Seattle School Board Meeting March 21, 2018 Part 1

She's in our famous Seattle traffic.

Oh beat that one.

Well done.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director DeWolf.

Present.

Director Geary.

Present.

Director Mack.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Getting here.

Director Harris here.

Thank you.

Everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

At this time I will turn over the floor to Superintendent Nyland for tonight's recognition.

Thank you very much.

It is my delight to have the opportunity to have us get acquainted with and celebrate with one of our premier partners at one of our district goals has been eliminating opportunity gaps.

And my brother's keeper is one of those strategies that is One of the it's a strategy that we know a lot about and we can actually see the evidence on how it improves student attendance student participation and student proficiency.

Aki Kurose was one of the first pilots nationally in the first 10 to pilot the program and had outstanding results and then the city of Seattle came alongside of us and provided funding.

And we're now in five schools and have a great partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation and we want to honor them as one of our premier partners tonight.

So with that I'd like to introduce Keisha Scarlett executive director of organizational development and equity.

Talk a little bit more about Seattle Parks Department and how they stand shoulder to shoulder and line up those arrows and helping us eliminate opportunity gaps.

Good afternoon.

So I mean it's just my pleasure to have the opportunity to be able to share about the My Brother's Keeper program through Seattle Parks and Recreation.

In 2014 President Obama launched the My Brother's Keeper initiative to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people reach their full potential.

The MBK initiative is a collaborative effort nationwide just as Dr. Nyland spoke about and Seattle has been amongst the first to really embrace this as a strategy and we are just so grateful for our partnership with Seattle parks.

Seattle parks program provides programming for African-American middle school students They serve students who really need additional resources and attention to be academically emotionally and socially successful.

Through mentorship the mentors work collaboratively with school teams in order to deliver a curriculum and activities in order to support the social developmental and emotional support.

and also companionship of a caring adult which is one of our strategies that we have in connecting the positive partnership and positive relationships.

So a few of the different kind of details about what's happening with our Seattle parks program right now is it started Aki Kurose middle school and it's moved to four other middle schools.

including Denny international middle school, McClure middle school, Mercer international middle school and also Washington middle school.

The program operates two times per week for 25 weeks and each session is one and a half hours per day.

There are a variety of measures that they are tracking to that are linked to learning.

One of those are looking at school absences at five or less absences per semester for the MBK participant for those students.

Also looking at suspensions and that's one of the measures.

Another one is around core course completion of a grade of C or lower or excuse me are better for those students.

And also those students receive a 200 dollar annual stipend for receiving those less than five days of absences and attending 80 percent of the after school sessions and amongst a few other measures.

And so it's always nice for those kids to get some money.

So right now we have 156 participants in the My Brother's Keeper program and they've had a total of 127 mentoring sessions that have been high quality and in speaking with all of those different principals they all have shared about just how the program has really started to change culture even within their school building.

So I would like to ask for Daisy Katagi and for Lori Chisholm to please come up.

I don't know if that was my role right then but I had them coming up.

So Daisy Katagi is our is our community learning center manager and Lori Chisholm is our out of school time manager for Seattle Parks.

And so they are just such great partners as a principal.

They got a chance to partner with them just over a number of years.

It's just so delightful to see how their work continues to expand and how they continue to meet the needs of our students in the city.

So super grateful for their work.

On behalf of Seattle Parks and Recreation we just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for the collaborative effort and the partnership that we hold amongst the city of Seattle and Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Seattle Public Schools.

Without our collaborative effort we have not been we would not be making the measurements we are today.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And we want to invite you.

Yes we'll.

Invite you up and we'll invite the board down to take a picture and we have a plaque for you.

So thank you very much for the good partnership work that you do and especially for all of the lives that you change.

One, two, three.

Unfortunately we do not have a student performance this evening so I'll turn the floor back over to Dr. Nyland for 10 minutes of superintendent comments.

Thank you.

Lots of things to celebrate.

We're celebrating Women's History Month theme for the month is nevertheless she persisted honoring women who fight all forms of discrimination against women.

Jay Inslee our governor has declared March 19th 25th school retirees appreciation week.

Many of whom are still here working with us as volunteers or substitutes.

We appreciate their work.

Last week we celebrated education support professionals week again a proclamation from Governor Jay Inslee recognizing and thanking all of the dedicated classified support staff educational leaders that we have that help make good things happen for our kids.

And March 19th national board certified school nurse day and 25 of our nurses are nationally board certified.

So that's a huge percentage.

It's like 40 percent have gone through the extra effort and extra work to become nationally board certified.

As I do each time I give a brief report and update on superintendent smart goals.

I'll start by saying thank you to the board for the ongoing conversations about the 18 19 goals coming up conversations about continuing MTSS eliminating opportunity gaps and engagement and some conversations around career readiness and program college and career readiness and program reviews.

Under goal one which is educational excellence and equity.

We're going to hear briefly tonight from our.

engaging families in high school success.

I can't ever get the words to come out quite right but Addie Simmons does really nice work with all of our secondary schools getting them to engage parents and doing that on a regular basis over a four year time period and it's showing up in our graduation rate I believe.

