Liza Rankin

Call to order in just a minute 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 Rankin I am now calling the June 26th 2024 regular board meeting to order at 426 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

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

Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please.

Director Briggs.

Director Briggs has let us know that she will be coming from another engagement.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Joe Mizrahi

Present.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Sarju.

Michelle Sarju

Present.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Topp.

and President Rankin.

Here.

Liza Rankin

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

Brent Jones

Thank you, President Rankin, board members, and audience here today.

I want to thank you all for being here tonight.

As we close this school year, I want to express my gratitude to educators and school staff.

Their hard work and dedication have been instrumental in shaping a successful school year, and I deeply appreciate all that you do if you're watching.

I also want to extend a thanks to the 23-24 cohort of our student board members, Ayush, Luna, and Lola, whose voices have grounded us in our conversations around student perspectives and student needs.

Tonight the board will be voting to usher in the 24-25 new student board members, and we're excited to welcome this new group forward.

I'm also proud to share that 27 of our schools have received state recognition this year for their achievement, and this was from the Washington School Recognition Program.

This honor highlights the significant strides in closing opportunity gaps, impressive growth, and academic achievement for our students.

This also is a testament of the hard work and dedication and collaborative efforts of our educators, students, families, and community partners.

Together, we are creating an equitable and thriving educational environment for all of our learners.

This group that recognized our students, our schools rather, it's a combination of OSPI, the State Board of Education, and the Educational Opportunity Gap Oversight Accountability Committee.

So 27 of our schools have received that recognition.

Tonight we will also discuss budget resolution, which represents the culmination of a year-long process with many conversations.

The proposed budget is designed to drive us towards greater sustainability, stability, and ensuring we can continue to provide high-quality education for all of our students.

We will also discuss our well-resourced schools planning this evening.

We went out and heard from community.

Families and staff want to understand our planning process and react to our proposals.

Tonight, we will share criteria of our decision making, such as budget, enrollment data, building condition assessments, program consideration, and the community input that we've received.

simply put we are trying to ensure our student outcomes are met we will take the time and bring the expertise in internally and externally to ensure that is the result We are still grieving and healing from the loss of Amar at Garfield High School.

And as we look ahead to the next school year, I want to reiterate our unwavering commitment to safety and security in our schools.

It is a top priority to create safe environments where our students can focus on learning.

We are expanding plans to include gun violence prevention in our high schools and increase mental health support for all grades.

Two million dollars is being allocated to improve school building exteriors and campus security.

And throughout the summer, I will be in conversations with our regional and our building leaders about the needs of their school communities.

Our campus safety also depends on our community reporting safety concerns to our district app and our hotline, and I encourage you all to visit our website for more information.

Thank you for your all continued support and partnership in making our schools a safer and nurturing place for our students to learn and grow.

in closing i know we have a full agenda this evening i'm looking forward to a productive conversation thank you all for your commitment and participation and for those of you listening have a wonderful summer thank you so much back to you president rankin

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

I want to give a special shout out to one of the schools on that 27 list which was so exciting to click on that link and see such a large number of our Seattle Public Schools getting recognition.

Wedgwood Elementary the mighty marmots of Wedgwood Elementary are one of the schools on that list and I happen to have run into a very special special education teacher from Wedgwood and learned that after some challenges that we eventually were successful in navigating with my son, they have identified other students who would benefit from the same type of support that he received and their shorthand for it is named after him in the building.

So that's just an example of then they were recognized for closing gaps, which was really exciting.

And I don't have as personal connection as other schools, but it's the type of work that exemplifies what we want to support and uplift the most in Seattle Public Schools is when our educators and staff recognize that students have different things that they need to be successful and are willing to do what it takes to provide it to them so that they can be successful.

And that's what that list represents and it's really great.

Yeah, 27, that's pretty awesome.

All right, so this is the board comments section of the agenda.

We do have a lengthy agenda ahead of us, but I wanna briefly address some action items that we will be getting to.

One thing is something we've gotten a few questions about.

As we close out our current year of board meetings, we have to set the regular meeting dates for next year, which you'll see is on the consent agenda.

State law provides for two types of meetings for bodies covered by the Open Public Meetings Act, which includes school boards.

regular meetings and special meetings.

Under state law and our policy, the full board sets our regular meeting dates, which are our regular legislative meetings like this one.

And that is the dates we are being asked or that Superintendent Jones and I are presenting to be approved tonight.

special meetings work sessions engagement anything else that's not.

This format this very kind of formalized structure can be called and set by the board president the full board doesn't need to vote on those and we set the regular board meetings first so that we have that kind of foundation for the year.

And then we add in more meetings.

So we do by our own recommendations from our ad hoc governance committee aim to have two full meetings of the board per month.

But one of those will be a regular board meeting which is this one and the other one will be work session engagement other types of meetings and we just don't have to approve those as a full board ahead of time.

So I'm designating that we're not we're not gonna only meet once a month.

It's just that that legal definition of a regular board meeting is once a month.

And so yes, so yes, special meetings can include executive sessions, meetings of the audit committee or any other ad hoc committees, board retreats, working sessions, and engagement that takes place with a quorum of directors.

We had two of those just in the last couple weeks, for example.

Our board also participates in sessions and opportunities for training and cross state and cross country collaboration with Washington State School Directors Association and the Council of Great City Schools.

So our regular meeting schedule reflects allowance for not overlapping with those things.

So directors I will ask you to continue to hold your Wednesdays open for school board business for the next year while we work to confirm the rest of our calendaring.

But the only ones that we're approving tonight are those regular meetings.

Anybody have any questions.

OK.

SPEAKER_31

Yes, the

Liza Rankin

My proposal would be that we plan out what we want to what we want to do at a retreat in August and set at least through the fall and even forecast into the next year.

But just we didn't set a really interesting start to the year and spring.

So we didn't set our our targeted work plan that would have extended through December.

So if we do that then we can add in the dates.

Yeah.

Gina Topp

Because what I'm concerned about for me who is looking to find child care for these times but also to folks who want to come to these meetings is to have them pop up in an ad hoc manner or late in the game without a lot of advance notice.

You know if it comes up the month before even sometimes I can't find child care and I can't be here.

Liza Rankin

Totally understood.

Yeah.

And I know people have work schedules and all kinds of stuff.

So after our consent agenda tonight we also have several additional action items including selection of our school board members for 24 25. Do we have them here.

OK.

If they were here we would have asked some of our selection committee to come say a few words if they would like.

But even though they're not here I could still say thank you so much to the student selection committee.

for their work this year in vetting a record 88 applicants which is pretty astounding and exciting.

And thank you to all the applicants.

Through the depth of the applications it is abundantly clear that we have a lot of talent and leadership in our student body which we already knew.

So we will we will be appointing the student member positions by a formal vote of the board this evening.

And of course when when they take oath of office in August or August September in August we will have more time to hear from them and provide that time and recognition.

But just for right now it is.

Pretty exciting that they got through that process and had the opportunity to sort of accidentally meet one of them at one of our board engagements.

And if they are any indication we have a great a great another group to follow an already great group.

So thank you so much again to the selection committee.

Some logistical notes.

After comments we were going to move down from the dais to the U for the well resource schools update from the superintendent.

Testimony is scheduled to begin at or after 5. So we'll pre-apologize if you're aiming for us to start right at 5. We will not we will never start before the posted time since people might not be here but it's We're going to take the time that we need for the presentation that the board and a lot of the public really wants to see.

So we may not be able to start right up.

But thank you for your patience.

Let's see.

We have a budget public hearing scheduled for after the regular board meeting.

which is an annual thing it's separate from public testimony it's specific to the 24 25 school year budget which we have been working through in sessions all year.

We need to do final approval on that and so we have a hearing prior to that.

IT GETS NOTICED IN A DIFFERENT WAY THAN THE REGULAR BOARD MEETING SO THAT'S ALSO WE HAVE TO PICK A VERY SPECIFIC TIME NOT KNOWING EXACTLY HOW LONG THE REGULAR BOARD MEETING WILL BE.

SO IF WE GET TO 8 PM AND WE'RE STILL IN REGULAR BOARD MEETING, WE WILL RECESS, HAVE THE HEARING, AND RETURN TO THE REGULAR MEETING.

If we finish our regular board business prior to 8 p.m., we will adjourn the regular board meeting and we will not start the budget hearing early.

We need to start it at 8 p.m.

as that's when it was legally noticed.

Yes?

Okay.

So the public hearing sign ups are done differently than public testimony.

For the public hearing, that is strictly limited only to the budget for 24-25.

And the sign up for that will be available in the back of the room.

And if you wish to provide remote testimony for that, there's a link provided on the hearing agenda to sign up in advance.

But everyone else should sign up on the sheet in the back of the room.

OK.

Let's see we have an announcement of some completed audits from our audit chair but as she has yet to join us I will hold on that.

Do we have any other liaison reports from anybody on the board.

All right.

Well directors we will then we will move to the tables then at the front of the room now and please take your microphone with you.

Brent Jones

Not for this section, yeah.

Liza Rankin

The floor is yours whenever you're ready.

Brent Jones

Thank you President Rankin and board members.

We want to take an opportunity to do an update.

I know that we had the June 10th meeting postponed due to a couple of reasons.

Since that time we've been able to take a step back and look at What do we need to get done for making sure that we're in tune with the with the community with our board understanding what what is it that we need to do for completing a plan for a system of well resourced schools.

What we heard from the community is that there's a there's more information needed There's an opportunity to have more transparency.

There's an opportunity to frankly bring our community along to the understanding of what's in front of us and how do we get there to really create a system of well resourced schools is a community effort and we want to make sure that we're taking the appropriate time and care to bring folks along with us and for us to be able to understand what communities wants wishes needs concerns are.

So as we go forward we are endeavoring to make sure that that happens.

With that said next slide please.

We want to talk about today what we've done what we've heard and particularly in what we've heard is a need for transparency and trust.

We want to make sure that we provide information on budget enrollment criteria timeline.

There's been questions about instructional models IEP support dual language immersion and option schools.

There's been questions about class sizes consistency and what's the transition going to look like.

questions about the clear connection to student outcomes and then what are our actions based on what we've heard so that's what we're trying to do tonight and into the next types of meetings that we have with you whether they are work sessions or or simply updates like this we want to continue to have these opportunities to share with you all next slide please So where are we today, our process?

We've started the process for research and review.

We continue to research options to align with our strategic plan and our goals and our guardrails.

We want to continue to review other district strategies as enrollments continue to drop across the nation.

We're not the only ones in this predicament, and we are thinking about what are the best practices.

What are some of our colleagues in California, in Colorado, in Texas are going through a very similar set of circumstances.

Community input.

In fall of 23, we had our well-resourced school inquiry and visioning to find out what is it that people believe a well-resourced school is.

And this spring, we've talked to our community about well-resourced schools and we've had information sessions.

And so the scenarios right now we're looking at how are we analyzing the academic opportunities within, keeping mindful of the enrollment and attendance areas, the demographic and integration effects, and then the site classifications.

And so these are the steps that we're taking currently to really get grounded in what's going to be ultimately our plan.

Next slide, please.

Bev's going to start to walk you through the community feedback and what we're hearing and synthesize that for you.

Bev Redmond

Thank you and good evening to the board and also to our community.

Yes we are going to discuss how we are going through our process of community feedback and then on the other side of that we will connect it to how that translates into our academic alignment.

So as we begin.

Yes you certainly see that our community feedback was intended and started almost a year ago.

We're almost at that point we started in August 2023 with a conversation in our community to talk about shaping the values and the aspirations of our community and what is it that our community wants to see in terms of our schools.

That vision is supposed to be and is the framework for which we will build a system and a vision for well resourced schools.

Moving on.

okay in terms let's go all the way back to August some of this our board has already seen but I want to make sure that it's fresh in our minds as we begin the conversation tonight in fall 2023 August to October we began the conversation and many of you came to our five sessions one of them was virtual the other were others were spread across the regions of our school district And we talked about facilities and learning spaces.

We also talked about academic and extracurricular pursuits and support services and resources for our families and for our students.

And what we began to see and hear is that schools are definitely the hubs of the neighborhood you see some nod there in the first category to safety and security which is top of mind for everyone as well as making the library the centerpiece of the school as well as making sure that we had opportunities for student reflection and diversity throughout the school moving into the next category academic and extracurriculars there was a lot of conversation about making sure that we celebrate and really work with our dedicated skilled educators, arts programs, our physical education and extracurricular programming, our arts programming, top of mind for parents, and then moving over into our support services, that there was definitely a cry for mental health resources for our students, making sure that our special education and advanced learning offerings were top, multilingual learner services top as well, as well as our transportation services.

So this became our anchor survey, our anchor efforts.

Moving on to the next slide.

And in the spring, we went out to the community to verify what we heard from our families.

But we specifically went out to our students.

We put out a district-wide survey to all of our high school students and held some in-person focus groups.

And what you will see is that we had a great representation from our students around the 500 student participation level.

But when you drill down into that, The number of students participating of color, black students, was definitely increased from our in-person sessions that we had before.

looking in the categories we kept the categories the same so that we could compare yes facilities learning spaces academic extracurriculars supports and services for our students still those categories you can see that our students said hey outstanding library all of the things that our parents said but they began to get it a little deeper and a little more rich and be specific about what they wanted to see such as you know they want interior spaces that are particularly designed for learning as well as for that social interaction with their peers.

If you go over into the academic and extracurricular spaces, definitely want to see physical education and athletic and arts and music programming, but they want to see diversity reflected in the curriculum and in their instruction.

If you're looking at support services and resources, all of the things that their parents or families wanted to see.

However, they wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to really address bullying, harassment, racism across every area of the school.

They really wanted that particular piece addressed.

We're going to the next slide.

We kept the conversation going to verify what we thought we heard and what we learned.

We also held focus groups with many of our multilingual families.

They came and sat and said, yes, all of the things that you saw, everything is important to us.

However, we really want to see and desire more educators and instructional supports to support the academic growth where it is needed most.

So really targeting our resources.

And then when it came to support services and resources, that making sure that we absolutely had services for our multilingual families and making sure that that goes as deeply and richly as it possibly can go.

moving on to the next slide so that brings us till now just a few weeks ago we began going back into the community to talk about our initial planning for well-resourced schools and we wanted to bring that to the community because they are not necessarily always in our board meetings with us so we took that presentation out to the community and we had four stops including a virtual meeting approximately 1400 individuals participated across those sessions again the intent was to expose the information that we have always talked to you about and bring that to the community in those information sessions would you please go on And in those sessions, we also offered an opportunity to do a virtual community survey district-wide.

The respondents at the time, approximately 1,100 individuals responded.

They were able to leave their thoughts on a particular question as we proceed through our planning and we're considering consolidation, what would make the process smoother, more equitable for students, families, and staff?

Again, 1,100 respondents.

They put in about 1,000 thoughts.

And those thoughts, every person participating was able to go back and rate.

So almost 30,000 ratings on top of all of that.

So it was a pretty robust conversation online.

SPEAKER_99

Yes.

Liza Rankin

Sorry really quick by ratings do you mean respondents rating other people's thoughts.

Oh OK.

So like like a I agree with this kind of thing.

OK.

I didn't know what you mean.

Bev Redmond

I agree or this doesn't.

Got it.

Got it.

Liza Rankin

But yeah.

Bev Redmond

Yes.

Thanks.

Not a problem.

Would you take me to the next slide, please?

So across that community information session of those community information sessions, Dr. Jones already started and brought us to some of the things that we've been hearing In order to create more transparency and create that sense of trust that's needed to really invest from a community standpoint in our planning, more detail, more detail, more detail on our budget, more detail on enrollment, more detail on the criteria that we're using in our planning process, and more detail about the timeline.

Again, inspiring transparency and trust.

We want the community to come along with us and not just be around our decisions.

Also the questions rose regarding what does this look like?

What does a well-resourced school look like in action?

The instructional model, dual language, all of the services that our families are using, how does that work in our model?

And then lastly, the class sizes, consistency and transition.

How will it operate?

How will we get there?

How will we take care of each other along So that really began or the initial findings from our community information sessions.

We're still working with that data, still massaging it, and we will have a more full and complete report at a later time.

But these are the initial types of questions, initial pieces of information that our families and those attendees wanted answered.

Go on to the next.

And as I promised, how does that connect to the academic vision for well-resourced schools?

What are we using this information for?

And that is to make our schools, our elementary schools that are serving our K-5 students, how do we make those stronger?

How do we make that robust where students can thrive?

To do that, I want to introduce Dr. Torres.

SPEAKER_37

Good evening board directors and community.

I'm going to provide us I'm going to take a little bit of the information that Chief Redman shared with us just share the eight buckets kind of that those fall into and then I'm going to give two specific examples from those buckets of how would we do this from an academic lane in Seattle Public Schools.

So next slide please.

Essentially what we look at here this is a distilled down version of the information that Chief Redmond just shared with us broken into eight different areas.

I'm specifically going to talk about the inclusive learning for every student area and the social emotion social and emotional learning support area and discuss how would this look in action if we were to do this.

We understand this is what we heard from community that they wanted.

How does this look in a public school district in Seattle.

Next slide please.

So one of the things that we work on in Seattle is inclusion and so this very much directly aligns with the inclusive learning for every student construct in addition to the social and emotional learning support construct.

