africana Community Land Trust, we firmly believe in the power of community involvement.

That's why I'm pleased to announce that there's an opportunity for community members to offer their input on both the Youth Achievement Center and the Carol Bineau Family Housing Project.

We value the perspectives and ideas of our community, and we want to work collaboratively with you to make sure that these developments truly serve your needs.

In terms of community outreach, we've already taken significant steps to engage with local organizations, partners, and associations.

We have already held numerous community meetings, open houses, and informational sessions, providing platforms for the youth to participate and also those in our community.

We have actively sought feedback and incorporated it into our planning process.

However, our outreach efforts do not end there.

We are committed to continuing our community engagement initiative in the coming months, and we will host further meetings, workshops, and forums to keep you addressed of these opportunities for you to share your input.

We believe a collaborative approach is very essential to our work, and we want every community member to have a say in shaping our future and the future of these projects.

So, in conclusion, the African-American Community Land Trust Youth Achievement Center and the CARE Open Youth Family Housing Projects reflect our unwavering commitment to creating stronger, more inclusive communities.

I invite each and every one of you to join us on this journey to offer your input and to play a crucial role in shaping the future of these projects.

Together we can create spaces that nurture our youth, empower our families, and strengthen the very fabric of our community.

Thank you for your time, your support, and your dedication to our shared vision.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker was Amir Noor Silkin, but I believe we heard from an earlier speaker that they will not be providing testimony.

But just to double check, Amir, if you're on the line, please press star six to unmute.

Not seeing on the line, so I'll move on to Sherry Edquid.

Sherry Edquid.

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

I'm going to go back through one more time for the speakers we missed.

First is Earl Richardson.

If you're on the line, please press star six.

Next is Amir Noor Sulkin.

And finally, Sherry Edquid.

President Hersey, that concludes today's testimony list.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you, Ms. Wilson-Jones.

All right.

That concludes public testimony for this meeting.

Thank you so much for your comments.

We have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

Liza Rankin

I move approval of the consent agenda.

SPEAKER_08

Sargi seconds.

Brandon Hersey

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Rankin and seconded by Director Sargi.

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

All right.

Seeing none.

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

Aye.

SPEAKER_08

Aye.

Brandon Hersey

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

Any abstentions.

This is passed unanimously.

We will now move on to the action items on today's agenda of which we have one may have a motion for the first action item on today's agenda.

Liza Rankin

Oops sorry wrong page.

I move that the board approve the 2023 24 superintendent evaluation document as attached to the board action report.

SPEAKER_08

Sorry do you second.

Brandon Hersey

All right.

This has been moved and properly seconded.

Do we have any questions on this item.

Okay, seeing none.

Oh, you have a question?

Go ahead.

Leslie Harris

So this was posted when?

Brandon Hersey

Yesterday yesterday.

Leslie Harris

I have some concerns about posting the day before and I thought that this had been on the introduction calendar previously.

So I'm a confused.

Brandon Hersey

Oh sorry.

You're good.

You can keep going.

Sorry.

That wasn't.

Leslie Harris

That's fine.

So I'm confused as to why it was moved from intro to action.

And I have made my concerns about intro and action at the same time very consistently well known.

But the biggest issue that I have is this document addresses goals and guardrails but the superintendent's job is much bigger than the goals and guardrails.

It addresses things like budgets.

It addresses things like communication.

It addresses things like closures and consolidation.

And I don't see where that fits in to this evaluation tool.

And at the risk of breaking executive privilege when we've had conversations or questions in the past I've been asked where does that fit into the goals and guardrails and other superintendent matrixes.

I would like to see us take a step back and take a look at a umbrella leadership if you will.

Element to this matrix that expands and takes recognition and.

of the responsibilities of the superintendent and I have no doubt whatsoever that our current superintendent will rock it.

But but I do believe that in terms of transparency and accountability it should not be limited to the goals and guardrails but be expanded to add the element of leadership and all the things that make a school district work like budgets et cetera.

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Liza Rankin

Well now we just have this work session here.

Was that a work session or was it.

That was introduction.

SPEAKER_00

OK.

Liza Rankin

Sorry I'm now I'm confused because we had this discussion two weeks ago.

So I just wanted to make sure that I'm not missing out what we're and.

Nope.

I guess I would just add or argue that progress on the goals is not possible if the other things are not being done.

Brandon Hersey

Superintendent Jones do you have anything you wanted to say.

Brent Jones

I'll defer until other board members have their comments but I just want to address the comprehensiveness of this.

Brandon Hersey

Fantastic.

I'm not sure that other board directors have comments.

Do we have any other comments.

Go for it.

Lisa Rivera Smith

I'm trying to recall and I know when we talked about this at inspection there was a beautiful colorful.

PDF you'd made for us.

And I don't see that here.

How does that.

Have to do with this.

I'm lost a little.

Brent Jones

So if we last board meeting what I did was give you all some context for what would be the components of the superintendent evaluation for your consideration.

Wanted to make sure that we're very transparent on that.

So you all saw the thinking you saw how all the pieces were connected.

We talked about strategy connected to implementation connected to accountability so that we can make sure that we all the elements are flowing together.

One of the concerns that I had that the board has had is really making sure that we have a heavy focus on implementation and implementation fidelity.

And so when we're talking about things like Director Harris mentioned that we have actually plans in place so that we can execute on those pieces.

So those are elements that have been actually inserted into the superintendent evaluation tool since we've talked, excuse me, since that last meeting where I introduced the concept to you.

An example is there's a there's a section talking about community engagement plans which talks about specifically a system of well-resourced schools budget 24 2020 for strategic plan and how they'll be engagement plans that will inform decision making going forward.

So those elements are embedded in this draft of the superintendent evaluation.

If there are other elements that the board would like to see specifically addressed, I remain open to that.

It's just a matter of the board being really clear and directive to me as to what those elements would be.

So I'm here to serve, and if there's other elements that you don't see that are in here that you all agree upon that says we want to evaluate, hold the superintendent accountable for that, I want to be very clear and transparent that I'm open to that.

So if there's elements that aren't in here that aren't reflected, please let me know.

But what we try to do is be very clear on the planning pieces, having evidence of planning, having the ability to adjust.

in real time and not just on an annual basis and really lock in on the key academic goals and build the scaffolding and the supports behind that and the infrastructure so that we can get the things done.

So again, if there are other elements that you all would like to see on there, we can have that dialogue.

I don't want to shut that down.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I pulled it back up.

So I can look at it again.

And I see the strategy.

I see the limitation.

I guess what I don't see on this final document that we're looking at today is the accountability part of it.

Because that was something we all kind of talked about how important that was to us.

And I mean, and again, we have a bar for a CBA coming that I had not heard about yet until today when I'm seeing it here.

So there's that example of I'm sure many examples.

Where do we find the accountability in this present, the one today we're looking at.

And I think it's great.

I think it does a great job going over the goals and guardrails and what we're looking for in that.

I don't have any problem with what I'm looking at.

I'm just, I'm missing that part of what we saw last month or a lot two weeks ago.

Chandra Hampson

So just to be abundantly clear we already had this for intro and now it's coming for action.

Yeah.

So that's.

Yeah.

So we've had this discussion and we have been moving the evaluation from a what is known as gotcha governance.

Which is we're going to evaluate you on anything and everything whenever we choose.

And at the end of the year we'll sit down and we'll write a big narrative that we will never be able to come to consensus on because we all have different ideas of what we like do and don't like about what you have done during this past year.

That's really really poor management and it's a really ineffective way to get the results that we need for kids.

So the accountability component of it is Superintendent Jones is responsible and I will just say if you go through the goals and the guardrails which will always need to be continuously improved right.

We didn't get it right the first time.

We know that we've already made some changes and we already need to make more changes.

I think we all agree we need something on finance you know our financial the budget instead of something else.

But there is a massive amount of accountability in here that is measurable that we have never had before.

We've never had measurable accountability and a superintendent evaluation that is directly connected to how our students are doing.

So I would just disagree.

Entire maybe there's aspects of quote-unquote accountability.

I mean that we can say that really broadly but we have Come up with together the things that we think are most important in terms of outcomes for students connected the strategic plan That we have there'll be a new focus in our next strategic plan or maybe there won't maybe we'll we'll continue with the same top line goals.

But the everything that the superintendent does is intended to be really clearly connected to those goals and that's what we've been we've been working on and learning to do in our progress monitoring sessions.

And having done our time use evaluation for this past month we increase in our regular board meeting.

We've increased our focus on student outcomes tremendously as a result of the in-depth conversations we're having about student outcomes.

I've learned a tremendous amount about what's actually happening in our buildings and in this building as a result of those sessions and we still have a lot more to learn and a lot more work to do in terms of understanding how we if you reviewed the questions that we were we're going to talk more about this later but the evaluation of how we asked our questions.

And the really good feedback that we got and I always study that because I want to know OK I don't care who asked it I just want to know OK what did they do and how can I do better with that next time because like there was some pushing that was happening that I think was really critical and we need to all learn to do more of that.

So kudos to those of you that have been you know getting A's on that and I'm aspiring to get A's because that's the work that we need to do.

I'm confused about what we're missing.

I would say, I know we talked about, I don't think you should open yourself up to anything goes.

It doesn't, not anything goes.

That's not how you evaluate somebody.

That's not how you, and you shouldn't be evaluating anybody like that.

Brandon Hersey

Do you have something you wanted to?

Brent Jones

Yeah, I want to just point to a couple points in this evaluation tool that really speak to accountability.

And there's a section in the tool, and it's labeled implementation goals.

And 6.1 talks about having evidence of progress monitoring that happens on a routine and regular basis, making sure those are honored.

There's another piece going down to implementation goal seven around developing a performance monitoring framework that's aligned to the goals and guardrails.

And so that each one of the key strategies that we're trying to implement have a fully developed implementation plan.

So we'll be accountable to that.

There's another section under that heading around goal 7.3 that talks about having formative and summative assessments for the monitoring of implementation fidelity.

And then lastly, in goal number 8, which talks about developing accountability tools with aligned metrics, that we're going to have a dashboard that's fully integrated and aligned with schools continuous improvement plans.

So we're trying to make sure that I'm accountable, the district office is accountable for having evidence of these and not just talking about them.

And then if you go over to the section on academic goals, there's a new section added that we have evidence for each third grade reading, seventh grade math, and college and career readiness that there's evidence of strategic refinement.

So that we have strategic adoption of new things as we learn and strategic abandonments as we learn that's what's not working.

And so throughout this, the goal actually was to have much more accountability.

So I want to make sure that Director Rivera-Smith and any other board members, if you don't see that, I want to be able to point to that.

And then we can get into some other discussion around what that actually looks like in practice when I show you that evidence.

But it's really, I think, embedded deeply in here.

But if it's still not clear, I think we need to spend a little more time doing this, whether it's a session that we have.

But I just want to really be super clear.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Thank you so much for pointing those parts out.

That does help a whole lot.

To be more specific, I guess, from what you did there, thank you.

Those definitely do show the accountability pieces there.

I'm looking back on your PDF, which maybe not everybody sees right now, but number three under accountability, measurement, impact, progress monitoring was role clarity and accountability clarity.

So I guess I'm looking for role clarity I guess in that and maybe I'm thinking of it the wrong way because I'm thinking of it like your cabinet even clarity of who does what but maybe specifically to you only this role clarity is just supposed to be you or I feel like understanding that level is something we haven't had clarity on in a while because it's been changing it's been in flux and I understand that that's been understandable but I think a lot of us are still looking for that clarity too and how the accountability is in that mix also.

Brent Jones

So great question and observation and all those folks against the wall over there.

This is part of their evaluation too.

They'll have elements of this that they're going to be responsible for.

So strategy there's there's people in here who are responsible for strategy implementation and accountability.

They will all have part of their their evaluation part of their plan part of their their job description will be aligned very specifically and tightly to this.

So I think you see it's embedded in there.

And then the other piece that's going to be really important is again the CSIP that are that my goals my accountability is all the way through the organization to the CSIP.

So to each school CSIP so we should see some great alignment and beyond alignment even integration.

So as schools make gains we're accountable to providing the right type of support so that they can sustain those gains as we see gaps at schools we need to be responsive to how are we going to provide relevant meaningful timely tangible support.

So this should all link up like that.

Will it be perfect.

Not even close but.

I think the intent is right and now we have to hold ourself accountable for the impact.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

Brandon Hersey

Go ahead Director Rankin.

Liza Rankin

The other piece of accountability that's really really important that's our job is our policy manual.

So that is a continual should be a continual review of policies to update them as needed from the board's point of view in terms of what the community expects for its kids and also a check with the superintendent on a regular basis of whether or not a policy is being followed and complied with.

throughout the system.

Brandon Hersey

Go for it.

Vivian Song

kind of along those lines.

I think what Director Rivera-Smith was bringing up isn't quite answered for me.

I hear Director Hampson's comments about the evaluation tool and I'm in agreement.

But what Director Rivera-Smith was bringing forward was when there is a policy and the district is not in compliance with the policy what happens there.

So the labor policy is an example of that.

And so I think that could be a separate conversation But it's something that Predates you as a superintendent predates us as board members but That's the point that she was trying to bring forward like what should happen when the district is not in compliance of a board policy I don't know that this evaluation tool is the right answer to that and so I will be voting yes on this item But I do think that that was a question that was is unanswered.

I

Chandra Hampson

And I fully share that I didn't understand that that's what you're saying and I fully share that.

Frequently and I think the but that's not that that's our bad right.

Like in terms of the I think.

What we have learned I believe is that really good leadership is equal measures of clarity and compassion.

Clarity of what your demands are what you're going to hold somebody accountable to and then also compassion and so not that oh if you do these things wrong that's it.

You know we're out of relationship.

We're not you know you're fired.

That's not how we should be operating.

And yet though so we that is a perspective.

