School Board Meeting - June 24, 2020

I just want to say welcome.

My name is Zachary DeWolf.

Thank you for being here.

I am now calling the June 24th 2020 regular board meeting to order at 1 p.m.

We live serve and go to a school go to school in a city that is the ancestral homeland to the Duwamish people Muckleshoot Nation and the Suquamish Nation.

We acknowledge them as custodians of this land since time immemorial.

As guests and in many of our cases as settlers on this land we extend our deepest gratitude and respect to their ancestors and elders past present and future.

I would now like to turn it over to Director Hersey for a moment.

Thank you President DeWolf.

I just wanted to take a moment to Observe a moment of silence for the student Lorenzo who was killed at the Capitol Hill organized protest.

Our hearts weigh heavily in this moment especially considering that there is so much violence going on not only in our world but in our city.

And looking at our agenda tonight hopefully we will be able to address some of the violence that is not only taking place in our city but also in our schools.

So in honor of Lorenzo if you could just join me in a few moments of silence that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Now I'll turn it over to Miss Wilson-Jones for the roll call please.

Director Hampson here.

Director Harris present.

Director Hersey here.

Director Mack here.

Director Rankin here.

Here.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Director DeWolf.

Here.

Okay.

Thank you Ms. Wilson-Jones.

Superintendent Juneau is also joining us for today's meeting and additional staff will be briefing the board as we move through the agenda.

This meeting is being held remotely per the governor's proclamation 28.5 prohibiting meetings such as this one from being held in person.

And I'll note that members of the public are also may also be joining via phone or online streaming.

I will not be asking members of the public to identify themselves now other than when we move into public testimony.

But thank you to those joining us.

To facilitate this meeting I will ask all participants to ensure you are muted when you are not speaking.

Staff may be muting participants to address feedback and ensure we can hear from directors and staff.

The chat function of Microsoft Teams will also not be used for today's meeting.

I will now turn it over to Superintendent Juneau for her comments.

Thank you directors.

And I think you will see a PowerPoint come up soon that we will move through.

Thank you.

I just want to also echo what we heard this morning and just make sure that we are sending condolences to the interagency Grey Wolf family and let them know that we mourn.

with all those who knew and loved Lorenzo.

And so that is always really hard difficult news.

And also since it is the wrap up of our 2019-20 school year I want to take a little bit of time to share some of the accomplishments from this past school year.

As we all know it was a year not like any other that we have ever experienced and yet SPS staff still got a lot done.

Next slide please.

While this year did not go exactly how we had planned we never lost sight even in the middle of a crisis of our priorities outlined in our strategic plan Seattle Excellence.

We committed to and held ourselves accountable to censoring students of color furthest from educational justice with a particular focus on African-American boys and teens in our decision making.

throughout this entire process.

Next slide please.

Just a few.

These are just going to be very high level just a few of our accomplishments.

A longer list can be found on my SPS and I would just encourage directors to go check that out because it would make you very very proud to be leaders in a district that got so much done in the middle of the COVID closures.

These accomplishments we recently had you know it didn't dampen the spirits of end-of-school celebrations and we had we had our annual John Stanford Center annual wrap-up of the year celebration and it was actually really a lot of fun even though it was remote.

But we got to share a lot of the great work that happened this year.

Next slide please.

If you think way back to where You know before all this it's important to remember some things actually happened pre-COVID like things like we established the African-American Male Achievement Department including the hiring of an awesome executive director and two managers.

They launched the African-American Student Leadership Council.

As you were engaged with our engagement teams around reopening you heard several of their voices.

included and they continue to help us with our major district decisions.

Coaching was provided to 42 racial equity teams.

There was a Winter Institute that was held.

And I know that you've also heard through our strategic plan updates the piloting of academic parent teacher teams or APTT at 3 of our 13 priority schools in support of improved family engagement and student learning.

Those will be some great lessons that we can expand our family engagement to other schools as well.

Next slide please.

1,400 educators from 25 schools attended racial equity training during this past school year.

I just want to say that again 1,400 educators from 25 schools.

I know that several of you always ask for numbers and so that is really really great that this type of engagement with from our staff is happening.

And as you all know a big celebration as we enrolled six times as many students in the summer of learning as we usually do.

Fifteen thousand students enrolled for summer school.

We have over 350 support staff that are helping with the summer programming.

Do you remember at the beginning a lot of our educators stepped up to create videos for SPS-TV for at-home learning.

And our educators make 618 of those videos.

Those videos were viewed over 308,000 times for a total of over 26,400 hours of viewing.

And so I just want to thank all the educators who stepped up to make sure that those were out there for our families to watch.

And from the numbers they surely were successful.

Those we had line learning packets aligned to the videos.

Over 105,500 of those packets were distributed at our 26 meal sites.

We also had community partners that brought them out to to our our housing partners and just a lot of heroic efforts.

Those were all translated so out into our community.

So just a big heavy lift there and we had a great team at Central and across the district who really helped make sure that we were getting this remote learning products out to our families.

And so those are awesome numbers and just really want to thank the teams for bringing that together.

Next slide please.

This is a pretty impressive number.

As we know that there was still essential staff that was coming that were coming into schools and into buildings throughout this entire closure.

One of those essential staff groups were our custodial services.

And you can see those numbers they cleaned and maintained 8,797,851 square feet.

So just read through that slide and just the huge lift and the awesomeness of our custodial staff just really appreciate the work that they kept going throughout the summer.

And so you know we have great SPS staff.

Next slide please.

If you think back way before we were thinking about coming up with a vaccine for our new virus there was a call that we had to get our student immunization records up to date.

Our health services department processed over 2,000 records to achieve a 97 percent immunization record compliance rate which is really huge.

And so even before all of this new virus there was a lot of vaccination things happening.

And just read through there were 8 over 830,000 miles.

That's not the final number.

So I expect that number to actually be higher.

But over 830,000 meals were served over the 14 weeks at 26 meal sites affordable housing sites and through community partners.

And as we know we were also you know scrambling to get devices out to our students so they could engage in remote learning and over and 25,500 devices were distributed.

That included the 9,000 Chromebooks donated by Amazon.

And so I just really also want to thank the DOCKS team.

They did a heroic lift of you know getting into schools emptying those laptop carts getting new devices in imaging them distributing them.

And so that was just a phenomenal job.

And so thanks to all the staff who got all of these things out.

And throughout this entire closure it's been pretty inspiring about our community partners philanthropic partners stepping up to really assist in all of these efforts.

And just a few of the amazing partnerships that were built or made stronger during this COVID closure to support our students and families of course the Alliance for Education They continue to be a super strong partner, working with a lot of different groups to bring money and resources and assistance to SPS, not just during the closure, but always.

Amazon stepped up in a really big way.

Fair Start, Microsoft, C-City, Facebook, Gates Foundation, And so so many more.

And I as the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools just really want to thank our community for everything they've done to come up in alongside of us and to support our school communities and our students.

And it's just so important to make sure that we can maintain this effort of our community partnerships because they're going to be needed for sure for next year.

And next slide please.

I also as part of our partners want to thank the Seattle Council PTSA.

They did a significant lift with our communities and our parents of getting information to us in a timely way and making sure they were reaching out during all kinds of efforts.

And so they've been a super strong partner as we've been throughout this closure too and a lot of the work we would not have been able to lift without them.

So thank them as well.

And just know that regardless of how we start school in fall 2020 and I know that there's still a lot of work to be done and a lot of leadership to be provided from the district and with the board we will continue to focus on these priorities and to center African-American boys and teens and other students furthest from educational justice as we continue to do this work.

So just super thankful I think.

You know we talk a lot about gratitude and I am just full of gratitude for all of everybody who came to circle in around Seattle Public Schools during this time.

And as you see from the high-level numbers and you know again I would encourage you to go check out SPS-TV and see the longer list.

Just super proud of our staff and super grateful that people came together to support our students throughout this closure and hope that momentum continues so.

Thank you directors for all of your assistance throughout this as well and look forward to continuing our good work together.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Superintendent Juneau.

And I just wanted to add one additional highlight.

Superintendent Juneau myself as well as Director Hampson as co-tribal nations liaisons sent letters to all 29 of the federally recognized tribes here in the state and asked if they You know needed any of our support particularly in the use of any of our educational resources.

And I know that we had heard back from the Tulalip tribe and so just another additional place of collaboration and something to celebrate that we were able to partner with tribes here in the state.

So thank you for that presentation.

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

May I have a motion for the consent agenda.

This is Director Hampson so moved.

Second Director Harris.

Thank you.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

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

Director President DeWolf this is Director Mack.

Yes.

I don't want to remove something but I did want to make note just so that all directors are aware that there are two items on the agenda on the consent agenda that have been have come through Ops for approval but they have not actually been introduced to the full board and we typically do that.

So just for everyone's knowledge make sure you double-check that because they weren't actually introed.

with the full board their intro action today.

They did come through Ops with a recommendation for approval though and I'm not asking to pull them.

I just wanted to call that out so that directors were aware.

Thank you Director Mack.

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

Okay.

Hearing none.

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

Those opposed.

The consent agenda has passed unanimously.

Thank you directors and thank you for that clarification Director Mack.

We have now reached a moment before our public testimony portion which does not start until 130. So I would ask any directors who would like to give their board comments now which we had reserved for the end of the meeting to either provide those now or we can I would rather not take a recess.

So if directors would like to share comments now I'll just go through alphabetically and let me know if you'd like to pass.

That's that's okay as well.

And like I said we do need to wait until 130 for public comment.

Hampson.

I will pass for now.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Pass for now.

Thank you.

Director Hersey.

Not for me right now.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Also pass for now.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Well I want to pass too but I feel bad wasting this 12 minutes.

I'm not I'm just not prepared at this moment.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Okay everybody's here.

I'm just an attendee so.

Folks can please mute yourselves.

Director Rivera-Smith.

I'll pass for now.

Thank you.

Okay well if directors have all agreed to pass we will take a we can either pause here for 10 minutes or we can jump to introduction items.

My my concern with jumping to introduction would be that we will likely get into a deep conversation and I I'm not sure prepared for that.

So Ellie I think given that directors do not want to provide any board comments right now It seems like the best course of action would be to take a small recess.

Director DeWolf.

Ms. Wilson.

Oh yes Director Hampson.

We have our public comment public testimony list is short.

Yes.

I don't know if if it's within our within protocol or policy to be able to take to ask anyone to go earlier or to take additional.

No.

Okay.

I think we just need to wait till 130 because that's what's been publicly noticed.

Okay.

Yeah.

So given where we're at I will take a 10-minute recess and we will resume at 130 p.m.

on the dot.

at 1 30 p.m.

And as we have now reached 1 30 p.m.

we will next go to public testimony.

And for folks just joining us we are really looking forward to bringing public comment excuse me public testimony back and so really grateful for today.

Board Procedure 1430BP provides the rules for providing testimony.

I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules which will be shown on the screen while I explain the process for public testimony today.

And before I begin I also want to just share my gratitude to our board office for figuring this out because I know this is a little bit more challenging logistically virtually.

So public testimony will be taken remotely with speakers participating by phone or through Microsoft Teams.

For those who are joining us with Microsoft Teams you will see the testimony list displayed five names at a time.

Staff will advance the testimony list on the screen as we move through the speakers.

The testimony list for today's meeting is also available on the school board website as part of the agenda posting for today.

Please remain muted until your name is called to provide testimony.

When your name is called please ensure you are muted unmuted in Microsoft Teams and begin your testimony.

If you have joined by phone please be sure you have unmuted on the device you are calling from and also press star 6 to unmute yourself on the conference line.

Each speaker will have a two minute speaking time and once your name is read staff will begin a two minute timer.

And if you are joining with Microsoft Teams you will see a progress bar at the bottom of your screen.

It will turn orange from left to right as your time is exhausted.

For those participating in Microsoft Teams and by phone You should also hear a chime sound when the two minutes have been exhausted.

This chime indicates your time has ended and the next speaker will be called.

So thank you everybody for your flexibility and patience today.

Miss Wilson-Jones please read off the testimony speakers.

First for public testimony is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins.

Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On final acceptance of the Wilson Pacific project.

Five points.

Number one the board report deliberately obscures important facts.

Number two the project resulted in three evictions.

Licton Springs K-8 Indian Heritage High School and the Clear Sky Native Youth Program.

Number three the site was landmarked by the city but not because of the murals.

But because of the importance of the Native history at the site including Indian Heritage High School its principal Robert Eagle Staff and the centuries old importance to Indian tribes of Licton Springs which runs through the site.

Number four the school district fought the landmarking and sued the city to be able to demolish the landmarked Native history at the site.

Number five the project was an horrendous example of wrongdoing by the school district.

Please vote no.

On the board resolution opposing landmarking of Rainier Beach High School.

Five points.

Number one this resolution is another horrendous mistake.

Number two the history of Rainier Beach deserves respectful consideration as a city landmark.

Number three instead the district has hired a consultant to claim that Rainier Beach has no important history.

Number four the same consultant and the same district staff wrongly claimed Wilson Pacific had no important Native history.

Number five please respect the history of Rainier Beach.

Please vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony is Carrie Seibertson.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Carrie Seibertson and I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a school social worker at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

This marks the end of my 13th year in Seattle Public Schools.

I was honored this year as the 2020 National School Social Worker of the Year.

I'm here to speak specifically to the role of the school social worker as we face reopening this fall due to COVID and the need to replace law enforcement with student support personnel.

On the agenda for today we are discussing student rights and responsibilities and the resolution 2019-20-38 affirming SPS's commitment to Black students.