So the way that we work it in the system currently and that we've had some success with that I will share shortly is through redefining a multi-tiered system of support doing a universal design for learning approach and pushing on restorative practices across the system.

So essentially we have cohorts of schools that are going through this process and what they receive is intentional coaching and support throughout the year for them, for their educators, through members down here at the central office.

We also have support from Novak Consulting Education which is an OSPI recognized support for this type of work.

And through that work we work on getting the inclusionary practices to work across the system.

There are a few metrics that we look at.

So if you could go to the next slide please.

We're going to talk a little about the outcomes that we've seen of this work by being very intentional in the approaches.

And so if we go back a few years ago one of the things that we were really looking at as a system is how do we get indicator 5A up.

And I'm going to do a Cliff Notes quick version of what that is.

When you do special education programming one of the indicators that gets looked at is 5A.

Indicator 5A essentially says that students are spending students who receive special education services spending 80 to 100 percent of their time in general education classrooms.

This was a big problem of practice for the state of Washington and also for Seattle Public Schools.

If we remember back at one point we were one of the lowest performing states in this indicator in the United States.

And us being the largest school district, guess what?

We get to help pull that lever in a different direction.

And so we put some intentional work behind it.

That's how some of this came to be.

But if you look back to 2020, 2021, we were at 66%.

And that's when we started putting a big emphasis on this.

And if you can look, you will see that it went up by 3% in 21, 22. by another 3 percent in 22-23 which are our preliminary numbers and it looks like we're going to grow the number again by another percent in 23-24 and that's just for Seattle Public Schools.

If you crosswalk this with the state of Washington data you'll also see that they've seen a 2 percent increase in this indicator.

So just sharing this as we have heard from community that inclusive learning spaces is a priority for us.

This is an example of how through intentional work on this construct we can actually get outcomes for kids.

The next one is around our panorama climate data.

This is another data metric that we look at when we talk about inclusion in Seattle Public Schools and there's what they call the inclusionary practices constructs.

Those are questions that we actually ask our students and say certain things like I can see myself in the curriculum or I have choice in what I'm doing etc etc.

So since we've started this initiative for example we started collecting data in the spring of 23 and for our high school students we've seen a 3 percent increase in one year already and student perception of how they're experiencing inclusion in Seattle Public Schools.

Another example is in our middle schools within a year of starting to implement some of this work a 2 percent increase in our middle school students saying that they feel more included in our schools based on these survey data.

And then I just wanna give one school level example, but if you were to go to Gatewood Elementary, Principal Kina Hogue was one of our early adopters.

She was very much, her and her team wanted to be an inclusion school.

They wanted to push on this.

So they jumped in right when we started doing some of this work and happened to be one of those schools that Dr. Jones just noted earlier today for the 27 schools that are gonna receive a state award.

And their award specifically was for growth for one or more student groups.

And so just wanted to share examples of how this could work in Seattle Public Schools in a system of well-resourced schools, specifically aligned to what community is saying they want to see and how we can get outcomes for kids at the same time.

So at this point, I would like to pass over to Chief Podesta, who's gonna give us a little bit more about the budget stability and enrollment numbers.

Fred Podesta

Thank you, Dr. Torres.

And I'm gonna veer a little bit outside my lane and echo the thanks that Chief Redmond gave to people who came to our meetings, our community input meetings that we've had last month.

I had really good conversations with many people And we know we have smart and discerning constituents for our district.

But the the great questions they asked us will make any proposal we come forward with a lot better.

And I just really want to thank people for again very good.

Some of these subjects are difficult but All the discussions I engaged in were very constructive and also really helped us think about how we're talking about this.

So I just want to echo Bev's appreciation for folks participation.

So budget instability the this whole discussion of well resourced schools.

The direction the formal direction that staff the superintendent staff have gotten from the board have all come in the guise of fiscal stability resolutions and actions about fiscal stability.

So we want to keep track of how these things interrelate.

If we could go to the next slide.

And so stability and balance go hand in hand and working on our financial stability is really balancing the needs of students versus the resources that we have.

And balancing where students attend school and how educational services are delivered to them.

what sorts of programs and staffing we have and how those are distributed across the system and then we have great resources in our buildings we have millions of square feet of physical plant serving students and those are great resources they are not inexpensive to maintain or construct and so making sure that we're being judicious and how we use those assets and think about right sizing our physical size is really important and that's really what this a lot of this discussion on the technical side ends up being.

If we could go to the next slide.

So as we faced up to the seriousness of our financial situation we recognized a couple of years ago really that we needed to get into multi-year budget planning not trying to solve problems one fiscal year at a time.

That's why today before this body has adopted a 24-25 fiscal year budget we're already talking about 25-26 because we have to keep considering what our present actions mean in the long run.

So these are this pie chart is meant to represent the four broad categories of strategies we can consider to fill the projected ninety four million dollar operating budget gap we have for twenty five twenty six.

And so working counterclockwise from one time solutions those include things extending the furlough days that we've had for the central office leveraging budget reserves and funds that we still have remaining to us year end carry forward.

We are since we're a tax free organization.

We're eligible for some refunds and credits based on some of our capital work around energy efficiency.

Those are kind of one time attached to those projects.

So there are a variety of things that we can do there again that are not necessarily sustainable but will be relevant to that year.

We're heading into a long session, a legislative session, and so there are things at play that we estimate it's realistic to think about $10 to $20 million enhancement to funding models for special education services, perhaps regionalization of how we can use levies.

There are a variety of proposals that we think that's realistic.

And then we are going to have to look at some other non-school reductions on the order of 5 to 10 million dollars go back.

There you go.

That's always the case.

Going another bite of the apple savings at the central office departments again on the order of five to ten million dollars.

We need to reduce our transportation costs.

The largest single action that we've discussed many times is transitioning to a three-tier bell schedule.

There are probably other things we can do that's a realistic savings we think we can get from our roughly $50 million transportation budget.

But the fact is over the last two fiscal years we've resolved big problems.

For the current fiscal year that's ending soon, We resolved 131 million dollars structural budget deficit for the budget that's being proposed that you all will adopt on July 2nd hopefully.

We resolved a 105 million dollar gap and then we're projecting $94 million gap for the fiscal year after that.

In those two years we worked hard to maintain schools as our highest priority and try to shield reductions from resources that are allocated to schools as best we could.

We also use special one time funding for each of those years.

We liquidated our economic stabilization account for the current fiscal year.

For the coming fiscal year, we are taking out an inter-fund loan from our capital reserves, which we have temporary authority to do, but we're at the point now where those solutions aren't available to us that we're gonna have to look at doing something about the resources that we spend in school buildings.

If we could go to the next slide.

So we've talked about that this, you know, creates a decision point for us in terms of how we want to think about how many schools we operate.

And it, you know, in the simplest terms it comes down to will we make reductions in each school building or will we consider operating fewer school buildings?

So neither of these is a proposal.

This is a model of Because we've already made reductions in non-teaching parts in school buildings, we've reduced our custodial services, we've reduced maintenance costs, so we're really down to things that have direct impacts on students.

And again, right now we're modeling about a $30 million need from school based reductions or we could continue to consider school consolidations and transitioning to a system of schools elementary schools that each have more resources rather than taking reductions at the resources.

And again this board has directed us on a couple occasions.

You need to pursue this strategy and come back with the recommendation.

So we're working hard on that.

If we could advance the slide please.

And I'm sorry could we go back one more I want to make.

So some of the great conversations we had in the community input sessions we had last month where people really wanted to get more detail wanted to understand some of the details behind this.

It's somewhat dense and doesn't lend itself to being presented in a slide deck.

So we will attach appendices to this deck that for instance nobody was satisfied with their answers.

Well how much money would you save at each school that you close.

And we were kept describing a range.

So we have a data set that will be attached to this presentation that shows the projected savings for all of the 73 schools that we're talking about that serve and the categories of savings across the system.

So we have three data sets that we have four data sets that we're going to try to supply people attached to this presentation.

So I'll try to highlight those as I go and that's one savings per school.

So now I'm sorry if we could go ahead.

So as I said you know in talking we get we've gotten so close to some of this work technically that we don't always appreciate you know people understanding what we're saying and how can we make this clearer.

I think we have an enormous opportunity to be clear about how our finances and the interplay between our finances and enrollment because a lot of folks ask me questions about Well if you could increase your enrollment with that solve your financial problems and remove the necessity to look at school consolidations and We would we want to be an educator the educational service provider of choice so new enrollment is great of course we would love to increase enrollment but just from a purely financial perspective you know our revenue is allocated by students so it does bring new revenue but it also brings new costs and ideally we sort of break even.

And that per student allocation is great to cover marginal costs so hiring more teachers more instructional assistants things that are fungible based on how many students that works.

What doesn't work are managing your fixed costs like keeping a building open things that you can't easily change if enrollment is down at a particular school.

So I just.

want to kind of dispel the notion that the key part of our financial issue relates to enrollment.

It certainly has a factor if you look at this model if we got forty nine hundred students back maybe we'd end up six million to the good.

We could end up in the red depending on where the students go what type of services they need which school they attend.

So it's complicated but it isn't that isn't really the main issue.

And the reason we're having a discussion is How many buildings do we need to serve the students we have.

And finances are related to this but it's not as causal as people think.

And that became really clear to me in having discussions at these meetings that the way we're talking about enrollment and how it affects our finances hasn't been clear.

We could go one more.

Brent Jones

Fred President President Rankin has a question.

Liza Rankin

I mean, I flipped through and made sure, yeah, can we go back a slide?

I didn't see what I'm about to say noted in here.

So the other thing I wanna say about this is that there are not 49,000 students in Seattle or 4,900 students in Seattle to come back to Seattle Public Schools.

So that's even, I mean, not only does it not suddenly solve all of our problems, but it's imaginary.

because I pulled state data on private school enrollment and homeschooling enrollment in Seattle Public Schools has declined by 8 percent since the 2018 2019 school year to now.

Enrollment in private schools within the boundaries of the Seattle Public Schools District has also declined 8 percent over the same amount of time.

Homeschooling has peaked or spiked during the pandemic and has returned to pre pandemic levels according to the state data.

So that is also just even if 4,900 students would solve the budget deficit, which it won't, that's not a reality that can be pursued because those students don't exist right now.

Not to say there aren't more students that we would love to have return.

because we want students in Seattle Public Schools period.

But we don't want them because they're going to bring us money.

We want them because we want to educate our students and we think public schools are the best choice for them.

Just to be super duper clever.

Fred Podesta

If you know we had a perfect system we'd break even.

You know that that would be the goal is we serve the students that need our services.

We're a provider of choice and you And a perfect adaptable system in our finances would balance based on how many students we have.

But that means you have to be attentive to fixed costs as enrollment goes up and down and buildings are a huge part of our fixed costs.

And so if we could advance the slide.

So enrollment, again, this is kind of a segue between the budget and enrollment.

And we could go on further.

Our enrollment forecast during the pandemic, we had a decline that was faster than we expected.

We have long, for many, many years, have forecast this decline in enrollment.

basically looking at birth rates in the area and then maintaining very close ties with city planners on the issuance of building permits.

What sort of housing is expected to come online in the coming few years really helps dictate are we expecting family housing.

Are we expecting lots of students to be living in the district and are accuracy at the system level the forecasting enrollment is usually within less the variance is usually less than one percent you know we get surprised at a particular school or we get surprised at a at a grade band but not across the total enrollment we have a long track record other than a lot of variability during covid of being able to count on our forecasts

Liza Rankin

I have a question that.

I wonder if you can answer because something that I've heard flying around a lot is well the district screwed up in 2009 and closed buildings and they had to reopen them.

What I have come to understand is that was due to a discrepancy between reporting kindergartners that at the time full day kindergarten wasn't paid for by the state only half day kindergarten was.

And so there was actually a mistake in the accounting for the number of students.

Basically they counted half day kindergartners as point five FTE.

when it actually was, that was a whole kid, so they undercounted the kindergarten students by half.

I don't know, Fred, if you have more information about that.

This is me going down a lot of rabbit holes to try to figure out what happened so that we don't repeat the same mistakes.

I think we have full day.

We report kindergartners to ourselves at the same level that we report them to the state.

One kindergartner is one kid for the whole day.

So I don't think we're gonna repeat that mistake.

But I also wanted to, it's really easy to say, well look at that screw up without having the, that was something pretty unusual that yes, that was a mistake.

But I don't see that being repeated.

And based on also what we're seeing here, that's also sort of Like it would be nice if this wasn't the reality.

Fred Podesta

Yes.

Liza Rankin

But it is.

Fred Podesta

I am not authoritative.

I've heard that scenario described as well.

And we are working much harder to integrate our long range capital planning and enrollment forecast to make sure that we are really accounting for capacity.

We're also anticipating this.

and the way state funding works, frankly we're just building bigger buildings than we used to build.

And again, that leads to efficiencies, it leads to better educational environments, but our ability to, and we'll get into building utilization, to absorb new growth is stronger than it was previously, the last time the district faced this issue.

So if we could advance the slides.

Liza Rankin

I get sorry that was a surprise comment on the kindergartners.

I would I would love first if through staff records for that to be confirmed or to understand better what what that was.

Fred Podesta

Yeah.

They're also I don't expect you know that off the top of your head some would like us to special circumstances around that spike that you see that we should probably explain as well.

We could go one more please.

So as we were just talking about kind of the utilization of our assets and particularly in elementary school we have more buildings and more capacity than we have students to the tune of we use about two thirds of the space for our secondary schools were much tighter.

We were operating at 80 to 90 percent capacity and the And we feel that that's comfortable that it's still if you're at 85 percent capacity you have room for growth.

So given the population and the forecast population we have for elementary school students we're operating 73 sites that serve them now think something on the order of 50 would be more efficient in terms of at the system level.

There are other things we could think about beyond just that it's inefficient to only use two thirds of, you're paying for 100% of the space and you're using two thirds of it.

Are there huge swings in enrollment at schools and different capacities and buildings.

We could realign our attendance areas to mitigate some of those impacts at lesser resource schools.

So at least it's more balanced across the system.

Again we have constraints based on the different capacities of buildings and that wouldn't really create efficiencies at the system level but at least it would mitigate some of the inequities we have and how we're allocating resources now.

Again the option we're thinking hard about now and will bring a recommendation is about consolidating sites to maximize utilization efficiency in buildings and get to on the order of 80 to 85 percent capacity utilization is where we think a good planning target leaves us and then also gives us a room for fairly significant growth without reopening buildings.

We could advance the slides please.

So what we really need to think about is so which buildings would we invest in if we think that a system of roughly 50 schools would better serve K through five students than the 73 we're operating.

How do you decide and again with which are the best platforms for investment at the building level.

So therefore criteria that we're really focusing on.

The building condition speaks to what is the condition of the system.

We do this on a regular basis.

This is how we plan our levies.

We hire outside consultants.

The Cezanne Group is helping us currently for the next levy.

They visit all our buildings.

They inspect all our building systems, roofs.

HVAC systems, windows, mechanical systems, which boilers are gonna fail to get a score for each building.

They also help us, working with our architects and our educational specifications, give a score to how does the building serve as a learning environment.

So building condition is about kind of the shape of the building.

The condition literally you know is it in good repair or not.

Learning environment is about the design of the building and how it's laid out.

Does it offer spaces for partners for early learning.

Does it distribute spaces for all the services and inclusionary practices that we want to have.

Is it designed well to meet that need.

And then capacity again if we think we believe that you know the bottom end of our elementary school capacity on the order of 400 students to something greater than that.

So could a building ever accommodate the sufficient enrollment to make sure that a sufficient allocation of resources came with it.

is obviously a very serious consideration.

And then location.

We need the buildings to be where the students are.

We need them evenly distributed across our district.

And we can't exacerbate travel times for students to get to whatever the new system is.

So those are kind of the four parameters.

Here's some examples here.

If we could advance the slide.

So just mechanically how this works.

We again with Cezanne Environmental Services who began this workforce in 2022 as we're planning for the next levy they score all our buildings on a scale of 1 to 100. This is another data set that will be available as an appendix to this presentation that will provide the building condition for every building that we're talking about so people can see how that's scored.

We could advance the slide.

And then in a similar fashion, we rate the adequacy of the design and the layout of the building to meet our standards to provide educational services.

That's also in that same data set.

And then the third piece of information at the building level is the capacity.

So so folks can.

And that's what we really heard at the community input sessions is people really wanted to see the work behind the work and how we're how we're making decisions about which again which buildings prevent present the best opportunities for us.

So I think then we take it back to Dr. Jones.

Brent Jones

I'll take it.

Thank you.

So we started down this path of finding a methodology for balancing our budget.

And one of those items was school consolidation.

Then as we got into it, we saw this as an opportunity to really bring program and service stabilization to the entire system.

Now we're at a place where we need to think about where we find those efficiencies, where we find savings, how do we reinvest them into our system so that we can have the student outcomes that we all desire.

So we've gone from a budget exercise to a stabilization exercise to how do we make our system such that it's going to yield outcomes for students.

and so as we as we next slide please as we look at the next steps we need to explore multiple scenarios understanding the mix between all of our program offerings all of our service delivery models and in so doing we need to look at academic impact assessment so how do we make sure that we're aligned with student outcomes how do we how do we make sure that our strategies are enduring so To do this, we need to use outside expertise to review and validate, to support us, to provide analysis along the way, and to find opportunities that we may not be able to see because we may be too close to it.

