Part 1 Seattle School Board Meeting Oct. 4, 2017

Director Peters please.

Okay welcome to the October 4th 2017 regular board meeting of the Seattle school board.

I'd like to welcome our student representative from West Seattle high school Lillian Jane Murphy.

Ms. Murphy will have an opportunity to provide comments regarding her school later in the evening.

Ms. Shek the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Harris.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Present.

Director Peters.

Here.

If everyone would please stand for the pledge.

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

We do not have any recognitions for this meeting and nor do we have any student presentations for this meeting.

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

Our thoughts are with the Las Vegas families and victims.

We do have a statement of support and resources for families on our homepage.

October is many things that we will recognize here.

October is principal appreciation month.

We kind of chuckled privately that we need to work with the national organization and think about a different month.

It is challenging for principals at the start of the school year with September, I guess October is better than September but certainly lots to be done.

So we certainly do recognize National Principals Month, we recognize the incredible job that principals play.

in school improvement and I know that the role of the principal has changed remarkably during my career.

Still all about keeping the doors open and the kids safe and lunches delivered on time.

But increasingly more so about what goes on in classrooms and how we support teachers in supporting kids to get each and every one of our students prepared for life and career.

So I would like to recognize Chris Cronus who served as principal of PASS this last year.

Paula Montgomery is incoming president for PASS.

PASS partners with us along with SEA and many many parts of our work, our tri-day planning, our monthly labor management meetings and so much more.

So thank you Chris for your service and thanks for being here tonight.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the kind words.

And to acknowledge all the principals is really important to me because I happen to be in a leadership role last year as the president of PASS but the work that goes on daily in our schools led by all of our school leaders is pretty remarkable.

And not just the principals but the assistant principals as well which often are overlooked because of their role.

But if it weren't for them our schools just wouldn't run and I appreciate the kind comments and the show respect there.

So thank you.

October 9th is indigenous people's day and the school board voted I think two years ago to make that something that we recognized each year.

And so I have a proclamation and then we're going to hear a little bit about the work that has been undertaken.

So two years ago when we well I'll read the proclamation first and then I'll make a few comments on it.

This is a resolution of the Board of Directors of the Seattle school district to promote the well-being growth of every district student especially Seattle's American Indian and indigenous students.

Whereas the school board recognizes that the indigenous peoples of the lands that would later become known as the Americas have occupied these lands since time immemorial.

Whereas the school board recognizes the fact that Seattle is built upon the homelands and villages of the indigenous peoples of this region without whom the building of the city would not have been possible.

Whereas the school board values the many contributions made to our community through indigenous peoples knowledge, labor, technology, science, philosophy, arts and deep cultural contributions that have substantially shaped the charter of the city of Seattle.

Whereas the school board has a responsibility to oppose the systematic racism towards indigenous people in the United States which perpetuates high rates of poverty and income inequality exacerbated disproportionate health education and social crises whereas the school board seeks to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination stemming from colonization and to promote awareness and understanding and good relations among indigenous peoples and all other segments of our district.

Whereas the school board promotes closing the equity gap for indigenous peoples through policies and practices that reflect the experiences of indigenous peoples, ensure greater access and opportunity and honor our nation's indigenous roots, history and contributions.

Whereas SB 5433 requires the teaching of the history, government, and contemporary issues of the 29 federally recognized tribes of Washington state, whereas the school board has amended policy number 2 3 3 6 required observances to observe the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day and therefore be it further resolved that all schools are encouraged to support the well-being and growth of American Indian and indigenous students and recognize the contributions of native peoples on October 9th Indigenous Peoples Day.

October 9th is hereby proclaimed as Indigenous Peoples Day.

When we took when the board took that action two years ago the question was OK what are we going to do to follow through on that and recognize it.

And we did what we could in like two days notice or something like that.

So since that time we have continued to make that a priority to figure out how can we provide appropriate materials on our website and how can we work with I suppose a few of the schools that ask for more personalized help.

The big picture of our work we call identity safety and it's the idea that all of our students regardless of race, ethnicity, gender have the right to come to school, feel welcome, feel a sense of belonging and feel like they can bring their whole selves to school and be an important part of what we do to learn together.

So with that I'd like to introduce UT Hawkins to talk just a little bit about some of the things that have been done to provide resources for all of the schools and maybe just a comment or two on some specific schools that you might want to comment on.

The board has a long list of schools.

You don't need to cover all of those but you might talk about a few of them.

So thanks for being here tonight.

I am a member of.

Hello, better?

Great.

So thank you for having me.

We are very thrilled to have an incredible team working on indigenous people's day.

It's been a lot of the scope of our work.

We've been doing a ton to create lesson plans, curriculum, help with art projects and support schools and students in assemblies.

coming leading up to Indigenous Peoples Day.

We've made a concentrated effort to make outreach to teachers via Schoology where we've provided a large list of authentic resources for them to create discussion around the upcoming day.

We've also partnered with a couple schools, McGilvra Elementary reached out to us to ensure that their assembly was culturally appropriate and that they had the resources they need to support their students.

We also know that Licton Springs is doing an assembly, Chief Self has organized an assembly incorporating our Sakachi classroom, leadership classroom there.

Gatewood elementary school has been working with me primarily in the K-3 to incorporate STI into their curriculum launching on indigenous people's day.

In addition to the Schoology perspective that we are really trying to do outreach on considering we have this great platform for this month we have been really trying to push teachers in their critical lens.

looking at the work that they find through their own research and seeing it, is it an indigenous perspective?

Does it talk about the lands and the tribal communities that we have here?

Does it respect the tribal treaties that we have in this area?

We've also been doing a lot of work with schools as we've been going out and working with students and meeting with principals and identifying their native students for them and letting them know that this is a community to outreach to.

We know that Jane Addams middle school is has made an intentional effort to push their staff to recommend to their staff that they go to the professional development about native identity safety that's happening on October 13. In addition to that there is going to be a since time immemorial training on the 13th of October as well which we hope will be an introduction to our classroom over at Meany which is a wonderful resource for our community, students and teachers.

We intend to provide ongoing support for schools given the month of November and moving into the Thanksgiving holiday and really making an intentional effort to give them a full rounded perspective on how we approach Thanksgiving and the month of Indian Heritage Month.

Yeah we're very, oh one more really exciting thing that's going on is that we have a wonderful new member to our team Georgina Bedoni of the Dine Nation and she has a specialty in arts education so she's partnering with the arts department to create a new a new program throughout the year that really focuses on teaching indigenous arts in a more culturally appropriate way and inclusive way.

So we're thrilled to see how that continues to go.

Any questions for me.

Moving forward.

Doesn't look like it.

Thanks so much for your work.

Yeah and thank you.

I hope that when the board does decide to do indigenous does have something come forward with indigenous people say that you reach out and show from the top down that that we are a resource here for the schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

October is also national bullying prevention month and Seattle Public Schools is dedicated to the safety and security of all of our students including keeping them safe from harassment, intimidation and bullying.

As you recall through our Title IX office this was also an element of focus over the last few years as well.

So one of the things that's being done this year is that Seattle Public Schools is taking part in a pilot program with I can help line dot org to try to figure out how to interrupt cyber bullying on social media.

So it'll be launched in October and we'll be communicating with the public about what that looks like and there'll be a news release around that as well.

As I usually do I'll comment briefly on each of our strategic planning goals.

Starting with educational excellence and equity the African-American male advisory committee gave their final recommendations at a meeting last week.

And cabinet members were present to meet with each of the subcommittees and to hear specifically from each of those committees about what their recommendations were and try to get a little bit of a feel about exchange of information about priorities.