Both reference the need for more school social workers in our buildings.

A school social worker holds a master's degree and a certification as an education staff associate.

The role of the school social worker is to provide an integral link between school home and community.

This is accomplished by removing barriers and providing services that include mental health and academic counseling support for students and parents crisis prevention and intervention professional case management collaboration with community agencies social emotional learning and advocacy for students and parents.

At Robert Eagle Staff we use restorative practices instead of exclusionary practices.

And the reason we're able to do this work systematically is because of the role of the school social worker.

We are trauma-informed provide mental health expertise and our strength lies in creating community partnerships and wraparound services for our students and families.

In Seattle Public Schools there are 35 ESA school social workers.

About half of those work in buildings.

When I began in 2007 there were three of us.

Due to the weighted staffing standards and the prototypical school funding social workers are often funded through various grants or discretionary funds at the building level.

Job position prospects and retention are a concern due to inconsistent funding and lack of an established department in our district.

Just this year we have established an outlet group created a PLC for social workers plan professional development together for next school year and have come out from hiding under others titles.

We are an established and viable profession nationally and Washington State is far behind where we could be.

Seattle could set the example.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony is Anne Sheeran.

Hi.

Can you hear me.

Yes we can.

Okay.

So I'm the parent of an incoming senior with an IEP at West Seattle High School and an 8th grader without an IEP at Washington Middle School.

In the past several months you've heard from our special ed families about our difficulties getting real questions real answers to questions about district actions affecting our students from continuous learning plans to data collection Responses from the special education department are vague, nonexistent, or inconsistent.

I doubt that we have a policy now of keeping our special needs families in the dark, and I'm concerned about what is going on.

I worry that this inability to provide clear information to our questions signifies a deeper problem, that we have no planners or nobody accountable in the special ed department I'm sorry to be so blunt but I hope that you will find out.

I am also concerned about the district's vision and commitment to inclusion if online learning is going to continue in some form it seems likely in the fall.

The experience so far has been horribly resegregating for our students with disabilities who without access to their regular services and supports have been cut off from their gen ed classes.

Yet when Superintendent Juneau opened the special ed town hall last month She gave a shout out to a special education teacher for getting all of her IEP students together for a weekly lunch buddies.

A teacher practice that actually sets an incredibly low bar for inclusion and for special educators.

And in this case failed to recognize that the students in that caseload are all access students in the first place.

That is they receive their services in Gen Ed and yet all they got was a lunch buddies.

Why not find a special education teacher who is successfully navigating the sped gen-ed divide during school closures and celebrate that instead of celebrating the most segregated practice of all.

I am hoping that the school board can help set expectations for how the district will speak about and practice inclusion in the fall.

Thank you.

Thank you Anne.

Next up for public testimony is Manuela Slay.

Good afternoon.

My name is Manolo Sly President of Seattle Council PTSA.

Thank you for bringing forth this resolution affirming Seattle Public Schools commitment to Black students.

Regarding the moratorium on SELs I want to stress the importance of listening to community and the voices of students with an intentional focus on those at schools impacted by this moratorium.

We need authentic community engagement and we need to discuss the life experiences of students in these communities and the role of the officers in their schools.

We need to discuss needs and we need to discuss alternatives outside the police partnership.

But most importantly we need to look at a bigger picture.

School administrators and teachers must have the skill and the resources to de-escalate situations and avoid calling the police intervention.

I hear counselors and social workers are great alternatives and I believe so but painful reality has proven sometimes even those professionals have caused distress to students So training accountability is really important.

Also I think that detailed reporting of school-based law enforcement interactions is a huge priority.

Last week I heard from SPS Collaborative Policing Department there were 40 arrests on school grounds last year but they were unable to desegregate the data and tell me if the arrested people were students parents or staff.

This is the kind of information that needs to be clear and needs to be transparent.

Also can you please prioritize the work with teacher and principal unions.

Your collaboration is crucial.

Pointing fingers is not going to be tolerated.

I support the directive of Superintendent Juneau to develop to Superintendent Juneau to develop Black students curriculum.

This is also crucial and much needed.

Much talk has happened about ethnic studies.

In this climate Black studies is not only appropriate but also essential.

I also want to close by saying that our communities are watching and it is our intent to hold you accountable to everything in this resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony is Eli Cortez.

Is Eli Cortez on the line.

If you've joined by phone you may need to press star-6 to unmute.

Can you hear me okay.

Eli.

Yes.

Can you hear me.

Yes we can.

Okay.

Sorry.

Technical difficulties.

Hello.

I'm Liz Cortez.

I'm parent and leader of Latinx group at Garfield High School.

I have submitted in writing in prior meetings the testimony of my group of the Spanish-speaking parents.

The consensus is to keep officers.

We need them not to police policing but to build relationships between law enforcement and the community.

But if the politically correct thing to do is to cancel them Then we need a plan before students go back to campus to keep them safe.

I ask you to please listen to the people directly affected.

The teachers the students administration and the community leaders that live in the communities and the students that attend this school.

Because they are a crucial part of our daily lives.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony is Kayla Epting.

Hi my name is Kayla Epting.

I am a parent at Garfield High School.

I want to start by saying fast never lasts.

I feel the decision to remove The school resource and emphasis officers was made in a knee-jerk fashion and made prematurely.

While I absolutely agree we need police reform, I don't think it is responsible to throw things out before we've replaced them or an attempt has been made to reform it.

I believe making adjustments like having them dress in plain clothes and not carrying lethal weapons on campus would have been a better Way to start.

I also believe that these choices should be data driven.

Using statistics on if our SROs and our SEOs have excessive force complaints or instances of biased policing.

Have they abused their power in our school environment.

Are there overwhelming complaints about their behaviors from students and staff.

Have we seen a reduction in behavior that we felt warranted when their presence was first requested.

Do our SROs and SEOs love being in our schools.

Do we have a developed criteria for how we pick the SROs and the SEOs that serve in our our school population.

I think that these things should have been fleshed out before the decision was made and I am confident that the deep work required to make such a decision was not done beforehand.

SROs and SEOs provide a vital link between departments and community.

I will end with this thought.

If a situation with a child or your child arose where law enforcement needed to be called to their school, would you prefer an SRO responding who has a relationship with your school community or a random cop with an unknown history and no working knowledge of the school community?

I don't want to discount the trauma suffered by communities of color.

Up the hands of law enforcement but I know that the way forward requires healing conversation and actions on both sides.

We can't do the work independently.

It has to be a collective effort.

Next up for public testimony is Lucia Ramirez-Levias.

Sorry apologies for her pronunciation.

Hi this is Lucia Ramirez-Levias.

I don't believe that children should be policed in their schools.

As a mother of children of color that's a terrifying thought.

However I also don't think that the voice of the students and the families that have resource and emphasis officers in their schools were engaged in a meaningful way prior to the superintendent's decision.

I am the mother of two boys who identify as Black and Hispanic.

One at Aki Kurose and one at South Shore.

Until I started looking into this issue I thought that every Seattle Public School had a resource officer.

Discovering that they are only in the schools where there are majority children of color is unsettling.

But I want to tell you about my students experience with Detective Lucas and Detective Roberson because I am not sure this view has been heard.

Both of those officers are assets to our schools and have a meaningful and positive relationship with the children including mine.

As far as I know they do not play any sort of role in a disciplinary policing manner in our school.

In fact I understand that they have been involved in de-escalating conflict in the school.

They are members of our community and they are Black.

Detective Cookie is not a resource officer but she runs a chess club for fifth graders that was hugely positive for my older son.

The community recently built a park in the Rainier Beach area in recognition of her work in schools and communities.

That is why this issue is so complex and requires nuanced and thoughtful consideration from students and families in relationship with these officers.

Will Detective Cookie be allowed into the school next year to run the chess club.

Can Officer Roberson come to Aki out of uniform next year and still run the lunch flag football league at Aki.

These are questions that my children will be asking and I don't have clear answers.

I ask that the school district ensure that meaningful engagement with the students and families in these schools is captured.

It is our kids and our community that's impacted by this decision because those are real relationships that exist in our schools.

As a mother of Black children I do have deep concerns about policing the schools.

However this issue is complex and deserves meaningful and nuanced attention.

Thank you.

That concludes the list of public testimony signups.

Thank you Miss Wilson-Jones and thank you to all of our folks from the public and from our community and our neighbors for speaking up and speaking out today.

Greatly appreciate you joining us.

So that concludes our in-person public testimony meeting.

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

As we move through these items and later the introduction items I will first call on committee chairs.

Then I'll call on the remaining directors alphabetically for questions and comments.

And if I could provide one small suggestion to my fellow directors just a little bit editorializing here.

Given the large agenda we do have today my suggestion would be to please reserve your time for new comments and questions.

Repeating gratitudes comments and concerns may might mean we'll have a longer meeting today and there are plenty of introduction items to work through.

You are your own director so take that as you will but I am sure it will be welcomed by all.

So we'll now move to Action Item Number 1. Resolution 201920-38 Affirming Seattle Public Schools Commitment to Black Students.

This came through the Executive Committee on June 10th for approval.

May I have a motion for this item please.

This is Director Hampson.

We move that the school board approve Resolution 2019 affirming Seattle Public Schools commitment to Black students.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second the motion Director Harris.

Thank you.

This item has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

This item is on the agenda for introduction and action today.

I will start off with just a little bit of background and then co-sponsors direct And as well as my co-sponsors Director Hersey and Director Hampson will provide additional information based on revisions and conversations since introduction.

So just to start us off I I'm so grateful for the speakers that were able to join us for public testimony today.

And I think one of the probably the most important word that I heard and continued to hear is just how complex this issue really is particularly as our moratorium on SEOs and SROs captured within this resolution.

So not soon not soon after the murder of George Floyd and the continued protests directors we we knew we had to do something.

We wanted to meet this moment and we felt that given our really strong strategic plan we could make a resolution that made some commitments.

from SPS and I'm really grateful for the collaboration with Directors Hersey and Hampson.

I will turn it over to Director Hersey for a little bit more background and then end it out with Director Hampson and then move on to additional directors for comments and questions.

So Director Hersey.

Hey can everybody hear me.

Yes we can.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

This was definitely a labor of love from my perspective thinking about how we can be responsive to not only the innumerate amount of emails that we received but more specifically our students who have been calling for this change.

I do want to give space to the parents especially those of color who are on the call who gave us very clear public testimony that These officers in so many respects have really great relationships with the students that are in their buildings.

And our district has failed in the past and in some instances in this present to do adequate and robust community engagement in any significant way in many regards.

Right.

So I hear you and I see you and I want to make sure that you understand as we move forward with this with this policy that we need to figure out what are the needs that these officers are filling in our buildings and also be responsive to the students primarily from all of these schools who have reached out to us and very clearly said that they do not feel as though they want police in schools right.

What I think we can do in this situation is thread this needle in a specific way.

One of the biggest demands that we've heard is that if we are going to take these individuals out of our schools then we need to replace them with mentorship opportunities in individuals who look like our students.

Director Hampson and I have already begun that work in figuring out what that will look like.

Before I move any further I would be remissed if I did not show an immense amount of gratitude for Manuela Sly and Sabrina Burr, Seattle Council PDSA President and Co-Vice President respectively.

for the amount of engagement that they have done around this issue.

We need to figure out a way to celebrate them and to show them how much that they are appreciated because if it weren't for them we would not have the clear understanding that we do now about the landscape of this issue in our building.

So I want to make that very clear and very known.

If it wasn't for them we would not be here.

As we move on in thinking about how we move forward with this resolution I had the opportunity to meet with one of the longest standing community engagement groups and advocacy groups on the South in the South End that is student-led named WABLOC.

Building Leaders of Change.

My meeting with them was very it was eye-opening in a lot of respects because when initially We had the ban set for one year or the moratorium rather set for one year.

When I met with this group again predominantly student-led they said very loudly and clearly that a one-year ban was not enough.

And I believe even in an instance when we are at an intersection to where we feel as though for once we want to do adequate and proper community engagement I felt myself caught in the midst of an equity detour.

Right.

I believe that we have a responsibility as a district to be in a position to where if we are taking something away we need to do the community engagement to figure out what those needs are so that we can make sure that we do not have a student population that feels unsafe.

Because in this country and not only this country but more specifically this city and in this region we have normalized the presence of police in schools.

And so it is rightfully understandable that we have parents on this call who are very concerned with not only the safety of their students in the absence of these officers but also more robustly the absence of those relationships because for many students principals and educators and paraeducators are often not their primary relationship at that school.

It's often the instructional assistants.

Individuals who are serving roles like the resource officers or mentorship roles even in some instances the custodians often have the closest relationships with our students.

And as a second grade teacher I know this firsthand.

That being said we also have a responsibility as a system to rethink the way that we expose our children to police officers.

And I believe that we have an opportunity here to continue to do authentic engagement figure out what needs and services those officers are providing and then also do a better job of working with our community-based organizations to figure out a solution to get mentors in our schools that look like our kids.

And that's a little bit of background on why we moved away from the initial one-year ban to an indefinite ban.

so that we could not only be responsive to the calls of our students and our advocacy groups who have been working tirelessly to tell us very clearly that we need to be heading in a direction that does not involve police in our schools, but then also we need to find opportunities to answer those questions like were just posed to us.

Is there going to be an opportunity for Detective Cookie to come in and continue to do the chess club?

Is there going to be an intersection for our officers to come in as individuals not not necessarily in their roles as law enforcement but rather as community members and continue to engage with our students in a way that does not have the moniker of police or law enforcement on it.