We also need to make sure that we're further developing our comprehensive logistical plan.

The detail around implementation is critical for us to be able to have our arms around.

And frankly, we don't have experience with doing this on a regular basis.

Most districts don't.

And so we want to make sure that we're taking the time to be detail-oriented around implementation.

And as we do this, as we talked about, we want to clearly communicate along the way and find ways to build trust and confidence with our constituents here because I think that's important as we move forward.

Next slide, please.

So our summer imperative, our mission is to develop a plan that demonstrates the benefits to student outcomes from a system of well-resourced schools.

If I can't say it any plainer than this, this is what we need to be endeavoring to do over the summer.

Make that connection from where we are right now to this system of well-resourced schools and lead with what the benefits are.

That is a very difficult task, but it is a task that's in front of us.

That's why I mentioned we're willing to utilize outside expertise to help us through this.

We're willing to talk with community and engage them in ways that we can understand what their wants, wishes, and needs are so that we can make sure that we actually develop a system of well-resourced schools.

And so I won't veer away from talking about the word system because it's not a singular well-resourced school.

It's a system of well-resourced schools.

So Dr. Torres gave an example of how that might look for inclusion.

He gave an example how that might look for social-emotional learning.

But if you think about an expanded out portfolio if you will of plans for how do we get from where we are now to the system of well-resourced schools and actualized student outcomes that's what we would endeavor to bring forward as a recommended plan so that's that's our that's our goal that's where we're going and so that's an update for for where we are I'm hoping you find this to be and think about us doing this on a regular basis, having these updates, not just with the board, but with the community as well.

So at this point, I'd love to just open it up to the board for your comments, questions, concerns.

What are you curious about?

What would you like more information on?

And did this meet your expectation?

Liza Rankin

Who would like to go first, directors?

Director Hersey.

Brandon Hersey

So I'm really excited to see that last slide there because I think that that frankly is the most critical part and I think that what we are in a position to do that we have not been in before is to balance the very real need to operate in an efficient way but to reorient ourselves well not even reorient but now that we have done that work it's really I would say a good look for me to see that the work over the summer is going to be focused on like how do we make these changes in order to impact student outcomes in a positive way?

Because those are the conversations that I've been having with families.

I think that it's hard to envision what is the benefit to me if my kid's school closes, right?

We've been going back and forth about this definition of like what a well-resourced school is and like Libraries are critically important.

Having teachers on-site full-time, critically important.

Being able to have more resources in a building, critically important.

But the specificity in how that actually translates to a better educational outcome for a child is a step that I'm really excited for us to take in terms of our development, in terms of a plan and how we communicate that to our families.

And so just in terms of specifics that I am hoping will be implemented into the plan we really have a very clear road map in our goals and guardrails.

Right.

The questions that I'm going to be looking for and asking as a board director quite specifically given that this is a move that is going to that is going to exclusively impact elementary schools and we have two goals that are predicated on elementary school performance being third grade literacy and seventh grade numeracy.

we all know that in order to be successful in seventh grade you need to also be successful and build skills with yeah seventh grade um you also need to build those skills from k to five what i'm really going to be looking for is what is your plan for the reinvestment of the money that you intend to save longitudinally what are those options going to be to us because we've said several times that even if we close buildings tomorrow that doesn't necessarily mean that we are going to be seeing a kickback immediately i also think that that is fine but what i do need to know is that there is a plan in place now to show how those inc how those outcomes are going to be better i want to know how inclusion is going to be impacted by having less buildings i want to know about like what is the rate of um implementing curriculum with fidelity potentially.

I think another piece of that is also going to be how does this keep us better aligned with our guardrails, specifically the one around safe and welcoming environments and being able to engage families of color more efficiently, right?

I think that those are really clear aspects of our strategic plan that we are currently in the midst of retooling.

That would give us, as a board, a lot of clarity about where you're headed and the fact that it aligns with the vision and values of the community.

I think that's also incredibly critical because all of the engagement that we have been doing around our strategic plan has really harkened back to a sense of doubling down on what we're already doing with the ability to expand in some areas.

that I think are probably well served by having a more efficient system and a better resource system in terms of how do we roll resources out to specific buildings.

So I am just saying to crystallize all that, utilize our goals and our guardrails and our strategic plan and give us some real specifics around how does this actually put us into a position to better deliver on student outcomes in a way that is meaningful for our families and more importantly our students.

Michelle Sarju

I need to follow him.

Go ahead.

Somebody else has their microphone on.

Okay.

Because I don't like that noise.

Who has it on?

No it's better now.

So Brandon essentially articulated what I was thinking during the presentation.

But because there was so much information I was actually trying to absorb it and at some point I gave up and I floated to the audience and I kept looking at you and I sat by you and I was doing thought bubbles like do you understand this.

No no me neither.

So I was really.

Like, being a parent, right, and I will take this information and I will look more deeply at it, but I think when we get to the end of the road, what we need is specifics, right?

I think what you all did was provide us with literally the, the maximum amount of information that we will likely need, but it's hard to digest in a setting like this.

And it's moving fast, so when we talk about doing these kind of presentations in the future, we need specifics, like what is, how does this actually translate to student outcomes not sort of a theoretical it's really a specific and i think for our community when i say our community i mean the parents they need to walk out here and go tell their neighbor who has kids man the district knocked that mess out of the park right i fully understood what was happening in that meeting because they're either our ambassadors or the other thing and i want them to be our ambassadors this should be at a level where We were elected by a representation of the people, but we're also parents, right?

We're humans.

And so I wanna be a parent in the audience that actually understands what you're saying and that I don't have to have a manual to understand it.

So when you do this again, and this is not a criticism, I really do feel like we needed this information, but then the next time you bring us something, it really needs to be specific.

So like Dr. Torres, when you talk about inclusion, how does that connect to third grade reading?

or seventh grade math, right?

There has to be some connection or this is just a performative exercise, right?

And then Brandon said, you know, using the goals and the guardrails and for the parents in the audience, we're actually trying to move in a direction where we're paying attention to all the students and that you don't have to live in a community where you can raise thousands of dollars in an auction and buy yourself and your children something.

We want the same thing for all of our kids regardless of who their parents or caregivers are.

And so that's how we get there.

We get there by focusing on student outcomes.

And I know this can be difficult for parents because it's new.

It's really how it should have always been and it's actually how it's never been.

And so we're trying to change that because outcomes are not getting better for students, some students, particularly the most marginalized students.

We're just like, well, you know, you should have chose different parents.

Not our fault you chose those parents.

We can't do anything about it.

Well, yes, we can and we will.

Thank you for being a thought bubble with me.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah, there's one aspect of this that the last time that we saw slide 24, I don't know if we want to put that back up, that gave me a bit of pause and concern.

And I want to follow that up a little bit.

So I have a question.

In this slide, it says that K-5 students would be more efficiently accommodated in approximately 50 sites, evenly distributed with 10 per region.

What do you mean by region?

Do you mean director district?

Wait one second.

Let them answer.

Fred Podesta

There are a map of regions on our website.

They're really the regions that the management of schools uses.

We have five executive director areas.

Sure.

Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southwest, Southeast.

Brandon Hersey

Great.

Fred Podesta

Nobody would be surprised if they saw that map.

If you said, oh, you divide the city kind of evenly into five sectors, west, northeast, central, southwest, southeast, you would picture the map that exists.

SPEAKER_99

100%.

Fred Podesta

And so that's just a way of saying that, well, how do you approach this that needs to be evenly distributed?

Just as important are the middle school feeder patterns.

We need to do this.

So we have the capacity at middle school as well.

So it's a way of saying this needs to be evenly distributed.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah, that's all clear.

Fred Podesta

Yeah.

And again, the actual location and the travel times will be analyzed.

Brandon Hersey

Right.

Fred Podesta

Nobody can get too far away.

We can't make this work by students being too far away from schools.

So that's just built into this.

Brandon Hersey

Dope.

Another question that I have around that is that are the population metrics that we use to determine those regions, are those determined by general population of the city or are they determined by student population?

Like how many students attend school in that region?

Fred Podesta

They're more tied to enrollment.

Brandon Hersey

Okay.

Fred Podesta

And then again, Seattle Public Schools Board policy and other investments will make sure we always look at know what are going to what are the demographic impacts and that you know we envisioning our elementary school system can't create or exacerbate any segregation any any form of racial imbalance that doesn't reflect the local communities that that's also will be an important

Brandon Hersey

Yeah.

The reason that I asked that question, just to explain my line of thinking and why I want to make sure that I'm super clear on this, is the fact that with those regions, there are opportunities for growth and there's opportunity for attrition.

I want to make sure that the balance of student population in each region to justify the fact that each region would have about 10 elementary schools actually makes sense.

Because when I think about the Southeast and where folks are buying homes, The growth that takes place in the southwest part of the city and the southeast part of the city, in my experience, is happening at a more rapid pace than we're seeing in other parts of the city.

So with that being said, if we are equalizing what it sounds like to 10 schools per region, I want to make sure that we're also being thoughtful with the idea that the vast majority of students of color are located in my region of the city, right?

as well as the vast majority of folks in my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, of folks that are moving here and purchasing homes and where there is higher density, or rather where there are higher density living opportunities being built.

So with that said, I have concern that we are approaching this from a nature of equalization as opposed to equity.

And I want you to prove me wrong in that when you bring me the plan in September.

Does that make sense?

Fred Podesta

absolutely um one of the building characteristics i described was capacity and and capacity versus enrollment we are using the 10 we're using our enrollment projections to model this and the 10-year high water mark in the building so that will take into account those factors because our projection is both based on projected birth rates and housing start sure housing permitting yep so this is probably inartfully um drafted here It should say average 10 per region.

Brandon Hersey

Sure.

Fred Podesta

Every kind of model that we've looked at so far, you know, it's 9 here and 12 there, because it needs to be tied to where we have capacity and where we're expecting enrollment to grow.

You would absolutely see that built into any proposal you're making.

Brandon Hersey

That sounds great.

Thank you.

The last question that I have is around our equity tiering system.

That has been something that's been floating out in community for a minute.

And I want to have some clear understanding of the fact, like, can you articulate for me, are we utilizing our equity tiering system in this process?

Or are we developing an equity analysis that is more unique to this process?

I think unless we make a very clear distinction about what tools we're utilizing, it puts us into a position to confuse community and put people into a stance of asking us, why isn't this tool being utilized if we already have it?

So that could be circumvented by just being really clear about what internal tools are we utilizing to make these decisions.

And that's OK to not to like provide more information on it at a different time.

Fred Podesta

Absolutely built into the any recommendation.

I also think it's important to hit on the points that Dr. Jones cited is we're trying to move to a better system.

So we want to make sure that analysis Is it are we being equitable and who gets these new better resource schools that be and it it's only natural that people tend to think of this from the school closure perspective is there inequity in which schools are closing.

If we make this case appropriately this all makes sense.

The question should be who gets into these better resource schools.

So the that's the opportunity.

And so it you've advised us a few times director Hersey don't be deficit based and you're thinking you know be asset based and we're moving to something better.

So.

That equity analysis will be geared into.

So where are we consolidating into these schools with better resources and what is the tie to the educational outcomes.

Who's getting this opportunity.

Liza Rankin

Director Marzahi.

Joe Mizrahi

I have a few questions some I think are a little on the technical side and then some about the process.

So when you were talking about the criteria one of the things you mentioned was learning environment and that seemed like the most qualitative where the other ones are pretty clearly quantitative.

You can say what's the capacity of this building.

So I'm wondering you talked about engaging with some outside specialists on the on the building condition questions.

What what's the process for that learning environment analysis.

Fred Podesta

So the district has designed what are called educational specifications for each type of school.

You know what is.

You know how many rooms how many learning spaces maker spaces labs early learning spaces.

And so the point of that scoring is how well does this building conform to how much outside space how much spaces for each learning it is not.

It is not objective or subjective with a blank canvas.

We we have a specification that's also what guides how we build new buildings.

Do they have the spaces to offer it all the supports.

And and so there is a yardstick that gets measured against and that is our our educational specification that we renew on a regular basis and renew every time we build a new building so we can.

And those documents are available.

That's kind of thing people could look at them.

What do we think the ideal school should look like and how does this building.

Joe Mizrahi

How far off from it is that is that.

OK I understand.

Well that leads me to my next question.

You talked about you know additional data and dependencies where you go to find that.

Fred Podesta

Could we go to the last slide in this deck.

So the check will be a little bit in the mail.

So there are four appendices that aren't attached yet to this deck but will be and reposted so people can go And again those will there will be a report that shows for each building under consideration what the building condition score what the learning environment score and what the capacity is how we calculated projected savings for each building and then our most recent our enrollment from the fall 2023. A lot of this can be put in context in the budget book which we're about to adopt a budget so people see how these things factor out in each building so.

We will add these appendices to this so people can go to this agenda and this deck and get those documents will be appended.

Joe Mizrahi

Perfect.

So my last technical question then I have some process questions.

So on on slide 18 Dr. Torres what you were talking about.

I just want to echo what my fellow directors said around I think that's a very helpful metric to look at and I think as we go through this process having things like that where it's both linked to the student outcome goals but then also there's a good it's not that oh not 18 maybe 19. um the one with indicator 5a on it yep I think that's very helpful and seeing how that how that applies to the student outcome goals and then the next step is how do we think that will be improved by the system of well-resourced schools like what's the vision for that and how do we think it's going to move the needle on this and I'm sure there's lots of other metrics we can be looking at for that So in terms of process, I'm curious, you don't have to have like dates or anything, but what in your mind, just to expand a little bit on what the summer looks like to actually go through that process of getting to a plan that you wanna bring forward and what the engagement will look like with the community.

Brent Jones

Yes.

So we talked about making sure that we avail ourselves to outside expertise.

Part of that will be them kind of taking a analysis of where we are right now and giving us feedback around how far are we from being able to get to the finish line.

And so we want to have check-ins at least with our status along the way.

We're thinking something like monthly as we go forward.

But in terms of our deadline, we're talking about sometime in late November to actually bring the plan forward.

And so we haven't backed up from from November and said these are our marks yet.

But part of that is again the third party expertise to help us to scope this out to make sure that we're we hit hit all of our marks.

So timeline is forthcoming.

Joe Mizrahi

Got it.

I think one thing that's going to be important how I think about this is the time period between when the recommendation comes forward and November and thinking about you know ideally there there's there's lots of feedback you've already had lots of feedback and you come forward with a plan that Everyone says wow you nailed it.

You got it right.

We feel great about this but realistically there are going to be things in there that maybe it's things even that are just about the transition and implementation where people want to say well what about this and what about that and where the time period is for that feedback to be incorporated in the plan I think is super important to me.

Brent Jones

One thing that we've ideated is having specific workshops like workshops on learning environment workshops on maybe what Dr. Torres talked about.

And so we we don't bring to Director Sarju's point we don't bring the whole thing to the table instead we chunk it out in ways that when people have areas of interest where they want to go deeper we can have a workshop on that.

And so To the extent that we can feel that time between when we're working and when the plan comes forward, I think there's opportunities for us to really kind of expose different pieces of the puzzle as we go through it.

Liza Rankin

To add to that quickly and then I'll go to Director Taub.

I really like hearing you say that because I think that's what we've sort of been talking around and maybe thinking we've been asking for and definitely what we've been hearing from our community is that nobody expects a perfect with a bow on it finished plan.

We actually don't want that.

We want to see what the decisions are and what what the trade-offs are and how we get to that final plan kind of together.

So the workshop thing is great.

I think that's important for, you know, nobody wants this done to them or at them.

Not that you have to have a flock of community members following you and all the behind the scenes stuff but this is a really big involved complicated.

This is basically anything and everything that has to do with public schools.

There's going to be nobody who's not impacted by this even if they don't have kids in public schools.

Traffic patterns are going to change.

Their neighbors are going different places.

And so the the the more that we can kind of you know I think of it as like a set design process.

You talk about what story you're trying to tell.

You go and do a little work by yourself.

Then you come back with the team.

You kind of compare notes, see if you're headed in the same direction.

You go back off and do some more work again.

And then you come back.

And you keep doing that, sketching and whatever, and on and on and on.

And eventually you get to opening night.

But opening night should not be a surprise to anybody who's been part of the process.

They have been brought along, and they understand what the story is.

And I think that's the part.

We're not sitting here waiting for the curtains to open on opening night.

We and community members want to be part of not every tiny little thing, but to just understand, as there are different opportunities and different choices to be made, what they are and how they're being made and where they might have the opportunity to provide input or feedback.

at those points so that when we get to opening night, everybody can applaud.

Brent Jones

Yes, and so we're looking forward to getting to opening night as well.

On that last bullet here around clearly communicate along the way and find ways to build trust and confidence, one of the features of that is gonna be, and this is frankly scary for us, we're gonna articulate when we're struggling.

We're going to articulate when there's a mismatch.

We're going to articulate when we don't have the information.

And so we will do that along the way so that there's not going to be a surprise.

So if the opening night is supposed to be in November and we can't get there, you're not going to know that on October 31st.

You're going to know that in advance.

And so we want to be sharing along the way.

We don't have a history of doing that, but this group is willing to do that.

And it may evoke a little bit of lack of confidence, like they don't know what they're doing.

