SPEAKER_03
Good afternoon.
The board meeting will be called to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.
SPEAKER_02
I'm looking, can staff assist me here?
I'm looking in the attendees and it looks like we are without our vice president and one other director.
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
Oh, I see Director Topp.
I know Director Sarju is coming straight from another meeting.
Why don't I go ahead and call us to order and I'm sure that Vice President Sarju will join us shortly.
Okay, this is President Rankin.
I am now calling the October 1st, 2024 board special meeting to order at 4.31 p.m.
This meeting is being recorded.
Directors and staff are participating remotely today, but public access is being provided to be in person and watch remotely at the John Stanford Center or to watch online through SPS TV.
We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.
And for the record, I will call the roll.
Director Briggs.
Here.
Director Clark.
Present.
Director Hersey.
Here.
Director Mizrahi.
Vice President Sarju?
Maybe not yet.
We'll note when she arrives.
Director Topp.
Director Topp, are you able to hear us?
Oh, I see Vice President Sarju.
Gina, it looks like you have a hand raised.
Oh, you're unable to unmute or turn on your camera.
SPEAKER_05
Is that, do you need to?
I think she's raising her hand like here.
SPEAKER_04
Issues should be fixed.
I can now turn on my camera and mic.
Oh, super.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
SPEAKER_02
Teamwork.
Okay.
Uh, let's see.
And, um, we have also with us the superintendent and, um, are there other staff members present that need to introduce themselves for the record?
Sounds like no.
I mean, there are other, uh, uh, staff members present, but, but we don't need anyone else to, um, introduce themselves.
All right.
We will now move on to the two action items on today's agenda.
And these two items are related to two of our primary duties as a board, as they are for boards across the state, which is to employ and evaluate the superintendent.
Action item number one is approval of the superintendent's employment agreement.
May I have a motion for this item?
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
One moment.
I move that the school board approve the proposed superintendent's employment agreement as attached to this board action report and authorize the board president to sign this agreement with any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the board president.
Do I read the rest of it?
Yes.
Okay.
Effective July 1st, 2024, the attached superintendent's employment agreement supersedes the prior superintendent's employment agreement approved by the board on March 11th, 2022. Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.
SPEAKER_02
I second.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Approval of the superintendent's employment agreement has been moved by Vice President Sarju and seconded by Director Briggs.
So I'll introduce its action item.
But as the sponsor of this item, this action approves the superintendent's employment agreement Updates from the existing agreement are described in the board action report and reflected in the posted materials.
I wanted to just note for clarification or for reminder that the contract renewal process in SPS has been historically rather routine and not as aligned with the board's ability to to have accountability as this board is prioritizing.
So the contract defaults to a year over year rollover.
And so if we were to do nothing, the current agreement would just extend every year in September for a year.
you know, forever until somebody does something differently.
So I was authorized by the board in June to negotiate terms and, you know, realizing some pieces that were in there that didn't seem to be aligned with really the best interest in terms of accountability and also transparency about the timing and And a couple of different things.
I learned that it has been past practice for recent memory for folks for the board to use the district's in-house counsel to negotiate the contract.
That to me felt like a conflict of interest.
Um, not, not, that's not a statement on, on any buddy personally, but just having the board negotiating the only contract that we have the authority to negotiate, um, with, uh, legal counsel that also reports to the person who were negotiating the contract for just felt it didn't feel like it wasn't the best interest of, of the board or the public.
And so, um, I asked about, uh, engaging with outside counsel.
And, um, that was not a problem received, uh, um, referrals.
And so I selected a council for us to work with, um, that who, who's his area is negotiating superintendent and labor agreements in Washington state.
He's very familiar with, um, the landscape.
And, um, I'm really glad that I did that.
And thank you to the board for, um, concurring with that.
And, uh, allowing us to have that conversation because we were, you know, there were a few things that he right off the bat recommended would serve us better, including, as noted in the bar, probably the two most specific, most significant things were that rollover piece that I was just talking about.
We actually, this contract would remove that.
So instead of there being an automatic rollover, that the board then has to kind of scramble to react to as to whether or not they want to extend a contract.
It moves that to annually in January, the board will discuss and then take an affirmative vote to extend an agreement as opposed to having to take a negative vote to stop the automatic rollover.
I think that's a great step forward for us.
It provides another halfway point in the school year to have a conversation as a board and with the superintendent about how things should or shouldn't proceed.
The other thing that's important that was not in the current contract is that we have language in there now that supports performance evaluation aligned with quarterly check-ins and a review of monthly progress monitoring data.
And that was important to me.
And I believed in the interest of the board to have some objective measures by which to evaluate.
It was a little loosey-goosey, a lot of room for a lot of subjective evaluation.
And so I think that this language will, it helps align our It helps align the superintendent contract with our actual expectations about evaluation of performance.
So those are some improvements.
It also aligns some other common employment terms with what other staff in the district have.
And then the cost of living adjustment or the salary adjustment.