Right.

So that is on us as a board and we need to make sure that we are also taking that into account.

Very quickly while I wrap up there are two amendments that you'll notice.

One is an aware as clause.

It is focused around the calling out very plainly that this is not a severing of engagement with SPD.

This is a severing of having police in our schools.

Right.

It would be irresponsible of us to think that if there was not an outside threat that we would still choose not to engage with the Seattle Police Department.

We would not be doing a great job of keeping our keeping our kids safe in that respect.

That being said we need to have very clear guardrails about what that relationship or rather not even relationship but rather communication looks like.

What is the conduct that we are expecting of the Seattle Police Department and when they are dealing with our system as public schools in any capacity.

And we also need to have a very clear and adequate definition of what is a threat and a threat assessment needs to be and a threat assessment or a threat assessment tool rather needs to be developed so that we can have very clear language that is student-led and driven and written in the interest and protection of students of color to make sure that in those rare instances where we do need to have interactions and involvement with Seattle Police Department that first it's at a systems level and then second there are clear guardrails to make sure that we are not further traumatizing our students.

The second amendment that was brought forth is going to be our support as not only a board but as a district in the defunding of police right.

Another key aspect is that if this motion passes or excuse me if this item passes and we remove these officers from our schools We need to do serious advocacy to our city partners to ensure that those funds go into services that will continue to benefit our students, whether that be directly into finding alternate mentorship and advocacy opportunities for people in our buildings, family support workers, counselors, social workers, what have you.

And when we are calling for the divestment of police, it is not only in the instance of saving money for the city, but rather making sure that those funds are rerouted into opportunities to continue to not only support our students, but help build the holistic lives that they deserve in the city in which they grew up.

We need to make this action now because our students are waiting and have been waiting long enough for us to actually take steps forward when we say Black Lives Matter.

And I feel very strongly that this is an opportunity for for systemic change but at the same time we need to do everything that we can to get this right so that we avoid taking away anything from a student especially in the regard of feeling safe but also ensuring that we are not further traumatizing our students in their day-to-day experiences with Seattle Public Schools.

And I'll turn it over to Director Hampson.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Pinagigi tremendous gratitude to you Director Hersey to you Director DeWolf for joining me in doing this work and then to Manuela Slye again and Sabrina Burr for working so hard to keep us connected to community and understanding particularly as a fellow parent what concerns parents have with respect to their student safety in a multifaceted perspective or way and I think that Director Hersey spoke to that really well but I just want to further emphasize and acknowledge that we do understand the the deep complexity associated with the need for there to be safety measures in place in our schools so that all students feel safe.

And I think that what we have attempted to do here with this resolution is to create a response that acknowledges that while that remains the case and is our obligation to retain and actually improve that sense of safety that we don't we shouldn't feel that we we are only able to access a resource that is not only armed in the form of police but is is militarized.

And so and so that's it's just been a it's been a really intense and difficult place to come to honor those those two tensions.

And we haven't fully struck the balance but but to be really clear this is a resolution.

So it is our intent and it is our commitment.

And then we have tremendous policy work to do in engagement with all of you that spoke today.

All of those that we have talked to and all of those that we have yet to talk to to reframe how it is that we bring law enforcement into our school buildings and into our school events.

And I think that's ultimately what I want to point to as well that gets lost.

It gets lost in in every single email that we've received is is the lack of awareness of the extent to which law enforcement is in our children's lives and our schools in a way that has nothing to do with school resource officers or school emphasis officers.

It is something that happens when teachers call 9-1-1 when administrators call 9-1-1.

We we do not have a well-defined or or racially equitable and by any stretch of the imagination set of policies procedures and relationships that allow us to really begin to stem the tide of the school-to-prison pipeline.

And for me that that is what this resolution is ultimately about.

And it is also about forcing our our system our and the people in the system to you know Black students are don't have a choice in terms of understanding White people and White lives whereas it's an option for for White folks to not understand Black students and Black lives and we need to put a stop to that.

And that's one of the reasons why we put Black Studies in here as well because that needs to also become a focus.

It can't just be a you know a protest.

It has to become known and humanized.

And I couldn't be more heartbroken that we're doing this on a day when we've lost one of our own Black male students just in the past week to gun violence.

It's it's beyond tragic and I do believe that we we failed him.

We managed to to get him a diploma but we still failed in our ability to protect him from violence.

So I take that very seriously.

I'm I'm proud of the work that we've done here but and I and I really support this resolution but I do want to be really clear with the community that this must be the beginning of our relationship with you and determining what the structure looks like so that we can Remove the sort of fear inspector of law enforcement as a way to work through just even the simplest behavioral concerns that that that come up in in our buildings if in many cases they are even behavioral concerns because I think that there's a big cultural shift that needs to take place there.

So with that I will I will pass it on to the next school board director for additional comments and questions.

Actually Director Hampson we'll move to ask if there are amendments from directors to this resolution.

Yes this is Director Rankin.

I would like to put forth an amendment.

I don't know do I need to make make a motion.

Yes you do.

Okay.

I move to amend Resolution 2019-20-38.

to include a reference to another policy and to specifically identify Black students with disabilities.

And I have the language for that but I do I need to have the motion.

Second.

Thank you.

Is this question mark.

Yes.

Actually the motion should.

Go ahead Greg.

The motion should be specific as to the language that is being offered.

If that could be read into the record.

Oh okay.

So I just need to specifically read it out.

All the words.

Yep.

Okay.

So just to clarify.

So as part of my motion to amend I read the language and comments to the resolution as it stands are still forthcoming.

Yes.

You need to read the motion.

And then you need to read your amendments.

And then another director can second and then we will talk about this amendment.

And then if this amendment is approved by directors we'll then move back to the underlying motion for the whole resolution.

Thank you.

That's always I've seen this process many times and it's always confusing.

Yes go ahead.

Okay.

So I move to amend the resolution to include In the 7th whereas which is whereas per board resolution 2017-18 Seattle Public Schools stands against gun violence and the arming of educators comma I would like to add and per board policy 4210 weapons prohibition for adults and visitors Seattle Public Schools properties are designated gun-free zones and and then the next whereas.

I would also like to in my motion to amend including include some language about additional disparities in discipline for Black students with disabilities.

The fifth whereas whereas in the United States Black students are three times more likely to be suspended than their peers.

Then I would add And Black students with disabilities are further disciplined or suspended for behavior related to their disability at a rate more than twice that of their White counterparts meaning White students with disabilities.

And and then the original language would continue in our state.

According to the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Black males and other students of color are disproportionately disciplined at a rate of 6.5 percent as compared with 1 percent for White students.

And in Seattle Black students and students of color are disproportionately disciplined and removed from the educational environment.

I would like to add comma widening gaps in access to instructional time and support services comma and.

As part of my motion the third addition I would like to add comes at the down in be it further resolved that the board commits to by accountably engaging in substantive substantive and substantial family and community engagement etc. etc.

That first first bullet point utilize de-escalation techniques and restorative justice programs which should reduce exclusionary practices and narrow racial disparities in discipline comma and then I would like to add including interventions that address the excessive and desperate just disparate loss of instruction for for Black students with disabilities.

And that is my motion.

Thank you.

I did hear a second from Director Hersey.

So I will call on directors in alphabetical order for questions or comments on this amendment and then we will move from here to the roll call and then back up to the underlying motion.

So myself I if Director Hersey wouldn't have seconded I would have so I'm fully in support of these.

Thank you Director Rankin for bringing them forward.

I will now move to Director Hampson.

No questions.

I fully support the amendment.

Director Harris.

Oh thank you so much.

I think you skipped over Director comments on the initial motion but happy to backfill.

And — Yep this is just for the amendment.

Excuse me.

You said we would be going to the amendment and then we would be going in any event.

With the amendment fully support it.

Thank you Liza.

Appreciate it immensely.

Thank you Director Harris.

We will have an opportunity to address the main motion.

Is that correct sir.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Hersey.

Fully support.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

I fully support the motion.

Thank you.

Any final comments.

Director Rankin.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'm really pleased that that folks seem supportive of this.

I.

Part of the something that protects the public from decisions being made behind closed doors but that is can be frustrating for board members is the the Open Public Meetings Act rule that didn't allow more than three don't allow more than three people to work on work on something that's not public.

It was really really important to me that we got language in here about specifically about disproportionate discipline and that students that students who are Black and have disabilities face in our system.

And I just I wanted to say that the the idea of policing of our students is is I think Director Hampson mentioned not limited to actual police.

particularly for Black students especially Black boys with disabilities their behave their very behavior and existence is is policed and reprimanded and disciplined at a really unacceptable rate.

And and they are they're punished for their lack of willingness or lack of ability to conform with White patriarchal norms of behavior expectations.

And so it was really important to me that we call that out.

That the school-to-prison pipeline doesn't start and end with police.

That it goes to at a very very young age what happens to what our system does to Black children when their behavior is deemed either threatening or merely inappropriate.

to a primarily White adult staff.

So anyway really thank thank you for the opportunity to add this.

And it was kind of tricky to get the language to be you know mesh with the rest of the resolution but I appreciate the support and I'm glad that this can be included.

Particularly with the work that we're doing in a curriculum and instruction around the restraint and isolation policy.

So thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rankin.

I'll now ask Miss Wilson-Jones for the vote on this amendment.

Director Mack aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris Director Hersey aye Director DeWolf aye.

This amendment has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

So now I actually need a new motion on the underlying item as amended.

I do I need to restate the motion or can I just move as amended.

You can move as amended.

Okay so moved.

Thank you for the move from Director Hampson and thank you Director Harris for the second.

I will now call on directors for discussion of the underlying item as amended.

And we'll first start with Director Hampson.

I'm I'm have said my piece.

Thank you for the friendly amendment and we'll I'll I will move to the next director.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Okay thanks.

Appreciate that.

I am very pleased to see this.

I am somewhat conflicted because we are being reactionary given the times but the fact that we are turning reactionary into proactive excites me greatly.

Those of y'all that know me well know that I started my legal career representing incarcerated individuals for several years.

Those of y'all that know me well know that day before yesterday was a cause for celebration because the 9th Circuit turned down the appeal of King County Sheriff's Office for the murder of Tommy Lay.

So we did a trial.

Recall that Tommy Lay was murdered the night before his graduation from CareerLink at South Seattle.

And our little firm and our little team have been working really hard and the anniversary of that was on June 14th just a week ago.

So whatever we can do to increase understanding to build bridges to stop the murder of our children we need to do it.

Hold hands.

Messy as hell.

Frustrating as hell.

and get on with it.

And I am most pleased.

Now do I appreciate that the devil's in the details.

Yes I do.

But we can work through that and I am hoping that Chief Counsel Narver with his background at the City of Seattle and in the OPMA can help us figure out ways that we get to actually work together without handcuffs on.

No pun intended.

So that we can communicate more effectively in bringing this information to the fore and actually have changed.

And I will extend props yet again even though we're on a time deadline here to Ms. Slye and Ms. Burr.

Thank you ever so much.

Thank you Director Harris.

Next up Director Hersey.

No additional questions or comments from me.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Yes hello.

Can you hear me okay.

Yes we can.

I deeply appreciate the work of the directors that brought this forward and sponsored this and the comprehensive nature of it as well as the amendment that was brought forward to highlight additional things that needed to be clearly stated in the resolution.

I fully support the resolution and in particular I wanted to mention the references to the policies that were We need to review and the superintendent procedures that go along with those that also need review because as Director Harris just stated the devil is in the detail and how we operationalize our policies in our school buildings is where sometimes things can fall apart.

And the section in the resolution that talks about the various policies.

If I could suggest I think a Scribner's error change so not really an amendment but the let me pull it up really quick.

The section there's a there's a footnote number 13 that is reference to a policy but I think it's supposed to reference to the all of the policies because it's not directly to that.

policy so in that let's see it is the.

It's where it says amend appropriate policies number numbers 3200.

And let's see here.

Yeah it's in a be it resolved be it further resolved section.

And let me make sure I get to the right one.

I'm sorry I'm scrolling and wasn't able to print this out.

I ran out of printer ink.

But yeah so it's be it further resolved that this board commits to by accountability engaging and substantive and substantial family and community engagement.

I appreciate that a lot.

And re-examine and amend as appropriate school board policies.

And I think that the Footnote number 13 should be after or on top of the word policy not on top of 3200 because there's a number of policies that are mentioned here.

So which is just kind of a editing function and As it was noted here school-based threat assessment is currently I think has been intro to the board and I I just want to make note that I have concerns about the superintendent procedures that accompany those not being detailed and that that policy I think references resource officers.

So I just want to call to attention that we may need to pull that back.

and have it come through a committee again to review that before we adopt it because it may need some changes based on this resolution which I'm grateful that we're talking about today.

The last thing that I want to just mention is the the testimony that we heard today from parents and community around you know how important it is to authentically engage the communities there and to ensure that we are we're going to have a plan in place to provide the mentoring and supports and all the other things that we need to be doing before the start of the school year.

You know I've heard from a number of community members that you know the personalities the people are beloved and in an incredibly important from a community perspective and that that having that community process as we move forward is just really important to make sure that those voices are at the table.

So thank you so much for bringing this forward.

I fully support and look forward to moving on and having the vote.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah I just wanted to thank my colleagues who put forth the work and effort to bring this resolution forward.

It's it's really critical and and also to the community members of course and especially those who gave testimony today about you know that that we are calling for an indefinite moratorium so that some of the concerns that were brought up in testimony can be better explored knowing that it's it is a more nuanced conversation than yes police no police.