Well, yeah, we don't right now because we don't have a history of doing this.

And so I think it would behoove all of us and perhaps build trust and confidence that we can articulate the gaps along the way, that we can do formative assessment along the way to know, yes, these are areas where we don't have it nailed.

We can't make that nexus between third grade reading and pre-K at every school.

once we know that we're going to articulate that you know we think that is a actual a strategy that we want to lift up so anyway just want to be be transparent around we're going to be sharing along the way around what the challenges are and where the wins are director tom

Gina Topp

I just want to understand a little bit of clarity on the timeline.

So no late November is when you imagine our preliminary proposal comes out from you all.

Is that correct.

Brent Jones

So I'm going to put President Rankin on the spot.

This is this is what we've been talking about as the ideal date for when we bring that that preliminary set of recommendations for.

Liza Rankin

I think the preliminary.

Brent Jones

Sorry.

Where we tell people this is what this is this is the plan in late November.

So we're talking about fall for sometime in fall maybe mid September for the preliminary plan and then late November for this is where people are going to be moving.

Liza Rankin

So what we have talked about and I can get sort of thumbs up down right now is that the absolute latest anyone should know which schools will or won't be open in the fall of 2025 is before winter break.

That's my I feel like later than that is.

Gina Topp

So I guess.

Yeah.

Yes I agree with that.

But I think my question becomes more the preliminary plan possibly in September and opportunity then for engagement on that preliminary plan between September and winter break.

Michelle Sarju

No.

Brent Jones

Yes that's the that is the that's the timeline.

That's the if we're trying for before winter break that that would be the engagement period.

And so.

Michelle Sarju

But it's not the preliminary plan.

It would be November is the plan presentation.

Brent Jones

That's correct and I think what Director Topp is asking about is the time between the preliminary plan and the actual voted on plan.

And so that period in between is the time if we stick with this timeline was where we would be doing where we'd be seeking the feedback and input.

And so that's that's fast.

And that's something that we have to just accept as if that's the timeline that's what that's what it will entail.

So it'll be compacted and it'll be intense.

Gina Topp

Yeah that's that's very compacted and intense and we kind of look at our previous engagement session that we just went through and we realize all of a sudden oh my goodness there's so much incoming feedback and information from folks.

We need more time to sort it out.

Is that is that going to be enough time to be able to allow people to react and engage and provide input.

Brent Jones

That is a challenge.

And we just went through that between May 8th and just recently.

And so that was a compacted timeline.

People didn't feel heard.

People didn't feel like we provided enough information.

So we need to go into this clear eyed about what those challenges are.

So that's a real timeline constraint that we have as of today.

Gina Topp

How are how are we going to knowing that is an even more compacted timeline go into that and be prepared for that.

What does that look like.

Brent Jones

I think there's some more discussion around what what the what the scope of what we're trying to do is.

And so I think we can back back as long as we know what our delivery date is then we'll have to be we'll have to be very clear about what a compacted timeline will be.

So if we want to have it go out further to have more pro more prolonged engagement that's that could be necessary then we need to do that.

But I think that's a an intentional decision that we need to we need to look at and I'm seeking guidance and I'm open to what you all would want to do with that.

Gina Topp

I guess the question really is do you think it's feasible to do engagement in that short time frame.

Brent Jones

just given our recent experience, we have to manage expectations in a way that it's so clear because we had a mismatch in expectations when we went out for this last time.

And so we need to be absolutely clear about what we can achieve and what aspects of the plan we will be seeking input and feedback and engagement on.

And so I think as long as we know that in terms of expectation and scope, we can craft a timeline that will work.

I think there's a question that we need further to talk about.

Gina Topp

I think, yes, I think further talking about that question and really looking into that timeline is important because I don't want to set ourselves up for failure here and I guess be sort of in this same spot we are in today realizing we need more time.

Brent Jones

Yes, we share that.

Liza Rankin

Director Hersey has a follow-up.

Brandon Hersey

Yeah.

So in follow-up to that, I would just say you need to be super clear with what the engagement is because I think that the definition of engagement is going to be very different for everybody, right?

Because like you might say, hey, we've got this preliminary plan.

Come tell us what you think.

And where we fall into a problem is that the thing is baked and we're not really actually intending on making any changes, right?

so i think we need to be super clear going into whatever the engagement is that you are conducting after that portion about like what is up for discussion and what's not right because the last thing that i would want to put our families into a position is to come to uh an event of some kind to provide feedback thinking that it's going to be implemented and it's just not feasible to do so so that's part one part two which is pseudo uh which is slightly unrelated is that I've got like some major concerns about our system's capacity to do a wholesale closure approach model.

So what I want to see in the plan is a justification for not going with a phased approach where we are being considerate of, you know, there are some parts of our city that might take more time to be able to like weather this change effectively.

And given the fact that we have made a tremendous amount of cuts to central office, there are going to be administrative challenges to doing this right.

So I want to know what is the benefit of doing this all at once as opposed to a multi-year phased approach in terms of consolidating schools.

Liza Rankin

Well and I would add to that but that doesn't mean We can't have the full picture at once but it does also doesn't mean it's a flip of a switch.

We could know this is where we're headed and because this building is going to be rebuilt but we're still going to use it in the next 10 years instead of sending them to an interim location.

We'll combine you know we'll have students attend this school that we're not planning to use but we'll wait two years and then they can all go to what you know whatever that may be.

We don't have here.

Oh my gosh.

OK.

I am feeling really like like I have an insane sense of urgency that I'm trying to keep at bay because it doesn't feel matched.

So I'm trying to.

What.

Oh OK.

I mean in 20. When when I was first running for school board in 2019 I knew what the enrollment projection was.

I assumed this would be a conversation I would have to be a part of on the board five years ago.

And then Covid happened and even when Covid happened I was like quick while everybody's home close some buildings.

Just do it now because seeing the forecast that we're going to be in a in a bad spot like this is not this is not a surprise.

We've known this is coming.

So I have this real sense of urgency and I am.

I want a lot more information right now I'm wondering what is.

Keeping us from being more clear about the very real constrictions that exist.

We know that some buildings are not in great condition.

That's like like that's a known.

We know that enrollment or population density doesn't look the same all over the city.

We know that if we don't.

know what's happening before winter break that that's really too late to tell people what's happening in the fall of 2025. So if we get to that point and we haven't figured it out how do we make up that other 30 million dollars if we don't.

So I have concerns that we're still sort of talking in the theoretical when the board has already agreed that consolidation is a necessary component of stabilizing our budget to meet the needs of our students at current enrollment and projected enrollment levels.

So I just kind of want to say again I don't we are not still we need to get out of the if place and if we're if we're because there's not another option, and into the how is this going to work place.

I think we're still, when people talk about transparency, they mean they don't understand what's happening.

They don't mean that they don't understand.

Our meetings are public.

They're transparent.

A ton of this information is somewhere on our website, so it's transparent.

But either people can't find it, Or they don't even know what they're looking for.

Or if they find a piece of it, they're not sure how it connects.

So it just is totally overwhelming and confusing.

And I think that people in this room need to be much more direct about the fact that some building, I can name you right now the top five worst condition elementary buildings.

And one of them is a K-8.

So my question is, if that building is not good enough condition, What's happening to that K8?

That I am.

We got to figure that out.

We have to talk about it and I'm still it still feels very theoretical.

So I have a lot of concerns about that at this point in the because I think and I'm wondering too where have maybe we as the board not been direct enough or clear enough to in asking for where we are.

Because I know this information exists, because I've found it on our website in my own spreadsheets about what I think.

But also, people shouldn't have to know as much as I know to be able to understand what might or might not happen.

We should be telling them.

We should be saying, hey, here's the reality of how enrollment has declined.

of buildings that have opened over the past 10 years while enrollment was declining because we added SPS added capacity in the north end in option seats added new capacity while enrollment was projected to decline.

And that's you know I don't I would like to know about how we could maybe think about not repeating that in the future.

But also we don't have it.

We can't undo that.

So we have to figure out how to deal with Wedgwood and View Ridge being 70 year old neighborhood schools that are both about in need of replacement with Thornton Creek as the crow flies basically right in between the two of them.

That was added capacity and we don't have enough kids for all three of them.

That shouldn't be scary to say because if you look at enrollment you look at building conditions you know that.

So we need to just say those things and then talk about, okay, now what are we gonna do?

Because the reality is we have accepted that we need, we have fewer students than we used to and we need to serve them in fewer buildings.

Our district has the operational capacity right now for over 60,000 students and we have 49,000 students and it's projected to continue to decline.

That is reality.

And we can not like it.

I don't like it.

This is not what I want to be talking about.

But dodging around the what ifs and whatevers are not going to get us away from that reality that has to be reckoned with.

So I guess with the appendices, I am requesting that added to that for people to look at are enrollment projection reports that we have had done by two outside entities already.

The flow analytics analysis from February 2023, I think, that was presented to the Bex Levy Oversight Committee.

And then the, I can't remember the guy's name, but the outside guy who used to be SPS Dramographer and is all over the place.

Thank you.

in March 2024, which I happened upon on accident on the SPS website when I was looking for something else.

And I was like, oh, here's a whole other presentation about enrollment projections that just came out in March.

So those are, and like I found it by accident, I would like us to deliberately say, hey, look at this.

So I would like to have please those added to the appendices.

I would like to see our Bex Levy guiding principles added to that appendices so it's easy to find as an understanding of direction that has been given and approved by the board already on the use of buildings and when we adopted those principles we knew that enrollment and capacity was something that would be coming even though we hadn't gotten to the point of like that has to happen but That's in the principles to pay attention to adequacy and you know really think about making capital investments in ways that improve opportunities for all students including replacement buildings because something that's going to come up very quickly is the capital levy which is going to go out to voters in February 2025. And we're going to have to before we get there people are going to need to understand that there is a budget deficit and we have a whole bunch of more money coming in because we're we're very fortunate to have the ability to raise the capital funding in Seattle and in a lot of King County.

Other districts are not so fortunate but we can't convert that to operational costs operational funding.

But we have to be very clear about When we go out and ask voters to give us capital money when we've just said how many schools are going to close.

So when people are talking about transparency, I don't think they mean that there's secrecy.

I think they mean we don't understand what's going on because we don't work in central office.

And so how do we help people understand?

And when we talk about engagement too, being very clear about if we're saying, here's the reality.

What do you have to say about that if we're asking for input or involvement?

Because it's not going to do anybody any good to engage on likes and dislikes about things that maybe are not actually a choice because of the reality of the finances.

And so we just really I just really want.

And if you need more clear direction from us I also the where do students live maps on our enrollment website.

We have pretty good descriptions of like Brandon was talking about you know 10 schools being equally distributed.

We have a higher density of people under the age of 18 living in Southeast.

We also have the top five poorest building conditions for K-5 students currently the worst ones are in the north end but the southeast has the highest number of buildings that are approaching that.

And so we can't just say well those are poor building conditions.

Those are the ones that are going to get closed because that means all of a sudden District 7 doesn't like that.

So but those are things that are real that we just need to state and explain and help people understand what the scope of what this is.

I would really like us to get out of the theoretical to the to the actual as quickly as possible.

And so having these things in the appendices is great, even better, and this is a staffing suggestion, I'm so sorry, but it's a school consolidation or rightsizing website that is designed to be accessible to the average community member to just to not have to look through, like this is a lot, even the appendices, that'd be great to have those in one place, that's still a lot of information.

and a lot of documents to look through.

We need to be able to just say, why is this happening?

How did we get here?

What's happening going forward?

And then we really need that timeline of what kind of engagement is happening when.

Like the workshop things that Fred was talking about, or Dr. Jones, sorry, was great.

I think those could and should happen over the summer, but also knowing that that's not when people are the most engaged.

I don't think we need to wait until there's a preliminary plan to ask people about it.

My expectation as a board member is that a preliminary plan comes with and this is what the people that we that are served in our district like we we have done some engagement already and this that helped inform the recommendations that we're making to you.

Yeah.

Timeline.

Understandability not just transparency I guess.

And then I would like to see a lot more clarity about the limitations.

Oh and then lastly I think what families really want to know is even if they're like I understand that we have to do this for a well resourced school they want to know what does that mean.

How big is my kids class going to be.

What what does staffing look like in the building.

Even if we, we are not gonna know 100%, but like a good kind of prototypical expectation, there's also a confusion that class sizes are going, that classes are going to be larger in a larger school.

And so how we can help folks understand, like Brandon was saying, what's the experience that my child is gonna have at this school as opposed to the school we're in currently, what will that look like?

And that's what I wanna understand, that when we approve something, that we're approving something that pencils out that is not aspirational.

Director Briggs.

Evan Briggs

Hi everyone.

Sorry I was late.

I think I said this last time and I'm going to say it again.

I would still really love to see how this plan is going to impact secondary education because I think that's an important part of the story to tell that that while this is really focused on elementary and the impact will be greatest for them, there is a ripple effect and I think a positive one on creating a more efficient system and what that can do for our middle and high schools as well.

And so I'm not, so far I haven't seen anything about that and I think that's, it's a missed opportunity.

because I think that's sort of an added, that's a bonus, that's a benefit to creating a system of well-resourced schools is that we will free up more resources for middle and high schools that have been bearing the brunt to some degree of an inefficient system.

So I just would hope that you know before this presentation is complete that we could have at least a high level idea of what that looks like.

Joe Mizrahi

Potential negative consequences like you mentioned feeder patterns I'm curious how that all gets impacted as well.

Gina Topp

I will say one thing I think that you know the direction I think that we gave was to come back with a plan to show us how to how we can best use our resources to get better student outcomes or to get student out to get the student outcomes we want.

I have bought into the idea that closing schools will allow us to do that and to get additional benefit.

But as you go through this summer planning and you see and and maybe the analysis shows that that's not the case.

I want there to be space that you come back with that response to.

because we've put a lot on you to come and show us that.

But you may come back and say we tried we did this analysis and here's where we're at.

And I think you need to have the space to be able to say that as well.

Michelle Sarju

The thought bubble.

This is a lot and you know this whole setup doesn't allow for us to engage with the people and I tend not to follow the rules.

And so I'm going to speak to the people for a minute because this is a lot.

It's a lot for us up here like our elected official status.

We don't have special brains that allow us to like comprehend all of this stuff at the same time and make sense of it.

The central staff this particularly the senior level staff I'm a hundred ninety nine point nine percent because can we never be 100 percent sure that they are doing their level best to try to grapple with this.

Even in sometimes when it feels like wow that's that's not what I thought we were going to get.

And so as we because we're trying to get this right y'all at the end of the day we're just trying to get this right.

We are going to have to consolidate schools.

This is my fourth I was trying to count them experience as a parent in this district for almost 40 years of some kind of school closure or consolidation.

Was I happy with any of them.

No I wasn't because it actually impacted kids in my neighborhood and yet it still happened.

And here we are again and what we're actually trying to do this time is prepare for a future that we know based on data is coming.

It's coming.

Unless we get rid of birth control the birth rate is going down.

I'm in public health.

We have been seeing this.

That would be the solution.

If we want more kids, let's just eliminate birth control.

I'm not advocating for that.

Affordable housing.

Affordable housing, that's true.

And birth control.

I'm all for birth control, though, as a midwife.

So as I sit here, I think what I'm grappling with is just the volume of information and trying to make sense of it.

And so what we're asking you is, is there a different way to present more simplified information that is specific and clear to the people in the audience, right?

Like if we think about who is our audience, yes, we as board directors, you're talking to us, you're not necessarily talking to them, but I don't think anybody wants to come back and sit and experience this again and leave and not really know what we're saying.

So for the record, I think on that page where you have next steps, like when you say explore multiple scenarios, EG, K-8s, option schools, dual language and highly capable, That's a really general statement.

I think what you're saying is that we may have to eliminate K-8s.

And if that's what we're saying, then let's use that clear language.

Parents may not like it.

They can come yell at me.

Sorry, had to do with my kids.

I mean, this is not about being likable.

Parents want to know.

And why would we eliminate K-8s?

Like what is the rationale?

Why is that good for our system?

That's what they want to know.

And so when you the bottom bullet is clear, clearly communicate along the way that should be the top bullet.

Because if that's the top bullet then everything that comes after that you're asking yourself are we clearly communicating along the way.

You shouldn't have to have a master's or a Ph.D. to understand this and that's kind of what it feels like.

I don't want to go back to school.

Right, like I wanna be able to understand it in clear and plain and simple language.

And what I think is, even though people may not like what they're hearing, I think the majority of people are gonna understand, okay, I don't like this, but I understand this is what we have to do.

Right, this is a life lesson.

When we tell our kids, you gotta do something, and they say, I don't want to, well, you don't have a choice.

Zeke you got to do it do it first and then we can talk about why I asked you to do it later.

But the first thing is you got to do it first.

Right.

And I think that's what parents want.

Right.

Ultimately nobody wants their school closed.

If we're being honest nobody wants their school closed.

And at the end of the day we're going to have to close and consolidate some schools period point blank.

I'm saying it for the record.

It's got to happen.

We cannot continue in this trajectory.

So that's what I'm asking you all is make make it simple for yourselves.

as central staff because you are presenting this to us and then we're giving you feedback and hopefully this feedback is like, let's just state what's true, the plain truth like Liza said and then let's work from there.