With that I'd like to introduce James Bush director of school and community partnerships and hear a little bit about our engaging families in high school success program.

Good afternoon and thank you.

So in 2015 Seattle Public Schools and Johns Hopkins University were awarded a four year grant from the U.S.

Department of Education with funds.

The EFIS program engaging families in high school success.

And it's ran out of the family community partnerships department.

Connected to SMART goal for engagement and collaboration, EFSA is focused on building the capacity of middle school and high schools to engage families in the transition to high school and contributing to the success of students in ninth grade.

Improved secondary family engagement leads to improved ninth grade student attendance and course passing.

This initiative is doing great work.

A team of professors from Johns Hopkins University helped lead this program.

We have two of them here today.

Martha MacGyver and Eric Rice.

They are great partners working with us.

We could have had them up here a second ago but they are doing coaching at our schools working directly with us and our teams to make sure we're improving our practices.

Research shows that ninth grade success is a predictor of on time graduation.

One of the biggest predictors of on time graduation and doing everything we can to support that work is what we're here to do.

Today 22 middle schools and high schools are participating in the initiative.

As some of you know EFS is based on continuous improvement model using the cycle of inquiry which is a tool for staff reflection on and evaluating the outcomes of engagement activities they implement.

The schools are networked as a community receive professional development coaching and technical assistance to ensure continuous learning and improvement by school staff and our and our families and students.

And at this point I'll welcome Addie to the stage to give a brief presentation.

Good afternoon members of the board and Superintendent Nyland.

My name is Addie Simmons and I manage the FS program engaging families in high school success.

And as we said this is part of a four-year grant that we received in partnership with Johns Hopkins University from the U.S.

Department of Education.

So the grant funds we are using the grant funds to support our schools and to create this initiative to ensure that secondary schools work on engaging families in Seattle.

Here is a list of our participating schools.

We have 22 schools participating and we have seen and as time has progressed we've seen an incredible amount of work that is being done in our secondary schools to engage families.

Sorry moving it backwards.

So we.

One question we usually get from everyone is why is this initiative focused on the transition period between middle school and high school and what we see is that families and students don't normally know the fact that ninth grade is a critical piece of a predictor of high school graduation.

So what we're working we're working with the schools to ensure that they inform families equip families to support their kids as they move into high school.

And also we're working with students to to understand the fact that course passing and attendance are both critical to ensure that they succeed in ninth grade.

Here's an example of some of the informational pieces that our schools are producing for families and many of the informational pieces are translated in 8 or 9 languages.

So we're seeing a great rate of attention to detail as to why 9th grade is important for high school success.

The theory of practice that we're using is equipping the schools with the ability to understand and to engage the families by listening to families by discussing future plans and goals for their kids and for ensuring that they have opportunities to come together as families and as school staff to discuss future plans and college success as well.

So we believe that if we raise the capacity of schools to engage families and as they improve their practice they will be able to establish better relationships with families as children and students move through the four high school years and they'll be able to support high school success together.

As you may or may not know research shows that it's right there at the middle school point when family engagement declines.

Not because parents don't want to become engaged but schools believe that that's the point where our middle schoolers are wanting their parents to sort of stay away from the school.

So we usually see a decline in middle school family engagement practices and as they move up in high school the decline continues.

So we are trying to sort of change that paradigm.

We are trying to equip the schools to make them understand and give them the practice to understand that they actually can partner with families and families are willing to do it if they if they understand that's probably the best time when to engage in when the students need you the most.

We use the cycle of inquiry which is a tool for continuous improvement and this allows the school staff to come together and reflect on practices they have implemented.

I find that is one of the best tools to not just reflect but to also improve and think about how will they do, how would they implement the practice better the next time.

Most of the practices we've seen involve parent activities and student activities.

One of the best things to do is to engage not just the parent but the whole family in when you're looking at college preparation and future plans.

So I usually do a lot of coaching with schools.

I help them put together an activity and then after the activity has been implemented as the coach I go back and reflect with the schools and we start thinking how that activity will be better in the future.

We have created a whole toolkit for schools of materials they can use directly with parents and they have been translated in nine different languages.

So as part of this process we not only would reflect with the schools we improve their practice but we also have put have created a network of continuous improvement with all of our 22 schools that are participating in this project.

So we call it the accelerated learning through through this professional network and we do two professional developments per year opportunities per year plus we convene the schools to learn from each other and to discuss their practices twice a year.

Thank you so much for your attention.

Thanks for the great work.

As we've reported earlier our graduation rate for African-American students and historically underserved student groups has gone up 12 percent in the last four years.

The Seattle Times just reported that our district wide rate went up slightly 1 percent this last year.

SPS and Seattle Housing Authority did a webinar this week and had 900 people from across the nation participate.

So we're one of their one of their premier partners working together nationally on attendance and we've reported on some of those gains earlier.

And similarly they convened a group similar to what Addie just talked about this week so that schools can learn from each other about what works to increase attendance.

You're hearing a theme as we go through tonight's comments.