And and and the very critical importance of hearing directly from the communities impacted.

And thanks to the efforts of Seattle Council PTSA we've gotten a lot of emails about people's experience and from within the communities that have these the officer so I just on the whole is is so important.

And I also just and gosh sorry I just totally lost my train of thought.

Oh I know what I was going to say.

The combination of this kind of in tandem or in addition to what Director Mack was talking about with the various policies The combination of this resolution and the threat assessment resolute or a threat assessment policy that's coming to us later in this meeting has really kind of highlighted the need for us to look at some policies together where they overlap with discipline and behavior and the relationship with with law enforcement and other agencies.

And so I'm hoping maybe that we can make time somehow to have a work session or some kind of some kind of discussion where we can bring together a bunch of different policies that I think we need to align under this resolution in terms of you know this would go to restraint and isolation discipline a whole host of things.

So that may not be a conversation for right now but that is something that I'm noticing you know things that are coming through different committees all kind of tie together very directly to this resolution.

And so as Director Mack was saying you know some policies will need to be amended to reflect this resolution but I think that also we need to consider those policies together not just you know making the amend or making the changes one policy at a time.

And I think That is it.

But really important good work and so thank you to everyone who's has and is continuing to support this work.

Thanks Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

I think it was about a month ago that I I actually I emailed superintendent's office and the board just to share that.

Dr. Mila James and I had had a conversation in which I at the time it was the Minneapolis school district was looking at terminating a contract with the city's police and so I just wanted to share that that it was something that I I said we might be getting emails about this and sure enough we got a ton.

And at the time you know I spoke about how Dr. Williams said how it was a valuable relationship officer at a school.

And I and I said how it sounded like something you'd want to grow not to terminate.

But I want to I want to own that.

I have evolved on this issue I believe and and I think that's something that's good to admit when we as directors can can speak about our own evolution on issues.

So I I appreciate the moratorium very much so that it's given us a chance to learn more and to do the community engagement that is necessary for a a far-reaching decision like this.

But I do very much hear our community and speak about the you know the fear students have of seeing officers in their schools and the need to to take that away to not not put them in that position because it is real to see they see DV and they see their families being harmed by police officers and then to see them in their schools that That is a real fear and a real trauma that we want to appreciate and want to acknowledge.

But at the same time you know as Ms. Lyon and Ms. Burbank engaging with the communities that have the officers it is important that we listen and we learn and we find a solution together.

So I I like everyone else I really appreciate this this this resolution.

I look forward to the conversations we're going to be having on it.

And thank you to all involved.

No further questions.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And I just want to continue to extend gratitude to our partners and my fellow directors Hampson and Hersey for collaborating as co-sponsors and also directors for your engagement and really robust conversations around this resolution.

So there being no further conversation on this resolution Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Hersey aye Director Mack aye Director DeWolf.

Emphatically yes.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you Directors.

We will now move to Action Item Number 2. Approval of the 2020-2021 Superintendent Evaluation Documents.

This came to the Executive Committee on May 20th for consideration.

May I have a motion for this item please.

This is Director Hampson.

I move the school board approve the 2020-21 Superintendent Evaluation Documents as attached to the Board Action Report.

Second the motion.

Director Harris.

Thank you Director Hampson for the motion and thank you to Director Harris for seconding.

This item has been updated since introduction.

At introduction Director Mack requested that the evaluation introduction documents be edited so that it is more clear there are two goals.

Therefore the attached attachments are now labeled Part 1 and Part 2 and the goals are labeled Goal 1 and Goal 2. In addition numbers were added to the summary statement at the top of both introductions to reference the two goals.

I'll now move on to directors for any final comments or questions before we move to the vote.

And as the Executive Committee Chair I will start and just briefly say thank you again.

I know we had this conversation at our introduction but thank you to the staff Erin Greg and and Superintendent Juneau and all of our partners at SPS for the work on this.

And special thanks to Directors Hampson and Harris for very very robust conversations over the course of four or five weeks.

And so thank you to their just showing up and doing this hard work in the midst of everything.

I will now move on to Director Hampson and then we'll just move through the list and okay Director Hampson you're next.

I don't have much in the way of comments.

Having had a lot of authorship and I appreciate everyone's input and support in getting these done into a place that was we hope robust enough to get us to some solid evaluation next year.

are at the end of this year and will fully be accountable for any reflection when we get to the end of that.

That indicates that we missed something.

So I just hope that we proceed in a good way.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Director Harris.

Very very robust.

No question about it.

A couple of things I'd like to point out.

Number one it's better than it was.

I don't think we're there yet but we live we learn.

It's a whole hell of a lot better than what we used to do with past superintendents with reams and reams of paper and killed trees that didn't necessarily really tell us anything at the end of the portal.

Two things I'd like to point out and then I will quiet down.

The word dyslexic is in third grade reading goal and I'm very pleased about that.

to again remind us that the Ocan Street Bridge the 1st Avenue South Bridge and our 500 buses south of the 1st Avenue Street Bridge are going to cause us enormous traffic delays and background and and we have to A embrace that and figure out ways around it.

It's I feel a little like Chicken Little and I don't want to be right.

In any event I plan to vote for this.

I argued passionately and robustly and I appreciate staff ability to embrace those arguments.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris and thank you too again for the your fierce advocacy for making sure that dyslexia was in that.

And just to clarify for folks the two goals are high-quality instruction and learning experience as priority and that specifically deals with 3rd grade reading.

The second one is about executive management and leadership and with a specific focus on HR transformation.

And so I will now move on to Director Hersey.

I think that these look great.

I don't have any further comments or questions at this time.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Yes hi.

Thank you for the edits that were provided to create some clarity around that there are two goals and the narrative and the documents also lay out that underneath each of those goals there's Well for Goal 1 they're termed initiatives and for Goal 2 they're termed projects.

So there's a little bit of confusion in my mind about are they initiatives or projects.

But just to clarify from reading through the whole thing that the rubric that's set up the Goal 1 is reading and it has four initiatives underneath it.

related to family community engagement professional learning teacher collaboration and establishing early learning pathways under the 3rd grade reading goal.

And under the executive leadership management goal there are three projects or maybe initiatives under HR that are case management training videos and process improvements.

And then the fourth one of prepared be prepared to and effectively lead and manage the district I think is how it's the organization.

But under that one it actually has about 10 different points which I think are important to ensure that we I'm calling them out here in this conversation that each of those points inside of that are also important.

And I appreciate that they're made here that these are kind of sub-goals.

in that in that higher-level goal or initiative I'm not sure what the language is here but that I appreciate that that's there and that that we will be able to refer back to that in our process next year.

So thank you for the work on that.

Thank you for the edits to the documents.

And if there's a way to maybe clarify that difference between an initiative and a project or whether or not that maybe it doesn't matter.

But anyway thank you.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Rankin.

No I just want to say a quick thank you to the exec committee and in particular Director Hampson who I know put a lot of time and effort into Making this as as we say more robust and kind of and to better reflect the actual job of the superintendent as opposed to metrics of the district as a whole.

So yeah.

Thank you.

No further comments or questions.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Yeah I appreciate that.

We've made it very clear for the public what we are measuring the superintendent's job performance on.

I think that would be great to be nice to refer back to these when we get questions and comments from the public and I look forward to using these next year so we can evaluate superintendent performance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

No being no further questions or comments.

Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Hersey aye Director Mack aye Director DeWolf aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you Miss Wilson-Jones.

We will now move to Action Item Number 3. Revising Board Policy Number 6901 Capital Levy Planning and Adopting Board Policy Number 6900 Facilities Planning.

This came to the Operations Committee on March 24th for approval.

May I have a motion for this item please.

This is Director Hampson.

I move that the school board amend Board Policy Number 6901 Capital Levy Planning and adopt new Board Policy Number 6900 facilities planning as attached to the school to the board action report.

Second the motion.

Director Harris.

This item has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

To directors for any comments or questions for Chief Operations Officer Fred Podesta before we vote.

And I also will as mentioned we'll start with our committee chairs per item and so we'll start with Director Mack who has our operations committee chair.

Over to you.

I just want to urge support for these this revised policy and adopting the policy.

This has been a couple of years of work.

Staff and the board collaborating to bring these forward.

Just I'm incredibly excited that they are finally here to be voted on today and I just urge you to support.

And thank you Mr. Podesta.

As all the rest of the staff as well.

Thank you Director Mack.

Okay.

Director Hampson.

No questions for me at this time.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

I'm good.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Hersey.

None for me.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

No questions for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I'll just add I know that grateful for all the work on this and was really appreciative to work with Director Mack and appropriate staff on this.

If folks were at our meeting last on June 10th we adopted a resolution affirming our commitment to the inclusion of our LGBTQ student staff and community.

And one of the policies that connects to that resolution is this one.

And so really really grateful for the to be able to collaborate with you on that Director Mack.

Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director Hersey aye Director Mack aye Director Rankin aye Director DeWolf aye has passed unanimously.

Thank you and congratulations on the incredible work on that Director Mack.

We'll now move to Action Item Number 4. Extending the Suspension of Provisions of Board Policy Number 2420 High School Grade and Credit Marking through August 2020. I have a motion for this item.

This is Director Hampson.

I move that the school board extend through August 2020 The temporary suspension of identified provisions of Board Policy Number 2420 High School Grade and Credit Marking Policy previously approved by the board on April 20th 2020 is identified in Attachment A to the Board Action Report and to be replaced with the grade marking options A or incomplete for the course courses that earn high school credits due to the containment of COVID-19.

Second the motion.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

This has been moved.

This item has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

So we'll now move to directors for any comments or questions for Chief Academic Officer Dr. Diane DeBacker before we vote.

I will start with Director Hampson.

No questions for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up Director Harris.

No questions.

Quick comment.

I intend to vote against this.

I have heard from a great many higher education folks that are very disturbed by our previous vote and I'm nothing if not consistent.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Hersey.

No questions for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Mack.

Just also to clarify that I did not support the original credit-making policy and I won't be supporting this as well.

Next up is Director Rankin.

Hi.

As the chair of the Curriculum and Instruction Committee This came through through us and was also offered as intro at the last board meeting two weeks ago and now is being introduced on action and I'm a little bit disturbed that there are concerns that are coming up now that did not reach my ears from either the public or my colleagues about it.

So but I will just say that the determination was made that the these the circumstances and situations surrounding the previous the policy for the spring are still in effect now.

And so it made sense to extend that to reduce negative impact on students.

And I also want to add that the evidence that we have have gotten or the data we have gotten about the policy this spring has been that it was very successful in being in in in being followed through as intended to reduce harm.

And I will also just state with in response to concerns about higher education that the that OSPI the whole state is everyone's grades during during COVID during this semester grades around the whole state there is an indication that it was during COVID-19.

And so some some districts chose to do an A B C or incomplete.

Some I'm not sure exactly all the variables but the instructions from OSPI were to not award to award neither passes nor fails in any case.

And so our our solution to that was to award A's or incompletes rather than try to sort out and potentially further penalize the most disadvantaged students by grading them based on circumstance rather than their ability or aptitude or capability for doing the work.

And so yeah just wanted to.

I guess reiterate that and and and say for the record some what the conversation was in the Curriculum and Instruction Committee and why I support the extension.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

I just want to reiterate my my concerns that this has to kind of stop here at least in the summer.

I don't want to see us using this for the fall.

I but I also acknowledge that you know it's not just us.

I think we're one of nine school districts approximately in the state who took this policy grading policy on.

So I also appreciate that there are there are students transcripts do have the marking signifying that this was a grade during the COVID time.

So it's it's Not ideal that we have to make this sort of sacrifices these these concessions to lack of more engagement and more time.

But I appreciate that is what we're going to have to just follow through for the summer and look forward to conversations about the fall grading policy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have no comments or questions.

Thank you for the work on this.

Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Hampson aye Director Harris nay Director Hersey aye Director Mack no Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director DeWolf Yes.

This motion has passed with a vote of 5 yes to 2 no.

Thank you.

We will now move to Action Item Number 5. Distress School Grant Approval of Budget Transfer from BTA IV Program Contingency and Award Construction Contract K5107.

Bid Number B02206 to Bailey Construction LP for the Cedar Park Elementary School Restroom Addition Project.

This came through the Operations Committee on June 4th for consideration.

May I have a motion for this item please.

This is Director Hampson.

I move that the board authorize the superintendent to approve the transfer of $354,477 from the BTA IV Program Contingency to the Cedar Park Elementary School Restroom Addition Project Budget and authorize the superintendent to execute construction contract K5107 with Bailey Construction LP in the amount of six hundred and thirty three thousand one hundred dollars including base bid and alternate number one plus Washington State sales tax with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second the motion.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

This is this item has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

This item is on the agenda for introduction and action today.

So Mr. Podesta I believe you will be briefing us and then I will move on to directors for questions and comments.

Over to you Mr. Podesta.

Thank you Director DeWolf.

This Cedar Park Elementary is a 1959 constructed landmarked building with one set of restrooms in the interior of the building for the 2015-2016 school year.

Eight portables were added.

You know significantly increasing the population of the school and requiring students to go from outside entrances into the building and is not Students have not been well supported by that configuration so this project will add roughly 600 square feet of space to the main building near the portables to allow for easier ingress and egress from the restrooms and additional capacity.

And this item is here for intro and action as well as the two that were on the consent agenda.

We delayed bids in the spring after the Governor's Stay Home Stay Safe order because certain construction activities were prohibited so we didn't really start creating construction bids.

until early May opening construction bids.