I don't want anybody to lose that for those of you that are going to still be there like to hold on to that particular piece because we haven't been clear as a board how what our expectation is for that because it's really for us to say and to try to work out with the superintendent what is the system for bringing for when we write policy we think we're clear and then there's a different interpretation And both interpretations are within state law.

Where do we go from there.

And there should be a process by which we can have a conversation about it.

And there are some I'm just going to call it out right now the big thing that we're having difficulty around right now is math.

And we need to have a conversation about it.

It's not going away.

And so but I believe we have not been clear not because we didn't try not because somebody didn't try.

We just didn't quite get there.

So yeah I 100 percent agree.

I don't I think that it I believe this falls under the accountability office and potentially the board office but I'm not clear either.

Like how do we.

How are we tracking any of these things or knowing you know and one of the ways that we have to make that happen which I think is what Director Rankin was saying was getting to a much fewer set of much smaller set of policies that we're regularly reviewing and that we're focused on.

But there's some there's some critical ones.

Yeah but that's we need to look to where is where is our leadership falling down in terms of the clarity.

If something's not being followed and not that like somebody's because I think that's been kind of our historical process and it's really easy to to do that.

We have families who call us and you're like yeah it looks like we're not following the policy and then what do we do.

You know.

Well maybe we're not there in terms of the clarity.

But yeah.

So thank you for that clarification.

Brandon Hersey

Go for it.

Leslie Harris

I stand educated and corrected with respect to the introduction and the action piece of this.

I'm not sure however that The pictograph which we had an intro which I love and said so and will say so was related to what we got yesterday.

And and I don't want to beat the dead horse but I think.

I think a couple of examples make sense here when we talk about accountability.

And I'm not interested in beating you up or doing gotcha governance.

In fact I like to think that you and I have had a pretty good straightforward relationship.

No surprises from this one.

The accountability office the accountability officer.

We have no idea what that job description is.

We have the org chart requests etc.

And you promised us a interactive org chart and job descriptions and that is hugely exciting to me and builds trust with our community and most importantly with our voters who are funding us and our families.

But then we take a look at the last board meeting And we find out because folks with orange shirts are sitting in the audience that they're threatening to strike on the first day of school.

And this board hasn't been kept apprised at all of the negotiations and the fact that this is happening.

And tonight I believe we've got an intro in action and I'm not sure that this board has been apprised again At all.

And you've got folks that are that are hardworking great brilliant people that didn't appreciate as director Rivera Smith pointed out that's black letter policy that the board is kept apprised.

And that that wasn't recognized.

There was no apology.

There was no.

Man we blew it.

We're not going to do that again to you.

Not a problem.

That's the sort of stuff when I pick up the phone and somebody is ripping my ear off.

Why can't you knuckleheads do X Y or Z.

It's hard to defend.

And and because you're so highly respected it's hard to tell you that.

And it's also hard.

for the general public to call you up and say hey what up.

But they're more than happy to call us.

Believe you me.

In any event I'm not going to belabor the point any longer but I use that as a learning tool not as a gotcha.

Thank you.

Chandra Hampson

I just have to respond a little bit to that Director Harris because that still feels like a gotcha.

I'm not saying you're intending it to be a gotcha.

There are many policy violations that happen in this district because we can't stay on top of things that are small to some people and large to others and this felt large to us because we're we're in front of people and I.

I do believe that there were extenuating circumstances.

I don't think I think multiple interpretations in this particular instance could be made of whether or not policy was followed in all honesty from my understanding.

So I don't see any point in beating stuff over the head with the fact that you know we were disappointed right that we had a moment of disappointment that it happened and we need to talk about OK how can we be more clear.

about just like you would in any other compassionate situation where you still need to provide clear accountability and boundaries.

How can we be more clear about how we how we need this information to get to us or do we need to.

Let's have the conversation.

Do we need to be more clear in.

in our policy or is there, and I think we do need a review of the collective bargaining.

Unquestionably, there's a policy called collective bargaining that I believe needs review.

However, and as important as all that is, I don't believe that it has to do with what we've determined.

Thus far is the critical items for reviewing the performance of this particular employee in this time period so that we can show whether he's able to demonstrate that he's achieving the goals and within the guardrails that we've established.

I'm sorry I keep turning this way instead of this way I'm trying to address more rather than less.

Leslie Harris

Oh no offense taken.

Believe you me.

Liza Rankin

I just want to clarify that this item number two also is not intro and action it was introduced at the last board meeting and it is up for action today.

Unless I am misremembering or there was a different contract.

Brandon Hersey

So here's here.

Case in point.

Case in point.

Case in point.

Everybody take a pause.

When we have conversations like this one, it does nothing but confuse the public, all three or four of which that are with us tonight.

What's up, Chris?

But definitely those who are also watching from home.

So all I'm asking is that We get into this cycle a lot where there is like something that we feel is important that is on the agenda that we've seen before in some capacity most of the time.

Right.

Especially for something like the superintendent.

If the intent is to get at getting a clear explanation of where is accountability built into this.

You could ask that question directly to the superintendent without all of the stuff that comes beforehand.

Right.

And I'm not saying that because it's like I don't love to hear you know Director Harris or any of you guys go off on a rant.

I think you all are great speakers.

Right.

But I think if the real.

aim is to provide clarity.

We just did a terrible job of that, a terrible job of that in terms of the conversation that we have with one another.

And I think that we could do better.

And if we are setting an example for whatever board comes after this one, I would just hope that we can take a step back because I don't think your intent is a bad one.

I think your question in there is really good.

However, lacing it with all of that other stuff, I think we lost the point, so to speak.

And now we don't know what's intro, what's action, what's this, what's that.

And all of that stuff could be clarified with questioning as opposed to accusatory statements.

And that's all I'm getting at, right?

I think that we owe it to our community.

For us, if we are up here confused, did this come for intro?

Was this action?

Where did this come from?

And I feel that way right now.

I can only imagine for what this feels like for the people who are actually listening to it.

So what I want to do before we move on from this is there a question about an aspect of the superintendent's evaluation tool that has remained to be answered.

And if there is please take a moment.

Write that question down and let's get some clarity so that folks feel comfortable about this when we get to the time that it's actually time to vote on this.

And I will also say when we introduced this the last time we were very clear if you had feedback email it to me Ellie Superintendent Jones.

I didn't receive any.

So it's just confusing to me to be in a position to where we are having this conversation from a stance to where we I can't respond effectively to you.

That's not how we need to do business.

That's why we intro this in the format that we did.

That's why we asked for feedback in the way that we did so that we could come prepared to have these types of conversations which is why it feels a little bit like gotcha governance because there were ample ample opportunities to provide feedback here over the course of the last week two weeks and I didn't receive any.

So just going to leave it at that.

Director Hampson take it away.

Chandra Hampson

I was just curious I didn't have the expectation that the conversation which I thought was rich about culture would necessarily make it into this particular evaluation.

However I am interested in hearing if you thought of anything since that time that would speak to that whether in your self-evaluation or which you might share with us in a executive session or in relationship to your work with your staff.

Brent Jones

So definitely took the culture statement and all the discussion around that into consideration.

And it's actually deeply embedded in this tool and in the form of getting things done.

And so when you start to look at implementation plans, there's very specific things that need to happen regarding change management.

And so when you click in three layers to any of these plans, when you talk about where are the points of resistance, where are the points of collaboration, where are the points of refinement, where do we have the discussions about continuous improvement, all those are really trying to create a culture of us getting things done.

And so I interpreted the culture statement around what are all of the aspects that we need to improve our culture to get better outcomes.

And so that should be it's not maybe clear in the tool itself but in all of the scaffolding that's supporting the tool it's it's in there.

Brandon Hersey

Director Rankin.

Liza Rankin

Very quick clarification with apologies.

I was misremembering this contract.

I think somebody answered it but they weren't miked so I just wanted to make sure everybody heard that I was mistaken.

This was not the one from last time those were two different contracts so apologies for the confusion.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah, it's just cortisol is a really powerful chemical in our bodies.

We don't think straight when our emotions are heightened.

I know that I get that way.

I'm an incredibly sensitive, sagittarious person.

So it is what it is.

And that's what I'm just saying.

We can all be much calmer if we just ask questions of each other and look for understanding.

And it doesn't have to be as combative, because I would really hope that conversations in our classrooms don't go like the one that we just had.

So with that being said, do we have any other pieces on this?

Brent Jones

So I want to spend a little bit of time thinking about how we can have our collective bargaining agreement intro and action process refined a little bit.

This is where that question comes in around not being informed.

And things are so fluid when we're in bargaining.

Things are changing rapidly.

Everything is very delicate.

We don't want to upset the sanctity of the bargaining room and all those type of things.

And so sometimes we are we are operating at the 11th hour.

But I do I hear the board in terms of wanting to be updated wanting to be informed and we can probably do more.

Tina and Sarah will work through that in terms of doing it.

But this has been going on for years and years and years but we're going to be the cohort that resolves that.

So I want to make sure I register the request or the demand that the board is making around having more detail around collective bargaining.

It's just always been so sensitive so political.

and people are operating literally around the clock sometimes and so we have to figure out a better way to keep you all informed.

So I'll own that.

I'll be accountable.

Chandra Hampson

Just one note.

I appreciate the much of what you said President Hersey in terms of how we are with each other.

We at the same time we have to be able to have hard conversations 100 percent with each other.

Anger is OK.

Frustration is OK.

You know Director Harris and I have many strong disagreements.

I have no issue with her.

The passion with which she speaks and I spoke honestly with her about how I was receiving things.

I want my fellow directors to feel like they can show up here and be their whole selves and not necessarily.

Well we're going to make mistakes.

I mean we're going to make mistakes of emotion.

We're here up here talking about about kids.

Yes we can.

And at the same time we can always try to do better get we use the tools that we have developed and that we are generating we're all still practicing and trying to do better.

But I also want to give.

some space and some grace for the emotions that run through us when we're talking about things that we really care about.

And so yeah I don't want anyone to feel like.

And.

Yeah people are listening.

I mean y'all are here but you all get to go to your cubicles and do your jobs without people watching you and filming you and playing things back.

We don't have that option.

It's all public and I don't think people realize that our work together.

We were just in a room together.

We had to make sure we kept talking about babies because it's not legal for us to talk about any business together.

And so we have to be able to have some amount of space to be who we are and not be slammed over the, we get slammed out there anyway.

So because everybody's watching, it's all on record.

We get plenty of slamming.

So yeah, it's all good.

It's all okay.

Brandon Hersey

Yep.

I 100 percent agree and retract any statement that I may have made that box people into a corner of how they should respond or whatnot.

I know I'm just saying for my own personal modeling of like what it looks like to admit when an individual is wrong it did not necessarily consider like all of those feelings.

So I'm owning that.

So you have my most esteemed apologies Director Harris.

In no way did I intend to make you feel admonished right.

So please.

Indeed.

Director Rivera-Smith and then we have got Director Sargent.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Thank you.

I appreciate everyone's passion up here.

I've tried to stay a calm Capricorn and I hope that I hope that I.

I hope that I really do appreciate the opportunity we had to submit questions earlier.

We do that with every meeting.

It's awesome.

So I don't have I don't really want to lay out my personal reasons I wasn't able to do that this time.

So I apologize that I wasn't able to come to you sooner with this point on the accountability part.

But I think you did a great job answering me, so I'm not really concerned.

I think I had talked about this before at introductions, the same exact thing I talked about then, so I hope it wasn't a surprise for you.

I just wanted to kind of put a bow on that, how that piece from last time, you know, weaved into what we're seeing today.

I think that I'm satisfied with the answer.

I do very much agree with Director Hampson regarding we need to be clear about what we're evaluating for.

I don't want to evaluate on something that we never told you we were doing that for.

That's completely unfair and not professional.

Um, so I'm wondering where do we- where is it codified or written that you follow policy and you hold yourself accountable for that?

Like, because that's not in this evaluation here and I get that maybe this isn't the exact place for that, but in some level and in some way, we do have to hold you accountable for when policies are not followed.

Again, not like, oh, you didn't follow this one, you're fired.

That's ridiculous and everybody knows that.

I've talked to families and parents who understand you don't just fire the superintendent because they didn't follow this one policy.

That's ridiculous.

But, you know, as a wholesale, like, there's policies, yes, that aren't followed all over the place.

Who's watching that?

Who's making a list?

Who is, you know, bringing that to your attention, to our attention?

I don't think anybody is, right?

So, we do need to figure out, like, where does that happen?

Otherwise, why do we have policies?

It's like, you know, laws that aren't being, you know, held, like, why do we have those?

Somewhere, in some form, I don't know if it's in 1620 or 30, one of these policies we have where we just outline that here is what happens.

Who's overseeing policies being followed?

Who's overseeing notification?

What are the things?

How do we hold you accountable for that?

Because we're not going to fire you because of this one instance here.

But what do we do?

What are our levers?

I guess is the question.

So that's an overarching thing.

I know I'm going to vote yes on this.

I do appreciate all the work that's been done on this tool.

I just have those questions that maybe can be answered elsewhere.

Brent Jones

So board.

Well I'm going to respond.

I'm sorry.

Board sets policy.

Superintendent executes the policy.

That's my job period.

And what this evaluation tool is is supposed to be doing is showing where the focus is on making sure the outcomes occur for students.

And how do we get there.

You're evaluating how I'm doing that.

But I'd like to have a clearer understanding, or at least public facing understanding around just that simplicity around board sets policy, superintendent executes policy.

And because my team are, I actually hold them back from talking about policy so often.

I mean, that's a lot of our conversation about policy.

And I know that's the board's purview.

And so to the extent that we can have a clear document that kind of shows a flow of when there's a policy issue and how does it get reconciled, I think that would be worthy of us, you know, authoring that maybe together.

And I can task my team with putting a first draft together, or the board can do it.

I don't know.

that clarity will be really healthy for for us to say okay when there's a policy uh not if we're not adhering to policy then how does that get escalated where does that happen um and it it seems like it'd be obvious but it's not you know as we're talking about it it's not really super clear as to how that happens is our policy manuals that thick you know and so How do each one of those.