Goal 2 is improved systems.

The legislature adjourned so they can go campaign.

There was some good news.

There was a decrease in state property taxes that will help the levies for 2019. They funded the breakfast before the bell a little bit and they made some slight improvements to compensation and special ed although not nearly enough to keep us out of shortfalls in future years.

Locally we've been doing a lot on nutrition services trying to increase our participation rate.

We do find that that's an important intervention for students when students are homeless and come to school hungry tired.

They don't learn as well as when we can provide breakfast and provide some time out facilities for them.

Our logistics department.

The numbers are just staggering in terms of what they do.

They've been helping us get science kits out.

They've been helping us put tags on and deploy all of the computers that the board approved for teachers.

and for students.

And they're talking with the city and King County about the ORCA cards.

Under goal 3 school family community engagement.

Thank you to our students and our staff for the March 14th remembrance of Parkland Florida victims.

41 schools reported in and we had some that did demonstrate off campus most stayed on campus.

And the event on Saturday is scheduled to be an incredible event.

Senator Cantwell when we were in her office this last week wants to know about how she can come and participate.

We said well we'll find out and we found out well she has to ask permission from the students because the students are doing a good job of leading this this event.

So it should be quite the event on Saturday and really impressed with our young people and the leadership that they're doing.

Lots of other things going on, family partnerships, task force meetings are underway, family connectors university will be held this spring.

Steven Nielsen, Director Geary and I were at the council of great city schools, I'll let Director Geary report on that.

OSPI and the whatever OSEP the feds were here for special education yesterday and they continue to be amazed with the work that we've done on improving our procedures and they really liked our formula for success.

And they're not quite done with this yet.

They'll be back next year to make sure that we're continuing to do the good work that we've been doing.

And then under every student succeeds act.

That was what Senator Murray's office was interested in.

They were prime movers in making that reauthorization happen.

We reported to you recently that our schools have been identified.

We only had two comprehensive schools in Seattle that were identified and about 30 other schools that were targeted for specific groups that we'll continue to work on.

For the most part schools were ones that we had already identified through our MTSS work.

Board will be having a session on the 28th of March around the BEX V capital levies.

And there's a series of community meetings going to be held.

And that takes us to good news.

Garfield High School boys are going to the national tournament.

Winners for life.

Awesome event every year when Rotary recognizes so many of our students that have overcome incredible hardships.

Born in science born in STEM recognized as a state lighthouse school meaning that other schools can come to them and get a little help in doing similar things in their school.

Grant for Rainier Beach.

And six of our students from Seattle Council PTSA reflections program went on I think to be in the national issue and then as has happened a few times Lori Dunn.

Our physical education manager was one of four educators nationally to win the National Shape America Honor Award.

So that concludes my remarks.

Lots more on the back table about visits that I and other staff members have been making to schools and community engagement activities that are underway.

Thank you so much.

We have reached the portion of the agenda where we would like board directors to give us short presentations on their committee work.

Director Geary do you want to talk about great city schools and your other legislative work.

I'm prepared to talk about the federal legislative work I've done and I'm going to let Director Mack handle the state legislative issues.

So as Director Nyland said we traveled to Washington D.C.

to participate in the Council of Great City Schools which is a group that is set up particularly to for the largest school districts in the nation primarily around cities but also sometimes countywide.

The big issues they prepare a legislative agenda for everybody to talk about and the big issues were gun safety.

They passed a resolution and we shared the fact that we had passed one as well and actually took that to our representatives.

DACA asking making sure that we were out there asking them to take care of our families make sure that they are safe and able to participate and have due process that they oppose private schools vouchers.

They're looking for Perkins to re-authorizing Perkins which is what funds CTE and hoping in the case of that that they retain local flexibility as we do.

They're always asking to increase funding for education primarily through ESSA and the implementation of the title programs.

And then finally the one that really sort of started to align arrows along with CTE for us was the request that as they move forward in funding infrastructure across the nation that they remember to include schools in that discussion.

And so to the extent that we or anyone out there wants to make comments to the federal administration around infrastructure funding that schools remain a part of that discussion.

We did go visit with staffing in both Maria Cantwell's and Patty Murray's offices.

Maria Cantwell's office we talked about the Perkins and CTE funding infrastructure and they indicated their interest in making sure that students are ready for futures in the tech industry since that is something of great importance to her and as Superintendent Nyland indicated Maria Cantwell was very much interested in in our march this weekend.

And so that was that was good to hear.

Patty Murray's office was more focused on the implementation of ESSA and the performance standards whether or not we were going to be measuring growth through common standards or through growth in the students themselves.

So you know tied to the student growth or tied to an objective measure measure.

And we just communicated that we hope since we've been doing so much of this work already and have been looking around increasing performance that as the state implements we need to make sure that we continue to have the flexibility so that our teachers are not subjected to a whole new set of standards implemented from the state level when we've worked so hard to get them aligned with the stuff the work that we've heard people talking about today.

And then finally one thing that was a common theme throughout all of the districts is the focus on African-American male performance.