The base salary increase is the same cost of living adjustment that was provided to other administrators in Seattle Public Schools.
And so I will see if Dr. Jones has anything to add and then open up if there are questions from directors.
SPEAKER_07
Yes, thank you, President Rankin.
I just want to say that this is my third, this will be my third employment contract as superintendent.
I appreciate the evolution of where we were with the first contract to the second to this one.
The accountability measures I embrace, the clarity I embrace.
And the other piece is just this commitment to me and us around stability.
I had the honor to go to the Seattle World School this morning and witness the tremendous transformation that's happening with students from all over the world, giving them the opportunity and creating the conditions for them to thrive.
I want to do more of that.
I want to do that with you.
I think this contract commits us to those ends, and I'm appreciative of that.
The other piece that I want to note to this board is our central office leaders, our central office administrators have made sacrifices in terms of salary reductions.
They've taken two furlough days.
And what I'm willing to do in just a moment.
a show of solidarity.
I'm willing to have five furlough days to really just to make sure that we're in alignment and that we're all doing belt tightening.
I want to do that as well.
So that'll be a week that I want to also adjust my calendar of non-paid days.
But I want to do that in solidarity with the rest of the team here in central office and others who will be asked to make sacrifices as well.
But I'm grateful and I'm ready to roll.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you, Dr. Jones.
Any questions from directors?
SPEAKER_06
Yeah.
I have a quick, quick question.
Quick question.
Okay.
It's not, it's not as much about the contract, but I'm curious about the furlough days.
So Dr. Jones, if you take a week off, does that mean then like we don't have a superintendent in the building?
SPEAKER_07
I will still be, it will be unpaid days.
Yes.
We'll have, we'll have somebody in lieu of me officially, but I'm available.
Yes.
SPEAKER_06
Gotcha.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02
Any other questions.
All right seeing none I will ask for the staff to roll call the vote please.
SPEAKER_01
DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Director Briggs Director Clark Director Hersey Director Mizrahi.
Director Mizrahi, can you say that one more time?
I didn't hear it.
Your sound is not coming through.
Are others able to hear?
I can see your mouth making the, I think, an eye sound.
Fine.
SPEAKER_05
Muted, but you guys can hear me.
SPEAKER_01
Now I can hear you.
SPEAKER_05
Okay.
Aye.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
Vice President Sarju.
Aye.
Director Topp.
Aye.
And President Rankin.
Aye.
This motion is passed unanimously.
SPEAKER_02
All right.
Thank you all.
Our second action item is approval of the 2024-25 Superintendent Evaluation Instrument.
May I have a motion for this item please.
SPEAKER_00
DIRECTOR HAMPSON I move that the board approve the 2024-2025 Superintendent Evaluation Instrument as attached to this board action report.
Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.
SPEAKER_02
DIRECTOR HAMPSON And is there a second.
SPEAKER_06
DIRECTOR RANKIN A second.
SPEAKER_02
This item has been properly moved and seconded by Vice President Sarju and Director Briggs.
I think this is also me introducing this.
This action would approve the superintendent evaluation tool for the current school year 2024-25.
In alignment with board policy 1630 and procedure 1630BP, I worked with the superintendent on the draft tool that is here for your approval.
The tool aligns with the goals and guardrail metrics and the superintendent's employment agreement and additional information about the evaluation process can be found in the board action report posted for this item.
So as I referred to with the contract, part of historically, the contract negotiation with the superintendent has been like one or two meetings, and then it rolls on, as I said before.
Part of what took more time was I really wanted to align for us the contract, the evaluation tool, and our policy and expectations around evaluation, both for having clear measures of accountability, having them be transparently available, having measures that are more objective, and also having our own policies and procedures aligned with each other so that hopefully the next round people are not starting from scratch again and there are clear lines and connections drawn structurally between what it means to evaluate the superintendent and why, what measures there are, and then what data we have available to us to support evaluating the performance of the district and holding the superintendent accountable to that performance.
So the tool is attached.
We're in a kind of a funky...
We're about to adopt new goals and guardrails that will give us a five-year life for these measures and then have inside those five years annual targets because we're at the end of a strategic plan and we only have a year left.
we still wanted to have some clear measures to evaluate and hold accountable, but obviously, you know, setting some new lofty targets or totally changing course was not going to be reasonable for anybody.
So what you see in the tool is our current goals and guardrails with metrics adjusted for what we believe is monitorable and could be achievable within this school year.
And then quarterly in our, or not, sorry, monthly and progress monitoring, we will get interim information about, um, uh, work to support, um, achieving these measures.
So the, um, the, the goals and the guardrails, the top line, what we're looking at hasn't changed.
Um, it won't change until we adopt the next set for the next strategic plan, but what we refined on in terms of, uh, being able to measure something over the course of one year did change.
And that, I know that you all have seen this already.
So I'm just kind of refreshing and I will open it up if there are any questions.
Director Ta.
SPEAKER_04
Sure.