And so we had some projects that we wanted to make sure stay on schedule during the summer.

This is one of them and the other two that were before on the consent agenda for intro and action and that's why we're bringing it to the board in this manner because summer is here we need to start work.

And that is all my remarks.

I'll be happy to take any questions you have.

Thank you.

We'll start with Director Mack as our Operations Committee Chair.

Yeah thank you.

I don't actually have any questions or comments that came through for consideration because some of the details have not been filled in.

But the support for the project and getting these things moved forward was was clear.

And so thank you.

And thank you Fred for covering all that.

Thank you.

Director Hampson.

No questions.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that this has a completion date of September 11th.

We're going to need every square foot that we can get particularly in bathroom spaces.

So thank you so much for making sure this happens.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Harris.

Will do see this.

Thank you.

Support of.

Thank you.

Thank.

Next up is Director Hersey.

No questions for me.

Excited to move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Rankin.

No.

Much needed and appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Yeah no questions.

I'm really excited about getting this going.

I am I love me some construction right now.

I went and visited the Danville County site yesterday and it's so impressive to see the work that our capital projects teams are doing.

So thank you for this.

No further comments.

Thank you.

And I have none here but thank you to the work of the Operations Committee.

Miss Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Director Harris again please.

Director Harris aye Director Hersey aye Director Mack aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director DeWolf yes.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

We will now move to action item number 6 waiver of board policy number 3 1 3 0 student assignment and enrollment with respect to new students to the district who would otherwise be assigned to Mercer Middle School.

and an amendment to the Student Assignment Transition Plans for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

This came through the Operations Committee on June 4th for approval.

May I have a motion for this item please.

This is Director Hampson.

I move that the school board waive the provision in Board Policy Number 3130 Student Assignment and Enrollment that state students shall have the opportunity to attend an elementary middle or high school in a designated attendance area based on home address with respect to new students to the district who would otherwise be assigned to Mercer Middle School as their designated attendance area school and amend the student assignment transition plans for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 as attached to this to the board action report.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second the motion.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

This item has been This item has been moved by Director Hampson and seconded by Director Harris.

This item is on the agenda for introduction and action today.

So Chief of Student Support's Dr. Concie Perchosa I believe you will be briefing us.

Hi yes.

Thank you.

And I also have Ashley Davies on the phone to answer questions as well.

So just to share some background information.

We actually were in talks with the principal Cindy Waters in terms of some of the overcapacity issues of enrollment issues that have occurred.

They've they've experienced some extreme enrollment situations to the point where for the 2021 school year Mercer will have 25 portables on the school site.

And in addition there's no additional rooms within the buildings to be converted to classroom spaces.

This is there was a need to think differently about what to do and we believe that this action assignment plan as is temporarily for Mercer Middle School as the best action moving forward.

There is capacity at Aki Kurose and Washington Middle School to support students moving into those schools during this time.

Thank you Dr. Pedroza.

Now I'll move on to directors for any comments or questions before we move to the vote.

And just wanted to.

say at least my gratitude to Dr. Pedroza and Ashley Davies as well as Directors Mack and Hersey and other staff for coming together really quickly in the last month and a half on this topic and being able to pivot so quickly.

So we'll now move on to Director Mack who is our Operations Committee Chair to start off our questions and comments.

Yeah.

I wish I could say I'm happy that this is in front of us but I'm not.

It's unfortunate that we're at this situation with an overcrowded schools and having to make a somewhat emergency decision.

But I'm grateful that we have we're moving forward with our board policies that we passed today and the advisory committee that hopefully we can get ahead of some of these issues going forward.

And we all know that everything's up in the air and going to be challenging for the fall but that still this is critical.

for us to to pass at this time in order to ensure student safety in the building.

So thank you for all the work and pulling this together and bringing it in front of us.

Thank you.

Next we'll move on to Director Hampson.

If you could just clarify the the new student assignment options is there any choice or just geographic determination of whether they're going to Washington or or Aki.

I'm going to allow Director Davies to answer that question.

Good evening.

This is Ashley Davies Director of Enrollment Planning.

So new students to the district would be assigned to either Aki Kurose or Washington Middle School based off of where they live.

They would get choice just like any other student new to the district to any option school that does have space though.

So Orca K-8 for instance is an option school that is in the area of where Mercer is and they do have space so that could be one option that families could also take advantage of.

And then what's the impact on the high school on the high school pathway.

So there would be no impact on the high school at this time.

The assignment would just be for an alternate assignment at the middle school level.

They'd still be assigned to their neighborhood or attendance area high school once they get to that grade level.

And there is capacity at that in those areas.

Would they have the option to continue on their new their assigned for middle school pathway to high school.

So the middle schools don't feed directly into the high schools the way our boundaries are.

Our elementaries feed directly into middle schools but the high school boundaries don't align with the middle schools.

Right.

So there isn't a direct feeder anyways.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's all for me.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

I appreciate why we have to do this.

But it frustrates me no end that we knew this was coming for years and we didn't have the bandwidth or that with staff changes we were not able to change elementary theater schools away from Mercer who has been completely slammed for years.

We knew it and we knew we had room in other schools.

So it's a disappointment.

I'm hoping that the.

facilities master planning task force whatever it is that we're calling this that we are looking out for several years in advance and the good people that we have in the seat presently that are planning for years in advance we don't end up in this situation again.

I'm disappointed in us but we're doing the best we can and onward.

I will vote for this.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Hersey.

I'm just thrilled that we got to a place to where we could find a solution that in the short term at least alleviates a little bit of this struggle our educators administrators and all of our other hardworking employees in that building specifically.

We will need to find a more long-term solution for this and I'm looking forward to having those conversations and the robust community engagement that it's going to take to make sure that whatever decision we make is a good one.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Excuse me Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah I mean I have some of the same concerns related to the questions that Director Hampson asked.

I don't think there's a good good solution but I I would expect that when it comes time for students to rise to high school that there are going to be some frustrations or disappointments about what what that outcome is which is not to say it has a impact on this this item right now but I just you know I think you know there's there there is drama and upset when the perception is of not being able to continue in a in a cohort with your with your peers even though as to Miss Davies' point the the high school high school pathways don't or high school boundaries don't necessarily align with middle schools but I'm just throwing that out there.

The other question I have is if some students are going to Washington and some so I was not able to I had another director attend the June 4th meeting in my place where this was discussed because I wasn't able to be there at the Ops meeting.

Was there any discussion or or is there a I'm wondering about students being assigned to Washington versus Aki and if how it will be if we've thought about how to make sure that students understand the programmatic differences and and TAF and what that means for their student.

etc.

Sorry that was a long way of saying I sense there's drama.

Have we thought about it.

Or I sense a potential for drama and has it been considered.

Well I'll just speak but I know that Ashley's team is and especially in the admissions office one of the things that they will do is they work really closely with the families and making sure that they're understanding because this is more for new families registering into our system.

And so we can work with our teams to just sort of work through some of those those situations so they understand the programming and we can work with the manager Ms. Manu to just make sure that the team is equipped to answer those questions and work with Ashley to to get those questions answered.

But yes it might be a challenge but for some of our families coming in They might be really excited about that opportunity too.

Absolutely I agree.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

No questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have none at this time as well.

And just again thanks for the work on this.

And Ms. Jones roll call please.

Director Hersey.

Aye.

Director Mack aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Director DeWolf aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Okay directors we now have ahead of us 26 introduction excuse me 24 introduction items.

So I'm just encouraging us.

We have about an hour left scheduled for this call.

Minutes will likely not be as nuanced as the seconds or the or the repeat.

Gratitudes I just want to encourage really the burning questions and comments.

So I will move to item number.

1 which is Amending Board Policy Number 1430 Audience Participation and Board Procedure 1430BP Audience Participation.

This came to the Executive Committee on June 10th for consideration.

Chief Chief Legal Counsel Greg Narver I believe you'll be briefing us.

I will.

Good afternoon.

Greg Narver Chief Legal Counsel and I'll try to get the many intro items moving right along.

This came to executive committee on June 10th for consideration because there were a couple of possible amendments discussed and I'll I'll get to those in a second.

What I want to do first is just clarify what is in this BAR in terms of proposed changes to Policy 1430 and Board Procedure 1430BP.

The first thing this does and this is something that's been under discussion for a long time but got put on hold because of the COVID necessary and routine restrictions for a few months but it's finally moving forward.

The first thing this BAR does is just try to clarify the process a little bit for how the public can sign up for public comment and how we administer it.

Among the things it does it recognizes that board meetings won't always fall on a Wednesday.

We had a situation I know with a religious holiday at one time that required holding it on a Tuesday.

That's reflected in the new board procedure.

It clarifies the sign up process and the information that we ask speakers to provide to us and it provides some clarification on the slots we reserve for student speakers as well.

The other thing we do is reorganize a little bit and provide some clarity on the guidelines that we provide for public speakers.

When we make our podium available to the public It's called a designated public forum.

We are allowed to put reasonable time place and manner restrictions on speech like time limits and number of speakers.

But for the most part we we really don't can't restrict very much what people choose to say.

And so what I wanted to do was make sure that our guidelines were consistent with the principles of a designated public forum and I used as a guide the WSSDA model policy.

And what we have in the proposed changes is a lot closer to what WSSDA recommends.

The key principle for us always is that we have to be content neutral.

We can't discriminate based on viewpoint if we don't like a speaker's point of view and we can't provide favoritism either.

And I've now included in the board policy an explicit recognition that while we may hear a lot of speech that's negative in tone We will always remain content neutral in terms of allowing it.

We do provide a bullet point list of a few items of types of speech that are not protected under the First Amendment.

Things like inciting illegal acts or violence or so-called fighting words.

These are far and few between and in the meetings I've been attending since September I don't think I've we've certainly heard some direct speech even some offensive speech but I don't think I've heard anything that would have actually mandated the board president terminating somebody's speech.

So that's what's in today's BAR.

At committee there was discussion of a couple possible amendments.

One director proposed that a robust equity analysis be done of the time we allow to speakers and how many speakers we have.

That's a really important issue.

It's one that just given everything going on we really didn't have time to conduct before.

before this vote was taken a couple of other directors made the really important point about can we reserve certain speaking spots for particular agenda items because maybe if we have 25 speakers 23 may speak to the same item.

And given that the purpose of public comment is to help inform the board's decision making you might want to hear about a wider range of topics.

That's an important point.

It's also a pretty tricky one in terms of the law It needs a careful analysis and it's just nothing at least I have been able to turn my attention to yet.

This is a way of saying while it's up to the board what amendments they want to consider and when.

I think with those types of amendments we'd be better off giving them the analysis they deserve and maybe bringing this back up in the fall.

But I think in the meantime it makes sense to handle these clarification issues.

I think that's those are the only remarks I'm going to be making but I'm happy to answer any questions about this BAR.

Thank you Chief Local Council Narver.

We'll move to directors for questions and comments.

As the chair of the Executive Committee I have none but just do want to reiterate both my thanks but also that I hope we can come back to this because I think what this does is really provides and revises the container for our audience participation.

And to your point it doesn't add anything with with respect to extending our time or thinking about 0030 or Strat Plan having priorities.

So I ask my colleagues to come back to those ideas after we have some community engagement and some legal analysis around those challenges.

So Director Hampson I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you so much Mr. Narver for for doing this work.

I think it's really important despite not having anyone speak to it today.

In our public comment I do believe it's something that that is of great interest to those that would like to advocate on behalf of their their student communities.

And I think the the the equitable access is really my primary concern when you're talking about a public speaking forum as you indicated and getting beyond two minutes and how we can do that and still allow a lot of I think my preference would be three minutes and that seems like a tiny change but it would have pretty major implications.

So I'm looking forward to having more discussion about about that.

But otherwise I think that it it strikes a good balance in terms of being clear about what people can and can't say.

It's a pretty restrictive moment for us and I think it just goes to the fact that we need to find more ways to reach deeper into community.

to to get input.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Big big breath and swallow here.

This wasn't delayed just a couple of months because of COVID.

This has been on the agenda for several continuous months.

I well appreciate that the First Amendment slippery slope issues are are messy.

are difficult that our previous policy was just waiting for us to get sued.

And thank you Mr. Narver for wading through this morass to get us here.

But I do want a correct record and it's not because of COVID.

This has been out there for quite some time.

Second First Amendment is I think dear to all of our hearts but messy and difficult.

And people have a right to say what they say and they have a right to say who they want to say it to.

And for our district to narrow those rights is is very distressing to me.

The other issues that come with this I agree with board member Director Hampson that we really ought to go to three minutes.

There is a very long history of that years ago.

And there's also a long history of having our meeting after work in the evening when people can potentially participate.

The last issue that we talked about and I was understanding that staff was going to bring up some ideas here is to set aside a certain number of slots to talk about race and equity and white supremacy.

Again that's been discussed months and months and months and I'm hoping that we can do that so we can put our effort and admittedly our time And these meetings are long and they're going to get longer but but we need to put our time where our mouth is.

Thank you so much.

Director Hersey.

I didn't I don't have any additional statements.

I think my sentiments are covered in all of the comments that were just made.

So in the interest of time I'm going to go ahead and pass.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yeah hi thank you.

Mr. Narver can you clarify I was reading through the edits and the changes.

Can you clarify the the whether or not speakers need to speak to agenda items and whether or not they're ordered.

Did that get taken out entirely because the previous policy had a if you're speaking to action items you would be placed.

first so therefore it was kind of a more pressing and then intro items later.