And the keys that they're looking at are mentoring social emotional learning and restorative practices.

So it was good to hear that we are.

really leaders in a lot of that work in that some districts were ahead in some of those areas but we are definitely working on all of them.

And then there was an inspirational presentation by Florida representative of Frederica Wilson and of course Florida being very much aware of the gun safety issues that are going on.

and hoping that the federal government shifts away from the idea of arming people within the schools and getting close getting focusing more on those practices that will create community and healthy communities where these things don't happen.

So that was the report.

Thank you very much.

Director Mack would you like to follow up on the legislative piece and on operations committee.

Yes.

Thank you.

Happy to.

Well the legislature the state legislature has adjourned.

This is the first time in many years that they've actually finished on time.

I think we don't have a full picture of exactly the ramifications of all the bills that passed.

There was a bill that they're calling the McCleary fix bill that may not have gone as far as we need it to especially for the long term.

And I know that staff is kind of evaluating those numbers and the impacts of that bill.

And we hopefully sometime in the not so distant future will have a more comprehensive report about how that impacts us.

We did they did pass a supplemental capital budget and there's a portion of that that is supportive of our district's capacity needs.

So that's good news.

Additionally WASDA which is the school directors association of which director Geary is the legislative rep from our board to WASDA and I sit on the legislative committee.

They are now in the process of defining their legislative agenda for next year and between now and the end of April I believe they're accepting position statements and so we'll be working As a as a board and with staff to see if we want to submit any position statements to WSSDA that would be adopted at the state level and potentially working with other school districts.

In particular I think a position around gun safety is one that we're interested in potentially working with some other districts on submitting.

So TBD more information on the impacts of the legislative session this year for operations.

Well we have a lot of work.

We are building buildings and moving Moving fast.

I think we have 14 items for introduction today that came through operations.

This last meeting we also spent a fair amount of time talking about our work plan over this next year trying to wrap our arms around all of the work that we have related to facilities and capacity planning.

We do have the BEX work session on the 28th which is going to be a great overview of not only the planning around BEX and enrollment projections and kind of the justification for why some buildings and projects are showing up on that list that are being proposed to us to be part of the levy.

But also a presentation from the city of Seattle around their population projections and and how that impacts us as well.

So I'm excited for that work session on the 28th.

And I think that's about it.

We have a lot more work coming down the line with buildings that are coming online and planning for the future.

Thank you.

Director Burke C&I please.

Curriculum and instruction.

Thank you very much.

We had a curriculum instruction policy committee meeting on March 13th.

And so some of the byproduct from that you will see here.

I'll just touch on it sort of an intro to the intro.

We have a board action report coming forward on interim assessments and I know that that's always a good topic.

We went super deep on it in the committee meeting.

And so I look forward to more conversation around that.

We also got an update on the instruction materials that are proposed for adoption for the upcoming academic year.

And so I just want to make sure that everyone recognizes that this board set aside a budget for that and staff has been enthusiastic and responsive in trying to align that budget with our goals and priorities and past promises that we haven't been able to fulfill.

And so I just want to bookend that the way we're spending that tentatively is.

There's an allocation for professional development for K 5 ELA.

So this is something that was previously adopted and we're going to be doing ongoing professional development around that.

And then instructional materials around high school science.

One third basically a three year process for middle and elementary school science.

Ethnic studies as a component of secondary social studies.

world language specifically Spanish and elements of career and technical education that haven't been completely refined.

But those are the components that there will all be work from the curriculum instruction team to form committees engage with the community and identify materials that are aligned with the standards.

our commitment to our opportunity gap work and that ultimately serve the educators in those subjects and the students.

So that's super exciting for me and I hope for everyone else.

And.

I think that's the best sort of backwards looking thing we had a couple of discussions around technology and the there's a technology advisory committee that's that's coming forward that was more of a was discussed as part of C&I but was actually moved to executive.

So that'll be discussed as part of our body of work.

Looking forward into next month April 17th.

We have board action reports on program evaluation and assessment that's policy 2090. And so just to bring that into perspective the work we've done under our SMART goals around program reviews.

around program evaluation and trying to understand how that weaves in at the policy level.

How are our governance helps inform us on which which programs are.

Are providing the best value providing the best support best aligned to our goals of closing gaps and all these different things.

We also have a board action report coming forward on the annual CTE policy.

This is the essentially the annual strategic plan for CTE.

So there's some really great stuff in that.

And then we also have as a special attention item an update on the annual approval of schools or CSIPs.

So for people who are passionate about the work we're doing under CSIPs and how those essentially form the strategic plans for our schools we'll be talking about that.

And then we also as if that wasn't enough we have an update on advanced learning and the work that's being done by that department to help move us forward under the resolution that was brought forward by the book by the board.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham Audit and Finance please.

Thank you.

I think I guess we'll start out with this announcement.

Board procedure 6550 BP internal audit requires announcement of completed internal audits.

As Audit and Finance Committee chair I'm announcing that at the March 6th quarterly Audit and Finance Committee meeting the office internal audit presented an internal audit report for Rainier Beach High School.