And what might be possible.

We did commit to reporting back to them over the next couple of months in response to those recommendations and to schedule a couple of follow up meetings over the remainder of the year.

So I would say that the feedback and the input that we got from the advisory team was awesome.

They continued to refine their recommendations and try to figure out how to both recognize and align to some of the work that we were doing as well as to push us in some areas where we need to continue to make improvements.

As was just mentioned coming up on October 13, Friday the 13th is our EOG Institute and the title is schooling for racial justice.

So this is a follow-on to really the board's request for replicating the good work that we see emerging in more and more of our schools.

It will be at Chief Sealth International High School from 8 to 3 on Friday the 13th and we've been getting a lot of participants similar to summer leadership Institute where we are turning Really, almost exclusively to our staff who are our principals, who are our teachers, who are our instructional leaders that are leading the way in helping us figure out how to close gaps.

So this is a new launch for us and we are looking forward to it and a lot of work has gone into that.

And then the MTSS systems and structures which was one of the smart goals has been continuing to move forward as well.

emphasis has been how do we know students by their story strength and need.

And in order to do that in addition to the relationships is figuring out how to use assessments and data and progress monitoring to find out where each student is and the kind of progress that they're making.

So.

We launched some of that work last week and had an overwhelming response from principals who want to continue to figure out how to use that data for the benefit of their students.

The second goal is improving our systems as a district.

Budget continues to lead that work.

Our budget team led by JoLynn Berge can figure out what has done and what the impact of that legislation is.

And we're a little bit more encouraged than a bit concerning and troubling that we hope change during the upcoming session.

But the early views for what 18 19 look like are maybe not quite as dire as they had been.

And so we're continuing that process of bringing forward 20 30 40 I'm not sure what's on the list at this point in time program reviews to give the board an opportunity to see how we do spend our money and to start thinking about how what the priorities is for each of those programs.

We've also started the process of reaching out to the community with.

Thank you.

I better.

Thank you.

have also started the process of reaching out to PTAs starting with McGilvra last week.

did meet with the city of Seattle in a couple of different sessions one through an educational roundtable effort that they're setting up and other meetings pretty much staff to staff at this point in time.

About two things well maybe three things.

One is the mayor made the presentation about what's in the city budget and there's about 10 million dollars in the city budget to support the EOG work.

that came out of the summit.

And we continue to work to collaborate better about the family education levy funding and how that supports EOG work in the school district.

And the city is getting ready to move forward with their levy request for Well I guess it's the next seven years but in November of 2018 so having that opportunity to talk about what that what will that fund and what's the impact for voters given the fact that their levy and our levy will be within a very short window of time.

Goal 3 is our community engagement with schools families and community.

We did a fall partner kickoff.

We've got close to 300 community based organizations that partner with us.

We had 80 people come to the fall partnership and James Bush and Kerry Campbell talked with those representatives about MTSS and how they could align their work with in support of the work that we're doing.

So I have this new cool arrow diagram.

that moves beyond parallel arrows and has arrows that touch each other in the last arrow.

So that's what we are working toward.

I appreciate the work that James Bush is doing to try to coordinate and align our community-based partners to be a little bit more specific than we have been in the past about what exactly are we trying to do and how can they help us with the MTSS and EOG work.

Likewise we met with the Seattle Council of PTAs and wow we I guess it could have been standing room we found another half dozen or more chairs in my office so by far the largest attendance we've ever had in my office.

three-plus years in the district we must have had about 15 community representatives plus our staff so great great discussions and really appreciate that that partnership.

One of the items that came up and that we'll continue to follow up on was special education and so we kind of tee up the items and then arranged to have our staff come to who are most directly related to those items to the next meeting to get into a little bit more depth on those items.

City Year is one of our premier partners, they are in 10 of our schools and provide almost 100 volunteer AmeriCorps members to help with that, oh I don't know they do so many things, the identity safety, having a caring adult at school, meeting kids at the door in their red jackets, giving them a high five, connecting with them during the day.

So I appreciate Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen and school board director Stephan Blanford that were invited to come and welcome city year this year.

And yeah what city year does for us is truly incredible.

And they have a great theory of action and plan of action for how they are helping us improve graduation in some of the most challenging high school attendance areas both here in Seattle and nationwide.

And then communications in regard to advanced learning systems.

One aspect of smart goal 4 is identifying and supporting 3 to 4 high-level engagements throughout the school year with our thought exchange process and so that's underway with regard to advanced learning services to help figure out what families want, what implications we need to consider and what questions they have for us so far.

1300 people have engaged in the online conversation and we will continue to work through that process and learn from our families and about the system.

Good news.

Our SAT scores exceeded state and national averages and I would note that thanks to grants and most recently this year through school board approval and district funds we do sometimes we are challenged to do it.

But we do work to make sure that all of our kids are tested with the PSAT and the SAT for a variety of reasons.

One is the biggest one is that we want all kids to know that they should we want them to have that high aspiration to continue their education post-secondary and when they take the SAT and they get their scores back they start getting all kinds of free college information in the mail.

And hopefully some of that encourages them to say maybe this is a dream that I can pursue.

That in addition to a lot of other things that we do.

Building leadership training is underway.

We started that pilot in a few schools last spring and continue on it through this year.

It's a partnership with SEA and PASS to figure out what that looks like and deal with some of the challenges that the board has raised.

It's kind of like so there's things that we need to have done like CSIPs and budgets and then there's requirements that we engage staff and parents in that work.

So it's been a great opportunity to provide training to figure out how do we help principals navigate that intersection and get their CSIPs, their budgets, their staffing and their PD plan done in a timely way with engagement and with that ownership that we want.

Fair start.

continues to partner with interagency Academy and help us figure out how to help get job skills for students during the time that they are going to school.

And one of their fundraisers raised $1.7 million for youth and adult programs so we appreciate their partnership.

And El Centro had their gala on Saturday night and we had Director Blanford there was along with several representatives from cabinet and their keynote speaker was John Powell one of the people that we have had here in the district several times to provide PD for our administrative staff.

And topics of community interest, student assignment plan, high school boundaries, mentioned the fact that that was coming up as part of the community engagement work that we are doing with thought exchange and through the puzzle pieces that we are giving to the board.

Interactive pieces that are coming to the fore and coming before the board over the next few weeks.

Lots of work underway there in terms of both boundaries and the student assignment plan.

Five community meetings are being scheduled inviting families to come learn about the potential changes and give input on high school boundaries and other aspects of the community engagement.

Concord elementary had a meeting last night with regard to their dual language program and some of the changes that have been implemented at Concord.

And Director Harris was there last night along with Executive Director Kelly Aramaki, Michelle Aoki and Sabrina Burr from the Seattle Council of PTA.

So I appreciate the conversations.

I think there are some difficult challenging conversations there but I think good conversations in terms of a little bit better understanding of what what was intended and then trying to do a reset about what that looks like and how that fits in with the school.

Concludes my remarks.

Thank you Dr. Nyland.

Okay again we would like to welcome Lillian Jane Murphy.

She is a senior at West Seattle high school.

She is currently the president of the overall associated student body, a scholar student on national honor society, a member of key club and has also served as a link leader in link crew at her school.

In addition to her studies and extracurricular activities Lillian is a two-sport athlete for the Wildcats.

She is a member of the track and field team and the captain of the varsity soccer team.

I will now turn it over to Lillian for her remarks.

Welcome.

Thank you for having me tonight.

It's a pleasure to be up here with you all.