Is that all removed now.

That's not in here.

That again gets into some of the tricky issues about we can require that you speak to items on the agenda.

There's plenty of case law supporting that idea.

In terms of dividing it between intro and action That's not something I dealt with.

I have not changed anything about that.

Whatever I'm dealing with whatever changes we proposed to the existing policy didn't didn't remove any prioritization like that.

It's well the term slippery slope has been used.

It's a very slippery slope on some of these things once we start saying we want to hear about this but not about or that this gets priority over that.

I apologize and maybe I just am having a hard time reading it.

So is that prioritization in the policy now because I thought it was or is it it wasn't there before and you didn't or I just just clarification is there a prioritization in the policy of order of action items versus intro items that can be.

Greg I can speak to that if that would be helpful.

Sure.

This is Ellie Wilson-Jones Director of Policy and Board Relations.

Yes Director Mack that prioritization process is retained in Board Procedure 1430BP.

There's a paragraph that begins with at noon on the day before the board meeting and then it speaks to the prioritization process which is that people speaking to action items are prioritized first on the list.

Then those speaking to introduction items followed by those who would be speaking to other other topics.

Thank you.

I knew I didn't change it but I couldn't remember if it was in there or not.

So it's so it's not in policy but it is in procedure.

How does that fit with the policy of not prioritizing.

Mr. Narver because I'm confused about whether or not we're we're being consistent here between what's written in the procedure and what's in the policy.

What I want to be clear on is what's prohibited is viewpoint discrimination.

And when I'm talking about whether we set aside particular topics like the strategic plan equity things like that which by necessity removes other things whether that's going to be viewed by courts as a form of viewpoint discrimination as opposed to what's permitted which is directing that speakers speak to the agenda.

That's just an analysis I haven't had the time to do yet.

I think what we have here is fine but what we can't do is say we want to hear people who are going to speak in a favorable way about something versus an unfavorable way.

And we also have to consider a state law that requires an opportunity for oral public comment before policies are adopted.

And so that we'd need to make sure we're not moving out people who want to speak to and those would be action items so that's okay.

That that's just when we get into the topic of are we going to move moving some speakers up and others down in general is okay because we are allowed to focus things on our agenda to help the board.

We just have to be careful that none of that is going to be construed as a form of viewpoint discrimination.

That's what I want to be really careful about.

I don't think there's any consistency here but I think it's just something to be very careful about.

And Director Mack I would just encourage any other questions to Chief Counsel Narver and CC the board in case anything else is not clear.

So thank you.

Director Rankin.

No I I will I have I could make comments but I'm going to since this is for intro I'm just going to say thanks for the work and I'm glad we're puzzling over this and I will reserve for another time.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Yeah likewise I will hold my comments I know we're running behind here but I appreciate the work and I'm excited that we're going to keep looking at this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we'll move on to Introduction Item Number 2. It is 318 p.m.

Approval of Contracts for Development of the New Seattle Public Schools Websites and Ongoing Website Hosting Services.

This came to the Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

Chief Public Affairs Officer Carri Campbell I believe you are briefing us.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Yes Carri Campbell Chief Public Affairs Officer.

Today I'm introducing a BAR that if approved will authorize Superintendent Juneau to execute two contracts.

One contract with Domain 7. Domain 7 will lead design content management system configuration.

content migration and staff training for new internal and external SPS websites.

And the second contract with Pantheon who would provide ongoing web hosting and security services.

The total cost for the two contracts is $831,577 and would be funded by BEX IV and V. Contracted services outlined in this BAR are through 20-21-22.

Our websites are our most used communication channel with over 25 million engagements annually for the district pages alone.

Over the past two years we've had significant disruption to service and in some cases at really challenging times including during snow days and when we announced school closures related to COVID-19.

When we analyzed our current content management performance so our websites and supports for families furthest away from educational justice so analyzing data from Title 1 schools the 13 priority literacy schools as well as schools where we have a higher percentage of English learners.

It became clear that our families aren't receiving the highest level of service that they could.

Families who use a mobile phone or free internet to access their websites experience much slower page load times.

And in addition schools who have a higher percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced students of color or English learners are less likely to have regular updates to their websites their school websites.

And this is defined as at least one update per month.

Our school web editors have consistently said that our current content management system School Messenger is cumbersome to use.

It's now been a decade since Seattle Public Schools has actively solicited for a new website CMS and with the new strategic plan Seattle Excellence and a commitment to better serve and support students and families of color who are furthest away from educational justice it is the right time to make this change.

Engagement for this project was conducted in two phases.

Engaging with staff and volunteers in the selection of the content management system, so that's the platform in which the websites are developed, was critical to our future success.

As a reminder, we use a distributed web management approach with over 500 web editors, and this is supported by three central office staff.

During Phase 1 engagement a series of workshops one-on-one interviews and focus groups were held with central curriculum managers school web editors representing all grade levels and parent volunteers who edit the websites at the school level department web editors and web editors at the 13 literacy priority schools.

Pain points challenges and preferred supports were surfaced during this engagement and informed the first RFP round for a new CMS.

Feedback included that the new CMS needs to be intuitive and easy for everyone to use, support mobile-first design, and provide automated auditing for things like ADA accessibility.

Platform demonstrations and six in-person usability testing sessions were conducted with various stakeholder groups, and the team received 35 survey responses, and overwhelmingly, staff and parent volunteers preferred WordPress, which is an open-source content management system.

Because WordPress is an open source CMS, the team then needed to put out another RFP for a web developer and hosting service.

The bar in front of you today are for those two contracts.

The engagement criteria gathered in phase one, including criteria centering families furthest away from educational justice, then created the foundation for the second RFP.

Technical experts from multiple central departments, including DOTS, the SPS web team, and the project manager Reviewed 12 responses.

This team selected Domain 7 and Pantheon as the final vendors.

Domain 7 was selected for their focus on mobile-first design.

As a reminder I've talked a little bit about this before.

70 percent of our families in the 13 literacy priority schools access our web pages using their mobile phone.

Ease of use including a clear back-end dashboard and editing tools.

Demonstrated commitment to end-user design and ADA accessibility.

a flexible platform that can meet the unique needs of all grade bands and demonstrated understanding and experience engaging and building sites to reach and support families and students further furthest away from educational justice.

Pantheon was selected because of their strong security and evidence of rapid and automated responses to issues.

Issues like errors downtime which is what we've been experiencing a lot with our current content management system and security vulnerabilities.

If this FAR is approved, the two contracts will be executed and we will begin the migration of web content.

We will also begin the third phase of engagement.

From August 2020 until the websites are launched, we will conduct usability testing with the community, parents, students of all grade bands, staff, and community partners.

User experience research will include web traffic analytics, navigation studies so really looking at the design of the website to make sure that families and staff and students can find the information they're looking for.

And special attention will be given to ensuring families and students furthest away from educational justice are prioritized during engagement and user testing.

And in Exhibit A the contract reference documents included in the BAR you'll see that we've outlined that as an expectation for Domain 7. Staff and web editors will also be supported with the training plan materials and support videos.

MySPS and the internal sites will migrate first to give staff time to get accustomed to the new CMS and tools that will be done in the fall.

And then the external sites including all of the school sites will be completed summer of 2021. I'm now ready to take questions from the board.

Thank you Carrie.

We'll now move to Audit and Finance Committee Chair Hampson and then I'll move to directors for questions and comments.

I just want to say thank you so much.

I know this is a really long time coming and must have just been tremendously frustrating to have to begin this entire COVID shutdown and need to have that next level web presence and not be able to move forward so.

Congratulations again to this point.

I fully support this and appreciate all the work and I know it's going to create another level of communication for us.

Thanks so much.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Director Harris.

Could not be more pleased about this.

Huge props to all of the interdisciplinary intersectionality teams.

Huge lift.

Critical lift.

Happy to have heard about it in great detail and exec committee.

Go forward.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Hersey.

No questions for me.

Let's keep it rocking.

Good job.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

I'm so excited about this.

I do not have questions.

I just have much support and enthusiasm and gratitude that we are going to be able to move this forward.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

No.

Deep deep appreciation.

No questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have none at this time as well.

Carrie thank you for the work.

Okay move on to item.

Of course.

Okay now I'm going to move on to item number 3. We are one twelfth of the way through our introduction items.

That is 326. This is introduction item number 3. University of Washington Experimental Education Unit Interagency Agreement to provide special education services to students with individualized education programs ages 3 through 6. This came to the operate excuse me Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

Dr. Pedroza I believe you will be briefing us.

Yes hi.

Thank you.

And I was going to say 112. Okay.

Just to share that this is the EEU contract.

This is the annual BAR that is presented for approval every year.

The contract would provide special education services for up to 42 preschoolers and 16 kindergartners for students with IEPs during the 2021 school year as well as technical support and training for the Early Learning Department on inclusionary practices.

These are services that Seattle Public Schools does not have the ability or staffing to offer and we are required by law to meet the needs of IEP students of all our students.

And I just want you to note that the contract does include that increase of kindergarten slots from 15 to 16 and that and that we we recommend that we approve this contract.

Thank you Dr. Pedroza.

We'll start with Director Hampson as our Audit and Finance Committee Chairperson.

So yay EEU and having said that this is something about which other than the pride with which we were able to bring this through Audit and Finance as a continuation of this incredible relationship.

I'm going to pass it I'm going to actually defer to Director Rankin if I may to talk a bit more about this because she's her own children have attended there and she knows about this organization this relationship very intimately.

You're up Liza.

Oh I was like is that now.

I obviously was not prepared for that.

Yeah.

No I am always excited to see the EEU come through for services.

Yeah.

Like Director Hampson said both my children had the great opportunity of attending The toddler program the preschool program and one of my children was there also for kindergarten and they were students there with and without special education services.

And the the EEU is a tremendous tremendously wonderful place that I would love to see not only you know our our students families have access to but also just continue to promote their work.

And and and I would I would really like people to understand what an incredible resource we have here.

And we talk about inclusion and we talk about possibility.

We don't have to look around and wonder what it would look like.

We have this incredible early learning facility here right now in our city.

about two miles from where I'm sitting right now and or three.

But it is I know at one point in the history of SPS it was described as having by somebody who's no longer with the district as being just full of too many bells and whistles that we couldn't possibly replicate.

And for anybody who's been in the building there are no bells nor are there whistles.

It is extremely basic basic structure in some old mid-century building.

But it's the people and the values and the focus on the whole child and bringing families in and including children with a wide range of ability and disability and showing that they can learn and grow together.

And it is a obviously tremendously special place to me and to a lot of our families.

And they I would love to see a strength in our partnerships.

Something that they do extremely well is when you have a very young child and newly diagnosed disability it is it's terrifying.

You wonder you know your the vision the the life you imagined for your family for your kids.

There's there's an actual sense of mourning and a sense of loss depending on the severity of the disability of course and other circumstances.

But the the fear and uncertainty of wondering what your child's future is like is something that is really hard for people who haven't gone through it to understand and I've gone through it to a very small degree compared to a lot of other families.

But what the EEU does is really teaches families to advocate for their child and be engaged in their education and and welcome them into participating in that process.

And so they not only are welcoming and inclusive environment but they also are a wonderful model for bringing parents in to teach them how to participate what services to connect to.

and how to navigate the educational system with a child with disabilities.

And then of course the the wonderful wonderful thing it provides for our children is a place where they are all included and loved and valued.

And so yes I could go on but I won't.

So this is just hugely important and and and thank you Director Hampson for giving me this moment to.

to get all sentimental about it.

But and any anybody who's listening and all staff everything I can do to strengthen that partnership is is going to be supported by me.

So.

Thank you Director Rankin.

Okay next we'll move to Director Harris.

My what a difference four and a half years makes.

One of our first board meetings was getting rid of the EEU.

And Perhaps sometimes we need to be scared to lose what we have to recognize its value.

But ever since that time we've heard from staff.

Admittedly staff that is overwhelmed.

Staff with limited bandwidth that we can do and lift up such a program ourselves.

And we we've not gotten there yet.

And most of us know as well that the EEU is extremely limited and we turn away dozens and dozens of children.

And I cannot echo as much what the good Director Rankin has to say.

And I can think of 20 children whose lives were catastrophically changed for the better because of the EEU.

I'm pleased to vote for this but I really want to see this on our work plan so that we can deliver those services ourselves or we can expand this program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Hersey.

This is critical.

Let's move it forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

No thank you.

Ready to vote.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rankin excuse me Director Rivera-Smith.

Don't come back to me.

Yeah.

I love it.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

Okay.

I have no questions at this time as well.

Next we'll move to induction item number 4 Head Start Grant Annual Renewal.

This came to the Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

So we'll welcome Chief Financial Officer JoLynn Berge for to brief us today.

Good afternoon Director Harris.

This BAR requests approval for the 2021 Head Start Grant for approximately 5.2 million dollars.

This is an annual federal grant that we receive from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.

In the Audit and Finance Committee we were asked to provide data regarding staff and student ethnicity.

This information will be coming to board directors in this week's Friday memo.

That would conclude my remarks.

Thank you.

We'll start with Director Hampson as our Audit and Finance Committee Chair.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for that Chief Berge.

I appreciate getting that info as that was the primary question that I had in committee.

As a product of Head Start I am a huge supporter of this and I think just wanting to make sure that we're getting these services to students that need them and and working hard as I know HR is — to make sure that we have representative staff.

And with that I will turn it over to other directors for questions.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Next up we'll have Director Harris excuse me actually before we go I just want to also highlight Director Rivera-Smith as our Head Start Program Liaison and I'm sure she'll have some to say as well.