All findings and recommendations are discussed at a public Audit and Finance Committee meeting and the completed Reports are available online at the Office of Internal Audit's public Web page.

Click on departments and services under the directory tab and then click on internal audit.

And we did have our A&F meeting on Monday March 12th and director Mack was a little bit concerned because it only lasted like 59 minutes.

Because it was a short agenda.

We had two special attention items regarding contracts that are approaching $250,000 or more so they're bringing it to our attention.

Kind of a FYI one of them with the ADA compliance for our district website.

And I did ask as we're looking forward we are asking future contractors that may be in it so that they also bring that along with them that we don't have to try to adapt our services to be ADA compliant but that actually is coming in as part of the package deal.

The other notification of contract exceeding was career staff provided occupational excuse me. occupational and physical therapy for our students in need and them too is just a contract service that we do for staff or we don't have the staff here to fulfill those services.

And rest of the agenda was pretty straightforward just our monthly updates and our next meeting will be April 16th 2018.

OK last I will speak for the executive committee and as folks are well aware the big lift for us right now is a superintendent search.

And on March 10th we spent a full day together.

We went through 63 complete applications and over a thousand folks reached out to us from 49 states and a couple of countries but 63 completed applications were done and we came in early and we read them.

We also saw videos from some of the candidates and we worked with our search firm Ray and Associates And I I have to tell you I am extraordinarily optimistic.

I'm optimistic because I serve with such bright and thoughtful people up here that ask piercing questions and that understand that we all bring different backgrounds and biases to the table and we weren't afraid to express them and speak from our hearts and our brains both.

Tomorrow and Friday we will be interviewing in executive session.

We have invited partners to assist us in observing the interviews and they will give us feedback from those interviews.

Now each of the partners that are invited have signed nondisclosure agreements and those agreements are in perpetuity just like The nondisclosure agreements that each of the board members have signed in perpetuity till we are dead and buried.

The confidentiality is frustrating.

because we'd really love to brag about the candidates but those candidates have put themselves out there and they have in fact put their present positions at some risk to know that they are shopping for a new position or that they're interested.

We expect to release probably on Monday the top three candidates who will be coming back to Seattle next week Thursday and Friday for interviews and for school tours.

There will be a town hall here next Thursday at 5 p.m.

We're going to be live asking people for their impressions.

We are in the year 2018. It's very exciting to me that we can gather that information live.

We'll also have of course paper copies for impressions and we'll have translators here as well.

It's a big lift.

We appreciate the feedback very much that there has quote not been enough community engagement.

We hear you.

We appreciate that.

However.

Statutorily fiduciarily it's our job to make that call and we are listening and pick up the phone and send in the emails.

SPS directors at Seattle schools dot org.

I don't think anybody on this dais takes anything more seriously than the right fit for a leader for the next 10 years to leverage off of the extraordinarily good work that's being done now.

OK and Cedric could you please introduce yourself.

Tell us who you are.

He is our student from Garfield and you're a member of the board tonight.

You don't get to vote but you can stay as long as you like.

We hope you stay till the bitter end.

Thank you for having me.

And my name is Cedric.

Sorry.

I apologize.

No thank you sir.

So I'm from Garfield High School and I'm on the ASB there but I have some issues and ideas that I wanted to bring to you slash address.

And the first of those is the fact that you have a rotating student on the school board that comes from a different school every week or rather every time that you meet and that that student cannot vote.

I think that whatever way possible I know that the legislator may need to be involved to change that.

But if possible getting it to be a the same student week by week and having that student be able to vote on decisions that the board makes seems like a very important thing that would also increase the Getting information to the school board of what students think because it's difficult for many students to.

Bring their thoughts or ideas here or they don't know that they should bring them here or that this is where.

Those things should go.

So that was one of my first things.

Another is more of specific to our school.

Some problems that our school is just having that students can see are.

Lots of drug use and sexual assault in our schools.

At Garfield which.

While it may not be particularly open it's still definitely an issue there.

And I just wanted to bring that here.

Thank you.

And also the discrimination of people of color in our advanced placement classes at Garfield.

The.

Most of the students in those classes are Caucasian or white.

With.

Very few people of color in those classes.

And.

The proposal to increase the amount of students coming to Garfield in the next few years I think that in I don't remember if it's the 20 21 school year or 21 22 school year.

But you had projected that Garfield had more than 2000 kids at it which is more than 400 above the capacity of the school.

And.

The fact that we are already above capacity.

At our school is making it so.

It's very inefficient to get things done there and there's too many students and not enough space.

And also it still doesn't work even if you do make do remove Garfield being a school for AP and HCC because the amount of students that would get removed by that is just a few hundred and that's still going to leave Garfield at too many people.

which it's not good.

And also the proposed discontinuation of a program at Garfield that is for prevention of drugs and alcohol because it's been called not as effective as it should be.

I'm sorry I don't have the full name for it here but I just would like to say that the program that is run with It is with a one of the hospitals around here that I'm not remembering right now unfortunately but sorry I don't think that should be removed.