And at the end of the day, I think parents will appreciate that kind of process, that kind of, as a former board director used to say, transparency I think at the end of the day we will meet that mark if we do that.

Liza Rankin

All right.

Public comment is next.

Yes.

Public comment will be in five minutes.

Once it is 5 p.m.

or later is what my notes say.

It's later.

We will now go into public testimony.

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

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

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

Listed speakers 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 or waiting list.

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

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

and the board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as we expect of ourselves.

I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by this procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines may be asked to leave the meeting.

Staff, please read off the testimony speakers.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

For those who are joining online, when we come to your name, you can press star six to unmute yourself on the conference call line.

Right now your mic might be disabled, but I will make it so that you can unmute when we come to your name.

We did have Izzy Rampersand as our first speaker, our same student speaker from Ballard High School, but it looks like Izzy just had to drop off the line.

So if Izzy rejoins, I'll go back to Izzy.

So then our next speaker will be Dominic Parker.

Oh, actually Izzy is on.

Sorry, Dominic.

Let's go to Izzy.

Um, let me make sure that your mic is working there.

SPEAKER_11

Yes.

Hello.

We can hear you.

Awesome.

Okay.

Um, hello members of the school board.

Uh, my name is Izzy Rampersad and I am a recently graduated senior from Ballard high school.

I'm here to make a proposal for the school board to form a committee with teachers and students in order to re-examine the grading policy for the school district, particularly the section regarding the minimum grade for missing assignment being 50%.

For my final project in my AP statistics class, my group collected data on the percentage of assignments that students had turned in versus their percentage grade in that class.

And then we made a scatterplot of this data and formed a linear regression line.

We chose this topic for our study because we noticed that some students at Ballard are chronically absent but do not seem to find that is majorly impacting their grades.

We wanted to investigate whether the current grading policy is allowing students to miss class and turn in a minimal number of assignments yet maintain a passable GPA.

What we found was that the predicted value of a student turning in zero assignments was a 61% grade in the class, 11 percentage points higher than the passing grade of 50%.

I know our data is only from Ballard High School, and I know that our school has a lower percentage of students furthest from educational justice for whom this policy was supposed to benefit.

Though I think that if this is the policy going forward, there needs to be some serious conversation as to whether it is actually benefiting students to see a 50% rather than a zero.

I believe that school is meant to prepare us for our future, going into the workforce, next steps of our life, maybe higher education.

And I don't believe that this grading policy is preparing students adequately for those next steps.

I don't get half of a paycheck when I don't show up for work.

Grades are meant to communicate understanding and learning, and therefore students and teachers deserve the district looking at the policy and not just rolling forward with the current model.

Thank you for your time and for listening.

I would ask the school board to create a committee with teachers and students to have a conversation about this policy and how it's impacting students.

Thank you.

Liza Rankin

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Thank you very much.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Dominic Parker.

Dominic if you press star 6 you should unmute from the conference line.

SPEAKER_25

Hello, my name is Dominic Parker.

Oh, something just happened there.

Can you hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

We can hear you.

SPEAKER_25

Okay, thank you.

My name is Dominic Parker.

I graduated from Seattle Public Schools last Thursday and I would like to share my experience.

I started attending a developmental preschool at Greenwood Elementary at three years old as a supposedly typically developing peer to be a role model for my disabled classmates.

and I attended Pathfinder K-8 in West Seattle until December 2016 when the impact on my mental health became too great because I did not receive the support I needed for my learning disabilities.

I became depressed starting around 10 years old and I was telling my parents that I did not want to live because my school was restricting my ability to learn and participate.

I didn't get an IEP until I was 12 and a half years old and only then thanks to my parents' advocacy.

I had to stay out of school for over seven months and repeated sixth grade at Denny Middle School.

I was bullied all year and left the district for three years after that.

I returned for 10th grade and didn't get any instruction for half a year because I could not attend classes in person.

Only my zero period jazz band teacher provided remote access to the classes.

I was identified as a highly capable student by SPS in elementary school, but other than seventh grade math in sixth grade, I never received highly capable services during my time in SPS.

I wasn't invited to the advanced math classes initially because I had a hard time focusing and I worked slowly.

I could easily do a higher level of math with the appropriate support, but if my parents didn't speak up, I would not have had that opportunity.

I needed adequate support of special education services and the challenge of highly capable services.

Neither of those were provided and I'm still having to catch up on skills that I need for college and beyond.

My brother who is now a seventh grader at Pathfinder has similar needs.

The school psychologist kept denying evaluations to me and when he did evaluate me he dismissed he dismissed my needs.

He is still there.

He also denied my mom ADA accommodations and said that since she has English as a second language her input into my evaluation would cause questionable evaluation results even though she is fluent in English.

I don't understand why someone who caused so much harm to me and other students over the years would still be working with kids especially with when SPS is aware of the impact of his discrimination.

I'm glad to be done with Seattle Public Schools.

Thank you for your time.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Thank you Dominic.

The next speaker is Sarah Butler.

Sarah it looks like you need to set up your.

You should be able to unmute by pressing star 6. ELLIE WILSON- We can hear you.

Joe Mizrahi

SARAH BUTLER- Hello.

I am Sarah Butler.

I have two children at Seattle Public Schools.

I'm speaking today about item 4 on the agenda which sets regular board meetings to be held only once a month for the 24-25 school year.

I heard Director Rankin's comment about adding special meetings but I do not understand the public benefit to reducing regular meetings.

These regular meetings are extremely important for two reasons.

The first reason the district is headed into a very very difficult year.

The board has so much work to do to address the fiscal crisis and to address student focused outcomes and the board and the public need time to work through these issues in a thoughtful way.

The second reason is that regular meetings with the public comment period are an extremely important platform for the public.

I have watched families use public comment as a venue to spotlight problems that they tried to solve with the district on their own such as problems with staff at their school or safety concerns.

It would be a huge loss to lose half of those meetings.

The Seattle School District is a complex organization that oversees a $1.2 billion budget and it impacts the lives of nearly 50,000 students and their families very deeply.

Meeting once a month is not enough oversight during an enrollment and a budget crisis or any time.

My expectation is that our elected and appointed officials hold regular meetings at least twice a month to show their work to the public.

And my expectation is that these meetings allow for public comment.

I urge you to adopt a regular meeting calendar that meets at least twice a month.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

Chris Jackins

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. On action items on today's board agenda I am including written comments.

Two examples number one on the Moss Adams contract Moss Adams expertise would be misused toward reducing the board's due diligence with delegation of monitoring to staff.

This sounds like the FAA and Boeing.

Number two, on final acceptance of field work at Madison and West Seattle High School, these projects included artificial turf with forever chemicals.

On school closures, four points.

Number one, I have visited many targeted schools and I have provided the district with dozens of signed statements by parents and others opposing school closures.

Number two, there are other ways to address budget gaps such as using the interest on capital funds to help out with operations costs as allowed by state law, RCW 28A-320-320.

Number three the district notes that its local operations levies are capped by the state but the district can and does accept money from separate city run levies.

The district should ask the city to repurpose existing city levy funds to keep schools open and to retain teachers and other staff.

Number four, I have helped people go to court to fight past school closures and to petition to recall school board directors.

I will happily do so again.

The board directed the superintendent to present a school closure plan by June 2024. That did not happen.

The board agenda does not include a vote to authorize a plan for September.

The board should vote tonight to stop the school closure process.

Please do not close schools.

Thank you very much.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Betty Pauly.

Betty Pauly.

SPEAKER_10

Hello my name is Betty Pauley a parent of two young children in the SPS system.

I came here today with prepared testimony but after engaging in today's presentation I'm going to go a bit off the cuff.

Board members thank you for humanizing this process emphasizing transparency for considering the timeline the enormity of this proposal and the magnitude of accountability that sits on the shoulders of the superintendent.

SPS staff and ultimately the voting members of the board.

The timeline feels overwhelmingly congested and rushed, which brings me to my most significant point.

It is our expectation that you, Dr. Jones and the board are making your utmost priority the psychological experience of the individual child.

It is alarming to us that you plan to initiate school closures in the 25-26 academic year.

This plan most significantly impacts would be fifth graders the exact same kids who were most negatively impacted by covid as they experienced kindergarten remotely we are seeing from this cohort devastating behavioral challenges it is undeniably true and research supports that disrupting this cohort's fragile stability they hear before they make the change to middle school would have long lasting detrimental effects continuity of social groups is important to children Again, Dr. Jones, I urge you to come assess for yourself the vibrancy of the places you are contemplating closing.

We have faith in you.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Cheryl Lynn Crowther.

Cheryl Lynn Crowther.

SPEAKER_09

Hi I'm Sherrilyn Crowther and I am the immediate past president of the Seattle special education PTSA.

I have my notes and then I came to listen and I've been rewriting the whole time.

So and I also had a good conversation with Dr. Torres which I hope proves true that staffing for special education students will be available the first day of school in all schools.

OK.

But the one thing that I really wanted to talk about is something on the consent agenda item for Blue Sprig Pediatrics Autism Program.

It's all of a $1.5 million expansion or a total of $1.5 million.

But I'd gotten curious after talking to a school board member down in Kent about the growing business of ABA by national organizations.

Blue Sprig is owned by KKR, a worldwide private equity firm.

It is part of their healthcare growth portfolio.

In other words, it is an investment expected to generate significant returns.

I choose to believe that funneling more money into a profit-driven entity is disturbing to special education administrators within this building, though I suspect the finance and budgeting departments see this as an obvious solution.

Use the state's safety net funding to pay private businesses instead of providing the services through hiring training and supporting staff a more sustainable service and integrated into the schools.

When did special education services become a moneymaker.

In much of the talk about REL resource schools I've wondered do people recognize how under resourced special education is in this district.

I intended to talk about equity instead I am talking about private equity making money off of the public school system with the changes that we have ahead of us and the potential or the potential threat or concern about charter schools taking over some of the buildings as well.

I want to keep some of this as public schools public free and appropriate education.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera.

Laura Marie Rivera.

And speakers as you come to the podium or unmute to please do reintroduce yourself especially if I have mispronounced your name.

SPEAKER_15

Good afternoon.

I'm Laura Marie Rivera and I yield my time to my favorite Seattle Public Schools students who have been very patient this afternoon.

SPEAKER_36

My name is Alice and this is my brother Zach.

Today is our birthday and we are here to remind you that we have about 50,000 students here in Seattle Public Schools and this means that we have 50,000 individual learning profiles.

This is why we must keep the option schools open.

K through 8 schools dual language immersion advanced math inquiry based learning parent partnerships STEM or STEAM career and technical skills alternate high schools or early college.

Our students need all of the options and in the name of equity we need to have more options available instead of less.

and i am here to remind you that student outcomes focus government needs to focus on the students and as individuals the cdc says that one in four people have a disability but it seems like sps does not consider us when making new policies i am concerned that nobody is thinking about us when closing school is either For example, why is the school nurse two days a week?

What happens on the other days?

And when consolidating schools, where are the additional staff to help with special education needs?

SPS has not considered their needs in the past.

Students with disabilities are some of the students furthest from educational justice, and SPS must do better.

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

Thank you, Zach and Allison, happy birthday.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Andrew Broninger.

SPEAKER_33

So I get to follow that, okay.

Like many of the previous commenters, I came in here with prepared remarks, I rehearsed it, and then I kind of threw it all out because I thought today's presentation was very good and very informative, so I sort of had to sort of write new things on the cuff.

I'm just talking about a few things that I didn't hear much about.

I first of all I'm a parent of a second grader North Beach Elementary.

North Beach is one of what President Rankin talks about one of these north end schools is pretty old.

And those of us in North Beach community are quite concerned about the prospect of our school closing.

We love that school.

But you know we're also very concerned about is what will be the experience regardless of whether the school closes or not.

We've looked at what the plan for well resourced schools is and it does not look good.

You know, everything the previous commenters mentioned about, you know, the nurse resourcing and the, you know, everything else, the counseling, everything else, it does not look like the definition of a well-resourced school.

This is clearly a school system in crisis.

I want to know what are you doing to advocate with the legislature?

the district is in grave financial peril and you know it's not just a hundred million dollar deficit now it's growing to 150 million dollars in two years and what are you going to do two years from now you're going to close 40 more schools i mean it just doesn't work out there's a statewide crisis in k-12 funding and i think it needs to be addressed at the state level and i want to hear what the seattle school board is doing to advocate with the state to really fix the problem and not do these paper cut fixes that you guys are proposing I also think personally, the estimate of saving $30 million from closing 20 schools seems wildly optimistic.

We've seen from other school districts that have done this, they have not realized cost savings that they hoped for.

And I'm very curious, I would love to hear you all explain why you think Seattle will be different in that regard.

And finally, the demographics.

You know, it's hard to escape.

Yes, people are having smaller families, but I walk around my neighborhood in Crown Hill and every third lot is being redeveloped from single family homes to townhouses in high density.

And it's just hard to connect these realities together.

So I'm looking forward to digging into the data that you all share to really understand whether I can actually believe the trends you project.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Brendan Levy.

Brendan Levy.

SPEAKER_24

Hi.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

I'm a parent with kids at SPS speaking about the mass school closures.

I appreciate what you've shared tonight.

I just want to get out of the theoretical and into actual alternatives.

As an example, the slide showing a plan entitled Maintain the Current System of Schools with CUPAC isn't great, as its red backwards arrow seems designed to imply.

But actually, I think the majority of us would prefer that, even with some larger classes, to the bulk closures as you proposed.

The trust inherent in stable neighborhood schools gives us the emotional and literal space to fight for enrollment regrowth.

There may not be 5,000 additional kids to enroll in Seattle today, but we're losing families to the east side, in part based on this constant short-term thinking.

In other cities, mass closures of neighborhood schools effectively caused mean testing and insidiously worsened inequity, harming student outcomes as rich kids move to private schools or out of the district, shrinking the pie for all.

SPS runs on enrollment dollars, but to stabilize enrollment requires a culture of trust, transparency, and shared community long-term vision.

In theory, it may make financial sense to put every student into a one-size-fits-all school using statewide staffing models.

However, in practice, I don't think that's what parents want or what's best for kids by the data and will accelerate a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling declining of the kindergarten capture rate.

The school my kids go to is small, but its teachers and staff love it.

The climate survey was overwhelmingly positive.

Our school is small, but we have green space and fields to use vaccines across the city.

Our school is small, but it's efficient and uses less tax dollars to educate each child than the enrollment fee earned from the state.

Our school is small, but I vastly prefer it to a big box school across busy streets that tries to check off every part of a well-resourced school's checklist.

I don't want a school to close, and at the very least, I want to be meaningfully involved in the choice.

We want to be your allies asking the states for the money our Constitution promises.

We want to be your allies in designing optimistic and pragmatic visions for the future.

Give us plans, constraints, and real alternatives as President Reagan urges, and let us decide with you.

Thank you for your service.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Leslie Harris.

SPEAKER_06

My name is Leslie Harris.

I am a has-been school board member for eight years.

From an admired teacher in the district, quote, punting as often as the Seahawks.

You had this conversation in November.

plenty of time this last year to listen as opposed to carefully choreograph sit and get meetings, which you chose not to have in the southeast portion of our district.

Don't get it.

You didn't suddenly wake up and realize folks have a desire to be part of the solution.

You kicked the can.

You have been working with a matrix of decision-making for at least a year.

Why so paranoid not to show that?

If the draft list isn't available until September, and if there isn't a draft list already, then that's just plain cowardness and negligence.

That compressed timeframe with the legalities of closures, hearings, boundary changes, Boundary changes.

You want to see ugly?

Boundary changes.

Budget deficit conversations, safety conversations and hopefully changes and holidays will prevent real engagement and the possibility for input and change.

Oh, let's add to that list Beck's renewal levy and collective bargaining agreement negotiations.

That's a perfect storm and was entirely preventable by planning and leadership.

That which we aspire to teach our students, listening and learning.

This dissolves trust in the district its administration and board and I most sincerely do not wish to be correct in this analyst analysis It's painful.

Please address the elephant in the room and processes about option schools and K through eights and the rationalization for those beliefs and and If it's gonna happen, please say so and why.

And please address how much real money will be saved for closures netted out with the increased transportation, mothballing expenses, displaced, laid off staff costs added to these equations.

For example, is it true that some 40% of our principal core is not coming back for 24, 25?

If that's the case, that's really profound.

If it's not the case, let's give us please a percentage.

Senior staff positions have exploded in the last few years, yet there has not been a commensurate quality uptick.

And if you disagree, please tell us how.

The long range capital planning task force dissolved some years ago might have helped.

as well as the defunct board committees for operations and finance, even the executive committee, may have assisted in ferreting out the details, proposed timing and work plan and basis for such a large and belated undertaking.

The district is now bereft of advisory committees or inclination to seek input from families, students and voters.

We obviously need the help.

We could and can do much better.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Josh Doherty.

Josh Doherty.

SPEAKER_13

Hello, I'd like to cede my time to Heidi Yochum.

SPEAKER_21

Hi, I'm Heidi Yochum.

I have two children that attend Seattle Public Schools.

I'm also a special education chair of RPTA at our elementary school.

I'm profoundly concerned over the proposed closures, especially of the Continuum's elementary schools.

It is essential that the board considers the far-reaching consequences of such decisions.

I urge you to look at what you're mandated to do, especially in the RCWs.