I don't have too much to say.

I just would like to thank Ms. Angela Cordova from West Seattle High School and the administration for allowing me the opportunity tonight.

I've got a wonderful school there.

I feel very lucky to be a part of that community.

Does anybody have any questions for Ms. Murphy?

Director Blanford.

We had a little bit of conversation ahead of time where you indicated some of the schools that you were potentially interested in attending next year and I thought it would be good for you to share that with our audience.

I don't know if it's on.

A couple of the schools I'm interested in attending next year, University of Washington, Boston College, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, and USC.

Thank you.

So I have told Lillian she's welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting or she could stay for the public comments and if she wanted to comment afterwards as well she's welcome to do that.

Okay we have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move we move the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has passed.

Well we have now reached the public testimony portion of the agenda but we're quite a bit early so I would now like to ask if any directors would like to begin their comments now and they're welcome to speak again afterwards in response to the public testimony.

Do I have any takers?

Thank you Director Geary.

Hello, everybody.

Okay so welcome Lillian Jane nice to see you thank you for joining us.

Thank you to all of our principals and the work they do.

Clearly given all the changes that we on the district are trying to implement the constant tension between central and site based leadership.

It's a lot for our building leaders to take on and to get fluent in on themselves and then to have to take into our buildings be leaders while implementing a lot of change over people who have been doing this hard work for a long time.

So I think I for one and I know many of my board members appreciate what a hard job that is.

And we need to continue to support them the best we can.

I know we do that and having gone to the SLI day I know they're very much excited about the work.

And so we have to continue in that excitement fostering them.

So very appreciative of the work they do.

And also a happy indigenous people's day a little early.

That is super exciting and so nicely goes along with so much of the other work and that we're doing in our district in terms of recognizing people for who they are.

You know the opening of Robert Eagle Staff of the supporting of Licton Springs all of those things start creating an energy around the appreciation of people that is really nice to see and celebrate.

I had a lot of community meetings since our last meeting.

I held several coffees and had my board meeting or my director meeting at Sandpoint or Magnuson housing which attracted a lot of the Sandpoint families which is nice because they don't always attend my meetings but still not Seeing as many people from the housing coming so I want to continue to welcome them encourage them to come to my meetings.

Spend time talking to the school board about the concerns that they have that are unique.

What I have been hearing from the people within my district is a response to the opening of Decatur elementary and the impact that they are feeling in terms of losing families and how that caused a number of shifts in the weighted staffing standard and.

Even as I'm standing on playfields having parents talk about their perception that if they didn't move their students out of their neighborhood school their students wouldn't be adequately served.

And so while they regret regretted having to make that choice they felt that that was the the.

the direction the district is moving in.

And so I don't know if that's the direction we're moving in and it's certainly not the direction I want to see us moving in.

But I had a visit during one of my meetings from one of the music teachers at Eckstein who is feeling particularly.

I don't know saddened disheartened after Eckstein has spent decades the teachers they're building up nationally renowned music program.

They're all of a sudden experiencing a trend that the elementary schools are no longer have the robust programs across the district across their feeder pattern.

to bring kids into their school.

And you know they whether rightfully or wrongfully they feel like the concentration of of the highly capable kids in one school is having a negative impact on the programs throughout the district.

And so maybe this is an unintended consequence of self self-contained approach to highly capable education that we're seeing.

And so we need to look into that more and we need to figure out ways to reverse that trend because The Roosevelt Eckstein feeder pattern was one that didn't have that type of self-contained program and has over the many many many years has created a really robust music plan.

And while I know it's been recognized that that is perhaps you know a more affluent area and has the parent money to support those kind of programs.

We needed to look at more ways to expand the broadening of those programs not further condense them into fewer schools.

So let's take a look at that and figure out ways to build music everywhere and not negatively impact the really great program that we had and that they are very very concerned about being strangulated.

I had the great pleasure to meet with the special education PTSA last night and I'm going to make a better effort to attend their meetings to to keep abreast of what's going on with our special education community as well as invited them to come in and share their stories here.

Because while I know we very much want to create inclusive environments they still have very poignant stories about not feeling included.

And so that came out last night in terms of some of the parents sharing their recent experiences at curriculum night and really feeling like they didn't, that they weren't being included in the general population as the curriculum night activities went forward and how kids were talked about and they felt they were not part of the audience.

That they weren't being addressed.

And I have to say that I experienced that a little bit in the own curriculum.

The curriculum night that I attended in that it it it seemed like and those parents who aren't as well will talk to you later.

It seemed very much like a footnote.

And so I don't think we want our populations our kids to feel like anybody's footnote.

And so if if there's going to be you know not all inclusive conversations then we need to notify people in advance of that.

And if they're supposed to be all inclusive conversations then we need to make sure that we're being very purposeful and including direct comments about kids that aren't like everybody else's kids because that's how they go through the day every day listening about everybody else's kids.

So.

Everybody can spend a little time doing that I suppose.

I met with our athletic director Eric McCurdy for the specific purpose of talking about how we can build the unified program, make it more robust here in Seattle.

We are going to be hosting the special Olympics next year.

It's really important that we as a district prepare for that we celebrate that and to the extent we can we start thinking about building our own special Olympics teams out of our high schools and supporting that any way we can.

So stay tuned because that's going to be a real goal of mine over this year and figuring out ways that we can do that.

As a legislative rep for the board I did have the pleasure of attending the Washington state school directors associations legislative assembly meeting where all school directors come together to develop the sort of joint legislative agenda for that we will then advocate for as a large group going to Olympia when session starts.

What was very clear though the big districts the little districts have very different perspectives on what's happening in education.

There are a few interesting trends that I think I could share here without getting too far in the weeds.

One whereas Seattle was always considered this very very big district that nobody else was like.

I am finding in attending this that more our districts are growing all around us.

And they're starting to share the issues that we share.

And so it's nice because I when I go to the legislative assembly I have more people coming to me saying can we pair together to work on this.

And that's a good thing because we need partners to do this work.

The uniform issue across all of the districts is that every district is having a hard time attracting and retaining high quality educators.

That is everywhere.

And I'll say it because I just think it's so shocking I know I've said it before in the middle of the state 50 percent of their educators are teaching with substitute teacher certificates.

So here in Seattle Public Schools we are less than 10% according to WASDA.

I don't know that was just the chart that they provided and so that creates a real discrepancy in terms of a disparity when I talk to them about what A teacher shortage means because they're being their kids don't have certified teachers.

And but what we have to get across is that this is a problem of lack of funding across the state for teaching.

It isn't that we should have more less qualified teachers.

We should all have more qualified teachers.

And it is an issue that we can unify at every level across this state around education.

And I think that's something that wherever you are whoever you talk to anywhere else.

continue to foster that belief that all of our kids in this state must be well educated.

Had several school tours.

Pleasure of going being hosted by principal Talbot at Laurelhurst principal Roos at View Ridge and principal Sterk at Eckstein Elementary and will continue to visit the different schools in my district and happy to join in with other directors on their tours if they care to invite me.

My upcoming meetings will be October 28 from 1 to 230 and November 18 from 1 to 230 both Saturdays at solid ground Phyllis Gutierrez Kinney room again in Magnuson Park.

I'm just going to continue to hold my meetings there in order to bring people in and familiarize themselves and create community around that in that area of my district.

And then I'm continuing to hold my Tuesday mornings from 8 to 930 at Zoka on Blakely.

They've become more and more well attended so I invite anybody who wants to come and join in.

robust conversation over coffee.