I think that it serves a valuable purpose in our school and that the prevention of drugs alcohol and things along those lines are very important and is not being addressed well.

And also the communication between the school board administration and staff and then also to students does not seem to be very effective and also appears to have disconnects among those that cause lots of confusion.

And I think that's everything that I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you Cedric.

What are your plans for after high school.

What happens next year and after that.

Well I'm actually going to still be at Garfield next year.

Right.

So I'll be there for that.

But I would like to go into teaching most likely.

What subject?

I don't know since I really enjoy many of them but in making other making students better people just seems like a very very good job that has a lot of potential and that I would very much enjoy doing.

That's very exciting to hear.

Do you have plans for your summer?

Yes I was planning on taking some classes at Central over summer because I am someone who enjoys doing that.

Would you be open to doing some kind of an internship either for the board or communications etc.

Very likely yes.

We'll talk.

Thank you.

OK.

Time check.

It is 5 0 5. And we have reached the portion of the meeting that is the consent agenda.

Mr. Burke may I have a motion please.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

In the motion approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

We have one action item tonight.

Seeing none.

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

Thank you.

We've reached board comments.

Who would like to go first.

Thank you Director Geary.

Having commented on the Council of Great City Schools that was probably the big activity.

I have continued to hold my community meetings predominantly in the mornings on Tuesday at Zoka on Blakely between 8 and 9 30. With the time change and allergies I not yesterday but the week before I did show up late and so I believe I was able to apologize to everybody and would connect as I stated before if that time doesn't work for people please reach out to me either through Facebook messaging or call the board and leave your number and I'm happy to get back with you to schedule another time.

Those kind of immediate requests coming through email are not as easy for me to make sure that I get to in a timely manner.

And so by reaching out directly to the board or through Facebook will guarantee that I will see it and be able to respond quickly to you.

Some of the topics that come up are the continued desire that we move forward on ethnic studies.

And I think that I'm hearing more and more about some disconnect that's happening in terms of We are we have a lot of discussion around restorative justice around ethnic studies around cultural competencies.

But there I am hearing that people who are farther along in this process sometimes conflict with there's conflict that is arising between our parents and our staff.

based upon the amount of training or understanding or education that they have received.

And it's important that we all recognize that this continues to be a journey and important work but that lots of people are in different places in terms of.

understanding what the impacts of structural institutional and even individual racism have had on their lives their children's lives our city and that the best we can do in order to continue that conversation is to be understanding.

And I know it becomes people get weary from having to be patient and to educate.

But I think that that's the only way that we're going to continue to move forward.

And I hear that in my meetings the frustration around that.

So I would hope that we as a district have to continue to make sure that we're making that training available to our teachers but they you know they're spending their days with our kids and doing that and they may not have the time to read.

as much outside of the classroom or get the New York Times or participate in some of the intellectual activities that our parents do.

And I'm not saying that they're not intellectuals but they're on the ground doing the work and we need to be kind and patient.

And at times there will be need for hard conversations.

But remember these are people who day in day out are giving their hearts to our kids and we need to respect that profoundly.

And then the other thing that I'm hearing again is some tension in the special ed world around the labels of the programs that we are creating in terms of administrative functionality and the needs of the students.

So when I hear people saying things like well they're moving my student from resource to access because They don't have the right numbers and time or people.

And I think we have to remember that those labels around those rooms are administrative conveniences for us and that the individual needs of the kids is what our legal mandate is.

And that it's the parent and the teacher and special ed teacher and general ed teacher's job to make sure that each one of those students has an IEP that reflects the individual needs of that student.

And we don't tailor IEPs to put kids into defined placements.

So I've been hearing more about that and I just want us to be mindful that it is the individual needs of kids that need to be addressed first and foremost and that I understand that we have we have practical structures and those structures we are hoping to design with flexibility and we have to make sure that we are training our people to maintain that flexibility.

Director DeWolf and I met with NAACP youth and I think that they echoed a lot of what our student Cedric is saying in terms of us figuring out ways to bring more voice and opinion in.

And I will continue to think about that because.

you know well legislative change in order to give you a student a voice on this board to put that student through a state or a citywide electoral process just as we have all been in order to have the authority to represent.

would be very difficult to do on the annual basis that it would have to happen in terms of the student voice of course.

But you know why not some advisory votes and having a process by which the students can definitely engage in the dialogue and let us know through about through a representative process maybe with different students from coming together in a coalition from all of our secondary schools.

I don't I don't know what the best structure would be but I know Director DeWolf and I are very much interested in continuing that discussion.

I share a lot of your concerns about the other things that you have raised and I know that they are on many of our minds.

So thank you for coming and sharing those.

Again I would invite anybody who is interested in all the growth that director Mack discussed to look for the BEX oversight committees.

They are while they're not open forum there's just tons and tons of great information about the projects and about the proposed projects and about the potential visioning around the capital building of our Our school district within the city.

Great conversation.

And you could get a lot of you can see sort of what what we are considering in terms of possible projects in the future.

So.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Director Mack.

Thank you Director Geary for ditto everything you said particularly around.