Oh I'm sorry Dicker.

How do each.

How do those get.

How do those get addressed.

And we would say that's through the superintendent procedure but every policy doesn't have a procedure and some of those procedures need to be updated.

So let's let's.

I think if the board is OK with this we could task ourselves with you know writing that up through the policy ad hoc policy committee and or another venue.

But I think that'd be great.

So just affirming what.

Director, sorry, I'm sorry.

I was just trying to respond in real time.

Okay, thank you.

Michelle Sarju

Director Lola Vandernute.

Did I pronounce your name correctly?

I'm speaking mostly to you because what you just saw here was what you have to look forward to for the rest of your time on this board.

That's thing number one.

Thing number two, It's all good, right?

Because part of what you saw was we had situations of intent versus impact.

And we often use intent to justify impact.

If you don't learn nothing else, don't let that be the thing you walk out of here with.

Because at the end of the day, your impact should match your intent.

And when it doesn't, then we do what President Hersey did.

We apologize.

That's a lifelong lesson that will carry you far, far into your future.

Thing number two.

We got an A grade today.

She said she found the whole conversation extremely mature.

Yes.

This isn't going to take long, President Hersey.

SPEAKER_15

There were no raised voices.

Everybody was willing to hear one another out.

Everybody took their turns.

And when people realized that maybe they communicated something other than what they intended, they apologized and moved on.

And I think that's completely OK.

Michelle Sarju

Oh, we caught a good one, didn't we?

She just summed that all up in less than one minute.

The third thing is, There is a ridiculous amount of policies that we have.

And as someone who, yeah, I mean, we have binders.

You're too young to remember the binders of women.

But this is way more than the binders of women in that election.

I have to use policy in my professional life.

Policy means nothing if it can't be implemented.

And if it can't be implemented with effectiveness and impact for our students.

So what we're doing is we're trying to evaluate our policy.

Because really we shouldn't be writing any more policies.

We have hundreds of policies.

that actually most people, there might be one or two on this, people on this board that have memorized every single policy.

I'll give them that.

That'll never happen.

I don't memorize Bible verses.

I don't memorize policies.

But most of those policies are actually not serving you, the student.

They're not preparing you for the next thing that you're gonna do when you graduate.

And yes, sometimes we need those policies, but our job is student outcomes.

And that's what you're gonna hear about.

My job, I'm gonna say my job.

My job is to ensure that you graduate with the highest quality public school education that you could have gotten in this district.

So that when you walk out of here, you're ready.

It's game time.

And we have got to spend this next school year focusing on the students.

That's my escalation of frustration.

I got two years and three months and I am focusing on the students.

I'm doing this for you, not for me.

I don't need this.

You know, I'm old enough, I've done enough.

I could be doing other things.

So your job is to understand why we need to focus on students and how we adults sitting here on this dais, sitting against that wall, it's their responsibility to focus on students.

And if we're not doing it, you need to call us on it.

Brandon Hersey

Do we have any other comments on this item?

Is it important.

Is it super important.

Liza Rankin

I think that it is.

Brandon Hersey

Go for it.

Liza Rankin

We will have a work set our work session next week I think or the week after is is the policy committee which is I chair and directors Rivera Smith and Sarju are members.

We will be bringing to you what we've been developing which is a policy evaluation tool.

And I wanted to just highlight.

the context and importance of it, and I kind of couldn't let this opportunity go, because Director Rivera-Smith said, if we're not following it, why do we have it?

And that's really the question that our tool is answering.

So we're creating a scoring system that will label or give a score to all of our policies and categorize them as whether they are there because their governance which is our role.

We're the governance team up here.

If it's if a policy is governance it is the work that's in it is the work of the board.

If it's connected to goals it gets a number it gets a certain number if it's connected to guardrails if it's connected to delegation which is about how we direct the superintendent.

So or if it's legally required.

Or if it's not any of those categories and then we'll have to have a further conversation about exactly what Director Rivera-Smith said which is why do we have this.

If it's not one of those things why is it a policy.

It doesn't mean that it's bad and we have to get rid of it but it means we have to be serious with ourselves.

This is our accountability serious with ourselves about why we have it.

especially if nobody's following it and especially if we can't monitor whether or not anybody's following it.

So it's very nerdy and people are probably tired of hearing about it but I'm super excited because that manual that policy manual review and understanding why we have different policies and understanding how we talk about them with the superintendent and do our job of holding the district accountable for following those policies starts with us talking about that tool which we'll be bringing to you and I'm excited for that and I hope that this gives us all some context to start with and and look forward to finalizing that and putting it to use.

Brandon Hersey

All right.

Thank you Director Rankin.

With all due respect I'm going to end the conversation there.

So if we could have the roll call please Miss Wilson-Jones.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Rivera-Smith.

Director Harris aye Director Sarju aye aye Director Song-Moretz aye Director Hampson.

What are we voting on again.

Action item.

I'm just kidding.

Chandra Hampson

I'm just kidding.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

I was that an aye.

Yes yes yes.

Director Harris.

Leslie Harris

Beckfully no.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Rankin.

Leslie Harris

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Hersey.

Brandon Hersey

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

This motion is passed by a vote of 6 yes to 1 no.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you very much.

May I have a motion for number two.

Liza Rankin

I move that the board of directors approve the 2022 24 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle School District number one and Carpenters and authorize the superintendent on behalf of the board of directors to execute the agreement in the form attached to the school board action report with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of this agreement.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Michelle Sarju

I happily second.

Brandon Hersey

This has been moved and probably seconded.

I see Miss Mead is at the podium.

Directors do you have any questions on this item.

OK.

Seeing none.

Thank you Miss Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Sarju aye Director Song-Moritz aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris Vice President Rankin.

Liza Rankin

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Rivera-Smith.

Liza Rankin

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Hersey.

Brandon Hersey

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

This motion is passed unanimously.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you very much.

We have now reached the introduction items on today's agenda the first of which is appointment of the Discipline Appeal Council membership.

Michelle Sarju

approval of the I don't read that part yeah go for it oh this is for we are there no we're for intro transition Okay, thank you.

Just for people observing, I'm going to be talking about the Discipline Appeal Council, which is a piece of work that I chose to engage with because some of us know that the disproportionality and discipline in this district essentially upholds the school to prison pipeline.

So the goal is to provide clarity around what this council should be doing as an appointee of the board.

So tonight, what I'm doing is introducing this board action report to appoint members to the Discipline Appeal Council.

The Discipline Appeal Council is the school board's designee to decide certain discipline appeals.

We revised the policy governing the council.

In July, we revised the policy governing the council, and we can now appoint members under our updated policy.

and application for council members was posted to our website and shared broadly with families, staff and community beginning in August.

To date, we have 73 applications that were received prior to yesterday's deadline.

Yeah, 73. That's a lot of applications in that.

Maybe I, yeah, I signed up for this.

Well, we'll see.

It is what we wanted.

Directors, my fellow directors, Director Vivian and Director Chandra, are joining me in reviewing these hopefully no more than 73 applications.

And we will be making recommendations to the full board on the appointees.

On Monday, September 11th, 2023, we met to begin discussing our selection criteria, and we'll resume that conversation later this week.

We expect that we will review the applications next week.

per our policy.

So we have a policy for this, and you just saw us talk about policies.

We have the following requirements for our appointments.

Number one, members are appointed to three-year terms.

Number two, the council is made up of five community members not employed by the district and four district staff.

Number three, our appointees will be reflective of the students most impacted by district student disciplinary decisions through race, ethnicity and experience.

number four.

Our appointees must be knowledgeable about state and district student discipline rules, policies and procedures.

We will support them in that offering in that by offering an orientation.

Additionally, we identified the following priorities for our selected selection process.

we will use a targeted universalism approach.

If you are interested in knowing what the non-intuitive words targeted universalism mean, you can go to the Othering and Belonging website, and that is a great resource to discover what is meant by targeted universalism.

A modern day example are when you're walking on a sidewalk and there's a curb cut out, That's targeted universalism.

We will look at applicants objectives and experience.

We will ensure we have applicants who are of and from the communities most impacted by student discipline and look for applicants with direct lived experience.

We will look for understanding of child development We will look for understanding of child development.

We will look for understanding of child development and experience with students we see being disproportionately disciplined, such as students receiving multilingual services or special education services.

If directors have additional feedback for our applicant review, we invite that today.

We will update the bar prior to action to include our recommended appointees for the board's confirmation.

Current terms expire on October 1st.

And our new appointees will begin serving October 2nd.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you directors are due.

Do we have any questions on this item.

All right, fantastic.

Thank you to the directors who have put in so much work.

Please let us know how we can support.

Introduction item number two is approval of the guiding principles of the Building Excellence BEX VI capital levy.

Directors Rankin, Rivera-Smith, Song-Maritz are sponsoring this item.

Vice President Rankin will lead off the presentation.

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

So this is about a levy that will go before voters in February 2025. And we start this process really early with guiding principles so that staff has time to build the levy package and ask to prepare to go on the ballot.

So this board action report establishes our direction from the board for the building excellence or BEX VI capital levy.

Capital levies are state authorized levies for school districts to fund construction which the state does not consider part of their obligation to fund as basic education.

So local school districts ask local taxpayers through levies or bonds in some other districts to fund construction costs.

So this is BEX VI.

It's the sixth such of these happens every six years I think.

So our policy 6901 on capital levy planning provides priorities that apply to all of our levies.

And then the policy also calls for us as a board to establish guiding principles that are specific to to each levy.

So once we provide these principles, they help staff, they give guidance to staff to inform scoring and ranking of potential projects to determine what ends up being part of the levy package.

We, of course, have many more things we would like to see happen than are going to be possible.

So our direction provides prioritization guidance to staff to determine what will be in this levy package BEC 6. So President Hersey designated myself and Director Rivera-Smith and Director Song-Moritz to review the guiding principles for recent capital levies.

We're not starting with all new brand new priorities.

They're pretty well connected and established to what's what's important to the board in the community.

And so he directed us to look at Current existing principles consider updates and proposed guiding principles for full board adoption through this board action report We also took into consideration that there's the the recent well-resourced schools conversations gave us some reinforcement and feedback about priorities that relate very directly to to capital asks and existing board policies and we Typically intro and then action is you know one board meeting is intro and one is action.

We decided to this is scheduled for action on October 11th and we decided to move it up a month to give our fellow directors and the public an opportunity to see the draft and just have a little bit more time if anyone has questions or comments.

about it, so that is posted, and between now and introduction, the three sponsoring directors have some, what?

SPEAKER_99

What?

Liza Rankin

Between now and action.

Between now and action.

This is it's being introduced now.

We've got a month to allow time for folks to just read it and respond.

And the three sponsoring directors also will be reaching out to some specific stakeholders for feedback.

And so there there could be some refining based on what we hear between now and action.

But what's posted right now is our final draft.

not the final final but final draft because we are leaving space for feedback.

So there are six key areas in these principles.

High quality learning environments facilities planning that's responsive to our current near and long term student needs and accessibility accessible schools safe and secure schools technology that supports a high quality educational experience.

This doesn't necessarily mean classroom technology this means technological infrastructure to support support effectiveness and efficiency in central office and across the district and environmental sustainability.

And I will now pass it to my co-sponsors if there is anything to add.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Thank you know that was a recap of the work we've done and we're heading as I mentioned earlier during the backs BT oversight committee.

Update.

We took this bar before doctor doctor summaries and I had it before the backs BT.

They will say committee and they give some good feedback which.

Part of it was, if you notice, the beginning is longer.

Before we get to the bullets, there's more meat there about the populations and the policies that we are using as foundations for these guiding principles.

One of the recommendations from the oversight committee was to actually name them foundational principles so that that's clear that instead of having the demographics in every bullet like we had before, we pulled them out and made them this beginning portion.

kind of just say that these are the foundational kind of print based that's the word they use the financial principles.

So that it's clear that that that's what that's why we have this kind of narrative up front is to show that everything below is based on the foundation of these policies.

The demographics were aiming to center and the goals and guardrails usage for also centering these guidelines.

They wanted to under financially sound facilities planning and the first sentence at the end of it.

It talks about a second sentence.

Planning will utilize principles of financial prudence and an eye toward economic.

They thought we should end demographic trends to position the district.

And they were under the, was it one, two, three, fourth bullet of safe, secure, and welcoming schools.

They wanted, they thought, their recommendations are all to help guide them.

So they thought, or guide the capital program, capital planning department.

They wanted to see more about bringing out the welcoming schools part.

I guess they find that that's really important.

They understand that that that's something that kind of can get diluted because what does it mean and you know we pointed oh well it's in our zeros or three zero or it's other places but they felt that pulling it out and making maybe its own bullet of that or something more specific would make it stronger we can discuss this later too but this is I'm just giving you what the recommendations were and that was a couple of them had that feeling about that they wanted to see more about potentially safe routes and sidewalks because that's all part of you know part of making schools safe and students getting there is safe outside of just the building itself being safe and welcoming they thought about actually the routes to school which director best did think was actually a very valid concern because if you walk towards some of our newer projects the school is amazing but the route there is problematic so Having an eye towards that if they thought was I'm something that we could maybe pull out in these recommendation or these principles Circus onwards was anything remember that I missed

Vivian Song

I think the concept behind the discussion that we have around safe routes is that the school experience does extend beyond the physical experience being in the building.

So a suggestion to make it what adapt one of these principles to be more expansive of what that school experience is like and perhaps we should be.

Making decisions around our capital projects with that in consideration And then I'm just looking at more one of my the other additions to high quality learning environments.

There was a suggestion around being more explicit around pursuing in the pursuit of academic excellence, so Like it says high quality learning environments and just tying that directly to academic performance

Brandon Hersey

Director Hampson.

Chandra Hampson

We're ready for questions I assume.

So first question is did you all review the work session that we had on this.

You went back and.

OK.

So watched it because we did have a conversation about this.