Sometimes I can't hold them so do check on Facebook or feel free to message me to find out if I'm holding it.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

I'll endeavor to be brief in my remarks and start off by also thanking Lillian for gracing us with her presence today in the conversation that we had it became really clear that Lillian is a multitasker and has lots of responsibilities at West Seattle high school and performs them all very well so thank you for adding one more task and sharing your presence with us today.

I also want to along with the superintendent extend my appreciation to our principals and our assistant principals.

When I was in school we were taught by many of our professors that if we wanted to make substantive change in school districts that the principals were one of the primary units of change.

And I took that to heart and believe really strongly that our principal core will be the unit of change in the improvement of our school district.

And so I'm happy to and very pleased to be supportive of their work and the recognition that they get on this month.

Yesterday in this room 24 hours ago there was a meeting, a project that the University of Washington has done for the last couple years now called Mender which is focused on our discipline in our schools and it is a research based project and they were reporting out their final findings and sharing with us what the future of that project would be.

And Dr. Jones was in the room as well as members of the committee all sharing the data and research that guided it.

And whereas we did not discover any groundbreaking solutions to the problem of disproportionate discipline in some of our schools.

There were some interesting questions that were asked and some data that was collected that whereas it doesn't give us the solution surely sets the stage for further research going in into the future.

And I was sitting next to Dr. Anderson who was very engaged in thinking deeply about how to extend that research now that the grant has come to its conclusion.

And so I'm hopeful because I know that you know when we think about the root causes of our Achievement and opportunity gaps, disproportionate discipline has a key role to play in that.

So by addressing it, taking strong action, studying the results and continuously improving I think that we will get where we want to be.

Blanford.

I had great pleasure in last week in addressing the members of city year, the new members who are coming on board before they start their school year.

For those of you that don't know city year does an incredible job in many of our schools And I shared with them that they when you look when you think about their theory of action that that Dr. Nyland brought up earlier it aligns perfectly with what the research says is the best practices around improving student achievement overall and particularly addressing achievement and opportunity gaps.

And that is a focus on academics.

focus on social emotional learning and then they have a role to play in changing the culture of the schools.

I've heard from many of the members of city year as well as some of the teachers and administrators building administrators about how the energy and attention and focus on students that somehow fall through the cracks changes the culture of the school.

And so I wanted to share with them the incredible power and potential that they have.

to make positive change in our school.

I was really excited to see the level of engagement and involvement and energy that they brought to that meeting and I think if they share that in our schools starting this week that great things will happen.

I was also pleased to be at the El Centro gala that was held last week.

And particularly to appreciate a dear friend of mine Erin Okuno who won the Roberto Maestas legacy award for her work leading the Southeast Seattle education coalition over these last few years.

She was appreciated by a huge audience of people for her leadership and all of that is you know advancing the interest of Seattle Public Schools.

So I was really happy to join in a huge round of applause for her work and wanted to congratulate her for that.

And then finally I believe I have a community meeting that is planned for the 28th of October going right up to the near the deadline of my term of service on the board.

Unfortunately the library now is not available on that day so we're going to have to find another day so stay tuned.

We had a robust conversation at the last meeting Touching on a number of different topics most of the folks in the room were interested in our highly capable program but there were also parents who were there who had particular issues with their children in schools and then others that had some administrative issues that we were able to discuss and I was able to point them in the right direction and the reports back say that those have been resolved.

That's a great opportunity for those in the audience if you're not getting satisfaction and you feel like you are you know bumping up against obstacles sometimes coming to a community meeting if you can you know find time in your day can put you on the right path.

Frequently we as board members can't actually solve the problem for you.

but can definitely get you an audience with the people who can solve the problem.

So I was glad to have those at the community meetings or something I'm actually going to miss a little bit as a former school board director but I think I'll get over it somehow.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you Director Blanford.

Thank you Director Pinkham.

It's been a while actually since I've been here.

I missed the September regular board meetings the first one because I was sick personally and the second one because I had to travel down to New Mexico to be with my daughter who had not an emergency appendectomy but did have an appendectomy that had to go down there and be with her as she recovered.

So thank you fellow board members for covering for me while I'm gone.

But now I'm back.

Watch out.

Let me get my list out here.

First given with indigenous people's day coming up I'm going to just read a couple of paragraphs from a book that hopefully maybe we can encourage schools or even just teachers to look at maybe people here in the district office.

In an electronic age ethnic identity is not bound by a particular place although native people often associate culture with physical location.

As authors state in this book's introduction people in various locations are linked by long distance nationalism to an ancestral land base and government.

The external borders of nations and reservations differ from internal borders that unite feelings of territorial psychological and spiritual identity.

Cities have also provided fertile ground for native activism.

The American Indian movement was founded in Minneapolis as a reaction to police mistreatment for example.

Urban activism arrived with some irony because federal government policy sent native peoples to assimilate them.

Forgetting that influence of culture flows both ways.

I recall visiting Powell in Chicago's Navy Pier where several thousand people many of them non-Indians.

No one it seemed was paying attention to the assimilation theory formulated by anthropologists and sociologists in the 1910s which assumed that American Indians would cease to identify with their ancestral peoples once they had moved to the urban areas.

They assumed that a change of location would wipe the cultural slate clean.

The same academics seem not to examine immigrants from Europe who have moved thousands of miles to America and preserve their cultures.

Yet this book's comments when American Indians moved to urban areas they immediately created both tribal and intertribal groups and cities to support the continuance of American Indian cultural traditions for their families.

Recent scholarship has questioned whether assimilation theories are accurate or just a reflection of the continual colonial predictions of vanishing Indians.

Assimilation is not inevitable.

Native cultures are not static but continue to change according to circumstances as all cultures do.

Developing inauthentic natives is the desired outcome of assimilation.

This book binds with abundant support that the story of urban American Indians is not one of doom and gloom but rather an engaging story of cultural resilience and survival.

And this is from the book American Indians Reclaiming Native Space and so.

For being here in Seattle just to let you know and hopefully the people sitting around the room the people in the audience the teachers listening and the people viewing online that yes they are still here.

And they didn't vanish.

Our culture is still alive and it has adapted and we haven't assimilated.

So I just want to share that as we approach Indigenous Peoples Day and it reminds me I want to thank UT Hawkins for giving us an update on how things are going for the events and planning for this coming Monday.

Pass on my appreciation to the principals and assistant principals.

Thank you for the work that you do.

And also to Lily from West Seattle High School thank you for coming and joining us and hopefully you'll pick the University of Washington.

I too will have a community meeting I had to cancel the one that was scheduled for September because that was coincided with my time down in Santa Fe.

My next one will be October 21st which is a Saturday from 3-3 to 5 o'clock and will be at the Northgate library.

And again I apologize for my absence and hopefully I'll connect with some of the community members and I did speak with some people from Northgate Elementary about some issues and I will be following up to make sure things get addressed and we can take care of make sure things are getting handled and communicated to the community as needed.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ Thank you.

Peters Thank you Director Pinkham.

Director Patu.

I too would like to say thank you to Lily and Jane for joining us here tonight at our board meeting.

Hopefully you're enjoying it.

I really had a wonderful visit this week in visiting some of my schools.

I actually visit Emerson and then I went to visit Dunlap and was really amazed by the wonderful artwork that's displayed at each one of these schools.

And just to see the different artwork and just the two that's in all the hallways and and how wonderful it is when we have art because I really believe that art is a child can not be as motivated to do academic but when they're really inspired in art academic become a very much a part of that.

So it's it's really a wonderful thing to see artwork work continue on in the various schools.