So Director Harris back to you.

I'm good on this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Hersey.

Same here.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Mack.

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

I don't have any questions.

Hugely important.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith our Head Start Program Liaison.

Thank you.

Yes.

I regret that I have not been able to meet with Director Brown for the last month.

We we keep missing paths.

We're going to meet on Friday.

I'm going to learn more about summer programs and next year's programming.

Regarding this BAR specifically I have I didn't I already addressed this with her.

I have some questions about the inconsistency about the funding.

It's the numbers don't match up in the different places they're called out.

So I will be getting some explanation from her on that later.

That was the only real concern.

All of this obviously it's a hugely important program.

I'm excited that we're going to be able to expand the full-day classes and we'll have more to say at the next meeting.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

The numbers are actually I know that they may be confusing.

One is representing the 18-19 school year.

where it says the report for 19-20 it's it's the report that we issue in 19-20 but it's reporting on 18-19 and then the number in the bar is actually for the 20-21 school year.

So I did clarify that noticing the same things.

Great.

No thank you.

That's good to know.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And I have a question.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

So next we'll move on to Introduction Item Number 5. Renewal of Washington Schools Risk Management Pool Coverage for the Fiscal Year 2020-2021.

This came to the Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

Ms. Berge you'll be briefing us again.

I will.

This is super exciting.

This BAR is our annual renewal for district-wide insurance coverage for the 2021 school year.

The expenditure amount stated in the BAR is a 20 percent increase from the 19-20 school year due to the risk pool claims that have been coming forward.

And it's not just our district it's everyone in the risk pool that's driving that.

We do continue to work with the risk pool to control future cost increases.

It is our recommendation that we continue with the risk pool.

That would conclude my remarks.

Thank you Ms. Berge.

Next we'll move to Director Hampson our Audit and Finance Committee Chair to kick off our questions and comments.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for this.

Thank you to Director Hampson.

Chief Berge and Richard Stout Head of Risk Management.

Insurance is a good thing.

We need it.

And I think at some point as a board we can have a bigger discussion about the extent to which being in the field of education is in fact a very risky business.

And but I'm grateful that we have folks on staff that are keeping us covered in this regard and we can always as a board as it is our fiduciary and ethical responsibility to make sure that we are supporting the mitigation of risks district-wide.

So with that I'll pass it on for questions.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Harris.

Well if this is exciting to Chief Berge thanks a bunch.

Appreciate that.

I want to add that Richard Stout our risk manager sits on the board of the risk management pool and has for several years and that matters a great deal to us.

This is compliance oriented and all the things that Director Hampson said and frankly we can do better at minimizing risk and we own this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Percy.

No questions for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

No questions at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Nothing from me.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have no questions for you Ms. Berge.

Thank you for the work.

Director DeWolf can I can I just give one shout out to Chris Stout as well.

He did catch an error that the RISC pool had made and he saved us several hundred thousand dollars.

So I just want to give a shout out.

Oftentimes we have staff and operations who really are making a difference for us every day.

And that's one prime example.

Thank you Ms. Berge.

Thank you Richard.

Yes I'm grateful to have that person on our staff.

Next up we will move to Introduction Item Number 6 Resolution 2019-20-37 Fixing and Adopting the 2020-2021 Budget.

This came to the Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

Ms. Berge back to you for the brief.

All right.

Thank you.

This BAR would approve the 2021 school year budget of just over one billion dollars for the general fund.

I would like to note as requested by the Audit and Finance Committee we have added information to the equity analysis including a link to the equity tier methodology.

And second we added more explanation regarding the per-pupil expenditures to the electronic version of the budget book as requested.

I will now move to the short PowerPoint presentation for the budget.

Next slide please.

We'll go we'll go over these areas.

Next slide number 3 please.

So moving to slide 3 we have you can see that this basically talks about where we are predicting to start the 2021 school year with.

That's the beginning fund balance.

How many dollars in revenue and then expenditures that we plan on budgeting for for 2021. And you can see as we've talked about in previous work sessions we are spending down our fund balance and we are predicting an ending fund balance of about 54.8 million dollars in the general fund.

Now just recall also that every budget that we have does build in capacity for unanticipated receipts maybe like federal CARES funding or other things like that.

So there is 30 or 40 million dollars that we do build into the budget for capacity purposes.

enrollment increases things of that nature.

Slide 4 please.

I wanted to this was a request by the board specifically I wanted to remind us in these uncertain times as we're building a budget these are the areas where the board really has flexibility and this is where those over and shorts really are taken care of.

So we know that we have some money set aside for infrastructure.

We will set aside the $500,000 for the HR transformation.

But we will be using those other dollars as needed for COVID-19.

We will also use a mix of the Economic Stabilization Fund.

We were increasing it to its maximum.

We will use that as needed as well as then fall enrollment mitigation dollars if needed.

We would not be pausing curriculum based on the on the board's preference and that would be continuing as planned.

So I just wanted to highlight those areas as as a reminder of where we left the last work session.

Next slide please.

The next two slides talk about headcount and just our trend over time.

Slide 6 then moves to AAFTE.

So this the slide that we're currently on has the headcount which is how many students we physically have.

And then the next slide actually talks about the annual average average full-time equivalent.

So next slide please.

And this shows budget to actual for over time.

And you can see that we are budgeting to be up about 4 or 500 students from this year's actual number for AAFTE.

Next slide please.

This slide shows where we get our money from.

So it talks about 18-19 actual dollars.

What we adopted for our 19-20 because we don't have actuals yet for this year.

And then our 20-21 recommended.

So you can see that our revenues under the total resources line have increased from 18-19 from 951 million to our anticipated just over 1 billion dollars.

And then that does represent about a 36 million dollar increase from the prior year.

Next slide please.

This slide shows expenditures by state program.

This is the numbers laid out in a table.

The next slide shows it as a picture.

So this will show you the change in regular instruction which is really general education and what percent of our budget is going to fund regular instruction or basic education 47 percent.

Then special education represents about 18 percent of our budget.

And you can see that the next largest would be those support services as part of our budget.

Next slide please.

I just want to say that we do have increased costs because of increased labor costs.

And we do have some transportation increases in our expenditures.

Next slide please.

So we often look at expenditures three ways.

The other two slides were by program general ed special ed vocational education.

This slide shows them by state activity.

So how many dollars are in teaching and teaching support and in the principal's office.

So you can see that these are activities that go the first three lines are direct in the classroom type of expenditures and then we have the support services for our students.

And then we have central administration which has been holding at about 6 percent of our total planned expenditures.

Next slide please.

This is that same information put it put into a chart.

Next slide please.

This is background information in case you're wondering exactly what those definitions are.

Next slide please.

And this is the third way that we show our expenditures or track our expenditures and that's by object.

So that means how much do we spend on salaries benefits supplies travel capital outlay.

So you can see that the vast majority of our expenditures just like most all school districts we're at about 85 percent of our expenditures are for salaries and benefits for our employees.

Next slide please.

And the next slide shows this as a as a picture.

Next slide please.

So just another way to look at it.

Oftentimes we get asked about direct services to schools and to the classroom.

We are at about 84 percent of our budget directly servicing or directly going to that classroom which we call direct services.

And then there are other support services of about 16 percent.

Next slide please.

Same information showing that in graph form.

The next slide on slide 17 is a slide that we're required to provide by the state.

And this is what's called MSOC.

It's it's our maintenance supplies and operating costs.

So these are dollars that we are actually funded by the state for various categories and our associated expenditures for them.

You will notice that our state Our state funding is slightly more than what we're expecting to spend this year and that difference will be going to offset special education above what the state is funding us.

Next slide please.

The next few slides have high-level information for the other funds.

This one is for the Associated Student Body.

This is for clubs classes and athletics at the school level.

This is student-driven so students decide what their fundraisers are going to be and what they spend these dollars on.

Next slide please.

The debt service fund for our district is very small.

We put enough money in there every year to make the John Stanford bond payment.

So that's what these dollars represent.

Next slide please.

And the capital fund we've talked about this a couple different times in other work sessions.

Where we are planning on spending we have total revenue of about $332 million dollars and we are expecting expenditures of about $297 million dollars in the capital fund with an ending fund balance projected of just under $120 million dollars.

Next slide please.

Oh we didn't get this slide updated or I'm using oh we did.

I'm looking at my screen.

Sorry.

So two things that we've provided for information.

We have a district-wide staff FTE summary.

It really tells us how many of each kind of staff that we have.

That is page 185 in the budget book.

And then we do have school funding allocations that start on page 41 and that is by school in the budget book as well.

And I would like to shout out to budget staff who put our budget book together every year and they do an incredible job of tracking our billion-plus dollars.

So with that I would conclude and take comments or questions.

Well thank you very much Chief Berge.

We'll turn it over first to our Audit and Finance Committee Chair Hampson.

Thank you Chief Berge.

I'm going to preempt with a couple of questions that I am just assuming folks are going to have that they always ask and for the sake of those listening.

or that might watch later.

If you could speak briefly to the source of the information for the for next year's student enrollment budgets.

Enrollment planning provides that.

Yeah.

No I mean we are or the last round that anyone would have seen came from February enrollment And it's been updated in June to reflect.

Another 60 kids.

We didn't really have any change in June.

Yeah.

And then the next question I'm just looking at the slides myself has to do with oh if you could discuss for the sake of the board and those listening.

the extent to which we are seeing both COVID expenditures that will we've already made a lot we know but that will that will be part of next year a moving target we all realize.

But if you could speak to that and also speak to the application of the CARES dollars when they get to us the 10 million dollars that we believe we'll receive in CARES dollars.

So we are slated OSPI has told us that our CARES Act funding right now is about 10.7 million dollars.

As of the end of April I believe that we were just over 6 million dollars in COVID expenditures for our district.

So I would expect that the majority of the 10.7 will be used up from 19-20 expenditures.

If there are dollars left right now just for health and safety and PPE We just updated our projection.

We think we're somewhere around 15 million dollars just for extra cleaning disinfecting and then PPE for our staff thermometers all those types of things that we have to have to open under any model at all.

So we are hoping that we will have some savings in some areas.

Maybe not and probably not enough to offset all of those expenditures.

So.

You know that's where the budget flexibility slide comes into play.

It becomes important at that point.

I will also say that if there is a special session excuse me K-12 will be taking cuts.

We don't know what that looks like yet.

Thank you.

And then I appreciate I also appreciate the the work that the budget team puts into the budget books.

I spent the better part of the weekend with both last year's and this year's working with community members to help them better understand their school budgets.

So I just wanted to clarify for folks that what in the context of the the governmental accounting standards that are utilized and the information that we're that we have the the budgets in the at the building level are Not actuals but budgeted.

Even if there was demonstrate if you're looking at prior years.

And so when you look you look at changes and how things are budgeted from one year to the next but they don't necessarily represent all costs.

I mean all sources of funds.

Can I say that with authority because there are other sources of funds that that come into the school budgets that aren't necessarily represented.

PTA grants that kind of thing.

Yeah a small amount a small amount of funding may come after we set the budget.

Okay.

And and I think that that is it from my end so I will turn it over.

Oh I had one other thing that I noticed that.

Hold on just a second.

That I wanted to to bring up and then for later discussion that when buildings apply for waivers the process by which they do that first goes through requires an approval through the directors of schools.

Is that correct.

Do you mean for staffing waivers.

Yeah there's a whole series of them in terms of for example when you get an art teach or when you use your PCP dollars to pay for PE and then what do you use it for next.

Depending on the per the weighted staffing standard and CBA's there the money goes towards certain things and that waivers for that have to go through a series of approvals at the when the building applies for those.

But the first line of approval is the directors of schools.

Is that correct.

The first approval is really the the the.

The central admin.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

I'll pass it along.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

We don't have enough time for my questions.

I've got several but I'll take those offline.

I appreciate Director Hampson addressing the fact that the school budgets are not actual but estimated and budgeted which which I think is misleading.

Second we have got to address the PSA backfill funding and the inequities throughout this city.

Third I appreciate Director Hampson bringing up the executive directors of schools roles with respect to waivers and changes.

Thank you.

And thank you to the staff putting all this information together.

Thank you Director Harris.

And we will have also on July 8th is our are on July 8th we will have the budget hearing to go over more of the budget too for folks public on the call.

Next up is Director Hersey.

My concerns have been laid out pretty thoroughly so in the interest of time I have nothing to add.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Yeah thank you.

I do have a couple of things but I'll try to make them very brief.

Thank you Director.

Hampson for asking the question about where the enrollment projections come from.

I'll just note that the enrollment projection is closer to the actual from a couple of years ago.

And so trusting that that estimate is closer than last year's was and happy to see that.

The one question about the enrollment projections though that I don't quite understand is these summer school number of 36 students do we not get apportionment for the 14,000 students 1,400 1,400 14,000.

We do not.

Okay.

So you can only.

You can only claim each student a 1.0 for 10 months.

And so if they've already been claimed they're not qualified for summertime.

If there's FTE left over from those students and they take summer school they can be claimed.

That difference.

Okay.

So that so that the summer school costs are coming out of.

Us.

Levy funds.

Yep.

They're all on us.

Well sometimes we use grant funding right.

We use Title 1 and LAP often to supplement summer school.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So a question to the school budgets and the approval process.

The BLT's have to approve school budgets.

Is that done before this book is put together.

So have all the BLT's approved each of the school budgets that are in the book now.

Yes.

Okay.

So they say this yes we have we are happy with the staffing arrangement and such.