So there's one glaring omission for me which I'll talk about in a moment.

But I did want to say that I.

There's a little bit of duplication and I'm wondering if we can't clear that up a little bit because this is something we want to be super clear about what we are prioritizing.

What are these are our principles.

So what is a guiding principle.

We talk about what we're drawing from to develop them.

I don't know if we said what a guiding principle is that might be helpful language to include.

And that might also then help provide some get rid of some of the duplication we have.

I think there's three places where accessibility is mentioned.

And so just a suggestion that we try to.

providing more clarity as far as that's concerned.

The high quality learning environments I'm not maybe that's not the right title.

It just even hearing you all talk about it it feels like a hodgepodge where you put everything else that you couldn't figure out where to put.

And so maybe because it's that's not what that means I mean a high quality learning.

I don't know what that means.

What does that mean in a hard space sense.

And that actually brings me really.

easily to the point that that I made and that is missing and one thing that in some way shape or form needs to be included in the principle which is that we.

One of the principles should really be that we use place based strategies.

And if that is a I believe a really it's certainly a real known very well understood term in community development circles and it acknowledges the history.

So it's you're not doing things ahistorically and what I'm seeing on this page is very ahistorical.

So tribal consultation is our environmental impact related requirement for our capital projects and our district does that.

However it isn't as robust as it should be if we're truly doing government to government tribal consultation on our capital projects which means that we are bringing forth the actual history of the place.

that's where place based strategies for capital projects starts is what is the history of the place.

And that's but it's not just you know the the people who have been here since time immemorial and have tremendous information about what that place was to people for.

thousands and thousands of years but it also goes to who's there now and how do they use the building, how do they use the space around it, and how that how community flows in and out of that place because our buildings in a very good way our relationship with the city includes joint use of our facilities.

And so that's the other thing that that takes into consideration.

I think a lot of it is in here and you know we talk about like sustainability.

The sustainability portion is something that could probably be couched in the place based notion because if if you really are thinking about that we need for these to you know in a real way sustainability is part of that.

place based strategy.

So I think there's a little bit of tweaking here that could just punch a lot of the things up.

And my ask is that we include place based strategies for prioritization as a key one.

And within that that we at least mention honoring the are required tribal consultation obligation to the our local tribes when we do these and then you will learn about and it goes into the naming it goes into you know just everything learning about using that as an opportunity to learn about okay what is this place that where we're building this thing.

What does it mean.

What has it meant.

It's a huge topic in gentrification rich Seattle.

It is a really important way to not lose the past but also to honor the present and the communities that are there and really highlight it as an investment in those communities.

And I think if we.

State I believe if we state that and if we do that we will have fewer of the frustrations that we've had and some hiccups that we've had.

We're always going to have hiccups.

People are not things change and people don't like it when you're tearing down you know buildings or even just moving.

You know it's just it's hard.

But I think we can address some of those things by really acknowledging the full history.

And I mean I think by and large our our.

Our district does a phenomenal job of many of those things.

I think we just haven't been really explicit about it.

Lisa Rivera Smith

Let me say real fast, too.

I apologize if this was all discussed at that work session.

I missed that meeting, and I went to go watch the video, and it's not pulling up on Teams.

So I don't know how to get the video of it.

I looked at the minutes from that meeting, but it said nothing about this.

So if we can somehow get that video of that meeting, because I did try to find it inside Teams where the recordings are usually kept, and on the YouTube channel, but it's not there either.

So I would really appreciate seeing that video, just so I can get a better understanding of what you're talking about here, and we can work to get that in there.

So apologies.

Brandon Hersey

Go ahead Director Harris.

Leslie Harris

President Hersey.

Couple of things that I wish was more explicitly included here would be outdoor education would be child care on site and would be creative ways to use Limited space in this city to potentially do multimodal to have housing on top of a school.

It's being done elsewhere in the country.

We have some really large lots and I like to see us expand our way out of kind of a box that we've used and Lord knows there is a need for all of those things.

Thank you.

Liza Rankin

Go ahead.

Mostly in response to Director Hampson but also somewhat to Director Harris.

So I was writing down when you were talking Director Hampson.

But my question and I'm not sure actually who this is a question for maybe just in general is is what you were talking about a levy or a levy prior principal place or is it actually should that be higher in policy so that any any levy priority package that comes forward is going to already be guided by that.

Does that make sense.

Like this is this is specifically about selecting projects for the next levy ask.

So what you're talking about almost seems bigger than that that that should be sort of a.

a policy direction or I'm not sure where that might that's my question like where like in the immediate here makes sense because this is what's happening right now but also maybe it's actually more of a driver for More things than the levy development.

Chandra Hampson

I would say that's actually more true of other things on this list than what I said because I think actually Director Harris's point and mine are kind of connected.

Yeah where the need is great and you do take a place based approach and you are flexible with or you you figure out how to incorporate things.

We have I understand the limitations that we have in terms of we can't just willy nilly hire an architect to you know customize you pay right.

And we have a responsibility to seek out and prioritize projects where the need is highest and where you can and in the process of doing so you can marry that.

Those are place based strategies.

That's what she's talking about like what else is going on here.

Right.

What has gone on here.

You're you're you're not doing it a historically or a contextually.

That's the the the prioritization should be like you're considering projects.

along with all of those contexts, right?

you could end up doing a project and then realize, oh, if we'd prioritize that one down there, we could have parlayed the housing project.

Instead of building a housing project right adjacent, and then you realize, oh, we need more.

Now there's more kids, and we should have prioritized expanding that school more.

So it's actually directly related.

Same thing.

I mean, that's what happened when I got involved with schools was because huge amounts of housing was going in in the neighborhood and the school was closed and so and it had formerly served military families and then this is at same point and then now it serves a whole bunch of other families and the school reopened and now serves Those kids and many other kids in the neighborhood.

That's a very much a place based strategy to deciding about spending capital dollars on that particular school.

And there continues to be more housing and at some point that will have to be rebuilt and somebody will have to say OK what has gone on here.

What can we do that is and there's a huge child care need.

taking all those things into into consideration.

I don't think it's it's not from a community development standpoint and from the folks around the committee I don't think that this is new language right to consider those things.

I'm just pushing us a bit too and I'm not trying to push us to over customize which is I get nervous when Director Harris talks about that I'm like oh we can't afford to do all that.

But.

But the concepts are kind of coming from the same place and within what we can do Let's acknowledge that there are other things going on here And yeah, if you were gonna take there's some other stuff in there I would maybe that I think is not so specific to the Then maybe that's why you need to define know what falls into this category.

And then I think it'll just be, everything's there, it just needs to be tidied up a bit.

Brandon Hersey

Any other questions?

Statements?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

All right, so those are the two introduction items that we have.

We will now move into progress monitoring.

For our progress monitoring session today we are joined by A.J.

Crabill with the Council of Great City Schools.

Mr. Crabill will be walking us through guidance on effective monitoring.

Our monitoring session on guardrails one and three being rescheduled to an are being rescheduled to an upcoming meeting.

So do we have AJ with us?

The screen up front is not on.

Is it broken?

Good evening.

We hear you, but we can't see you quite yet.

Give us just a second, AJ.

That's all the better for you.

Yep.

Chandra Hampson

Hi, AJ.

Brandon Hersey

You are too hard on yourself.

Good evening.

All right.

There we go.

Take it away, brother.

AJ Crabill

I was in the middle of a three day Restorative Practices Workshop with a group of my high schoolers.

And they were commenting on just how old I was.

Like, you're like a really goofy teenager, but in an old man body.

I was like, thank you.

I really appreciate you all making that observation.

Can we get back to our work today?

Our work is around goal monitoring.

I wanted to start with this question.

Why do we bother monitoring goals?

What is the purpose of monitoring goals?

That wasn't a rhetorical question, by the way.

If anyone's speaking, I can't hear you.

Michelle Sarju

The purpose, there was a question, the purpose of monitoring goals.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

Why do you bother monitoring goals?

Michelle Sarju

Well, how do we know we're achieving them if we're not paying attention to whether we're on the right track in getting to them?

AJ Crabill

All right.

So one purpose for goal monitoring, uh, there are a few, um, But one purpose is to actually have an idea, are we on track to accomplish the things that our community has said is important?

Absolutely.

That's one of the reasons that we monitor goals.

But why else do we monitor goals?

Anybody else?

Vivian Song

This is Vivian.

To assess if what we're doing is actually working?

AJ Crabill

Yeah, this is huge.

I frequently will say to folks that the frequency of monitoring gives rise to the frequency of pivoting.

But if we're not actually stopping to look and see are we serving our children, is our intention, the impact matching our intention, then we're less likely to pivot to change what we're doing at the moment, to change our strategies.

And so the frequency of monitoring gives rise to the frequency of pivoting.

It gives us opportunity to ask, do we need to make a change?

And what might that change look like?

Absolutely, Vivian.

Anybody else why do we bother monitoring our goals?

AJ this is this is Brent to make sure the superintendent is doing his job No, you do get a paycheck and the community does have a right to know if you're doing the things that they are paying you to do and And one of the ways of evaluating that is by monitoring goals.

It is reasonable to expect that the community should know whether or not it's getting its money's worth out of its school system.

It's the community schools, the community's children, the community's tax dollars, the community's buildings, The community does, in fact, have a right to know.

This is part of why we would monitor.

And in that case, to make your point, Brandon, not merely monitor, but monitor in a way that's observable to the public.

Absolutely.

Anyone else?

Why do we monitor goals?

Chandra Hampson

To model the behavior that we want to see in the rest of the district and in the classroom.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, there is a culture setting implement.

Thank you so much for surfacing this.

that the board sets cultures.

Often board members, I've heard you kind of talk a little bit around this earlier in your conversation around policy.

I think a lot of board members are of the belief that the most powerful thing the board can do is set policy.

That is not my observation.

My observation is that policy is powerful only when it is paired with culture.

And if there is culture that is going left and policy that is going right, my experience tells me your school system is probably going to go left.

That if staff have to decide between what does the board demonstrate in its actions and what does the board say in its policies, then more often than not, staff are going to follow board action, not board policy.

That if there's just a bunch of this, but it doesn't match up with this, people will follow you where you're going, not what you said.

And so if you really want to drive performance improvements, you have to make, in any domain, but particularly in student learning and student growth, that you have to match what you are saying with what you are doing.

The policy is the same part, but I would argue that it's the less powerful of the two, but that it is incredibly powerful when it is paired with the actual doing.

And so monitoring is showing, here's what we value, because we're spending time focusing on it.

And we're modeling what we think that ought to look like, not only for us, but that we want people to have open and transparent conversations about performance all throughout the organization.

That's when the board is living into its leadership capacity as a culture-creating entity, not just a policy-creating entity.

In my sense, the culture is the more powerful of the two.

Any other reflections before we transition?

Why do we monitor goals?

Any other reflections before we transition?

Okay.

So, if those are the reasons for monitoring goals, then it stands that there are some practices that better help us live out those reasons and some practices that would be less effective at helping us live out those reasons.

Probably the most obvious example of this is if all the things that you just said are things that we want to get out of goal monitoring, I can give you an example of a behavior that would actually undermine all of those.

If the superintendent comes in and says, we expected achievement for African American males in this particular domain to go from this point up to this point, but in reality it's remained flat.

So the superintendent comes back and so there's our intention, but then our impact was actually down here.

And as a result of that, The board members, one at a time, take your turns saying how horrible and terrible the superintendent is, how you clearly hate black boys, and that there's something wrong with you, and if you actually cared about children, then we would actually see the performance that we intend.

Why would that behavior undermine every single benefit of goal monitoring that you all just described?

Brandon Hersey

Because then no one is going to tell you the truth again.

AJ Crabill

Oh, never again.

Never again.

Absolutely not.

Yeah.

Well, how might that behavior undermine every single benefit that you all just described?

SPEAKER_15

Thing is when people feel like they're being attacked, their immediate response is to react in a fight or flight way.

And that doesn't lead to any type of productive criticism or communication.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

Rather than being communicative, they just become defensive and that doesn't benefit you.

as the board, but it also doesn't benefit you as a student and the student body as a whole when the staff just kind of turtles up and becomes defensive.

At that moment, they're focusing on their longevity.

They're not focusing on the greatness of students.

Anyone else?

Why would that behavior undermine all of the different benefits that you all described?

Anyone else?

Liza Rankin

I just wanted to make, I don't know if you can see us, AJ.

I wanted to make sure you knew that last comment came from our student board director, Lola, who I don't think you've met.

AJ Crabill

Yes, but that's what I referred to as a student.

Liza Rankin

Oh, okay.

I thought that was like the universal student, you know, the royals.

AJ Crabill

No, no, no.

You specifically, Lola.

And welcome, by the way.

SPEAKER_15

I would also like to add that conversations like that, hostile conversations, can lead to resentment in the workplace, which also creates some really weird feelings.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, I hope that that is wisdom, not from experience.

But yes, absolutely.

That type of hostility can lead to resentment, which can lead to some really toxic behavior in the workplace.

Absolutely.

This is a challenge, is that if we want the benefits of monitoring our goals, of really figuring out, are we living into what we've said children deserve or not?

If we really want the promise of that, there are some behaviors that work and there are some behaviors that just simply don't work.

What I want to highlight is five distinctions that we've identified of the types of conversations that most benefit goal monitoring versus the types of conversations that just really don't provide the same level of benefit.

And then after we walk through these five ideas, then we'll dive into your most recent progress monitoring, look through some of the actual questions, and then talk about where was it living into these five ideas and where might it not be.

The first is that it's ideal for a conversation around monitoring goals to be focused on strategy rather than to be focused on tactics.

Anybody want to help me understand what does that mean for a conversation around goal monitoring to be focused on strategy rather than tactics and why might that matter?

Liza Rankin

Well if we as the board focus on tactics that would involve all kinds of things that we have no direct control over and also maybe don't don't understand the way different things impact each other.