My questions might be a little obscure, but just looking at some of the targets, just so I'm understanding, if the target is lower than the baseline in the actual description, does that mean we've gone backwards and so we need to make up what sort of – does that question make sense?
I guess let me restate it.
Some of the targets are lower than the baselines.
Is that because we are going off of different data than when these were than when these interim goals were originally created?
SPEAKER_02
I'm going to go to I think yes, I think that that it has the original.
Well, I'll let staff answer that.
Since they provide the metrics.
SPEAKER_07
Director Topp, thank you for the question.
Some of the targets we have not hit yet, and we actually came in lower than the targets.
And so the goal that we have is to actually – is lower than a target.
We're going to look at how we can have a reasonable – 2%, and I think the case that you're talking about gain over the next year since we haven't met the target, I believe the one that you're talking about is in math.
SPEAKER_04
I think, so I'm specifically, I think I'm looking at interim goal 1.2, 2.1, and 2.2.
So for like 1.2, the target is 25%.
But in the description, it says will increase from 33% in 2019 to 75%.
So 25% is less than the 33%.
So we've gone backwards essentially from where we were in 2019. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_07
Yes.
We're currently below the target.
So that is correct.
SPEAKER_04
Okay.
Perfect.
So for all of these in that last sort of statement where the baseline was in 2019, if we for interim goals 1.2, 2.1, and 2.2, we're currently below that 2019 benchmark.
That is accurate.
Thank you.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
Thanks, Gina.
So related to that, we have progress monitoring coming up in the next board meeting.
Are we going to have, sorry, I'm not trying, I promise I'm not trying to derail us into a whole progress monitoring conversation.
But are we going to, can we get, I anticipate that we will be getting the new kind of where we are right now information.
Is that an accurate or is that a reasonable assumption?
SPEAKER_07
That is a reasonable assumption, President Rankin, yes.
October 9th, October 9th to be specific.
SPEAKER_02
Great.
Thank you.
Director Clark.
SPEAKER_05
Thanks, President Rankin.
You kind of touched on both Director Topp and you kind of touched on my question, which is really like, if we don't have the current information on where we are right now then should we be approving an evaluation like how do we know that the metrics that were are in this evaluation tool like are actually like accomplishable meetable um i don't want us to end up in a situation like we did this year where we had really lofty goals um that um And it wasn't, you know, I don't want to go through that again.
So I just want to make sure that we have all the right information that we need in front of us.
SPEAKER_07
Yes, Director Clark, we are using guidance from the SOFG framework in terms of understanding the percentage gains that are possible in terms of statistics.
We are setting those with the understanding that our goals have have been lofty from the beginning.
But we believe that these are actually in fact achievable given our trajectory today.
So it's going to be a stretch but we believe that these are achievable.
SPEAKER_05
SHERRI KOKX- OK.
Thank you Superintendent Jones.
SPEAKER_02
Are there any other questions from directors?
Oh, Director Kopp.
SPEAKER_04
One more question.
Sorry.
Are these for us?
SPEAKER_02
We're here for this.
Don't apologize.
SPEAKER_04
Are we monitoring just a subset of schools or will we be for these schools monitoring all our schools?
SPEAKER_07
All the schools.
If you recall, for math, we had a subset of six schools and we had a subset of 13 schools for ELA, but we are looking system-wide, and we use those subsets of schools as opportunities to learn what's working, perhaps what's not working, but how does that apply to the universal across our district?
So we'll be looking at system-wide data.
SPEAKER_04
And then one last question, or more of just a check-in.
So the progress monitoring calendar, I think one of the issues we ran into last time was making sure that we were monitoring at the right time the data is available.
Looks to me like this calendar establishes that and I'm really excited for that.
Is that, I guess, is that the case?
Just testing my understanding of the table.
SPEAKER_07
Yeah, that was a request from this board to achieve alignment.
The progress monitoring calendar that you all will be approving should be aligned not only to when our tests come out, when the data from the test come out, but also to my evaluation.
And so this should be not just aligned, but integrated really well.
SPEAKER_04
I think it looks really good.
I'm really excited to go through and walk through this calendar.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_02
Awesome.
And the calendar is there as a draft for referral.
We will actually have the opportunity to consider the calendar as a separate item next week.
So if you have more questions, definitely write those down and we'll be approving the calendar as a separate, as its own item.
All right.
Any other questions?
Going once going twice.
All right.
Seeing no further discussion I will ask for the roll call please.
SPEAKER_01
ELLIE WILSON- Director Clark Director Hersey Director Mizrahi I heard that as an aye.
SPEAKER_00
I think maybe it takes a second aye.
SPEAKER_01
Vice President Sarju aye Director Top aye Director Briggs aye President Rankin aye this motion has been approved unanimously.
SPEAKER_02
Well, there being no further business to come before the board, the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 4.58 p.m.
Thank you all, and we will see you at the John Stanford Center next week.
SPEAKER_04
Thank you.