Also I wanted to say thank you to the principals of Emerson and also at Dunlap for taking time out to share with me some of the work that is going on at the two schools and also pointing out the various artwork that was displayed at Dunlap's Hall.

and really appreciated it.

And that was kind of a highlight for my week in terms of visiting those two schools because I love art and just seeing a variety of different arts display was just amazing for me.

I also wanted to say that my community meeting actually will be October 28. at Rock on Tour.

I want to thank Director Harris for being at my last community meeting because we didn't get a lot of community people come out but it was nice to actually to have her there and got a chance to catch up with with a lot of stuff that's happening in my community.

And also wanted to thank all the principals and all the students and the parents for a great starting of a whole new year.

And hopefully that we continue to see a lot of new exciting things happening at our various schools in the southeast.

Peters Thank you Director Patu.

Director Burke.

Good evening and welcome.

It's good to see everybody again on the board and in the audience and those of you that we can't see.

Thanks Lillian for joining us.

We really know how to have a good time on Wednesday evenings as you're learning.

No no end of entertainment.

So we welcome you to stay as long as you can stand it.

It's it's really a good time.

I also want to acknowledge the indigenous peoples day.

The the upcoming event and.

Especially as a as a leader of a district board director that's has has watched the I want to say awareness cognizance and I hope responsibility to the native community increase in recent years.

And I want to also thank UT Hawkins for sharing that work and really not just in support of our native students but also the systemic work that helps the entire district be more culturally sensitive and aware and robust in terms of those offerings.

Acknowledging principal appreciation month.

These are our high impact school leaders.

We can get behind the bench here and we can talk about things we can make policies but really the rubber meets the road in the schools.

And when we have high quality responsible react.

You know well well-trained well-acknowledged.

Principals then we can build really robust school communities.

And I think that we've.

Heard as a board more principals coming before us and talking about the the things that are successful in their schools the challenges they're facing.

And.

I believe that has that feedback has helped us be better in terms of governing the district.

So thank you to them.

Dr. Nyland mentioned MTSS.

It's something that comes up in conversations a lot and it does sometimes feel like just an acronym and so I wanted to also acknowledge the work that's going on in the district and in the buildings around multi-tiered systems of support.

As the chair of curriculum instruction and the director that is. responsible for.

That's that is the smart goal that I've signed up to be responsible for.

I had the pleasure actually just earlier today of joining Wyeth Jesse and Michael Tolley dropping in on the leadership team that's working on that.

And I just want to emphasize that you know there's MTSS includes all these components that sometimes can feel like we're we're we're building a machine that may not necessarily touch the students and so I just heard the conversations around how we're building the infrastructure to with intentionality.

And you know that there was a specific focus on Tier 1 which Tier 1 again is core instruction.

So we're not building a system to fix problems we're building a system to heal itself.

We're building a system that's rooted in robust core instruction.

So there was a lot of talk about clarity.

What are the non-negotiable components of that.

And even you know at the district level we recognize that there's a lot of places where we need to improve that clarity in the buildings.

So I wanted to acknowledge that work because I know it is a significant amount of work that we have committed to as a board with funding and words.

And so I figured I should back that up with some more words.

We had a work session earlier I guess it was last week last month around technology.

And I again putting the thank you first I wanted to thank our hosts at the living computers for letting us use the space and also for their their support for some of our educational work and professional development.

The the.

Influence of technology in our schools is a super hot topic and I think it's one of critical importance that this board recognized from that conversation.

So the the I believe that the charge is fairly clear from that discussion that we need to have a really clear.

understanding of what we're doing with technology and how it's benefiting students and we're not just trying to meet ratios of computers to students we're trying to provide really tangible elements of technology and evidence of how that's used examples of how that's used and the professional development for our teachers to help them engage with it at the same level that the students do.

And that's a big body of work.

So I want to make sure that's front and center for everybody.

I had a community meeting last week which was fairly well attended.

The primary hot topics related to boundary changes.

The high school boundary changes and also some work around the Whittier area which I know is something that has been.

in the works for a long time but I was reminded again that when we or previous boards make a plan and approve a plan and put it onto a document it doesn't mean that families know about it and it doesn't mean that families realize the impact even if it was approved two three five years ago.

If we don't have a way of truly reaching out to the impacted families and letting them know this is this is the decision that's been made.

This is how it could impact you.

This is your opportunity to to affect this decision or be far enough out in front of it that it doesn't cause disruption.

And that's that's definitely the case in this this Whittier boundary because it's something that has come before the board multiple times.

But it's there's still a lot of families that don't realize what what is happening and won't realize necessarily until they get the enrollment letter.

So I want to again reaffirm that we have to find a way to you know just as we want to reach out to our individual students and engage them where they are.

We need to reach out to our individual families that we're creating impacts for and reach them where they are as well.

Other hot topics were obviously high school boundaries which are There's a new set of maps that was just generated by the community engagement or sorry the high school boundary task force.

And there's a recommendation which I believe is map H which is being considered right now.

There's going to be one more meeting as part of that work and then it's going to be coming before the board.

Thank you.

On the opening screen of the website.

Other hot topic was the highly capable cohort pathways which is something that still needs to be overlaid on that.

And that work also needs to be done with intentionality because what we're hearing from the community is we see boundaries.

We see numbers of students.

We see how they're being put in in these these these boundaries but we're not seeing the clarity.

In how our pathway programs like HCC like language immersion are being addressed and also how the programs that don't necessarily have the same prominence.

Things like what happens when my kid starts in an IB program what happens if they're in the Ballard biotech what happens when they're on a particular path that they have invested their academic time and their brains and their hearts in.

What what does this process mean to them.

The other thing that was actually last night it was super exciting to me was the first community visioning meeting for Lincoln High School.

Principal Ruth Metzger played to a full house.

There were about 180 people there.

I want to thank John Hafford as well for his his presence.

It followed a slightly similar pattern.

There was a there was an element that described the building and the building structure.

But principal Metzger spent a lot more time talking about visioning high school what what people are trying to extract the elements of of what the community wanted to see in a high school vision and trying to build some sort of collaboration and a sense of community among the future Lincoln families.

So I look forward to further work there and I want to really thank and commend Ruth Metzger for that work.

There is one more meeting that's just going to be a duplicate of that if you weren't able to attend that's going to be on October 12th.

And I'm sorry I'll be out of town for that.

So if you wanted to see me at that meeting I won't be there but Principal Metzger will run it and it'll be great.

Looking forward I have an opportunity to join directors Patu and Geary on a tour of two skill center schools.

One will be the Puget Sound skill center and one will be Rainier Beach skill center.

We're doing a tour with a bunch of individuals from Seattle Public Schools Port of Seattle City of Seattle some labor partners and and higher ed representatives to try to look at ways that we can improve the entire CTE and skill center infrastructure.

And so it's super exciting just to have a bunch of people like minded without Particularly as a predetermined agenda to talk about possibilities.

In closing I want to come back to community engagement that there are again talking about boundaries.

There are five community engagement meetings between October 23rd and November 9th at school sites.

And I encourage anybody directors or community to attend those if you have hopes and dreams about boundaries want more information or understand how it could impact your your specific enrollment situation.

And then the other point of note is on October 25th we the board have a work session that is an operations committee of the whole to discuss the student assignment plan.

So the student assignment plan and the boundaries are two different things that are closely connected at the hip and always an interesting puzzle to unravel.

I have two upcoming community meetings booked one for October 28th.

330 to 5 p.m.

Greenwood library and one December 9th one o'clock to 230 p.m.

at Fremont Public Library.