We're talking about strategy we're providing support and direction to the superintendent about what the community expects for its students rather than suggestions about how that should be implemented because that's not.

that's not what we are in a position to activate.

AJ Crabill

Certainly.

Other reflections?

Why might it be valuable if the board wants to effectively monitor its goals, why might it be valuable to focus on strategy about where we're trying to go rather than the tactics about how we're going which specific teacher is going to do which specific task, or which specific district administrator is going to spend their time on Wednesday in what particular way?

Why might it make more sense to have a higher level view, a more strategic view, rather than a tactical view, or more this is who is doing what on a day-to-day basis level view?

Why might it be beneficial to maintain a strategic rather than a tactical perspective when monitoring goals at the board meeting?

Brandon Hersey

Because we don't supervise people who engage in tactical work.

The folks who are actually implementing are under the purview of the superintendent.

The superintendent's role is around strategy and execution.

We as a board oversee the superintendent.

And so if we're actually trying to have impact, the impact is when we are focusing on strategy and not necessarily the tactical aspects of what's happening.

AJ Crabill

What you said is something I think is an awkward thing for a lot of people to reflect on.

The superintendent is not actually hired to do the on-the-ground work of the district.

When you think of it in this way, the superintendent is not hired to personally go educate children.

That makes sense.

We've got too many kids, obviously, he can't go and educate every single child.

But then when you actually think about what that means, It's exactly what you said.

You don't hire the superintendent to be a tactician on the ground figuring out how to make things work in detail.

You hire him to be a strategist looking at the big picture and how do we move the system to support the tacticians on the ground.

The other issue here is if your superintendent gets involved in a deep tactical layer, what he's really doing is depriving your educators on the ground of the autonomy.

The more engaged he gets in tactics, the less autonomy your educators on the front lines have.

And so beyond a certain point, it's really quite harmful for him to try to be a tactician.

But if the board is pushing him in that direction, then he'll be inclined to, or said differently, the more the board gets involved at the tactical level, the more you push the superintendent to get involved at the tactical level, which will have the effect of depriving your educators of autonomy.

And so if educator autonomy is some, if you feel like the people closer to students should be having a certain amount of autonomy in decision making, The board being at a strategic level supports that.

The board operating at a tactical level does not.

It pushes the superintendent to himself get involved at a more tactical level, which then deprives the people closest to the students.

There are some decisions that you want made at the district level, that you want the superintendent to make, but there are a lot of things that you don't.

Any other reflections on this strategy versus tactics before we transition?

That's the first of five indicators of are we having effective goal monitoring conversation?

Is the conversation strategic rather than tactical?

Any other reflections on that before we go to the next one?

Chandra Hampson

Strategy is a lever for change if you're headed in the wrong direction, whereas tactics are not going to effectively move whatever outcome you seek and move you in a different direction towards achieving that goal?

AJ Crabill

Yeah, the challenge you're describing is really a challenge of scale.

Like if you want to impact the district to scale, like if you all were only serving a thousand students, this might be a different situation, but you're not serving just a thousand students.

And so to really have the level of impact that you all intend, strategy is a more effective lever for you than tactics are.

Like you trying to go to each individual classroom and tell each teacher how they should arrange their bulletin boards doesn't make a lot of sense.

It doesn't really scale.

And so you'd be looking for a more strategic approach to what are the things that our community believes are important.

The more the board is involved at the strategic level, the more effective it can be at pushing for the changes it wants to see in the system.

The board is just not an effective tactician.

Any other reflections on strategy versus tactics before we move on?

So the second distinction that we want to surface is being measure-focused versus versus not focusing on the measures.

And so, when you all are actually monitoring a goal, there are specific measures that are in the goal, that are in that monitoring report.

And so, we say to be measure-focused to suggest that you are focusing in on what is the data that is in that monitoring report, as opposed to not doing that and being focused on either non-data or things that you made up or data that is real but is not a part of this monitoring report that is from someplace else, this is probably the most common thing that board members do, is we're having a conversation about A, B, and C, and a board member will slide in with, well, what about X, Y, and Z?

This is what we describe as not being measure-focused.

Why do you think it's important for a board, if they want to be effective at goal monitoring, to be measure-focused rather than not be measure-focused?

Liza Rankin

So that you know if you actually are effective.

I mean, if we're not measure-focused, we're just sort of sharing opinions instead of talking about what's actually is or isn't happening.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, you go to all the work of having your administration be transparent with performance, and then you don't even have that conversation about what you've asked them to be transparent about, certainly.

Anyone else.

Why might it matter for the board to be measure focused versus not measure focused.

Brandon Hersey

So that we can also hold ourselves accountable to see if.

Well let me back up.

If we think about why certain things aren't happening in the district.

and we just feel that way and we don't have data to back up those feelings then we're just shouting at the wind as opposed to by being measure focused.

We can actually use those measures and various metrics to see what aspects of policy curriculum X Y and Z are working and which ones that are not and how long those things are taking to actually get to our desired outcomes for students.

If we are not measured focused.

then we lose the ability to actually have evidence to inform our decision making.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, this isn't quite what you said, but I want to push just a little bit beyond what you said.

Please.

And to suggest that if the decisions I'm making are not based on the measures that we've agreed on as a board that are a reflection of what our community's priorities are, Then we have to start wondering, then what is the basis for the decision making?

And often here's what we find it is.

I heard these two people say on my Twitter feed, or these three people posted on my Facebook, my Instagram, my TikTok, whatever.

I was at the grocery store, and I heard these three people, or I know these five people, and they contacted me.

And then we hear board members say something that is truly ridiculous when you analyze it, but is said so often.

Well, the community thinks that.

Really what you're saying is there are one, two, or three people who reported this to you.

You didn't actually stop to figure out Is this true writ large?

You do have evidence that it's true for two, three, four people who commented on your social media or to you in person.

The problem with this is it elevates not the reality of students, but the influence of adults.

Now, it's a subtle thing that happens and it's easy to miss, but that is what takes place is that we're not really grounding it in what is the actual measure, what is the actual data that we said is important about what our students don't are able to do.

What we're really doing is we're saying that the opinions of the people with access to me as a board member actually are more meaningful and more valid than the reality of what's happening in the lives of our students writ large.

This is a dangerously slippery slope, predominantly because the people with more access to you as a group of board members tend to be the more privileged among your community rather than the less privileged.

And at this moment, what you were doing is you were glorifying the access of the privileged while devaluing the reality of the less privileged.

this is not the path that you want.

There's a benefit to being measure-focused because it pulls you away from that, pulls you away from this unintentional, because I get that it's not what you intend to do, but it is what you in fact do.

It gets you away from this unintentional glorification of the access that a few privileged folks have, and that you then make the mental mistake of elevating that over what is true for our students writ large.

Their truth, their reality takes a backseat.

This is the challenge that you run into.

This is part of why being measure focused is so essential, is that it gives us a more objective understanding of what's happening that isn't just grounded in who are the few privileged individuals with access.

Any other thoughts about why being measure focused is so important?

Chandra Hampson

AJ I was trying to when you were struggling with what is the opposite of measure focused I was like yeah what is the opposite of measure focus and I'm wondering based on what you just said and some of my other thinking if the opposite of measure focused isn't blame the influence of adults tends to have that you can have an experience of a student and then an adult will move into a more hyperbolic state of mind and create.

It's rationalization right.

They've got to try to understand why is this happening.

And then but then somebody is responsible.

Somebody is to blame for this.

For me that's where it's objective.

It keeps you in an objective space rather than trying to put the.

You do have humans you're interacting with.

but trying to move away from that blame place of blame or responsibility and instead learning to push in a in a way that is neutral.

AJ Crabill

Yeah any other reflection on this so this is a second the first is are we strategy focused in our monitoring conversations the second is are we measure focused are we actually looking at the data Any other reflections on measure focus before we move on to the third or five?

Brent Jones

Yeah, AJ, you taught us that we have so many units of energy, so many units of effort.

And if we expend those on the end of one or the end of two, then we don't get those back.

And so it's a resource issue in terms of talent resource and money resource, time resource.

uh maybe uh and likely going to the wrong wrong thing or not the most impactful in fact impactful uh yeah strategy yeah what's the highest leverage strategy strategy is going to produce the most benefit for the largest group of our new year students as opposed to

AJ Crabill

that's going to create the most benefit for the person who's directly in front of me.

And this is where I think as elected officials, we really struggle, because it is so easy to want to be pleasing to the person who's in front of me and to not in that moment realize that that is actually the anti-equity position to take, that in the moment that I'm prioritizing the one person in front of me who has privileged access, actually saying that the folks who don't have that privilege, that their voice is not as essential to me in the moment.

That's not what we mean as public officials, but that is in fact what the effect is.

So yeah, absolutely, Brent.

I think it's spot on.

Any other reflections on measure focus before we continue?

Liza Rankin

Yeah I have one just sort of based on what people on either side of me said the connection between I think if we're not measure focused focused that encourages tactical response rather than strategic response.

So the the one thing in front of you to try to fix it for that one instance robs us actually of the opportunity to think about what's causing like I mean from the board level obviously I hope that if there is one student that's having an issue that someone is going to respond to that one issue right.

But our job from the strategic standpoint is. how do we prevent that from happening again because we're thinking strategically but if we only respond to that one instance it pulls us that's pulls us into the tactics place and if we're able to solve it we're only solving it for the one student and it's not actually solved.

AJ Crabill

And the point you make I do want to reinforce because I don't want people to misunderstand what I'm saying here is because it's exactly as you say is that folks are well-intended.

The intention is often wholesome.

As board members, we tend to be just these ridiculous do-gooders wanting to make the world a better place for children.

And often that drive can unintentionally lead us astray because it actually isn't always perfectly aligned with what is our highest capacity as a board member.

I think a lot of us get on the board from like I was a parent leader.

We've got a lot of parent leaders, education leaders, teacher leaders, things like that get on the school board.

And we are used to the tactical leadership that we brought with us that actually got us on the school board in the first place is why people trusted us to vote for us to be on the school board.

But then we got to switch it up because the new role we're in doesn't match the skill set that we've developed.

This is the ideas about strategy focus and measure focus.

We'll move on to the third one, ask-oriented.

Like, are we actually looking to ask questions to learn or are we looking to make statements and pigeonhole?

And so the idea here is that to be ask-oriented means that I'm asking an open-ended question.

Superintendent, what are your thoughts about X?

This is an open-ended question, and the hallmark of that is it's not a yes-no question, and it's not a multiple-choice question.

And so the way that I would encourage you to weigh from is, well, superintendent, don't you agree that we should do X?

Oh, okay, well, that's a yes-no answer.

It doesn't really drive effective goal monitoring.

Or superintendent, do you think we should do this thing, or do you think we should do this thing?

Well, that's multiple choice.

It doesn't really drive effective goal monitoring.

The question of why is that?

Why am I suggesting that to be effective in your goal monitoring that you should be ask-oriented, that you should be using open-ended questions rather than yes-no questions?

Liza Rankin

I think it goes back to the strategic versus tactical again.

If we ask yes no questions if the answers we're missing that are what we want is the outcome.

What we want is the result and how it happens.

We might have ideas about how something happens but The superintendent and staff and educators are professionals and know what the scope of different options are.

So if we limit it to two things we're being we're again taking that autonomy and taking that tactical place instead of the strategic place about what is what are the outcomes that we want.

AJ Crabill

Well and I've seen the exact thing happen in boards during monitoring sessions.

where they say, all right, superintendent, are you going to do A or are you going to do B?

Well, then what that often pushes the superintendent to say is either A or B.

But what if the best option for students was actually C, but that wasn't one of the options.

So the superintendent chose between A and B.

I would hope that that wouldn't happen, but I have watched this happen.

where then I later in do a check-in with the superintendent, it's like, well, actually, we should do C.

Then why didn't you say C?

Well, because they asked me, would I recommend either A or B?

And so it's in the way the question got phrased, because it wasn't ask-oriented.

Not only did it give the board bad information, but it actually, if that particular superintendent, I'm thinking I've caught it, but actually may have led to the administration implementing something that was from their perspective, objectively bad for students only because that's the way that the board seemed to be pushing the administration to its yes, no inquiry.

Any other thoughts about this?

Ask oriented.

Michelle Sarju

I was going to comment on the A and B selection.

Those are usually our favorites, right?

They are.

They're the two things that we think are the best.

without because there are ideas.

I mean, being honest with ourselves, we do think we have the best ideas and we do believe everything we think.

AJ Crabill

You sound like a former president.

I have the best words, the best ideas.

Michelle Sarju

Right.

And so My eye and I will admit I did this with my kids.

You can either do this or you can do that.

Right.

Because that's the idea.

Those are the two things the outcomes that I wanted.

I did think they were the best.

Sometimes they weren't.

And I think it's the sometimes they weren't.

right?

That's the demonstration of why the A and B selection isn't necessarily the best approach, because we're really putting our leader in a position to actually not be able to have agency to choose really what is best for kids.

AJ Crabill

Any other reflections on why you want to be ask-oriented than kind of this yes-no orientation?

Chandra Hampson

I, this is probably, I think this is one of the ones I struggle with the most when we're doing progress monitoring.

And I think it's because I end up talking myself into, you know, the answer that I want.

So I ask leading questions.

Right.

Instead of.

Then I deprive my when I ask leading questions I deprive myself of the knowledge of the superintendent or his staff's thinking on the matter in which case which you basically already said that Adu that there there may be other pieces and other concepts that I'm not considering.

And then I've just I've just squashed it all into one predetermined.

philosophy and I'm actually surprised at how often we as board members seem to have the the outsize of our influence in that matter.

We have a lot less power than than people think that we do.

And yet at the same time our influence in that regard is really dangerous because then I hear staff people say oh well so and so on the board or the board said this.

I'm like but that was just one person and that's not you know it's not really that bigger conversation.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is this idea that.

One of the benefits of goal monitoring is it's a formative evaluation.

Your superintendent, Brent, actually mentioned that himself.