Thank you Cedric as you walk out for your comments.

I just want to say thank you.

And also for.

Mentioning the BEX oversight committee.

It's a board committee that provides oversight to our BEX projects and it is it is an awesome committee where a lot of good information about what's going on is happening.

We also have a lot of other meetings going on around capital projects.

And there is a calendar online that segregates those that you can click on the capital projects calendar and see all the things that are happening.

And I I want to encourage folks that are interested in all of that to to check it out.

And we have the BEX 5 community meetings coming up there five of them are spread across the city.

But there's also things like the Webster departures meetings and we have so many projects going on.

Hopefully you can get engaged and attend some of those meetings if you're interested in those projects.

And thankfully they are on the calendar on our website under capital projects.

I want to express gratitude for all the students that took 17 minutes of silence for school safety on the 14th.

Some walking out some not.

Some schools like BF Day doing a peace sign.

We had we had a number of elected officials coming to our schools on that day to support the student led actions including Governor Inslee came to Ballard as well as our state senator Rueben Carlisle.

And there's even there's a fair amount of national news coverage around all of the student led efforts for school safety.

And I'm excited for the march on Saturday.

I hope to see you all there.

And.

I have a community meeting coming up March 31st.

That is Easter weekend.

I know some people may be out of town but 1 to 3 at Magnolia library and.

Please do email me thoughts concerns and echoing what Director Geary said if you'd like to speak directly with me send an email give a call.

I'm more than happy to meet directly with folks around issues and I'm excited to do so.

Thank you.

Director DeWolf.

Thank you President Harris.

Just want to say happy spring.

Today I'm wearing a flamingo shirt in honor of the spring.

Just some levity there.

Just want to thank you Cedric for being here today.

And thanks for repping District 5. So I'm just going to throw out a bunch of gratitude here.

Thank you to the parents for a better downtown Seattle had a meeting just to hear kind of their concerns and interests and further advocating for downtown elementary school.

Thank you to some of the parents and teachers administrators and students from Stevens Elementary got a chance to connect with them last Friday.

Also really really grateful and inspired and moved by the students of Garfield High School in Washington Middle School last week was able to go out to Garfield High School for the March 14th walkout demonstration.

It was just it was very emotional and but really felt grateful that there are some incredible student organizers in our community and I look forward to seeing you all this weekend.

I'm stopping in tomorrow to Nova for consent day briefly and so just wanted to shout out to those folks.

And also another shout out to India Unwin from Franklin High School.

She was the only student to submit an application for the superintendent search.

So just I'm always excited and inspired to see students lifting their name into the conversation and I hope we'll be seeing more of her.

As we move forward.

Working on a resolution with the school board next month is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

So really take those comments very seriously.

Also just want to echo Director Geary's comments have been really grateful to work with the NAACP Youth Council and we'll continue to meet with them and also try to find ways to include more student voice in our work.

Additionally Director Geary and I are going to be meeting with Councilmember Gonzalez and Johnson on a semi regular basis to continue our conversation and coordination about the levies and just make sure that we're communicating back and forth as things move forward.

And then lastly I am I do have a full time job so I know folks are frustrated that I haven't had a community meeting.

So I am currently organizing three just haven't picked times and dates and set the details yet but one will be at the Riveter in Capitol Hill and meet and greet.

One will be the international district for API community and families.

I'm also working on that one.

And then the last one a little more logistics is a discussion and movie night around the movie Home Stretch and it's elevating the issue of student homelessness which is one of my big items on my work plan.

So.

Lastly on April 5th I'll be going up to Daniel Begley Elementary and meeting Jet who wrote a letter to the school board and delivering books that we were able to collect from donations from publishers and a book company.

So I'm excited to go out to their assembly and present those to Jet and his school.

That's it.

Thank you.

Director Patu.

Patu I just want to say give a special thanks to our premier partners for their recreation program for implementing our Brother's Keeper.

I think that when we have such a great report in terms of actually seeing success at a program that actually has not been out that long I think it's wonderful that we're actually moving in the right direction.

Also I want to thank Addie Simmons for her presentation on the success of family engagement because I believe that family engagement is so important to our work because without involving our parents and our community it's really Not a good thing not to be able to hear from our communities and our parents in terms of what's happening with our schools especially is their kids that the students that actually that are a part of our system that makes up Seattle Public Schools.

So I think that we continue on the success of doing great family engagement because it's very needed.

that we need to also to make sure that we connect with all our parents letting them know the some of the great things that's happening in our schools.

I think we don't talk enough about a lot of great things that's happening around our schools which is I think that we need to find a way to continue to be able to focus on what's really successful in our various schools in our various districts.

Because we don't hear about that a lot.

And I know there's a lot of great things happening in a lot of our schools.

I also want to thank Cedric for sharing with us.

OK.

Yes.

Thank you for sharing with us his opinion and really you know down to earth telling us exactly what we need to focus on and what we need to be doing.

So thank you for that.

It's it's you know I think that we do the best that we can.