And I hope you can make it either of those.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Burke.

Director Harris.

Welcome and thanks for coming out this evening.

My next two board meetings are October 21st and November 18th.

They are the third Saturday of the month which I aim for 3 to 5 p.m.

at Delridge library and now you have a one in two chance of getting lasagna.

We had another community meeting on the 30th after the previous meeting scheduled the week before was rained out when the apartments leaked above the library.

We had about 22 23 folks.

It was I think the term that I've heard here is robust conversation and extreme concerns about folks being able to get enough rigor in their high school plan if we disperse the HCC and the AL cohorts throughout the city.

Obviously Garfield cannot continue to absorb everyone.

It's it's insane and we need a fix but we also need a fix that has enough folks to be able to offer enough college track programs to meet the needs.

I also want to say thank you to Associate Superintendent Tolley and to executive director Pritchett.

We had a dust up about a week ago about whether or not the 10th graders at Garfield and Chief Sealth international high schools would be able to take the PSAT.

That's been fixed.

They interceded.

and hugely appreciate it.

One of the reasons it's so important for 10th graders to take the PSAT is to a become familiar with this kind of testing and to show our 10th graders that they can do this and also to identify folks that we can help coach to increased rigor.

especially students of color.

It's an identification and it works with what we're talking about in terms of expanding opportunity.

So huge thanks to you and huge thanks to the principals Ted Howard and Aida Frazier-Hammer Ted Howard at Garfield Aida Frazier-Hammer at Chief Sealth for making that happen.

It was it was a sweet thing to see the pivot.

Did attend the Concord community meeting last night.

And that was robust as well.

Understatement.

But.

What was really quite extraordinary was to see an entire community come out at a community organized meeting and talk about how much they love their school.

It was extraordinary to hear person after person get up and worry about the teachers that are working way too hard.

And worrying about the effect of the teachers that are working way too hard.

It was respectful.

It was profound.

The district staff has owned the lack of community engagement and heads up about some of these changes and.

Efforts are already being put into place to do a better job of that heads up.

I did speak and I did suggest that it would be very nice to give them additional teachers and not to have kindergarten classes that have 25 and 26 kids in them.

Students in them.

But that we just plain don't have the money.

McCleary.

It was a rich conversation also Jeff Clark and folks from Chief Sealth on the same international school pathway were there as well.

And to that end Concord is having a Dia de Mirtos carnival on October 28 and 27. 29th that's Saturday 1 to 4 Sunday 1 to 5. And if you've ever been to a Concord celebration you know what a good time it is what good food it is what good music it is and what amazing dancing will be had by all.

Couple of things that I'm still waiting for on my request list.

I'm still waiting for a West Seattle community carnival date so that we can engage with our community.

And I can assure you that the community is getting more rowdy by the week waiting for same.

Also am still waiting for a response on the race and equity tool for playgrounds.

And how are we going to address that because it is in fact an equity issue when we build new schools with really nice playgrounds and we don't assist high need schools on the same that don't even have a PTSA or a PTO.

And we all know how important fresh air and activity are for kids.

Director Geary told me something over the weekend and I just about fell off my chair and that's that we apparently do not fund united teams.

Athletic teams for unified.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

I am stunned and shocked and extraordinarily distressed and I hope that we can reverse that.

because that is beyond an equity issue.

And if we're offering it to our able bodied etc. children then why we would not be offering the same offerings to our differently abled students and children.

There you go.

Harris is speechless.

Who knew.

Want to want to give a shout out and a thank you to Director Blanford.

We get a lot of emails from folks some really thoughtful some really helpful some from folks that.

potentially are attacking us.

And a difficult some from folks that maybe we disagree with philosophically.

And we got an email last week from a gentleman who had very strong feelings about respect being paid to the flag.

And director Blanford wrote a extraordinary response to this gentleman.

And I really appreciate it.

And I thank you for that.

And moreover he continued the conversation when the gentleman wrote back.

But it was the most elegant stand up that I've seen and I hugely appreciate it.

Principles and assistant principals.

I'd like to highlight the assistant principals because sometimes they're the folks that do even heavier lifting.

And.

Director Burke said something about well-trained principals.

I would add to that phrase well-supported principals.

And I think we're doing a better job than we ever have in terms of principal leadership days in terms of SLI over the summer.

But.

The principal.

Sets the tone.

Sets the tone at every school and.

And leadership really is bringing folks up.

And.

Coaching.

and surrounding and caring and lifting all those boats.

And thank you for that because those are extraordinarily long days and a whole lot of triage a whole lot of meetings down here and they have to assemble a team that that is nimble and responsive and I'm proud of our principals and I thank them.

Thank you to Lillian district 6 and welcome to your new principal Brian Vance.

And I hope you guys are giving him a great welcome.

Thank you.

One last piece and this is under the good news category.

Associate Tolley direct superintendent Tolley and I got to meet this morning and some of you all have heard me push pretty hard on the ingenuity online curriculum because we've heard from a great many teachers that it is culturally inappropriate.

And that was an online program we used to use as a base curriculum for interagency some of our most vulnerable students.

And leadership stopped using that program.

and wrote back to ingenuity and said and this is why.

And ingenuity saw fit to write us back ask us questions and in fact change the online curriculum.

Are we there yet?

I'm not.

willing to accept that whole I will continue to keep an eye on it.

But I thought that was a pretty terrific and responsive and also reach out scenario and I very much appreciate it.

And for CIO John Kroll there's a lot of traffic out there on social media on the use of interactive programs like class dojo etc.

And we still need to know more about what's being used on district computers.

Privacy issues with students etc.

I will save my remarks for the Fort Lawton piece until that resolution comes up.

But let me just say in advance thanks everyone that has contributed to that.

Much appreciated.

It is my pleasure my privilege and my honor to serve.

Okay thank you Director Harris.

So we have now reached 530 a little bit beyond and we will now go to public testimony.

The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers be respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on items related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Shek will read off the names of the testimony speakers.

Thank you.

Shek First up for public testimony this evening we have Taejon Glover followed by Chris Jackins and Valerie Cooper.

Taejon?

Chris Jackins?

My name is Chris Jackins box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the property sale of 315 square feet for the South Flanders Street right of way to the city of Seattle.

Four points.

Number one the proposed sale appears to violate state law.

Number two the city provided an appraisal of property at $50,000.

Number three the district did not do its own appraisal.

Number four RCW 28 A 3 3 5 1 2 0 section 5 requires that the appraiser be quote selected by the board of directors unquote.

Please vote no.

One update today the board just voted to approve the apparently illegal property sale as part of the consent agenda.

Please quickly reverse this action.

On the Wing Luke elementary project two points.

Number one in 2005 the district spent six point five million dollars at Wing Luke to provide a new classroom wing and a cafeteria auditorium.

Number two 12 years later the district proposes to tear them down.

This is a mistake.

Please change these plans.

On levy planning three points number one the board gives students special priority to address board meetings.

Number two some students who have been making use of this priority are employees of a district contractor and they have been lobbying the board on issues related to their work.

Number three this looks like a cozy arrangement bankrolled by taxpayer funds toward convincing voters to approve a future levy on these projects.

Does the board have any qualms about this arrangement?

I also have some graduation data for you on the Rainier Beach grant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Valerie Cooper.

Livid is a pretty good word right now.

I cannot believe where we are currently sitting with a Fort Lawton land.

Not only should the district be a part of this, should have been a part of this master redevelopment from the start, the district has had ample time to work through this process.

We appreciate what our school board is able to do in recognizing proactive planning.