Good for you.

But if we think of it in that term, if you were going to evaluate someone, would you want to tell them what the answers are?

Would you want to ask them what the answers are?

And so it doesn't really make sense.

If we want to know what does Brent believes is the answer and what is his team believing the answer.

Giving him a yes no answer and saying pick A or B doesn't actually tell us does our superintendent have meaningful insights about what the reality of our students are and what their needs are inside of that reality.

And that's I would say as a board member something that you really really want to know is does the superintendent have meaningful insights into what's going on with our students and what are ways of addressing that.

And When you're not being task-oriented, you aren't finding that out.

You aren't getting the superintendent's thinking on it.

You're getting the superintendent's binary reaction to your binary question.

Any other reflections you want to ask, before we go to the fourth item?

Brent Jones

I never do it with my team.

I always ask open-ended questions, because I try to position myself always as a learner.

But in reality, I do the same thing.

And it makes me a teller versus a learner.

And I think that the open-ended part allows for more understanding, more context, More vulnerability more adaptability to the situation.

And you know as the open ended questions get to rolling.

I think that both parties if you will the superintendent and the and this board can can learn more as we go along.

But if it's just you know an A or B I think it it just limits our collective understanding of what of the situation.

So but again I don't do that with my team ever.

AJ Crabill

Well, and I love that you mentioned this, because somebody else mentioned, or I think it was Shana, mentioned the importance of this work as culture setting.

And I absolutely guarantee you all do not want all of your teachers asking yes, no questions in the classroom.

What you really would want them to do is asking open-ended questions that really call for and pull for the wisdom and the thoughtfulness and the insights of our students to really challenge them as critical thinkers and full partners in their education, rather than just people who are being regurgitated at and being expected to behave and like.

That's not the learning environment you want in your classroom.

Don't call for that through the culture you create in the boardroom.

I appreciate that.

Other reflections on ask oriented before we move on.

Then the next is results focused.

Results focused is one that a lot of boards struggle at.

As I'm going back and looking at your most recent, early on you all struggled in this.

You all have actually gotten really clean on this one.

But the distinction that we draw here on this one is are we asking questions to understand the data or are we offering up our opinions?

And we can ask a question in a way that is really just offering opinion, particularly when we get into the yes, no's, those really start to sound like questions that are just a thinly veiled opinion.

The intentionality here is you want to be focused on understanding the data, understanding are we getting the results that our community expects or not?

Why do you think it's critical that a board be results-focused rather than opinion-focused, focused on understanding the data rather than just sharing their opinions when it comes to goal monitoring?

Why is that important?

Liza Rankin

I think if we're not results focused it allows us to pretend that things may or may not be happening that aren't.

And that's not you know that's not good for students.

We need to know what is actually happening with our students if they are learning if they are having you know the experience that We're looking for them to have.

And if we are not results focused then there's just no context even for how we know what we know.

It's just what we we we it's made up.

AJ Crabill

Anybody else.

Why is it important to be results focused rather than.

really seeking to understand the data rather than seeking to offer your opinion.

Why is this important?

Anyone else?

SPEAKER_15

Another thing I'd like to add is that when you focus on opinions, you don't actually account for all the students because the students aren't here to give their opinions.

So you're discounting a lot of the reality of the situation.

Also, nobody is ever going to agree on the same thing.

If you are doing it based on opinions, there will always be disagreements and nobody will come to an actual conclusion.

Whereas when you focus on results and the data behind it, there is no negotiation.

There's no room for interpretation.

It's just this is what is happening and this is working or it isn't.

AJ Crabill

Any other thoughts on this before we move on?

All right, and then the final one is time bound.

And the distinction that we're drawing here is between, is the question focused on what's happening in the present and looking back?

Or is the question focused on what will happen in the future?

This is what we mean when we suggest is something time bound or not?

Are we looking forward into the future?

Are we looking at what's happening or what has happened?

And our suggestion is that the majority of time, not all of the time—in fact, we're very clear not all of the time—should be focused on the present and looking backwards.

I would say roughly 80 percent of the time should be, and then a small segment at the end of the conversation should be set on looking forward.

Why do we suggest that to be effective at goal monitoring the board should be time bound that it should spend most of its time roughly 80 percent of its time really looking backwards and understanding how we got here rather than looking forward to what's going to happen next.

Why do you think that's so important to effective goal monitoring.

Chandra Hampson

I mean philosophically speaking I don't understand how you can have a sense of where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

It's I was talking about this before that when you're making decisions they can't they shouldn't be a historical or a contextual you need to understand what came before so that you can inform yourself.

It sets a baseline.

for where you're headed?

AJ Crabill

It is really hard to make powerful decisions about what to do next if we aren't deeply grounded in how did we get here.

The folks who are trying to have a historical perspective on what to do next, well, let's not talk about how we got here.

Let's not talk about the decisions of the past.

Let's just talk about what we're going to do next.

There are so many reasons this is a really poor way to go about deciding how we move forward.

Anyone else?

Why is it important to be time-bound, to be spent most of the time focused on how do we get here and what do we learn, what's taking place, rather than most of the time talking about what's going to happen next?

Why is it important to be time-bound?

Liza Rankin

Our students are time-bound.

We've only got You know, they get older every year and move through our system.

And if we're not time bound, they miss the benefit of any of the improvements that are trying to be made.

AJ Crabill

If we're not constantly learning, then we aren't going to be able to make decisions quickly enough to impact them in a healthy way before they've just moved on to their next level anyway.

Anyone else?

Why might it be valuable when we're doing goal monitoring to spend the majority, roughly 80% of the time, understanding how we got here in advance of trying to jump into inquiry about where are we going next?

Anyone else?

Why is it important to be timed out as part of effective goal monitoring?

Chandra Hampson

I'm going to go twice because I feel passionately about this.

The, If we are not this is just back to the beginning.

If we're not modeling that approach then I feel like we're telling the district that it's OK in the classroom to support a student and moving forward with their learning without understanding what has come before for them.

What hat what they have and haven't learned what their strengths and their weaknesses are.

And.

I actually believe that we do this particularly once you get into middle and high school.

That is this the or just from year to year.

That is unfortunately what our students experience.

And if we're not modeling that then we can't expect for that to happen in the classroom.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

I think people understand it in micro levels like it wouldn't make any sense for teachers to never do formative assessment.

Like we would expect teachers to.

take a snapshot of, okay, what has worked so far, and then to look back and say, okay, so I see little AJ didn't get fractions when I explained it.

How did I explain that?

And how do I need to reteach this?

What are the things that I've learned about how we got here that are going to help inform what I do next?

But I don't just, oh, little AJ didn't pass his math test, so we'll just we'll just keep it moving and we won't analyze how we got here.

That's not what you would expect out of the behavior in your schools.

I would not encourage you to model that behavior in your boardroom.

Any other reflections on time-bound before we transition?

SPEAKER_15

Insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over and respecting different results.

So if you never look at your past results and you kind of just assume that it will get better if you keep trying, you're really just kind of wasting your time.

I'm sure it'll work out.

Past patterns are probably the most accurate predictor of what's going to happen in the future.

Unless you change something.

AJ Crabill

Absolutely.

We'll just hope it all works out.

We'll just hope.

That'll be our strategy.

Hope.

We'll just hope it works.

We won't actually be intentional about it.

We'll just hope it works out.

These third graders will teach themselves how to read anyway.

It's all going to work out.

It'll be okay.

Any other reflections before we move on?

Then what I want to do, and I realize This can be a little bit awkward to time.

I've just shared with your team a blank version of your last monitoring conversation of the questions that you all asked.

And so I want to go ahead and pull up that.

So I made a copy of your actual monitoring sheet, but then I blanked out all of the answers.

but I just left your questions.

So what I want to do is put that up on the screen so we can look at a few of these questions.

They don't have any names associated with them, so you'll just have to guess for yourself who asked the question.

But I want to look at each question, and I just want to do one or two, maybe three, we'll see how quickly it goes, and then wrap this thing up.

But just to take an opportunity to look at an actual question, and then try to get an idea of, okay, so as we look at these indicators, how does this pan out?

And is there, let me see, is there a way to make Freeze.

Nope, I don't know how to do this.

Oh well.

I'll make a quick edit to this so I can freeze these.

A few freeze to rows.

Okay, so I can't do that.

Oh well.

So what you can see, I did something wrong, but you have full edit, so if you can figure it out.

Yeah, if you can figure it out, great.

But basically, the issue here is that I want to be able to look through the questions that you got here and try to identify what are How would you score these?

So, I would score these, so I have my ideas, but now I want you all to have some of your ideas.

So, as we're looking at the first question, not these example ones, but here, I have a question about equitable measures of student supports and opportunity pathways.

What I see in those two areas is better monitoring and tracking of how tools are being used.

What I don't see is the connection between that and improved access to advanced courses.

What I'm interested in is whether or not we've addressed barriers that exist for students who haven't accessed advanced coursework in the past and how we've addressed those barriers.

We've relied on the highly capable cohort, but you have to discover it early and get to middle schools and scores have to show really high achievement.

We're trying to show inclusion, but how have we opened up pathways?

How are these strategies that have opened up access to equitable access to coursework?

So that was the question.

And yes, I was trying to type in real time, working out by stenographer skills.

So the question is, is this strategy focused?

So the first question is, is this strategy focused?

Is this a question about strategic issues rather than technical or tactical issues?

Yes or no.

Leslie Harris

Yes.

Chandra Hampson

I agree.

I think it's strategic.

Apart from the fact that it says strategy.

It says right there of course it is.

AJ Crabill

Anyone else is a strategic yes or no.

Brandon Hersey

I'm reading it again.

Give me just a second.

Michelle Sarju

So I'm, as I read it, I've read it three times now, and the final question reads out loud like this.

How are these strategies, how are these strategies, I'm asking how does this question read, or how are these strategies, which are referring to something else, Or is it asking?

How are these strategies that have opened up access to equitable out?

Equal out, uh, equitable.

Yeah, of course, work so that doesn't make any sense to me.

AJ Crabill

Yes.

So the way you're interpreting is the way I'm pretty sure that was acid is so let me restate it.

How are these examples of strategies that have opened up access to equitable access to coursework?

I think that's the way the question was being asked.

If I'm recalling, it's been a couple weeks, obviously.

Liza Rankin

I think I well I don't know.

I think this was my question and I was referring to things that were presented as.

Strategies that I didn't that I was wondering how are these actual like explain to me how these are strategies.

That have increased access.

AJ Crabill

All right.

So the question is is it a strategic for.

Is the questions focused on strategic issues or focused on technical or tactical issues?

Brandon Hersey

I'm gonna say technical and tactical.

AJ Crabill

Okay, why technical tactical?

Brandon Hersey

The reason that I say that is because we're not just because we're talking about strategies doesn't necessarily meet like the content of the question might be focused on strategies but in the way that this question is asked It is in a tactical nature to...

I'm trying to pick it out, but it is a paragraph of a question.

AJ Crabill

Liza, I'm trying to focus.

One second.

Brandon Hersey

I believe because for me I think the rub is in how do these strategies that have opened up access to equitable access to coursework that.

That does not feel strategic to me and I could be wrong and I'm not sure Like I don't have a good reason as to why it feels tactical, but I think it is in enough that we are not talking about Strategy, but rather the strategy like ask.

Yeah, I think you might know where i'm coming from, but i'm having a hard time articulating Yeah, I I think what you're suggesting is that the

AJ Crabill

You actually said it a moment ago, that for you this feels like it's asking about a strategy but in a very tactical manner.

And the language that I often use to try to help distinguish between technical versus tactical versus strategic is a technical question to trying to understand how something is measured, which I don't think that's what's happening here.

Tactical is trying to understand how something is done And strategic is trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities.

And in this case, the priority happens to be the goal.

And so what I hear you saying is, this doesn't feel like it's trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities.

For you, it feels like this is trying to understand how something is being done.

Brandon Hersey

Yes.

AJ Crabill

And so, I'm curious about other folks.

I can imagine folks seeing this both ways.

But with those as descriptors of what I mean by technical, tactical, and strategic, I'm certainly open to folks making an argument for why this sounds technical or tactical or strategic.

But again, I'll say those three once more.

The technical is really about trying to understand how something is measured.

which I would say I don't think this is trying to do that at all.

This definitely does not feel technical to me.

Tactical is trying to understand how something is done, whereas strategic is trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities.

With that in mind, is this technical or is this tactical or strategic?

Chandra Hampson

I thought it was strategic because it is specifically asking about our priority of giving access to advanced coursework for black males.

And so that's why I thought it was I agree that there's a technical or a tactical component woven in there.

But I think the overall.

question was meant to be about what was really meant to say, what is the strategy that is opening up access?

AJ Crabill

Anyone else?

Thoughts on this?

Anyone we haven't heard from yet?

Is it more tactical or more strategic?

Brent Jones

I can't articulate why, but it feels tactical.

because I feel like there's a there's leading questions in here to the answer being trying to be provided by the person asking the question.

And so that feels that feels tactical and strategic would be more open around how the.

Yeah, I'll stop right there.

Brandon Hersey

thought I think I've picked out something that may or may not blend to the fact that this is a tactical question.

The part that is sticking in my head that I've read a couple of times is we've relied on the highly capable cohort but you have to discover it early and get to the middle school and scores have to show really high achievement.

So by, I feel as though, explaining where you are looking for your answer in that portion of the question, regardless of where you ended up, lends it to be a tactical question.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

So I'll just let you all know, I love how you all have dissected this, because you all essentially got to very much the same place that I got to.

So the challenge here, and this is, honestly, quite typical of you all.

You all, as you can see throughout the document, tend to ask kind of these lengthy lead-ins to questions that make it challenging.

The kind of ace that you all have actually winds up being Brent in these situations, because often the way that things get treated in the meeting is if a question is kind of on the cusp.

Could this go one way or go the other.

Often the way that I will treat it because it is the way it was treated in the meeting.