You can say it supports the learning needs of all the students in the district and give special attention to high need schools and classrooms and to determine the allocation of staff time, whether certified or classified.

I take that as a huge charge.

My son who just finished second grade has had seven special education teachers in his short three years of education.

He should have only had two.

And in his program cohort, they didn't have an occupational therapist for six months.

This is due to the intentional district understaffing and underhiring of qualified teachers and support staff.

He's finally excelling after six months of consistent and adequate staffing.

Research shows school closures are disproportionately affecting students with disabilities adversely.

They require consistent routines, familiar environments to thrive, and this upheaval caused by school closures can lead to regression, academic and behavioral progress.

Seattle Public Schools has not shared detailed plans on how they're actually going to implement well-resourced schools or transition special education services and programs to the schools that do not currently have them.

Where are the staff going?

Who are these staff?

This lack of clarity raises significant concerns about the continuity and the quality of our education of the most vulnerable students.

Seattle Public Schools must do better.

We need concrete, transparent, which I do understand, plans communicated to us.

How can you provide consistent, high quality education in an inclusive environment if we don't have these?

This is your legal responsibility.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Peggy Fu.

Peggy Fu.

SPEAKER_35

Good evening, my name is Peggy Lewis-Fu, and I am the parent of three children in SPS, one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school.

I'm here to express my deep concerns regarding the lack of transparency, inclusivity, and accessibility in this decision-making process.

In stark contrast to Seattle, San Francisco Public Schools has implemented multiple phases of community engagement regarding their upcoming school closures and mergers.

Prior to their releasing their proposed criteria, they engaged thousands of participants through surveys, held over 30 public forums and community advisory meetings, and outreach to almost 300 community-based organizations.

Moreover, San Francisco is hiring independent third-party researchers to rank schools based on criteria and will create several proposals instead of just one.

They are hiring Stanford University conduct an equity audit to ensure no community is disproportionately impacted.

This comprehensive approach exemplifies how school districts should operate by prioritizing transparency, inclusivity, and genuine community engagement.

Seattle public schools must strive to do better.

We need a transparent process that involves all stakeholders and includes a leadership commitment to increase community input, hires independent third-party researchers like Stanford to vet proposals, and communicates clear timelines that do not change the day before meetings, which further erodes our confidence in SPS leadership and all of you on an already difficult topic.

Our children deserve better than decisions made in the dark.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Gregory Dawson Nichols.

Gregory Dawson Nichols.

SPEAKER_23

Hi, thanks for hearing me.

My name is Dawson Nichols.

I work for the Office of Head Start.

I go around the country doing trainings on early child development and learning.

My own children went through the SPS and are graduates now.

So I am here only as a concerned community member and somebody who knows a great deal about how children learn.

And I guess I just essentially want to say differently.

children learn very differently from one another.

There seems to be an animus toward alternative programming and option schools that I really don't understand, and there seems to be a trend toward homogenization of programming and curriculum.

And I just want to say that if we think that we can have one system that is going to serve optimally every child who walks through the door, they can be put through the same sort of program We're wrong.

Children need different learning environments to reach their own maximum potential.

We have, I don't know, pea patches, and we don't ask that everyone plant the same thing and do the exact same kind of gardening.

We shouldn't do that in our schools either.

The metaphor I like to think of, and this is borrowed from a researcher much better than me, is that we are not carpenters.

We are gardeners.

We can't construct children as though they're coming down some sort of industrial line where we can do the exact same thing to each one, and each one will have a wonderful education at the end of this.

They don't work that way.

Plants grow differently.

And they thrive in different environments.

We need those different environments.

We need to embrace those diverse environments.

So if the upshot of a lot of your decisions tends toward a homogenization, I would ask you to rethink some of the decisions that you're making.

The talk earlier about Thornton Creek being between two schools and conveniently having some excess capacity.

Well, it has excess capacity because people are not being let off the wait list.

So in the end, it may look like this is an alternative program.

We can shut down.

Please reconsider that.

We need a lot of diversity in our educational programming.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Jeremy Masner.

Jeremy Masner.

SPEAKER_12

Good evening.

A well-resourced school is a safe school.

SBS has failed to provide the resources to keep the students and staff at Garfield High School safe.

Dr. Jones wrote that business as usual in the wake of such a tragedy is unfathomable, but business as usual is exactly what the Garfield community experienced after the March 13th shooting.

You'll find in your email history my message from March 17th pleading with you to imagine the headline Garfield students slain and asking you proactively prevent that rather than waiting to react after the fact.

Your lack of response in March, April, and May is indeed unfathomable.

Providing sustainable and equitable access starts with safety.

I'm glad Dr. Jones outlined specific funded steps as a starting point, but what's happening at Garfield is unique and merits unique focus.

Look at this sign.

Seven incidents of gunfire at Garfield in one year.

Compare that to Nova or Franklin.

Garfield is an unhappy outlier.

SPD tells us some of the gun violence comes from gang members driving to the school to target specific students.

What resources are you providing to Garfield to develop a meaningful safety plan to get targeted students out of harm's way for themselves and their peers?

Students tell us it's an open secret that some are bringing guns to school.

What resources are you providing to Garfield to bring those whispers into the open and ensure guns are not present on school grounds?

Dr. Hart has asked for the flexibility to have SPD in the building, which is why the PTSA Safe Schools Action Plan calls for an immediate change to board policy to allow for a school resource officer at Garfield.

Why is this policy change not on the agenda tonight?

You need an immediate change if Garfield is going to be ready for next year.

Gun violence is a community issue.

It needs a community solution.

But Garfield cannot wait for any more forums or task forces.

You are our school leaders.

It is time to lead.

Don't tell us what you can't do or why your hands are tied.

Tell us what you need from the state and the city.

And let us be advocates together for policies and resourcing to give Garfield students and staff the safety they deserve.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Michael Lentz.

Michael Lentz.

Michael if you're on the line you'll need to press star 6 to unmute.

Not seeing Michael on the conference call line.

I'm going to move to our next speaker and check back later for Michael.

Manuela Sly.

SPEAKER_27

Can you hear me.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes we can hear you Manuela.

Can you hear me?

SPEAKER_27

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Manuela Sly.

I'm a proud mother of three West Seattle High School graduates.

I also serve on the Seattle Council PTSA Board.

I want to emphasize the importance to publicly discuss the progress monitoring of guardrails on today's agenda listed as informational items as follows.

Number one, the superintendent will not allow school and district initiatives to go forth without engaging students of color, furthest from educational justice and their families, including those who have a preferred language other than English and who require accommodations for disabilities.

Number two, the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service.

And number three, the superintendent will not allow adult behaviors in central office, school buildings, or classrooms that are misaligned with district-wide vision, values, and anti-racism initiatives.

Thank you very much.

I cede the rest of my time to Liz Berry, who is in the room.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you.

Thank you, Manuela.

Hello, board members.

I'm Liz Berry.

I'm an SPS parent, and I've been a dual language Spanish immersion teacher in SPS since 2006. I was at Hamilton for five years, and I've been at Denny's since 2012. These program models are very different, and while both have incredible value for our scholars, I want to ask you to consider a model in the Southwest region that would provide access for all of our heritage Spanish-speaking students.

The Denny and Concord programs are designed to prioritize the needs of heritage and native Spanish speakers.

Biliteracy for heritage speakers is not just enriching, but it is necessary for them to have academic and social success within their families as young people and as they go on as adults.

As you discuss school consolidations, I want to offer an idea that would better serve our heritage Spanish speakers in the Southwest region.

I would like to see the expansion of the dual language program in the Southwest region that provides transportation to all heritage speakers and a one-step enrollment process that would facilitate it for families.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Justina Schwartz.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Justina Schwartz.

Is Justina in the room?

Justina, if you're, oh.

Good evening.

We can hear you, Justina.

Can you hear me?

SPEAKER_29

Yes.

Wonderful, thank you.

Good evening, Seattle School Board of Directors, Superintendent Jones, and members of the community.

My dog says hello as well.

My name is Justina Schwartz.

I am a single mother of two Seattle Public Schools students including a NeuroSpicy kiddo and the Pathfinder PTSA president-elect.

Before I get into what I came here to say I really want to acknowledge the Bray students for their testimony this evening.

Your voice matters so very much and please never forget that.

I am here to speak on behalf of over 350 parents and caregivers of the Pathfinder K-8 community, where we have been struggling for years with a lack of leadership, accountability, and communication from our administration.

As a parent, I send my kids to school with an expectation of a safe, supportive, and positive learning environment.

I feel that is a pretty basic right for all students.

However that has not been the experience of many at Pathfinder or from what I hear several schools in Seattle.

I've connected with dozens of caregivers who have followed the district's process sent their concerns in email filled out the forms and our administration responds with either dismissal gaslighting or just silence.

That is not leadership and that is not how you build trust or community.

Taking it a step further we have sent numerous emails to Director Carter and Dr. Jones which have gone unanswered.

With the exception of Dr. Carter asking to meet with our group during the May 2nd board meeting which seems like an attempt to block our group from speaking on that day the lack of response and any effort to commit to communicate from our district leaders exacerbates the frustration and concern within our community driving further disconnection between the administration and the community it's supposed to serve.

Pathfinder K-8 and every school deserve a safe and supportive learning environment where accountability and communication are prioritized.

At Pathfinder we need new leadership and we need change.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Kathleen Warren.

Kathleen Warren.

Hello.

Oh, we can hear you, Kathleen.

SPEAKER_13

Hello.

This is Kathleen Warren.

Can you hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes.

SPEAKER_13

Okay, great.

Thank you.

My name is Kathleen Warren, and I wanted to speak about my child's experience at our school with trying to get them the help and support they need.

My child's school conducted a special education evaluation after we had been trying to get her help since for the past five years since she was in first grade.

She's now a rising sixth grader.

The special education evaluation that they ended up conducting this past year did not appropriately address her needs.

We requested an independent educational evaluation at public expense also because my autistic child's communication was not assessed properly and her assistive technology needs were not even part of the evaluation.

The school psychologist sent me an evaluation report before the eligibility meeting at my request.

and recorded that he did not qualify her for an IEP.

He even named the attached report file DNQ, does not qualify.

The psychologist began the evaluation review meeting by informing the team that my child did not qualify for an IEP.

I am a certificated teacher and I know that the eligibility decision is the decision of a multidisciplinary team, which includes parents.

I've seen the psychologist in meetings for other students at the school to do the same for other students not allowing team discussions or any input into whether the students would qualify for special education services.

He acts as the sole decision maker.

This is leading to several unsafe situations and also many students not receiving the services that they deserve and that they need to access their education.

I've experienced several instances where the psychologist denied eligibility for services or declined to even assess students who clearly needed them.

My child continues to need services as evidenced by various incidents including the principal of the school restraining her on the floor and then isolating her.

We can't punish children for their disability by physical violence.

I'm concerned closing smaller schools such as our school Pathfinder K-8 could have a catastrophic impact on students with disabilities.

My child's teachers and her close relationships she was able to form in a small school with looping is the reason she has been able to stay in school at all.

Moving towards a centralized learning system like the district is proposing in its wealth resource schools plan will not allow students with disabilities access to their free and public education like they are entitled to under the IDEA law.

Moreover, it could put an undue stress on students that need unique educational opportunities and more options like other students have discussed on this board meeting.

Thank you so much.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Nicole Patton.

Nicole Patton.

Nicole Patton.

I'm not seeing Nicole on the line.

I'm going to move to Jana Parker.

SPEAKER_14

Good afternoon.

My name is Yana Parker.

I am the co-president and then next year president of Seattle Special Education, BTSA.

In a recent meeting, Dr. Jones, you challenged people to say SPS doesn't provide high quality services.

You do not.

If services are not provided consistently and to all students who need them, we can't pride ourselves on having high quality services.

This goes for special education evaluations and IEP services, highly capable and multi-language learner services, as well as quality curriculum for students with dyslexia, mental health services, assistive technology equipment, sufficient nursing services and more.

Equitable access to education is very much a privilege dependent in SBS.

The district's exit survey for families does not ask for reasons for unenrolling students.

Instead, the drop-down menu lists options for future plans for the students' learning.

There is no comment box available for input.

We need to know the true reasons why students are leaving in order to improve services and ensure they want to stay and or return.

Look at the more than triple cost of risk management insurance premiums in just six years on the meeting's agenda.

It is now nearly $9 million with half a million dollars self-insured retention a year.

I understand that this amount shows that SPS is a high-risk district prone to litigation and utilizing the insurance far more than others.

When parents get desperate enough to get their child the support they require to learn, a couple of dispute resolution options are special education community complaints with OSPI or due process hearing.

The insurance provides the district with $5,000 for legal fees for special education community complaint and $35,000 for due process, which can be expanded as needed.

Parents also get, no, they get nothing, but additional burden to advocate for their children and their child continues to struggle while the adults are fighting.

Please listen and collaborate with the student, parent, and teacher communities.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

I'm going to go back to our speakers who we did not hear from earlier.

First was Michael Lentz.

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

I'm going to make sure everybody is able to unmute that we have on the line right now.

Michael Lentz.

OK.

I'm not seeing Michael unmuting.

And then our other speaker is Nicole Patton.

Nicole Patton.

OK.

I'm going to move to the wait list then.

Oliver Misca.

Misca?

Is that Oliver that's unmuted?

SPEAKER_26

Hi I'm unmuted can you hear me.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes we can hear you.

SPEAKER_26

Awesome thanks y'all I was there earlier but I had to go to a different event.

My name is Oliver Misca I'm a substitute in the Seattle Public Schools and community lobbyist.

Tonight in the conversation from what I did hear in the district proposal there was kind of two elephants in the room that were spoken around one of which was ethnic studies and the other one was progressive revenue.

I was going to talk more about progressive revenue today but it just it was it was so interesting hearing you know references to diverse curriculum and students seeing themselves in the curriculum over and over again as a goal for schools and the well resourced school plan as under the sort of inclusive umbrella.

But what I didn't understand and what I what I see in the schools and what students are saying is they're calling that ethnic studies and we're all calling that ethnic studies.

But when we're talking about all of these reforms and we're painting a pretty picture about culturally responsive this or restorative justice practice of that, but when I'm talking to law block who's providing those services, community passageways providing those services, A, they're having a really difficult time accessing any grants through the city and don't want to partner with SPS and all their money is being cut currently.

Whether or not that has anything to do with Mayor Harrell cutting the mental health funds to $10 million from 20 is one thing but it's definitely related.

But it's just certainly alarming to hear all this language around diverse curriculum.

Students have been in school board meetings month after month calling for ethnic studies.

It's called ethnic studies.

So that's the first elephant.

And the second one is progressive revenue.

and our spending allocation and the formulas that go into that.

The Superintendent Brent Jones came into the community meetings when at Garfield that was talking about coming back to the community with a nice tight plan to go to the legislature to fully fund our schools.

Well, Wausau has already developed that plan to the legislature.

And right now it's just, Special education increased by a tiny amount, which Senator Wellman's fighting against, I'm sure you know.

Increased admin costs and addressing some inflation costs.

But I don't see anywhere on there progressive revenue and addressing the revenue, which right now is relying on really, really regressive, the 49th most regressive in this country, right before Florida.

And we're relying on property taxes that ultimately just burden renting people and working people.

So I would really like to see Superintendent Jones and the board stick their necks out a little bit beyond what WASDA is doing and support some progressive revenue and also look at an overhaul of how our allotment and spending goes to individual schools.

Because right now, according to Professor David Knight's work at University of Washington, we're spending 3% less on average in school districts with low income and higher proportions of students of color and i know that we have you know the weighted staff uh model for for our allotment and that does wonders and it's only doing wonders because the state is failing to do that and so we have the opportunity to not just have what our legislators are doing increases to property taxes lifting the the levy lids the bond lids the motor motor threshold no we need progressive revenue we need to tax the rich uh and and and those are some things that we we we would love to work on with you board and superintendent and the district to support and and mobilize parents families educators youth to olympia this january so thank you for your time today um and i appreciate the discourse

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The next speaker is Carol Rava Carol Rava.

Carol in the room.

Carol if you're online please press star 6 to unmute.

OK.

Moving down our waitlist to Samara Inayat.

Is Samara on the line I think I might see the right number online.

I see the hand raised.

If you press star six, it should unmute.

Oh, here, let's try this.

Now we can hear you.

SPEAKER_30

You can hear me?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Yes, we can hear you.

SPEAKER_30

Awesome.

Well, thank you for your time and for the discussion today.

Well, with the discussion on the budget challenges, the idea that closing schools appears to be the timely path.

So addressing the shortfall may seem logical, but if you think about it and really think about it and not take for granted what you're told, you might come to a different conclusion.

Initial reaction may be that, yes, it must be cheaper to have fewer schools, but please think about it.

There's a lack of transparency in actual costs and impacts here.

Schools do not pay a property tax, so the cost of holding the physical building cannot be very large.

Mr. Podesta says that it is not inexpensive to maintain buildings.

I would ask, can you please show us the exact cost numbers of this maintenance cost and also how you're going to save money to arrive at the $100 million shortfall?

You're currently spending around $90 million on a school in my neighborhood to increase capacity where it's actually not needed.

But I digress.

Perhaps just a better use of funding would be something to consider.

Maybe if you hadn't spent that $90 million on this school where capacity was not needed you could have done those maintenance could have taken care of those maintenance issues.