The district is not on the same page.

We had a handshake from staff back in June saying that SPS would request to be on the environmental impact statement.

We had a phone call Where due diligence was not pursued by district staff and a letter to the office of housing so full of inaccuracies that it was clear that the district was disingenuous at its attempt to secure desperately needed land.

To our city officials I had a conversation on Friday with Lindsay Masters who is the project manager for Fort Lawton.

We've been having an open conversation this whole time and I've identified SPS's new information and reinterest.

We were told late fall would be the time of the EIS closure.

My conversation with her on Friday mentioned nothing about the loop being closed.

Today interim Mayor Burgess attempted to close the door for SPS.

I actually believe that the city decision happened above the project manager Lindsay Masters but for the city to treat their stakeholders this way is an affront to democracy.

Our mayor is a mayor of all of Seattle including ensuring a robust school education system.

If our district officials have an agenda that does not serve the well-being of all of the students of this district we need to have a new conversation.

We as concerned parents did everything possible to provide the opportunity and information about nearly free land.

When the capacity crisis hits the fan we will be desperate for new land.

I still don't know if this is over.

I'm not willing to say no and it's not done.

The reality of the times and the communication back and forth between the city will be bring a lot of information to light.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony we have Misty Jackson followed by Megan Burke and Lisa Evans.

Misty.

Megan?

Hello, my name is Megan Burke, and I have two boys, ages six and four.

As you just heard the Fort Lawton land to be potentially received at an extreme discount is an investment in our future.

I want to thank you now, thank you to the board for your consideration for this truly once in a lifetime opportunity.

Of course we want to see a school on this property as soon as possible.

But I want to highlight that Seattle Public Schools would be approved to use Fort Lawton to use the land as a maintenance facility forever and never have to build anything more on the land.

Seattle Public Schools would get an 80 percent discount on the land and if at some point during the 30 years of cooperation with the Department of Education if the district wanted to amend its use of land the DOE would work with the district on that revision.

All of that to say that there is so much flexibility with this land.

If the district can find funding to use the land for school building and receive the land for free it would save millions of dollars replacing other capital projects designed to increase capacity in this area.

And it could allow those funds to be moved towards much needed projects in other areas of the district.

This opportunity makes makes so much sense in so many areas.

The Department of Housing and the city have been amenable in coordinating with the school district and open to a school being included in the master redevelopment.

We are not asking for all of the land.

We're asking to collaborate with the master redevelopment plan and to have a portion of the land.

By asking to be on the EIS we are not committing to anything except the cost of the EIS.

It gets us on the train.

We need to ensure that this train does not leave the station without us.

We do not want to be on the wrong side of history on this and if we by omission do nothing the opportunity passes us by.

Thank you.

I have to read my own handwriting so I apologize.

I'd like to start by saying thank you to the directors for engaging with your constituents for remaining open minded for understanding the value of relationships with the community partners and the experience and knowledge partners and that's inclusive of families bring to the work and potential and possibilities that could be had by this district.

Thank you for supporting the students and families of the district by providing a resolution to be included on the city's EIS at Fort Lawton.

Yes I am aware of the letter from Mayor Burgess that arrived today in response to your resolution.

I would like to assert that I believe the mayor is ill-informed.

And yes I did say that.

He's ill informed on Fort Lawton this particular EIS process and its impact.

Like many staff members here today there is a there is and clearly has been a failure to communicate or demonstrate due diligence in working to partner and or possibly acquire a portion of the Lawton land.

As of last week our own conversations with the office of housing confirmed the EIS was still open and as such the office of housing was continuing with their due diligence and our lead to talk with the Department of Education and Patty Murray's office to gather further information and understanding.

Something the staff here has yet to do.

Please know this opportunity is not gone.

We are on the ground.

We see the actual capacity.

We know the increasing density.

We will continue to passionately and vigorously keep the door open.

Leverage our work to create relationships and partnerships with the city and others including an upcoming mayor an upcoming meeting with mayoral candidate Jenny Durkan.

The door is not closed despite what you've been told.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony we have Natasha Boswell followed by Andrea Peterman and Brian Terry.

Natasha.

Andrea.

Hello my name is Andrea Peterman I'm here as a representative of racial equity in HCC.

I have two kids in Seattle Public Schools one who's been in HCC for four years and she's now a seventh grader at the new Robert Eagle Staff.

I'm here to address the need for racial equity in the district's advanced learning programs.

You can look at the numbers or you could go to any HCC school or classroom and see the racial disparities with your own eyes.

These programs belong to mostly white privileged families.

My daughter has benefited from the curriculum and I value it.

She's had excellent teachers and has excelled academically.

But when I take a step back and I see who's missing from the program it looks like something other than an academic program.

It looks like a tool for segregation.

I'm sure that's not the intent but it is the result and the result is more important.

Students of color see advanced learning programs filled with white students.

White students in the program look around and see themselves.

And every day this continues.

We should be asking what message does this send to our kids.

Because what they see they will internalize and what they see right now normalizes segregation and racial and social inequities.

I urge this board to make this a priority to break down barriers so advanced learning serves highly capable students from all backgrounds all races and all schools in this district and reflects the diversity of the SPS student population.

Please continue to fund and expand universal testing of second graders.

Expand the testing criteria.

Stop allowing private testing for appeals and find ways to identify advanced learners in all corners of this district because they are there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

HCC classrooms are segregated by design.

A white student is 20 times more likely than a black student to qualify for HCC.

The intent is to create a classroom that is academically homogenous but the result is a classroom that is racially culturally and socioeconomically homogenous.

Each year many underprivileged highly capable students apply for HCC and are routinely rejected.

The excuse given is that these students would not be able to keep up with their privileged peers and would slow the class down.

To be clear this is not based on any data and is in violation of both state law and district policy.

The way forward is clear.

It is time to stop putting privileged students first.

We must desegregate advanced learning classrooms by finding and serving all highly capable students.

Desegregation will not be easy.

Many families love the program and its current segregated format.

As I look around the room here tonight I hope that many of you support desegregation.

If we want change we must unite.

It is time to end racial segregation in advanced learning.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony we have Chandra Hampson followed by Robin Schwartz and Hilary Jarigou.

Hezaki Shina I'm glad to see you.

My name is Chandra Hampson and I'm a parent of a second and a fourth grader at Sandpoint Elementary.

I'm Ho-Chunk from the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska and Ojibwe from the White Earth reservation.

I'm also on the parent advisory committee for title 7 now title 6 native education at the district.

And I'm here today to talk to you about advanced learning and the inequities present in our school district.

These fine people did a wonderful job stating much of what I thought I might have to say.

I'm going to start with this.

Miriam.

Actually let me stop and say I haven't wanted to speak to this issue to the board.

previously because the thing that makes me emotional at this time is that I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about the inequity in our advanced learning system and because it has served to tear my community at Sandpoint apart in such a severe way.

And the reason I got emotional is because the names that I was about to read are all the names of.

my daughter's friends who aren't at our school anymore.

And I value them I value.

They're at all at HCC programs and we miss them.

We miss the diversity that they also provide to our extremely diverse school.

And the hardest conversations I've ever had at Seattle Public Schools with any parent any administrator have to do with the inequities in Seattle Public Schools.

And I would challenge everyone to take one step further and look at the values that we.

place on how we screen for giftedness and what is giftedness and what values are we espousing by having a very static narrow version of giftedness that doesn't allow us to teach advanced learning in our neighborhood schools.

And just one final point.

I was really hit hard by a child who told me that he was when I first learned about advanced learning that he was going to the school for smart kids.