And so if Brit hears this question and takes the tactical aspects of it and runs with those, then I code this as a tactical question.

If Brent takes the strategic elements of this and runs with those, then I code it as a strategic question.

And so, if it could go either way, for me, often the tiebreaker is, how does the question get answered?

And if the question gets answered in a tactical way, then I believe that if it gets answered in a strategic way.

Brent actually answered this in a strategic way.

He focused in on the final question.

He did not kind of take the bait, so to speak, with some of the previous elements of the question.

For that reason, I erred on that side as well, as I scored this as strategic.

The learning from this, though, board, don't let it come down to your superintendent belling you out with his answers.

Make it a little bit easier for it to be clear to him what the strategic inquiry that you have is.

Don't make him have to kind of mime for it and translate in real time.

But because he did that on your behalf, I did in fact lean in the direction of strategic because that's the way he answered the question.

Brandon Hersey

Right.

One thing that I have a noticing of if I may is that we have gotten into the habit of also like at the beginning of our question saying this may be a tactical question or this may be a technical question.

If we're not confident that the question that we're about to ask is actually germane under the practices that we're trying to implement.

So I say that to say, we are all guilty of the paragraph questions, which is why I'm really trying to get us to shorten them.

Because then we will have more confidence in reading that short question back and saying, is to ourselves, or asking ourselves before we even ask it, is this a tactical?

Is it a technical?

And I think that the three definitions that you offered to us are going to be super helpful.

I'm wondering if we could get those printed.

to happen at tables?

AJ Crabill

Yes.

Julie, if you could provide to your board members again a copy of the technical tactical strategic document.

If you could send that out to them I think that'd be really really helpful now that we've had this conversation again.

Let's move forward.

Brandon Hersey

Our student board member has one more thing.

AJ Crabill

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you.

What was interesting to me is that Brent viewed it when after analyzing the question viewed it as a tactical and then when answering answered in a strategic way.

And I think that that's because typically what stands out when we're faced with a long chunk of text or presentation or something is the beginning and the end.

And because it was ended with a strategic sounding question I guess I think that's why his answer ended up being more strategic.

So that's also something to think about is how you frame your questions.

If it is something long where you do want to add that context, then maybe to end it in a way that leans more to what you were hoping they would respond in a way of.

AJ Crabill

Thank you.

Yeah, my main aspiration for you all from a coaching perspective is I would just try to make it less challenging.

If this even if you had the entire paragraph I think the point you're making I would co-sign on.

Even if you're going to keep the full paragraph lead in.

If you could have that whole thing be focused on strategy rather than dip into tactics then that I think that makes the whole conversation a little bit move a little bit more smoothly.

Let's go to the next section on this.

Is it measure-focused?

Does the question reference specific metrics and data that's in the monitoring report or not?

Would you consider this metrics-focused?

I realize you all don't have the monitoring report in front of you, so I'm asking you to use your judgment based on your read of the question.

Is it referencing specific data in the monitoring report?

Brandon Hersey

Can I look at the question?

Do we have the question written somewhere?

Am I tripping?

Oh, on this question.

Can you ask your question again?

I'm sorry.

I thought we were looking at something different.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

The paragraph that's on the screen.

Yeah.

That's the question.

The question is this a measure focus?

Is it referencing specific metrics or data that show up in the monitoring report?

Brandon Hersey

No.

Liza Rankin

Yes.

Well it.

I mean I.

I think it's referring in that first two sentences to the equitable measures of student supports and opportunity pathways which were data presented to us.

And then what I see in those two areas is is those two.

References to the data report.

Brandon Hersey

I think.

That I see what you're saying.

And.

Just because it says equitable measures doesn't necessarily mean that it just because you use the word measures doesn't necessarily mean that like.

Liza Rankin

No but those were it was equitable measures of student support and opportunity pathways I'm pretty sure were two different pieces in the report.

Chandra Hampson

Maybe.

I agree that they were in the report.

I don't.

And so by definition it's referenced but that's not what the question is about.

AJ Crabill

Anybody else?

Chandra Hampson

Does it say better monitoring and tracking of how tools are being used?

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

So to speed things up, one of the things I would coach for this one is mention the best plan.

Mention, OK, on page three in the second chart, There's data about equitable measures student and says that we're at 47 percent or I noticed that your strategy about equitable measures students suggest that you are going to do this specific thing on page four.

Given that.

then ask a question.

That is my coaching to you.

Again what's happening here is you are really making your administration and your colleagues and probably the public who's watching just work really hard to parse through what are we talking about.

What are we actually trying to get at.

I think you make it harder than it needs to be to have the quality of conversation that you want to have.

And so my coaching for you is mention the page number and point right to the data or right to the section that you're quoting from.

Like, hey, I see on page three, you're talking about equitable measures of student support and saying that we're really only 50% of the way to where you want us to be, you know, opportunity pathways really only a quarter of the way you want us to be.

How are these strategies of open up access that will access to coursework.

I think that level of specificity makes it a lot easier to know, is this measure focused or not?

Any questions about that?

All right, let's ask the third.

Is it ask-oriented?

Is it open-ended or is it a yes-no?

Chandra Hampson

It's open-ended.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, it's open-ended.

That's probably the easier analysis of the ones so far.

Results-focused.

Does the question focus on understanding data or does it focus on sharing opinion?

Is it results-focused?

Does it focus on understanding data or does it focus on sharing opinion?

Brandon Hersey

The latter.

AJ Crabill

Why do you say that.

Brandon Hersey

Specifically because of the couple of sentences before the last sentence.

So like we've relied on the highly capable cohort but you have to discover it early and get a middle school scores to show really highly really high achievement.

AJ Crabill

That is clearly an opinion.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah.

Chandra Hampson

I think it's both.

And I think then we have to we have to find a friend who's Brent and find out how he responded.

AJ Crabill

And that is exactly what happened here, is there is clearly opinion laced into this paragraph.

Very clearly, there's an opinionated nature to this paragraph.

there's other pieces that really do seem like they're trying to garner some understanding.

And so you're absolutely right on this one.

I had to lean into, okay, so how did Brent answer it?

And he answered it in a way that suggested that the questioner was simply trying to understand the data.

He basically skipped over and ignored the opinion part and just focused on the quest for understanding aspects.

Again, in this question, I think you may think it harder than it needs to be for your staff and your community and your colleagues to follow along.

with the intention.

But once again, you have a superintendent who kind of bailed you out by really looking for best intentions.

And that is kind of a theme across several of the questions in this document, by the way, if you want to go back and look at them after our conversation.

That where your superintendent had a chance to assume worst intentions or assume best intentions, he consistently assumes best intentions.

He assumes that you were trying to be strategy-focused, measure-focused, ask-oriented, results-focused, and time-bound.

There are multiple places where it could go either way because you all just didn't bring that level of clarity in your inquiry, And he consistently gives you all the benefit of the doubt and leans in the direction of you having asked a really, really effective question.

This is exactly one of those situations as well, where they're clearly both.

And he basically disregarded the opinion aspect and focused on trying to help the quest for understanding.

And then, was there a thought on that?

OK, so I thought I cut somebody off and then finally time bound.

Is this time bound?

Does the question focus on past action performance or focus on future action performance?

Michelle Sarju

I don't see any time bound thing in there.

AJ Crabill

So the things that the question is asking about, is it asking about things that have happened in the past or is it asking about things that will happen in the future?

Michelle Sarju

I don't see where it's...

Referencing the question is referencing past or future.

But if we go back to what seems to be a pivotal statement around what you have to do to get in to the highly capable cohort.

That historically is what has how it's been.

is you have to get in early and get really high scores.

But I can't see any time bound pieces to this.

Brent Jones

I see the time bound aspect, particularly in the.

In the 3rd, 4th sentence, what I'm interested in is whether or not we've addressed these barriers that exist for students who haven't access advanced coursework in the past.

And how have we addressed in past tense those barriers?

And then in the final sentence, how are these strategies that have opened up access to equitable access to coursework?

That suggests a backwards look to me, but not time bound in a sense of dates and whatnot.

But looking back, what have we done to connect the dots here for our future work?

So I think it's definitely time bound.

AJ Crabill

Anyone else thought to this?

Chandra Hampson

I think it's time-bound.

I think it has a tone of not being time-bound.

Liza Rankin

Listen, I'm being my whole self, Chandra.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

So, um, I also coded this one as being time-bound is the, uh, the preponderance of the inquiry.

The whole paragraph is definitely written, um, from my view in a past tense, really trying to understand stuff that has happened to date.

What I would expect to see if I, so here's, if it had been asked this way, I would have coded it differently.

How are you going to make sure that these strategies are opening up access, equitable access to coursework?

If that had been the concluding question, then I would say that it's much more future focused.

But That's not the way the question was asked.

It wasn't asked, how are you going to make these happen?

It's asking, how has this happened?

And so that's why I took it as a past tense.

But again, It almost doesn't matter how I took it.

What matters is how your superintendent took it.

He definitely used it as an opportunity to reference past practice of what has happened.

And so that's why I coded it that way as well.

And so sometimes any of you who watch me code these things in real time, because I'm generally coding these in real time while your meeting is going.

So you can watch, you ask a question, but you probably notice that I often don't code them or recode them after the question has been answered.

because how he answers it does wind up playing a role in how I wind up coding them.

For this particular one, then, for those keeping score, it actually wound up being yes all the way across the board.

But I should put an asterisk there, with a whole lot of help from your superintendent, not from the paragraph itself.

If you had a different superintendent, this probably would have gone two for five, just being realistic.

It definitely would have scored ask-oriented, and I think it almost certainly would have scored time-bound.

But strategy-focused, measure-focused, results-focused, I think those are kind of iffy.

I think if the superintendent had responded differently, I think it would have been easy for me to score them differently.

And so it went five for five, 100%, but I think it could have been 40% if you had a kind of less supportive superintendent.

What did you all take away from this activity?

As we're diving into what are the different things that help a monitoring, why does a monitoring conversation matter?

What are the different things that help a monitoring conversation be effective?

Then we dissected one particular one of your question paragraphs here.

As we come to the conclusion of this activity, what did you take away from all of this?

Brandon Hersey

I think the key takeaway for me is that zooming out, evaluating ourselves and rapid cycle evaluations especially, where we can do something and then come back and look at it immediately after is super critical.

knowing that we would not have known if that was your question, Liza, but also knowing how you feel about these things.

Thank you for putting yourself in the position to have your work kind of checked out in public.

That's tough, right?

And you did a great job.

So that's one piece.

But I also think that we need to be doing these things more often, and why it's critical that we take the names off these things, because I wouldn't remember if this was my question or not.

This definitely looks like something that I would have asked.

But it is super important to see these things out in text so that we can then take a look at it as like, if it takes me this long to read it and read it over and over again, and I'm still having a hard time getting to the bottom of the question, hearing it audibly is probably even more difficult for folks who are listening in, right?

And this could have been any of our questions.

is very familiar, right?

So that's what I think I'm taking away from this, is that the ability to do this more often is going to be critical to improving our practice on a regular basis.

AJ Crabill

Anyone else?

Reflection.

What do you take away from this exploration into effective goal monitoring?

Michelle Sarju

So I have two reflections.

One is that I need to be really careful about the questions that I ask now knowing that they might show up on the big screen.

I mean I'm making a joke but it actually is true because what this exercise is demonstrating for me is how difficult it is to actually focus on student outcomes.

And I'll be the first to raise my hand.

I am guilty of taking the bait of some of these deflecting and redirecting conversations that at the end of the day actually don't, really have anything to do with outcomes for students.

And it doesn't mean those things are important, but we don't need to be sitting here on the dais.

having those kinds of conversations.

And so this exercise just keeps bringing us back.

I mean, I'm a person that has to keep doing things over and over and over again until it sinks in.

I'm not somebody that can read the theory and then just like, poof, magically it happens.

And so now I'm thinking about the questions that I might ask with the lens of these five things.

That's what I'm going to be thinking about.

Before I ask the question, I'm going to ask myself, does this really have something to do with student outcomes, or is it just my personal I need to know, or is it that I think people should be hearing my voice on this because I want to be heard?

And any other combination of things.

But it's a great exercise for building the muscle of a way of governing that 10 years from now, if it's the concrete or the water that people are swimming in, I have to believe that we are gonna have different outcomes for our most marginalized students.

I dare to say we will have a situation where a whole bunch of adults have failed our children.

Vivian Song

I'm not trying to be overly critical of these reports but you know I've reached out to you to ask for example of other reports and I would say that I think for me where I kind of struggle to come up with strategic questions is because at you know I'm just gonna be honest I still have trouble articulating what the strategies truly mean you know like for our third grade reading goal it's excellent teaching and joyful learning and I'm kind of struggling between like strategy versus tactic But what that when I those words are not super clear to me what that means and so because I'm in that position it makes it really hard for me to ask the questions and I I hope that the staff can take that as constructive criticism because You know, I think we're all working together to make this a useful exercise for our kids our students But that's why I reached out to you because yeah, I think there's opportunity And you know, one of the things we talked about is the the importance of the clear communication to community you know, I think a quick fix is making sure that it's plain English you know like if I put this into a like what level of English this is I think it's quite academic and that's part of I'm not an educator so a lot of the terminology that's used in the reports I also don't know what they mean so I I would love to work with you know all of us in the staff trying to make these reports a more digestible way so that I can truly understand what the strategies are, and then I'll be in a better position to ask the questions.

AJ Crabill

Yeah, Vivian, that doesn't sound critical or negative at all.

It sounds like the type of inquiry I hope any of our students would make if they didn't understand something or something It was difficult for them to connect within class that they would advocate for their learning by asking that.

And so I actually love that.

I suspect you're not alone.

You probably have some of your other colleagues who are having the same experience you're having.

I would say a couple of things.

One, whoever's controlling the screen, are you able to scroll down?

Scroll down.

Scroll all the way down to line 40.

Vivian Song

Just one second.