Okay so the number of teachers is that going to be a cost saving?

No because the number of teachers is mandated by a defined student teacher ratio.

So you need the same number of teachers because you have the same number of students whether you operate out of 100 school buildings or 120. So there's no cost savings there with it with the teaching staff.

The only part there may be savings would be individual principal salaries for close schools.

which is likely offset by the added transportation costs to bus children to more schools further outside of their current neighborhoods.

Is that really the path to $100 million in savings?

I would like to see numbers to make that connection.

I would ask the school board demand the school district offer clear details on how these actions actually serve the community and quantify the real budget impacts of such action.

Show us the data.

Please show us the numbers.

I'm glad you are asking how these actions will result in better student outcomes but please also ask how specifically we arrive at any savings whatsoever when all things are considered.

Also please remember smaller schools are a better learning environment of four children.

Thank you for your attention today and thank you for your service.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

That was our final speaker for today.

Liza Rankin

Sorry I got the wrong stack of paper in front of you.

OK.

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

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

Michelle Sarju

Move it and then I'll ask for.

I move for approval of the consent agenda.

Liza Rankin

I second.

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

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

Michelle Sarju

I do.

I would like to remove item number seven approval of amendment to Blue Sprig pediatric con contract for the 2023 2024.

Liza Rankin

Sorry.

OK.

So may I have a revised motion.

Gina Topp

Liza can I remove number 4 approval of the 2024 2025 regular board meeting dates.

Liza Rankin

OK.

So we've removed item 4 item 7. May I have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended?

Michelle Sarju

I move as revised for the consent agenda.

Is that right?

Approval of the consent agenda.

As amended.

SPEAKER_31

As amended.

Liza Rankin

I second all that.

All right.

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

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

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Sorry.

All right.

I believe I heard everybody.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Okay, so I would entertain a motion for items removed from the consent agenda.

I don't know if it matters if we go in number, does it matter if we go in number order or the order they were removed?

All right, let's start with number four.

May I please have a motion for item number four?

Michelle Sarju

Thank you for your patience.

This is confusing.

I move that the board approve the following 2024-2025 regular board meeting dates.

August 28, 2024. September 18th 2024. She said I had to read them all.

October 9th 2024 Tuesday November 19th 2024 December 18th 2024. January 22, 2025. February 12, 2025. March 12, 2025. April 23, 2025. May 14, 2025. June 4, 2025. Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Liza Rankin

I second that.

Yeah, I'm going to move we get rid of seconding.

Not right now.

Just to note, the Tuesday, the November that's a Tuesday, that's a change from the original posting in case you missed it because we have a WASDA meeting.

And then there's and then the last regularly scheduled board meeting of the year is a Tuesday again as is this year.

All the other ones are on Wednesday.

I know we had some odd ones this year on a Monday and all the other ones on a Wednesday.

All right.

Director Topp.

Gina Topp

Sure.

I will ultimately support this motion motion but I pulled it just so I can put an emphasis on the idea of neat with there is a lot going on it from August through July 2020 August 2024 to July 2025. Thank you Michelle for reading off all those dates.

And it's going to take a lot of coordination.

It's going to take more than just one meeting a month.

And I'm going to put an emphasis on making sure that at our board retreat in August we schedule these out and publish them for the public and for ourselves.

I think that is imperative for us to do.

both because we have so much going on, but also for our community who we want to inform and be as transparent and open about our processes.

So I pulled it just to highlight that again and really push us in August to schedule these things out.

Liza Rankin

I don't need to second it, but I totally agree.

Oh, and related to that, you should have in your emails requests for dates for that retreat.

So please respond if you have not.

Gina Topp

I have not responded, and I will.

Liza Rankin

Great.

Any other questions on this item?

All right.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, roll call, please.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Topp?

Gina Topp

Aye.

Brandon Hersey

Do you want mine?

You got a few.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Hersey?

Joe Mizrahi

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Mizrahi?

Joe Mizrahi

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Sarju?

Joe Mizrahi

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

And President Rankin?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

May I have a motion for the other item pulled from the consent agenda.

Item number seven.

Michelle Sarju

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to amend the contract with Blue Sprig Pediatrics in the amount of seven hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars.

No seven hundred and seventy seven What?

How do I read that?

SPEAKER_99

$777,367,000.

Michelle Sarju

Ooh, my math skills have gone.

Bringing the total contract for 2023-2024 to $1,527,367 for applied behavior analysis therapy for students as required by the students' Individualized Education Programs, also known as IEPs, from September 1st, 2023 through August 31st, 2024, with any minor additions, deletions, modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Evan Briggs

I second.

Liza Rankin

Director Sarju as the.

Puller of the item, please take the floor.

Michelle Sarju

One of the things I think sometimes that is a really good outcome of public testimony is very astute and educated parents actually pointing things out to us that we wouldn't have otherwise known ourselves.

And thank you to my friend Cheryl Lynn, After that and then after hearing about some other stories about students and their efforts to get IEPs and the challenges and the problems that their families have had, I have real pause for concern about a priority of profit over a priority of our students.

In my opinion based on what I've heard and I'm open to hearing a reason why I should vote for this I don't believe immediate action is in the best interest of families.

Liza Rankin

Before I go to Dr. Torres.

OK.

So the reason that this item is on consent is because according to our policy it's above a contracted threshold.

So I just want to be clear I guess that we are veering into the territory of superintendent work not board work and.

This is extremely I almost swore serious the amount of money that is being spent protecting the liability of the institution instead of ensuring that the needs of children are being met.

is something I have a lot of questions about and have talked with legal counsel about to figure out how that information can actually come to the board.

I also have questions about contracting with outside agencies and the increase in the number of behavioral texts and the expense associated with those and the revolving door of people coming in and out of buildings understanding there are many complexities with with staffing and all kinds of other things.

But in an effort to say something that is board work I'm thinking about what are the questions that we need to ask.

And as we're setting and I Questions from the governance level.

How can we actually address this instead of when there's one item to be approved.

Like this is an ongoing chronic problem that I'm really tired of and it's expensive.

And so that's it sounds like maybe a guardrail.

I mean it is a guardrail and actually quite frankly the interim guardrails do not get at like the removal of students from class.

Missed instructional time because of behavior.

The failure actually to provide safe and welcoming environments so that student behavior leads to scenarios where they are removed from class instead of being educated.

the lack of appropriate intervention at a time where support can be provided instead of removing them from their environment.

So say that like yes.

So I don't I'm I'm also thinking like probably at this point this item whatever children are already planning to attend this program.

I don't know that voting no makes the immediate sense even though it might feel like the right thing.

But it's a bigger problem.

And then where do those kids go.

Gina Topp

Can I get some clarity.

Is this money already spent for the past school year and is already the services have already been provided.

So this is not moving forward.

We've already.

Sorry actually yes money.

Liza Rankin

Yes it's for the past school year.

Gina Topp

Yeah and I guess then that leads to my question of when something starts below the board threshold but goes above how do we what is the mechanism for us to know before I guess the money has been spent in life such as in this case.

Liza Rankin

Well for me it's not about the money it's about the students.

Fair.

And so we need to monitor we need to actually monitor the services that are being provided and whether or not students are getting the support that they need regardless of the amount of money that the contract is.

And we don't have to wait for a contract to come forward to care about the services that students receive.

Do you have anything else or anything specific to this item that you want to share.

SPEAKER_37

Yeah.

I just wanted to point out that when we think about this I am duly noted on some of the board testimony from earlier around private equity getting involved and there's some work that should be done on our end to double check some of this.

One of the issues that complicates this is the fact that When you go to look for providers, there are not tons and tons and tons of providers that can provide these services that are specified for students.

So not surprised to hear that private equity firms have figured this out and are trying to profit off of it from public schools.

Not a great thing, but at the same time, it takes us to a place of when we comply with the federal law, this is a team decision as to what the needs of the student are.

And once a team has made the determination that that's the service we need to provide to the student, we have to provide that to the student.

So it puts us as a district in kind of a rock and a hard place between there because we do not have an option.

It is not within our scope, my scope, the board's scope to say that we do not follow an IEP team decision.

We have to follow an IEP team decision.

But in that vein, I think there is further discussion to potentially have over how do we access ABA services.

Now we know more about who's getting into the game and why.

But at the same time, there is a limited number of providers for ABA services.

On the flip side, there's a whole other level of conversation that I think, as a district, we should be getting in around ABA, applied behavior analysis, because there are two competing thoughts on that.

But I do like to note that, in general, people do prefer ABA-type therapies at this time, which is why we see such an uptick in it.

But there is more conversation to be had about that.

Is that potentially the most appropriate path to go through when a kid requires some sort of behavior modification?

Open to further questions of course though.

Gina Topp

I have a quick question.

Go ahead.

The bar said this was for tuition.

Is this a school we're sending kids to or is this services?

SPEAKER_37

This is a service for Bluespring.

And so there they have they provide us a therapist and we have to pay sort of a tuition for the service.

Liza Rankin

So they're coming into the buildings where students are going there.

SPEAKER_37

It depends on the IEP.

It could be a very various mix depending on what the team determined.

Liza Rankin

I don't have any questions that wouldn't lead us into a four hour conversation on this.

So I'm going to.

Unless you had further question that you needed.

Oh it's been moved right.

Sorry.

Miss Wilson Jones roll call please.

Director Briggs aye.

Director Hersey aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Rivera aye.

Oh this is an old document.

Let's go with Director Mizrahi.

Michelle Sarju

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Sarju.

Michelle Sarju

Nay.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Clark.

Aye.

Director Top.

No.

President Rankin?

Liza Rankin

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

This motion has passed with a vote of five yes to two no.

Liza Rankin

Because of time, because we have to have the budget hearing starting at 8, I'm going to skip now in our agenda to the introduction of the budget so that we can have a hearing.

Going out of order on the agenda because the this.

We're going to go back to them because we have to have the budget hearing at 8 o'clock and so we need to have it introduced before we have the hearing.

And if anyone is here to provide.

Comments in the budget hearing the sign up sheet is in the back of the room.

and Dr. Buttleman whenever you are ready.

SPEAKER_34

Dr. Jones, do you wanna start or do you want me to start?

Go for it.

Okay, so finished by eight o'clock, is that what I'm hearing?

so that that's when the budget hearing is scheduled to begin yes okay thank you i'm kurt buttleman assistant superintendent for finance at seattle public schools this is the culmination of nine separate meetings with the board over the course of the last year today we're going to talk about the goals and principles and timeline for which this budget was developed and just to be clear this is for the 24-5 budget that will start in the fall a lot of the discussion earlier in the meeting was about the 25-6 so this is kind of putting the the final touches on the 24-5 budget we have some highlights and a summary information on enrollment general fund which is the one that gets the most discussion in these meetings some required maintenance, supplies and operating cost information, and then some other information on the associated student body, debt service and capital funds, and then a four-year forecast.

Next slide, please.

The goals and principles that the board established in September are represented here.

I won't belabor those.

You've seen those, but these were what guided the process this last year.

We can go to the next slide.

As I said, this is the ninth meeting on the budget for 24-25 in September, which was the foundational, talking about the goals and principles, the need for some ongoing solutions for the 24-5 budget development process, and the over-reliance on some of the one-time funding and how to wean the district from some of that.

In October, some potential solutions were presented to the board for discussion.

Subsequent to that in November, a resolution was brought forward to get guidance from the board on how to approach more details on those solutions going forward.

December, the board adopted that resolution and then the staff began the work to start to balance the budget for 24-25 using those tools.

January was an update on the governor's budget, some of the impacts that would have going forward, and then the legislative updates in March.

The recommendation was made to the board, a preliminary recommendation on how to close the gap for 24-25, which was estimated at $104 million.

The board provided feedback, and so an amended proposal was brought back in April.

And then in May, the board approved the utilization of a loan to balance the budget for this year up to $35 million, delaying the repayment of the rainy day reserve fund one more time, and then the utilization of $2 million in capital fund interest to balance the budget for 24-25.

So today we've got the culmination of all that work presented.

Each of you should have a 200 and something page budget book with a lot of details.

Those are also available online.

This is the recommended budget.

This presentation, we can go to the next slide.

This next slide is sort of an attempt to make it understandable for just the general public in terms of what the main drivers of the budget are for 24-25 and you'll see there the budget is going to be 1.25 billion dollars for the Seattle Public Schools and there have been ongoing reductions of around 90 million dollars over the last two years in those budget balancing exercises the major changes for 24-25 that are included in this budget are continued reductions at central office and staffing and other expenses, some school staffing allocation reductions, some compensation reductions for nonrepresented staff, a handful of other one-time solutions like the loan, like the capital fund interest, and then the introduction of convenience fees for families who are using credit cards to pay for Seattle Public Schools fees, and then voluntary athletic fees implementation.

And as I mentioned, the short-term inter-fund loan is a part of the balancing for the 24-25 budget in the amount of $27.5 million.

So just to repeat back at the last meeting, authorization was given for up to $35 million, and so the $27.5 is what will take place for the 24-5 budget.

And just to be clear, this will need to be repaid by June 30th of 2026 back to the capital fund of Seattle Public Schools.

The budget does maintain the strategic plan investments at 8.3 million.

No reductions were made there.

And then just, again, to be super clear on this point, not talking about school reductions or school consolidations for this 24-25 budget that we're talking about tonight.

And I have three more minutes.

So let's go to a couple more slides.

Can you go to the next one?

This is one more.

Let's try.

So here's the resources that come into the district.

Let me get.

And you'll see that the majority, about two-thirds of the funding, is from the state.

About 15% of it is from the local levy.

There was discussion on that tonight.

And then the other 20% is federal, the city levy, some other funding.

So those are the main resources that come into the district.

We can go to the next slide.

One way of explaining how the district is spending its funding is by activity groups.

So teaching, teaching support, the principal's office, other support, and central administration.

These are the most digestible ways of separating the expenses.

And so we've included those definitions here for folks so they have that information.

And then the next slide is a breakdown on some of that expenditure activity.

Gina Topp

Just on the state activity groups defined, where does special education services fall?

SPEAKER_34

Yeah, it's not an activity.

Linda's reminding me.

It's in the program section.

So there's three ways that the expenditures are sliced.

And so if you go to the program area, that's where special education shows up specifically.

Embedded in some of these activities like teaching, special ed teaching, staff, those would be in there.

But it's not specifically outlined in the activity section.

So you see it there in the program section.

And we're almost at 8 o'clock.

And this isn't as informative as I would have liked it to have been.

Liza Rankin

Well, this is not the first time we're seeing it.

SPEAKER_34

Yeah.

Liza Rankin

I'm sorry.

I'm not sure if I'm interrupting.

Two questions.

One, I had asked a couple, I can't remember if it was the last work session or before that, about uh conservative staffing in october and the offset or the whether or not that would be an offset with how am i trying to say this sorry the the balancing out of um compensatory services and for for misinstruction if there's misinstruction if we if we under under count or under staff and then um the other one was the overages, planned overages, and how high do we get before it actually would have been better just to hire another teacher?

That was something I asked about seeing reconciled a little bit ago, and I can't vote on this until I see the answer to that, those questions.

SPEAKER_34

Can you repeat the first question?

Liza Rankin

The first question may hopefully be mitigated, but basically the cost of if special education resources or staffing isn't in place in alignment with where students actually are, if the projection is under the cost of compensatory services, not mitigating I need to understand how hedging bets on that, I guess, ends up, it seems to me, being more expensive and less service for students.

SPEAKER_37

So I can speak to that on behalf of Dr. Bettelman.

But the way that special ed staffing works is not on the projected enrollment.

So if you look at the way that the collective bargaining agreement is written, it is something that is reviewed every two weeks by a relief committee.

the reason that you don't do special ed staffing on a projected enrollment measure is because you can't get into predeterminations and what that means is if you look at the idea you can't let's say that it's rocky we cannot say that we're going to predict rocky's going to have an iep that's called a predetermination that determination is something that's made by the iep team and the parent actually has to sign off on the services for us to begin to say we're going to service that student So essentially, the way that we worked with SCA in writing the agreement now talks about we go into the relief committee every two weeks.

There was a meeting that was conducted recently.

And the way that the staffing is done is the kids that are actually qualified that we know we're going to have in seats in September, that's how we staff.

And that process took place this month.

And so special ed did push forward to Kurt's team what those numbers needed to be to make sure that the kids that are qualified that we're going to get funding for and not in a predetermined way.

We'll have staffing in place come this fall.

Liza Rankin

And that is a change from last fall.

SPEAKER_37

Yes.

Liza Rankin

I would love a more confident yes.

Yes.

SPEAKER_37

No yes.

Liza Rankin

I would love a more genuine yes.

SPEAKER_37

It is definitely yes.

It was done through Relief Committee.

It was pushed forward that it has been received by the finance team and it was very intentional to do it through the Relief Committee.

If we think about throughout the school year prior CBAs had us doing the changes at the quarter if you remember and that was that was also causing the same problem that you're referring to doing it by the every two week process ensures that we're capturing the most accurate numbers.

So the numbers that are going to be forward for the fall are based on the kids that were qualified in our system and going to be actually in.

Liza Rankin

What is that.

SPEAKER_37

I can't remember that actually signed off as the parents have to sign off saying yes I agree to the service.

Those are the kids that we're going to be staffing for.