But when our student tells us you know we need to do A B and C that's even better because They're the one that will tell us the truth and be able to you know it's your education that we're actually trying to make the best that we can to make sure that every student in Seattle Public Schools receive an excellent education and that's what we're here for.

Also I am real sorry about canceling my community meeting on February 28th.

That was the same actually week that that my brother had passed away.

So hopefully I will have my next community meeting will be on Saturday March 31st at Rock and Tour and same time from 9 to 1130. And that's all I have to share today.

Director Burke.

I'll also begin by thanking Cedric for joining us.

You touched on like every single well not every but many of the categories that each of us are also concerned around in terms of the academics and the equity in advanced learning capacity and how we manage that across our high schools.

You know the the board dynamics how we plan board dynamics and you know I highly recommend running for school board because it's a fascinating experience.

You know trying to make sure that we're serving our students and and help them stay out of the drug and sexual assault area in its entirety because that's just that's just just bad news there.

So thank you for bringing all of those things up and in such a candid way.

I want to appreciate the Seattle Parks team and especially their work on my brother's keeper program.

Just reminding folks that is one of six of our signature strategies under our smart goal to EOG.

And it's not just the program but as you can see it's the people to support the mindset that goes around it.

So that's great to bring them forward as a as a recognition.

And then I guess I'm looking over to the staff around the Addie Simmons and and the work of her group.

Is that a place where we can engage around the 24 credit discussion.

I looked at the schools that are being served and thought wow that's exactly the the group that we're trying to reach out to in terms of communicating our 24 credit work.

So I just wanted to put that in as a placeholder if that's a communication avenue that we can engage with.

So some of the lively issues we continue to hear about the highly capable program.

And this did come up in the curriculum instruction committee policy policy committee.

And so I want to also share that with Cedric and please communicate with others that this is something that the board is working on defining the services.

Identifying you know what are our processes to identify students so that we improve equitable identification.

And then we're also defining support and acceleration systems so that you know we don't want to just.

Go in and.

Change our assignment program to you know based on some sort of an equity lens without making sure that we're doing it to provide the actual academic supports and prepare students for success.

And so we're super excited at the citywide enthusiasm around that.

Another thing which is has been brought before us before and as sort of a warning or a point of concern is the Robert Eagle Staff middle school and recognizing that that is a it's a capacity constraint place.

I think I shared at the last board meeting that I had met with the Licton Springs community and I'll be meeting soon with the Robert Eagle Staff community as well to understand from all the folks that share that building what is the best way to manage that.

So recognize that staff is conscious of it we're trying to think of you know what are the best long term solutions that provide sustainability and academic excellence for everyone.

So I'm going to I'm going to go a little emotional at this point.

When you when you sit behind the dais here and you do all the school board stuff.

It changes you it.

You just go through experiences that change you as a person.

And I had one earlier this month.

Where I attended the native.

Native education.

Pack.

What's the.

Parent advisory group.

That's what it is.

Acronyms.

And I got to.

Listen and hear some of the stories that were shared by the families.

You know their hopes and dreams and they were.

They were thoughtful they were pointed with their their concerns but they were super collaborative.

And so I want to thank them for that.

You know some of the some of the comments I heard were that they're feeling that Seattle still has a lot of boarding school policies.

And you know even some some really specific examples of that like when their students are out of school due to religious events because of the out of school time they may not be allowed to participate in athletic events.

And so we've created a policy where we're trying to encourage students to be in school.

So that's something that's supposed to be contributing towards academic success.

But because of the cultural elements of the native community it's just not as as compatible with what they do.

And so it has an unintended consequence.

And so hearing these stories from the people that they're affected is super super powerful.

One of the quotes that I wrote down is that they have to fit into this little box.

And I thought to myself wow this little box is what I was born and raised and grew up in.

And so the walls that make the box for me are completely different from the walls that they were describing and how how they need those you know how they need those to operate.

So moving forward with trust being able to talk about the conflict and having an authentic dialogue about it is really a.

a critical element of how we move forward on this and I want to commend Dr. Nyland for his leadership in being there and Michael Tolley and Kyle Kinoshita and just speaking to the trust component of that.

Kyle Kinoshita and also some district staff that were there that spoke sometimes favorably sometimes critically of the work that we're doing in the district.

were able to do that in the presence of one in some cases three we had Director DeWolf was there and Director Geary was there as well.

three board directors a superintendent and associate superintendent teaching and learning.

And these are people who feel comfortable willing to air their grievances with this hierarchy of of of people there.

So I think that was really powerful that that folks felt like they could share that and that would be received as constructive criticism rather than unconstructive criticism.

So closing.

I will also see folks on Saturday at the March for our lives and I want to put out loud and clear a clarification on the director page.

My community meeting for Saturday is actually listed at 10 to 12. The actual time is 330 to 530. So thank you for the community member for pointing that out.

We just posted it incorrectly so we'll get that corrected right away.

But it is 330 to 530 so you can spend the day focusing on kids.

Do a march.

Come visit me.

Thank you.

OK we're going to take a brief pause until 430 when we will have our public testimony.

So you've got two minutes to stretch.

530. Thank you.