Lola has a question or a comment.

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

SPEAKER_15

I would also like to acknowledge that being observed under a microscope like that is extremely scary and you have handled it really well.

So I admire you for that.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

AJ Crabill

Oh, thank you.

So the technical tactical strategic document is the one that I mentioned earlier that is probably most useful.

But yeah, the other thing I would say, Vivian, is I would certainly, yeah, if you reach out to me, I'd love to schedule time to try to connect and go over some others.

But also, I would say that would you all receive your materials in advance?

I'd also always be open to having a one-on-one to go over the monitoring report.

And this is true for any of the, I think, are there like 10 of you, or are there three student board members right now?

I can't remember.

Yes.

Yeah, so any of the 10 of you, as you're going over the monitoring report in advance, that you are welcome to reach out to me and I'm happy to have a one-on-one or visit with two or three of you to talk through the monitoring report and help you brainstorm questions in advance.

And so you can scroll back up to the question again.

I just wanted to let people know that that link is there and that I'm happy to go through it with you, but I'm also happy to join you for some pre-work so that you feel a little bit better prepared.

And my guess is it only take two or three of those, and then you'd be more than solid and never need to talk to me again about it.

But if that would be useful for any of the 10 of you, just know that I'm certainly open to that.

Thank you.

Any other reflections before we close this thing out.

Chandra Hampson

I would like to acknowledge that this is the I don't know maybe the 20th time that I've.

Had some sort of training or learning on this in some way shape or form.

I've certainly read it that many times this particular progress monitoring document and it is a process.

It's a self-reflective process.

It's a professional development process and.

Each time, however, I become more convinced of how important it is in order for us to have, and we're going to look at our time use in a moment, the bulk of our conversations be deep in the business of collaborating with one another about how we do our, how we operate in our respective roles.

as effectively as possible so that we achieve for students the outcome the students achieve the outcomes that we seek for them based on our community's values.

And this is to me this is the work.

It's the hardest stuff and it's hardest for us because we do it the least.

And it's the thing we should be doing the most which is why you know those 20 times have been spread over.

two years now.

So it's not the same as doing it every board meeting or you know it's practice doesn't necessarily make perfect but it certainly makes better.

I think that my future learning goal on this because I also think that's an important thing to think about is I struggle to it's.

I can apply these better when the results are positive when the results are negative or as Director Sonkin stated the those very strategies that are just kind of amorphous like I don't what does that mean.

And I can't see how they're linked in terms of money that we're spending and actual outcomes.

I struggle to ask the questions that push harder and still stay within the rules.

And so that that's kind of I want to do better and could use some tips on how to push more.

And I think Director Swang-Morris actually has great questions generally without all the stuff in between like some of us.

And I'm talking about myself not Director Rankin because I do the same thing.

Um, but yeah, that's, that's what, what I would really like to, to push on is how do we ask the harder question?

Because I'm, we're afraid, you know, we, it's public and we don't want to be admonishing or hitting over the head or, but like working on this together.

How do we do that in the most clever way?

AJ Crabill

Yeah.

And I really appreciate what you're lifting up and I would take the step further, you know, just by virtue of being a school board member, you know, more than, most people in your community do about what's happening in the school system.

You have more context, more details.

That's just part and parcel of being a school board member.

You are just presented with more data than basically anybody else in the community is.

And so with that wealth of insight or that wealth of information, if there's still insights that you're struggling to connect with all the wealth of information you have, How much more so is it possible that that's the case, not only for folks in your community, but also some of the folks on your staff?

And so I realize it is uncomfortable, and my condolences to Brent and his team, but I encourage the tough questions.

I mean, obviously the queen of tough questions on your board tends to be Leslie, and that's one of the reasons that I really appreciate how she shows up.

I think that's incredibly appropriate to have really tough and challenging questions, especially if it's something you're authentically struggling with yourself.

I think Brett and his team just have to I think they just have to roll with it, and it's either going to train them on how to communicate differently, and they'll level up in that way, or it's going to train them on how to use language that isn't all academic ease.

I think it is healthy for them.

It will not be comfortable for them, but I would not have you calibrate effective goal monitoring toward the comfort of your staff, I would calibrate toward the clarity for your community.

And that will invariably create, so like somebody is going to have to deal with discomfort, I would have your staff deal with the discomfort.

I think that is a more appropriate way to go than having your community live with the discomfort that you were living with, of not having clarity.

And so if there are strategies that they're describing to you, and you're just not getting this, like, I don't understand how this strategy connects.

Like, can you explain it to me?

I think that that is an appropriate question to ask during monitoring.

The other thing that's appropriate to do is to connect the dots.

If the superintendent said three months ago, this is a strategy we're using, and now we're monitoring the same goal three months later, it's appropriate to ask, did any of the strategies that you lifted up three months ago actually pan out?

Like, do we have any early evidence that this stuff is making a difference?

These are tough questions.

I think these are entirely fair questions to ask.

And so I would just encourage you.

Yes it's uncomfortable because you're not trying to put the you don't want to intend to put your superintendent on blast.

But I actually have a fair degree of confidence in your staff that even though it will probably be uncomfortable initially that they will roll with it.

They will rise to the occasion and that it will be a temporary discomfort as they figure out how do we need to communicate in a way that really makes it accessible to our board members because that's an access to how to make sure it's accessible to our staff and our community stakeholders as well.

Any other reflections before we before we close this section out.

No reflections.

Well then with that, I just want to end with a word of gratitude.

This isn't always comfortable, and like y'all have rolled, as one of your board members said, you all have rolled with it like champs.

And so I'll just always It's a joy for me to get to be with you as you all are going through the work of how do we best serve our children?

And what do I need to change in my behavior as a board member?

Like, how do I need to grow?

How do I need to change?

How do I need to develop as a board member to best try to make sure that my intentions for my students are lived out in my impact?

That is the the journey that you all place yourselves on, even when it's uncomfortable, it maybe doesn't put you in the most flattering of light in the moment.

But you do that because that says something about what you're committed to on behalf of your students.

And so for letting me be part of that journey, thank you.

Mr. Chair, back to you.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you, AJ.

As always, deeply appreciate it.

We have another work session on the agenda.

OK I'll believe it when I see it.

Take it away Director Rankin.

Liza Rankin

All right.

It's categorized as a work session because it's it's not I'm not introducing an item or anything but it's not.

This should all be very familiar to all of you so it's not it shouldn't be too big of a deal I hope.

So this is about WASDA which is the Washington State School Directors Association.

General assembly happens annually and will be taking place next week September 22nd and 23rd.

I will be our attendee in Spokane as the.

legislative liaison for the board and the WSSDA representatives or representative to WSSDA.

And so I will be our voting delegate.

Every every district is eligible to send someone to send more than one someone's if they if they can or want to.

But one there's one designated person to vote regardless of how many board members come.

And so I will be voting on our behalf as the representative for our board.

And in May we voted on proposals that I brought to you all to submit as positions for consideration for this assembly.

So attached to the materials for this meeting were the WASDA handbook for the assembly that has all of the position proposals that have come from other boards.

So I will be since we have already approved the positions from from our board I will continue to support those.

And I'll be basically using excuse me our board adopted goals guardrails strategic plan guiding policies what you know as a guide for how I vote on the other things.

The yeah again the handbook was in the in the materials so I can't think of anything Couldn't think of anything coming to this meeting that I thought there might be discrepancy between that I might wonder oh gosh how how would my board want me to vote on this.

I I.

feel like I have information I need from you all based on our shared vision and values and votes that we've taken.

But so my question would be if there if as you were looking through meeting materials if there were any things that you had questions about or any particular issues that you wanted to bring to my attention or discuss as a board.

Great.

Chandra Hampson

On the proposed amendment to the delegate without the change without the waiting.

Yes that was a little jarring in terms of who represents the most students versus.

Liza Rankin

So yeah that one is one that I've had several conversations with board directors from other districts about.

There's a.

Oh there's a submission that has been made by.

So OK.

Generally we get one vote on page 15 of the handbook if anybody's.

Yeah.

Generally for the votes we get one vote per district.

We have the most students in the state by a significant amount.

Stehekin has five students in their district.

That's the range.

And so typically when things are put up for a vote it's one district one vote.

However if once votes are tallied if there is a certain margin where it's it's close.

Five representatives can call, well someone can call for a weighted vote and at least five I think directors have to sort of second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth it.

If there's a call for a weighted vote and the weighted vote passes, the vote's taken again and there's a factor in for the size of the district.

So we get 19 votes in that I believe and it's I think, Up to 5,000 students or up to a thousand students is one and then beyond that it goes up incrementally so we have the largest and that in in my opinion and in the opinion of many others is a Democratic representation of our students.

Yep That is the position that I will be taking so I the the argument of the It was brought forward because there are some smaller districts that feel their voice is not represented because they're outvoted when actually every district gets one vote.

So it's sort of a.

gerrymandering but with numbers of students, so that's going to be I anticipate a very interesting discussion Unless I hear otherwise from you all I will be supporting Continuing to add that weighted vote since if we look at the impact to the number of students the impact you know the number of students that I am representing is Much much bigger when we get to issues like that.

Much much bigger than.

A district with five five kids.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Did that.

OK.

Brandon Hersey

OK.

Any other pieces.

Thank you.

That was very short.

I appreciate you.

Liza Rankin

Oh, just to add, we will be also related, but not directly connected to this, is that I'm also developing our legislative platform for the 2024 legislative session, which I will be bringing for us to vote on in October.

And that will be after General Assembly, obviously.

Sort of two different the general the outcome of General Assembly from WSSDA develops the legislative position for WSSDA as a whole body across the state all school directors.

And so we will also have our own legislative agenda which will likely align in many places where we will develop our priority areas for for our Seattle Public Schools advocacy.

Yeah.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you Director Rankin and thank you for representing the board in that capacity.

Go ahead Director Harris.

Leslie Harris

I didn't have a question but now I do.

Given the legislative aspect of this.

We've had conversations on this board for a long time about having school board directors compensated and it's a subject very close to many many hearts.

And I'm wondering where do we stand on that both with respect to WSSDA and whether WSSDA will incorporate that in their legislative agenda.

And I get that it's not a lengthy legislative session.

But where are we in terms of consistency on that aspect.

Liza Rankin

So for WSSDA that is in an existing position that I don't believe anyone has suggested change.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong if you noticed but.

that's in the attract and retain diverse school boards.

There's a position on on that where the stating that it's the WASDA's position to advocate for pay is within that position.

Thank you.

As part of it.

Brandon Hersey

Thank you.

Great question.

All right.

We have now come to the portion of tonight's agenda where we will be discussing our board self evaluation and time use evaluation if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_07

Let me confirm.

Brandon Hersey

Yes.

Board evaluation will now move into our time use evaluation.

Thank you Director Hampson for evaluating the last meeting and providing the detailed evaluation with today's materials.

Are there any takeaways that you would like to discuss.

Chandra Hampson

So I would just note I did.

I started a new worksheet for us for this period a new spreadsheet and I did August 9th and August 30th.

Those were two really distinctly different meetings and included.

I want to note that I included student student board member oath of office and student and family engagement.

Folks may disagree with that.

Overall we were we had as through the August 30th for the August 30th meeting we were actually at 29 percent of student outcomes focused which was pretty strong.

That's I think one of the highest that we've gotten.

Unfortunately August 9th was a retreat.

And so that's all a wash.

Yeah.

So that's a lot of other.

And then the cumulative then that brings us down to.

14 percent which I think we were trending around 10 percent historically total but.

Important to keep in mind as we do more of the student outcomes focus work.

You know the goal is to.

There were there in case anyone has forgotten there are percentage increase goals in the implementation plan and the intent is to slowly increase your time.

Some of that will this also this doesn't have any committee meetings on it that met during that time and it should.

So right now we're just tracking our total our collective board meetings and not including the ad hoc.

Those technically count as as board time.

I don't know if we should include those now or we should wait.

I actually I don't know if they happened in August.

I think I checked and I didn't see any meetings in August.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah.

Chandra Hampson

So they might not have.

But.

Brandon Hersey

Whoever is doing it for this next one which would be whoever represents District 1.

Chandra Hampson

So in terms of the time we spend our conversations and jettisoning it.

The biggest opportunity to save time and have greater percentage of focus on student outcomes is by doing our homework ahead of time.

Getting questions in ahead of time coming to meetings knowing Having the bulk of your questions answered and the rest of the you know just quickly I had these concerns but they've been answered kind of more perfunctory so that our voting isn't taking up so much of our voting deliberations isn't taking us so much of our time.

But I mean the reports in front of you if anybody has any comments questions or concerns about how something was coded and and then also for whoever is doing it next.

You're doing it next.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so I don't need to give you a tutorial.

Brandon Hersey

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any questions, comments?

For context for our student member, a part of this whole process that we've gone through over the past several years at this point is just being really thoughtful about how we use our time.

Oftentimes, as you've seen here tonight, we can be very verbose.

And a part of the structure, or rather, let me back up, we can say a lot of words that are unnecessary.

And so as a part of the structure we actually go back and look at these meetings and see how much time we're spending and that time gets placed into various buckets.

And so we are starting to become more consistent at the end of every meeting reviewing our time from last time to make sure that we are headed in the right direction in terms of how much time we're spending talking about student outcomes versus other things.

So that's what that is.

As we discussed before Director Rankin is going to be taking the next one.

Thank you Liza.

And then Director Rivera-Smith numerically on from there.

So you should know where you're going to be at in terms of your responsibility.

Numerical.

By district you represent.

Yep.

That's right.

You sure do.

Yeah.

All right.

There being no further business on the.

Well I do have a couple of informational items that I need to read really quickly.

We have one written update attached to tonight's agenda.

The compilation of questions submitted in advance of today's meeting by board directors and staff responses received and posted earlier this week.

There being no further business to come before the board, the regular board meeting now stands adjourned at 8, 11 p.m.

Thank you very much.

Great job, Lola.