Liza Rankin

Is there, I know that the SCA contract, they're not, they don't work all through the summer, but sometimes identification or an evaluation will finish over the summer.

I am assuming the relief team doesn't meet every two weeks over the summer.

It does.

What's the.

SPEAKER_37

That we're going to have to reconcile in September once we have.

But yes you are you're you're correct that there will be evaluations that occur over the summer.

In those cases those are what we'll have to address first thing in September and get those moving.

So there might be a slight gap but that's just part of the way that's right.

Liza Rankin

But not in mid October gap please.

That is not hopefully not a planned not a planned gap.

OK.

Thank you.

And I will look forward to sometime between now and next week I guess on the answer about the overage.

SPEAKER_34

I have a lot of information on that.

I'll work with the superintendent on the best way to get that to the board.

Great.

Responsive to your question.

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

Well we I think let's see I can check with staff I believe.

Can we go to the hearing and then return if if directors have more questions.

Yes yes yes.

So this is like a.

A funky thing that we haven't done before.

So do we.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

To recess the board meeting for the duration of the board's special

Liza Rankin

I see.

OK.

All right.

The board is now immediately recessing the regular meeting into a public hearing which will look remarkably like the regular board meeting.

We're not going to move.

So.

All right.

We're not.

We're now out of the regular board meeting.

We're now in a budget hearing.

So this is President Rankin.

I am calling to order the board special meeting at 8 0 5 p.m.

Would we have to do roll call and everything again.

Yes.

Oh yes.

This is a different meeting.

OK.

For the record I will call the.

Do we lose Director Briggs.

Or just temporarily.

OK.

For the record I will call the roll.

Director Briggs.

Director Clark.

Director Hersey had I think we have last director Hersey yes.

Yes.

No no I think he had to leave.

I just didn't connect all.

Yes he said he had to leave at 8. Director Mizrahi.

Joe Mizrahi

Here.

Liza Rankin

Vice President Sargeo.

Present.

Director Top.

Here.

And this is President Rankin.

Testimony sign ups have been accepted online for those testifying remotely.

We also have a sign up sheet here tonight for those with us in person.

We'll begin with those in-person testimony sign ups and then move through any additional testimony remotely.

We had a general public testimony session during our regular meeting earlier and this hearing is reserved for testimony related to the 2024 25 recommended budget.

Speakers will be given a maximum two minutes excuse me of speaking time.

Oh as a reminder written testimony is also accepted.

If you are unable to finish your comments in the two minute window you may provide any remaining and any already said also in writing.

Once your name is read staff will begin a timer.

A beep will sound when your time is exhausted.

And I will just say I'm unless there are students speaking I'm going to actually cut you off at two minutes.

So please honor that warning light and then the beep.

Miss Wilson-Jones please read off the speaker list.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

The first speaker is Chris Jackins will be followed by Christy You're going to have to help me with your last name when we get to you.

And then Vivian Song.

There's a list in the back of the room if anybody has changed their mind and wants to add.

Chris Jackins

My name is this working well for you.

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. I appreciate the budget books nice layout of information on the general fund three points.

Number one the current district funding model forces schools to compete with each other.

Number two please increase the size of both the inter fund loan and the general fund use of capital fund interest.

number three the district should ask the city to repurpose existing city levy funds to keep schools open and to retain staff on the capital fund three points number one the rainier beach project has a future 10 million dollar cost overrun number two the memorial stadium project is a mistake number three please halt the use of artificial turf contaminated with forever chemicals on the superintendent's cover letter seven points number one the superintendent's letter states quote Given that the state funding model is based on the cost to run a 400 student elementary school, elementary schools fewer than 300 students are simply not sustainable and dilute resources throughout the system, unquote.

Number two, this is a simplistic, deceptive, and bogus argument.

Number three, one could similarly say that the superintendent's salary is simply not sustainable and dilutes resources throughout the system.

Number four, or that everyone should wear the same average shoe size.

Number five, the issues are more complex.

Number six, the district has an idea in its head that the variety and sizes of schools currently in the school district are a problem.

The district needs to change its mind.

This resource should be used, not closed.

Number seven, schools can and should be kept open.

Please amend the budget.

Thank you very much, nice to see you again.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Next is Christy Mathe.

I can't.

Super close.

Christy Mathe.

SPEAKER_18

Thank you so much.

So I'm here to talk about pretty specifics down into the weeds of one specific elementary school.

And that has to do with the funding for Thornton Creek Elementary School, which is an option school.

It's a pre-K through five option school.

The budget proposal is based off of the enrollment projections for Thornton Creek is my understanding.

And my understanding is that the enrollment at Thornton Creek is being artificially lessened.

So it is currently slated to have 390 students next year, which is down from 455 this year.

And the school capacity is actually 660. And we have a 45 person wait list to get into kindergarten for next year.

So we're not filling those kindergarten spots.

My understanding is that we'll have two kindergarten classes instead of the three that we have this year.

And so there's definitely a need.

I think there's 80 people total on the wait list to get into Thornton Creek school wide.

And I'm trying to understand why we're not fully enrolling Thornton Creek.

and and then also to urge you to fully enroll Thornton Creek because it's a really great school and when we were talking earlier about students and who gets to go to these well-funded schools in my mind Thornton Creek is exactly the definition of a well-funded school and I'm so disappointed that there's so many students that are wanting to go there and that the school district seems to be depriving them of the opportunity to do that so thank you so much for your consideration

Ellie Wilson-Jones

And then the final speaker on today's public hearing list is Vivian Song.

Vivian Song

Good evening.

I am Vivian Song, former school board director and an SPS parent.

I recognize the extreme efforts that Dr. Jones and his team have undertaken to present a balanced budget.

However, I urge you to vote no on it because I don't think it will adequately address SPS issues.

Dr. Jones was correct that there are no good options, but at this point, a better option will be to vote to put the district into financial oversight, a form of insolvency allowed under state law.

This would be an important step that will allow SPS to work with the state to make the structural changes needed.

Dr. Nyland, the superintendent back in 2018 when the McCleary solution was finalized, predicted this moment.

Other districts such as Marysville have already taken this step.

They will not be the last.

This recommended 24-25 budget requires borrowing against the capital fund.

The hope is that it will be repaid by cost savings from closing schools.

This is very risky.

Does the estimated $35 million of savings include assumptions of lost enrollment after schools are closed?

We know from the last time SPS closed schools, enrollment dipped sharply.

We know when schools move temporarily, when their building is being rebuilt or renovated, families leave.

Indeed, several of the elementary schools, which now have less than 250, got there precisely because they moved.

Queen Anne Elementary, Montlake, among others.

This budget also doesn't address the largest source of our deficit, special education.

School closures will exacerbate this deficit because of a percentage cap on special education students funded by the state.

If we experience a significant change in the denominator of that ratio, total students enrolled, we risk more deficit spending.

Both Dr. Dyland and Dr. Jones are right.

SPS has exhausted all it can do.

It is time for state intervention.

Don't throw the dice that school closures will solve our budget woes.

The risk reward is not there, not when it so directly impacts kids.

Vote no on this budget and vote yes on financial oversight.

Thank you.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Rankin, that was the final speaker on today's testimony list for in-person sign-ups.

And we did not receive any sign-ups for remote.

I'm going to refresh the page just to make sure nobody else.

There are no remote testimony sign-ups.

So that concludes your testimony list.

Liza Rankin

OK.

So I have to adjourn this meeting and go back to the other meeting?

Is that right?

Okay.

So fun.

All right.

As there's no further business on this agenda, this meeting stands adjourned at 8.15 p.m.

Would directors like a moment before we resume the regular board meeting?

Yes.

Quick break.

And Director Briggs has a parenting duty to attend to.

So I'm gonna go, earlier we missed the completed audit report from the chair of the audit committee, Director Briggs.

So we will do that.

And then we will just party it on through the rest of the agenda.

Evan Briggs

Board Procedure 6550BP, Internal Audit, requires an announcement of completed internal audits.

As the Audit and Finance Committee Chair, I am announcing that at the June 4th quarterly audit meeting, the Office of Internal Audit presented two internal audit reports for the Northgate Elementary School Replacement Project, one related to the electrical work and another related to the mechanical work.

All audit reports are discussed at a public audit meeting and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the Office of Internal Audit Department website.

The end.

End of announcement.

Fantastic.

Liza Rankin

Thank you so much.

Thank you and good night.

You're free to go.

We have a quorum.

It's OK.

Yeah, we do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we got even one more online.

So we actually still have five.

We have a super quorum.

Yeah.

OK.

So let's see.

We've done consent agenda.

We went back into the audit.

If I am reading this correctly, do we now have action items?

Is that where we are?

Oh, excuse me, sorry.

OK, if there are no further questions for the budget right now.

You do have one.

Gina Topp

I will submit my questions to Dr. Buttleman to answer later.

Liza Rankin

Perfect.

I'll just say we are scheduled to vote on the budget next week.

So if you do have questions, you have a couple of days to get those in and hopefully receive answers by the time we come to vote.

Excuse me.

OK.

Everybody ready?

Yes, okay.

We are now moving to action items on today's agenda.

The first action item is approving the selection of school board student members for 24-25.

May I have a motion, please, Vice President Sarcho?

Michelle Sarju

I move for the selection of school board student members for 2025. Approval of this item would select Colin Bragg, Safiya Elias Sabayoun, I apologize if I mispronounced that young person's last name.

As the three school board student members for the 2024-2025 school year, immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Liza Rankin

Approval of the selection of school board members has been moved by director, by Vice President Sarju and seconded by Director Topp.

This will be the third year of our student school board member positions.

It has been such an awesome opportunity for us to have student members on the board.

and they have been invaluable to our work in the last two years, and also very generous with being willing to start a new program.

We've had two years of, sure, you're student board members, and trying to figure out what that actually means together has been really, really great.

And it's just going to keep getting better.

So I'm really grateful for the insights and leadership of our previous student members and very excited to meet and begin working with our recommended appointees from our student-led selection committee.

Do directors have any questions about this item?

All right.

Then I will call for the vote.

Director Clark?

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

Vice President Sarju?

Aye.

Director Topp?

Gina Topp

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Rankin?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Nice.

Liza Rankin

All right.

Looking forward to meeting them in August.

The second action item is approval for naming the Rainier Beach High School Gymnasium the Michael S. Bethea Athletic Complex in honor of Rainier Beach High School basketball coach Michael Bethea.

Michelle Sarju

May I have a motion for this item, please?

I move that the school board approve the naming of Rainier Beach High School gymnasium the Michael S Bethea athletic complex.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Gina Topp

Second.

Liza Rankin

This approval of this item has been moved by Vice President Sarju and seconded by Director Topp.

I see somebody, I see Richard Best approaching the podium and please take the floor.

SPEAKER_07

Thank you Director Rankin again Richard Best I'm executive director of capital projects planning and facilities operations and I'm really honored to present this bar to you tonight on behalf of Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones and the Rainier Beach High School community.

Mike Bethea has been a long-standing coach at Rainier Beach High School.

He has been there for a period of 30 years, and he has demonstrated a clear commitment to that student, to the students furthest from educational justice.

During his tenure, he has had 180 students earn athletic scholarships to two- and four-year collegiate institutions and I just think that's a outstanding, that's why we serve in public education is to create academic success for all students.

So pleased to recommend to you tonight acceptance of this bar and the naming of the gym, the new gym at the new Rainier Beach High School in honor of Mike Bethea.

And I open it up to questions.

SPEAKER_16

Anybody have questions, directors?

Dr. Jones?

Brent Jones

Yes, I just might add that Mike is a pillar of the community in many ways.

His reach goes far beyond basketball.

He's one who's connected to a family of the extended family as well that has embraced the entire Southeast region.

I've grown up with that family and have known them for pretty much all my life since we're about 7 years old and I just know of his family and the folks around them.

I think there's a there's some honor in us being able to name this after Mike that there and it's not just him it's the family that he he's associated with so I want to endorse this.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Well, I think we're all looking forward to calling for the vote.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Mizrahi?

Chris Jackins

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Sarju?

Amen.

Director Top?

Gina Topp

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Clark?

SPEAKER_99

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Rankin?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Liza Rankin

Awesome.

I'm assuming we'll all be invited to the name unveiling.

when it's ready, yeah.

That's really exciting.

All right, the third action item is authorization to negotiate a revised employment contract with the superintendent.

May I have a motion for this item?

Michelle Sarju

I move that the board no I move that the school board authorize the board president to negotiate with the assistance of council a revised employment contract for Dr. Brent Jones to replace or modify his existing employment contract with changes that may include, but are not limited to, revisions to the existing salary and term.

The revised contract, if one is successfully negotiated, will be presented to the board for approval.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Gina Topp

Second.

Liza Rankin

All right.

This item has been moved by Vice President Sarju and seconded by Director Topp.

I'm the sponsor of this item.

So just briefly states in the materials but what this item would do is authorize me as the representative of the board to work directly with council to seek a revised employment contract with Superintendent Jones.

The current contract is set to automatically renew on July 1st because of a complicated not non renewal.

Anyway basically his current contract as it was negotiated the terms of that of the negotiated terms and on June 30th and we have an automatic renewal to one more year.

And so And then this would author would authorize me to negotiate a further tenure onto that.

So if a revised contract is successfully negotiated it would be presented to the board for approval at a subsequent meeting.

I did not very elegantly state that.

Do directors have any questions for clarifying.

OK.

Then I will call for the vote.

unless you have anything to add.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Vice President Sarju?

Aye.

Director Top?

SPEAKER_99

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Chris Jackins

Aye.

Ellie Wilson-Jones

President Rankin?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Liza Rankin

Great.

We will now move to introduction items.

Oh my God.

On today's agenda.

Wait.

Gina Topp

We already did the first one.

The student fees fines or charges.

Liza Rankin

I don't I'm missing a page I think.

Michelle Sarju

Oh there's too many things up here.

SPEAKER_16

All right.

Liza Rankin

Thank you.

Oh yes there's an introduction item it's the budget.

Hi.

All right.

Introduction items.

The first item for introduction is.

Resolution 2023 24 dash 9 fixing and adopting the 2024 25 budget.

Is it not that.

Oh I'm so sorry.

That's what.

Yes.

OK.

Apologies.

Approval.

The actual introduction item that is going to be introduced having not already been introduced is approval of revised board policy number 35 20 student fees fines or charges and board procedure number 35 20 BP and I was going to ask for a motion but it's an introduction not action.

So Dr. Buttman please.

SPEAKER_34

This is a motion to amend the policy and the board procedure around student fees fines or charges to allow for the voluntary collection of athletic fees for the coming school year.

with no impact on participation of students.

And then once this is approved on July 2nd, assuming it's approved, the athletic department will begin communicating this to families and we'll be implementing it accordingly.

SPEAKER_16

Do directors have questions?

Gina Topp

Yeah so I understand this is part of our budget and we've talked about this quite a bit.

I just want to I guess when we say it has no impact on participating participation of students in sports because it is a voluntary fee.

How are we at all tracking whether participation goes down in the next year or so seeing as maybe this is however implemented becomes a barrier to some students.

SPEAKER_34

Yes I think we'll put in place tracking mechanisms to make sure participation if there's changes if it gets attributed to this.

Gina Topp

And I guess so yeah I think that's really important and something I think we will want to check back in in a year to see if this is something we want to change from a participation standpoint.

I guess my second question is you know this has been a cost that's been covered by a generous donation to the school district.

Have we asked that donor if they would be willing to donate again to participate or to to fund this need.

OK.

Thank you.

Liza Rankin

Yeah I was just going to say since it wasn't on the microphone the response was that yes that the donor who originally provided that grant to the district and was anonymous is anonymous to the public not anonymous to everybody and that person that person or entity has been contacted.

Michelle Sarju

I don't I don't have a question but Director Topp brought a thought to my mind and that is ensuring that students understand that it is voluntary and that this message is consistent at every single school.

It has to be the same message across the district and that's that participation shouldn't go down if if students really understand that You don't have it.

Great.

Let me sign you up.

That's how simple it should be.

There shouldn't be any feeling around.

Are you sure you can't come up with the money that kind of thing.

And if if there isn't.

oversight and accountability to that then that will become a problem to me.

It's all in the messaging.

The students do want to participate and they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for the financial lack of financial ability of their families.

Gina Topp

Yeah that's the reason this makes me very nervous.

I understand moving forward with it but this still makes me very nervous and I you know I think one year come back and review and see where we're at.

SPEAKER_16

Any other questions.

Liza Rankin

All right.

Board self self evaluation time use evaluation.

We don't need to discuss unless Director Topp you have anything to add but it's in our it's in our notes and thank you to staff for including so that we can track previous months.

That's great.

Did you.

We need somebody to do May and June.

Do you want to assign somebody or do you want to do it.

Gina Topp

So I created a nice handy dandy spreadsheet for folks to use the time use evaluation.

I think that I can do May if someone wants to sign up to try to do June and July.

Liza Rankin

There you go.

All right.

Let the record show.

Dr. Topp is going to do May.

Dr. Masrahi is going to do June and July.

Thank you both.

If there is no further business, going once, going twice.

Checking with Director Clark.

I'm about to call it.

Are you good?

I'm good.

Okay, great.

SPEAKER_35

Thank you, guys.

Liza Rankin

There being no further business to come before the board, this meeting stands adjourned at 8.44 p.m.

Thank you and good night.