So all the BLT's have approved this book.

That is that is something they have to finish before we can put the book out.

Got it.

Okay.

Great.

Just for clarification on that.

And then the last question I had was around what next year is going to look like and the apportionment that comes from the state and everything is based on actual counts done October 1 et cetera.

And you have a sense of what impacts might happen if they you know if with the The impacts to actually our revenue and our apportionment from the state given that we're likely to see a lot of variability in actual enrollment numbers in the fall.

Do you have any sense of plans for how districts are attempting to work with OSPI in order to not take a massive budget hit.

to be specific to the item.

It's about the I mean the apportionment from the state is based on enrollment count I mean our entire budget is based on revenue.

So my question is whether or not whether or not there's conversation about how to manage that in the fall.

We are having conversations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Two critical things.

What happens if enrollment doesn't come in.

We're talking to OSPI about that.

We also need to have those conversations with legislators.

And then the same with the state budget impacts.

We don't know what they're considering.

We know that they're considering cuts.

We don't know what those look like.

Again we need to work with the legislature.

So we built this budget without knowing a lot of things that are yet to come.

But we are you know we're going to we're going to make it through this.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Just one statement that I I think that there would be a special session to consider cuts instead of to consider additional revenue is is really shameful and disappointing.

And other than that thank you Chief Berge for your work and for being flexible and consistent and all of that.

Director Rankin and Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Also likewise appreciate the budget book being sent out mailed out to us.

I also have this slide show here.

I appreciate all the clarity of numbers.

I really like page 8 of the slides.

The expenditures by state program looking at where our money goes.

And I'm wondering where early learning is represented on that page in those numbers.

I'm sorry you cut out for me.

Say that again.

On slide 8 I'm wondering where early learning is represented in those categories or those numbers.

It would be in other instructional programs generally.

Okay.

Maybe I can find out later where I can dive into that that category more where you can where I can find information on what that what that includes in that.

category.

Other other other only that I'm concerned regarding as we had a community member point out that the meeting for the budget is like literally right before the board meeting in which we're supposed to approve it.

So I'm concerned that that's not really keeping with the spirit of the mandatory public hearing on the budget since anything I mean I don't know how much can change in that minutes between that meeting and the one we vote on it and it seems it seems almost unlikely that any real effect can be had from anything we hear at that meeting from the public.

I don't know that they're generally this this bumped up against each other.

I don't I think last year there was more time between them but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyhow.

Director Director Rivera-Smith we this is tradition.

how it's been as well as we have these discussions throughout the whole year so that we can bring up these issues as opposed to having the whole conversation on July 8th.

So I'm hopeful that we can capture all these concerns throughout the year during that process or through our committees.

The audit and finance being one of them.

I have no other questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you Chief Berge.

I don't have any other questions at this time.

Been really grateful for your continued work bringing us together each month to talk about our budget.

We will now move to Introduction Item Number 7 for Directors.

We are one quarter of the way through.

We've done 6 items out of 24 and we are 4 minutes over time.

So we will move on to Item Number 7 which is Approval of Contracts for Private Schools Proportional Share Services RFQ 03-969.

the provision of equitable services to private school students eligible for special education.

Providers include Hamlin Robinson Hampton Tutors Ryther and Spring Academy.

This came to the Audit and Finance Committee on June 8th for approval.

Dr. Burgosa I believe you'll be briefing us.

Yes thank you.

Just to share that this is an annual BAR that comes before the board for approval.

Seattle Public Schools is required by IDEA to set aside a proportionate share or IDEA funds.

To serve students who have been placed in a non- for-profit private school and are eligible for special education.

Students identified for services through the special education evaluation process and that are then placed in the on a service plan and may access services as determined by the proportionate share process.

The services are available for determined determined through a set process outlined by IDEA.

I just to share a little bit of information about some of the services that actually are utilized through this service.

We have a contract with some of the private schools one-to-one instruction in one academic area 90 minutes per week could be an example.

Social skills groups.

Sometimes there's workshops related to executive functioning to support teachers and parents.

And just to let you know that in addition we we as for the use of their private schools as well.

Thank you Dr. Pedroza.

We will now turn to directors for comments and questions starting with our A&F Committee Chair Director Hampson.

Thank you for this.

No no questions for me.

Other than this is a small group of services that we need more of in the absence of having the capacity to provide internally.

And I wish we had I wish we had more of them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Harris.

Emphatically agree with my colleague Director Hampson and would also suggest and again aspirational given our bandwidth issues If we're working with these schools and they're doing cutting-edge work on things like dyslexia perhaps we could have a trade in terms of curriculum and professional development etc.

Thank you so much.

Next up is Director Hersey.

None from me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yeah is this the first.

I don't know that I've seen a contract with Pamela Robinson in the past.

Is this the first or is this something I just didn't notice before.

Dr. Pedroza.

So I believe we have had contracts with him in the past.

I'm not sure about the contract from last year.

I actually have Director Campbell that's online but she can answer that question specifically in comparison to the last few years.

Director Campbell.

This is Director Campbell.

I am not sure I don't have that right in front of me so we can get back to you with that information if they were on the on the proportionate share contracting list last year and we can get back to you and let you know.

Yeah I that's fine and I appreciate that.

I just want to also underscore Director Harris's comment around potentially utilizing some of the some of these providers to support PD in our schools specifically around things like dyslexia and dysgraphia.

So thank you and look forward to getting that information back.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Nope.

Just want to echo the comments made by Directors Hampson and Harris.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

No questions or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the only thing I'll say particularly when we speak about special education is to just really highlight the fact that the state does not reimburse us fully for us providing special education services which our students need and deserve and that is a shame.

Next we'll move to Introduction Item Number 8. This is Approval of the 2020-2021 Students Student Rights and Responsibilities SR&R.

This came for the C&I Committee on June 9th for consideration.

Excuse me C&I means Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee.

Chief of Schools and Continuous Improvement Wyeth Jessee I believe you will be briefing us.

Good afternoon.

This particular motion is around the 2021 Students Rights and Responsibilities.

This is our annual approval of what we call the SR&R's.

This particular document helps to give us information regarding the rules and regulations around student behavior as well as the structures and procedures that schools do in response to the behaviors that are exhibited across the district.

This is in accordance with the disciplinary laws of the state of Washington and for us has had significant changes over the past five years.

This year happens to be one of those years where the state has not moved forward any significant changes most certainly not like last year.

But in turn what we did do is pull together a student group of 149 students.

representative across our elementary middle and high school levels.

It was really good to get that feedback and the thing that students really called out for us as we think about these particular rights and responsibilities for our students is around just the relationships that they have with the adults at the school.

And I know I heard that in part of the conversation of the previous board resolution that was passed 2019-20-38.

And then also just also about the differences or the imbalance in the amount or type of reactions of student behaviors across our schools.

And so the feedback was really about not so much around the content of the students rights responsibilities which they highly supported and said were well-written and intended since that is the work that we've done over the last five years to make sure it's inclusive inclusive of student voice and that it's also something that they can understand But this time it was about truly the implementation.

So for us we know that we're going to continue to move on with professional development to address those.

We know that there's a lot of things tied to student discipline.

I know I heard that as part of the earlier conversation but I'd be remiss not to mention that there is a lot of things upstream to help address so that we don't even approach the areas of more formal discipline and that we are building in community building on relationships teaching social emotional learning skills and most certainly providing an inclusive education.

And then in the sense of the building community is most certainly building and most restorative practices and engaging instruction.

There were some other parts of this that we did make some grammatical changes updated the hyperlinks that became outdated and then aligned our language to the strategic plan.

We also developed and aligned some of the definitions as you'll know later on as I present the new update to the threats assessment and school-based threat assessment teams and our new policy 3225 and then aligning also this work to the possession or using marijuana which is the new board policy 3423. And then that's some of the updates that we have made to the student's rights and responsibilities for this year.

With that I'll take any questions.

Thank you Chief Jessee.

We'll start with Director Rankin as our Creek Feminist Instruction Policy Committee Chair for questions and comments.

Thank you.

Yeah we had some good discussions around this in our committee and the Something that I would I would like to to re-emphasize I guess or just state for the public is the the discussions that we had around this really instead of being a kind of a box-checking behind-the-scenes sort of document figuring out ways to better communicate out to students and to empower students that this is their you know that that they have the responsibility that they carry responsibility but that they also have rights.

I mean I know it's right in the thing there but it's I think there's you know it tends to be a thing that's passed out maybe on the first day of school or there's a link somewhere and a short one-pager and it gets it gets buried and then an issue comes up and a student or and their family may not realize that that this exists.

And so trying to figure out ways to kind of educate our our kids about how this applies to them making it more accessible.

And then apparently the student groups addressed that as well and had some solutions.

So I look forward to that developing more.

This goes along a bit with what I was talking about earlier about the need to sort of align things across policies.

And yeah I just I want to make sure that where we are you know deliberately putting equity and updating and addressing institutionalized racism in all of our documents and our practices.

that we're really aware of of the critical importance of our language use and consistency of language use.

So saying things like orderly or civil or just terms like that that are pretty subjective and also could be couched in dominant culture as opposed to being more reflective or responsive to the the many cultures and backgrounds of our students.

I don't I don't know that the students rights and responsibilities is as much impacted by that desire that I have to sort of look at policies all together but it's certainly anything in there should be reflective in students rights and responsibilities.

But I really appreciate the work and and the conversations that we had in committee were great and it seems like we are aligned in in moving forward.

Thank you.

Next up is Director Hampson.

Hi.

Thank you.

So I I guess I would just to try to keep it short I do believe that I know the timing of this approval is intended such that it's ready to go in the fall.

And I believe that we're probably depending on how what we can get accomplished relative to aligning the critical work around policies that pertain to how our students come into contact with law enforcement.

And then the forthcoming anti-racist policy which I think will actually have a substantive impact on this.

I'm not sure if we want to consider and then I also see that there's a threat you know the threat assessment definition is in here as well.

So from a timing standpoint I do think that this will be impacted by decisions made in the next couple of months work that we do in the next couple of months and I don't know if that means that we just look at this again so that it's revised for next year or that it's revised in real time.

It's historically been the paper document that goes home with students.

We're pretty much looking at everything electronically right now.

So I just want to put that out there in terms of that I do think that there will be I don't think that this document passes the test of being consistent with what it needs to be in an anti-racist organizational context is kind of my final statement.

So I think we need to work towards that.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hampson and obviously that conversation is forthcoming.

Director Harris.

I'm good.

Thank you.

I agree that we have a great deal of work to do.

I worry about the bandwidth.

I worry about having 27 intro items and narrow opportunity to speak to them in ledge meetings and we probably need to.

Unfortunately make our meetings longer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Hersey.

I have the same sentiments around specifically moving this document toward a more anti-racist focus.

I share those concerns with Director Hampson and I will leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yeah.

Hi.

I mean my my question I think is back to my fellow directors and staff is you know is do we do we want to approve this if it's not aligned with the resolution that we just passed or do we move it forward anyway.

I'm I'm I'm just a little curious whether or not we want to have that review before we move it forward.

And that's a question to my fellow directors.

Do we have a time crunch on this would be my question.

Chief Jessee.

Yeah this we we make these every year we make an annual.

We could most certainly I know there's a lot of conversation and I also was obviously heard in earlier that yeah we can make more changes you know and come into a shorter cycle somewhere in the fall.

I know there's a lot of other intersects with other policies and then the anti-racist you know procedure that policy procedure that'll be moving forward.

So we can we can do that.

I think it's just kind of as soon as that gets landed we can take action right right after that to make sure that it lands and coincides with that as soon as possible.

Yeah I I would like to suggest that because this is so important and so tied to that and that there are some questions about the language that we probably should do that work before we finalize it.

I mean I recently read an article that was put out kind of questioning whether or not PBIS is you know as a as a structure is whether or not that is appropriate or whether or not it's anti-racist.

You know so I'm just I just would like to have that work done and not just approve it.

If we have the time to do the work I'd suggest that we do it.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Yeah this is Director Rankin again.

I just want to echo that yes this conversation sounds like it's going along with what was discussed a little bit earlier about the need to sort of look across several documents and be sure that they are supporting and reinforcing each other and very clearly rooted in anti-racist policy.

So if it doesn't impact timeline too much Director Rankin you are the chair of you are the chair of C&I.

Are you suggesting to pull this today.

What does that.

What does that.

I mean it's an introduction item right now.

So what I'm meaning is.

I could make a motion to refer it back to the C&I committee to align it with the resolution.

This is just the introduction so I think we could just.

poll unless Greg you have additional ideas.

This would mean that we would hold on.

I'm sorry to interject but I would just say that this means that we're going to use the old document so there wouldn't be the updates.

So we can move this forward and then just simply keep continue to make more updates to it.

That's what I was going to ask.

Yeah.

Is there is there a possibility of.

What are I guess what are the what are the options for moving this forward and continuing to amend.

I think Chief Jessee made that clear.

If I could if I could just add here too when we think about policies that are not actually policies yet when we think about 0 0 4 0 anti-racism it's technically not a policy yet.

And so to make concessions for a policy we don't know in this now I think would probably not be smart but I think it could be updated live as new policies are added if I hear Chief Jessee right.

Well but I'm also thinking about if we're looking across multiple documents that do exist and and time you know work to be done in a possible work session or I'm not sure what.

Can we approve this so that we're going for going from an up you know not reverting to last year's but going to this year's knowing that there may be changes made in response to either other policies or or the new policy.

Director DeWolf can I make a recommendation.

Director Hampson.