And one of the things I thought today before coming to speak to you was to the smartest kids that we used to have in this district were Charlene Lyle's kids and we failed to serve them.

And our duty is to them as much as it is to the folks who have passed those tests.

And if not more so because we have the opportunities to serve them and their giftedness and the ways in which they present.

And we failed them in the most severe way.

And I would like us to take on that charge and try to do things differently.

Sorry for the emotionalness.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Hi thanks for your time.

I'm Robin Schwartz I'm the PTA president at Concord International Elementary School.

Our school serves over 70 percent children of color and 50 percent Spanish heritage speakers.

75 percent of our kids qualify for free and reduced lunch.

We have low test scores.

We also have incredibly dedicated teachers families who are committed to raising successful children and kids who are thriving hardworking and engaged learners.

Our families are busy working learning the language and navigating the pressure that comes with living in poverty and an unfriendly political climate.

We are a school culture with many and specific needs and we are grateful to the district for making race and equity and closing the opportunity gap priorities.

Our community depends on the district upholding its commitments to these priorities.

We have had three important issues arise this year.

The new literacy curriculum does not include a Spanish component.

Our dual language model has always included Spanish literacy in grades K through 2. We now have no dedicated Spanish literacy and our teachers are scrambling to translate other subjects to Spanish with the expectation that kids will learn Spanish via math social studies and science.

Our 10 year old partnership with Solid Ground and Mara Farm was terminated.

This program provided hundreds of hours of planned and facilitated health science and nutrition curriculum including a 12 week series for second and third graders to walk to the farm.

Two full time staff members who planned multiple all school events and many hours coaching for girls on the run.

Concord kids have less public park space less recess time less field trips less healthy and organic food and more environmental health issues than most SPS kids.

This entirely free program address these inequities.

The dual excuse me finally our K classes are past capacity.

We have 26 kids per class.

Title 1 limits are 20 per class.

Our teachers are overwhelmed.

The dual language cohort is capped at one classroom with 11 kids waitlisted.

Our program depends on two classrooms of dual per grade.

We have simultaneously classrooms that are too full and a dual cohort that is too small.

We need the district to listen to Concord.

These changes have the potential to make or break our teachers our program and our kids education.

Please help us correct our course.

Thank you.

My daughter Amaya is speaking.

My name is Amaya and I am seven years old.

I am a second grader at Concord in the dual language program.

I am Mexican and I speak English and Spanish.

I want you to bring back time for Spanish literacy and I think everybody should learn Spanish because my friends that speak English and Spanish agree to bring back Spanish literacy, and my friends that speak English want to learn to read and write in Spanish.

The story from Ms. Carly's class.

We want to listen to us.

We want reading in Spanish.

We want writing in Spanish.

Help us get dual language back.

Everybody.

We want Spanish because everybody needs to learn Spanish.

It is very important.

We love Spanish.

All of us should go back to having literacy every time we go to school.

It should be fair.

Listen to Concord.

Escucha a Concord.

I love Concord.

Concord.

Story for Spanish classes.

Camila.

Thank you for hopefully listening to us.

Please help us recreate Spanish literacy.

Love Miss Carly's class.

Thank you.

Well done.

Thank you.

Next up we have Sarah Coulter followed by Anne Shuran and Sabrina Burr.

Hi I'm here regarding the Fort Lawton resolution.

First we've had encouragement from the city council that they understand the redevelopment of this area is important to fit the needs of the community.

Sally Bagshaw said via email we will remind the Seattle Public Schools how important an expansion school is in this area.

We've also had a huge community response favoring a school.

During the city's initial EIS comment period a school is the most popular option expressed with the community.

with 55 percent more supporters than the city's initial proposal.

We quickly gathered over 12000 excuse me 1200 signatures on a change.org petition.

The comments provide rich insight into the potential school uses for this land.

Also we did a survey with almost 400 users and when asked where they prefer a high school For Magnolia Queen Anne students 75 percent said Fort Lawton only 20 percent said Seattle Center and 5 percent said other.

The district has said it values the input of the families it serves when making decisions.

This is a very strong data point that should not be ignored.

Next I want to remind everyone of the Spokane example.

Similar to Fort Lawton the Walker Army Army Reserve Center was closed after it was declared surplus by the Defense Department in 2007. The East Valley School District in Spokane was able to get the land for free for the now open in tech high school.

Lastly just this Monday the city council voted to up zone lower Queen Anne.

This will increase density for adults and children.

Where will these kids go to school.

The schools in this cluster are already full.

Let's not miss the boat on free land.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Anne Sheeran the parent of a student with a disability who began ninth grade at West Seattle high school this year.

My son's IEP describes services that are known as access services.

These are pushed into general education.

The access model is in the collective bargaining agreement.

You the board approved it and it was supposedly rolled out to high schools starting with this school year.

However, not only was West Seattle high school not ready to implement inclusive services in gen ed, they claim not to know about access.

When provided by me with the district policy and the definition of access services they, this is teachers and administrators said we don't do that here.

We have to change your son's IEP.

I am here to ask how could this happen?

Even more egregiously we the family found out by accident that the SPED teacher assigned to this inclusion cohort does not ever provide inclusive push-in services.

She doesn't leave her classroom.

And even worse the school administrators see nothing wrong with this arrangement.

They actually told us to just switch all of our services to Gen Ed from Gen Ed to a self-contained classroom.

That it's the same difference.

Like they never heard the concept of least restrictive environment.

I think we can probably count on our building leaders to know the basic standards of practice in disciplines like math history science and language arts and that the executive directors of schools might catch blatant irregularities in the normal course of their supervisory duties.

something happened here.

It does not seem that we the families of disabled students are due this kind of guarantee.

This basic expectation.

This is terribly denigrating.

I feel it is an insult.

We are not second class citizens.

Our students are general education students first.

So I'm here to ask can you please clarify what are the systems for making certain that every building leader is absolutely on top of district policy professional practice basics and the law in regards to special education.

Why is it left to parents to exert this oversight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening Dr. Nyland and school board directors.

First of all thanks for what you do.

I realize it's not an easy job.

I want to talk just briefly about our focus on welcoming environment and family engagement.

School board policy 0 0 3 0 ensuring racial equity and the 4100 series around family and community engagement.

They're old and we need to revisit them.

I'm glad to see the race and equity team is relooking at 30030 and that family engagement is now relooking at the family engagement.

But that needs to be a thread that goes through everything that we do.

How the environment of each building is affects everything.

And our equity lens and our family engagement needs to be a through thread on everything that we do.

When we have the right instructional leaders that honors the community, who listens to family, who practices number five shared governance, beautiful things happen and we close gaps.

But when we have instructional leaders who are not informed by the people above them to reach out to families to teach them to reach out to families to look at unintended consequences of what is going on in our buildings it underpins all of the amazing work that you're doing here at the district.

And we need to reexamine it and we need to look at it.

I was at a community meeting for Concord last night And some of those things that are happening at Concord are happening in way too many buildings.

We're making decisions that affect kids and their learning and we're not talking about families.

We have principals saying narratives but when you look at the other end and the unintended consequences they're not true.

That has to be a through thread.

We need to make sure that school is safe for everyone.

And we are honoring the families that they come from.

Please let's do that work together and honor families.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Shek Next up we have Alex Cooper followed by Tay John Glover and Misty Jackson now.

Thanks thanks for letting me speak and you guys are busy and have a lot of issues to balance as I hear tonight.

I want to let you know you know I stand with a heavy heart understanding that the interim mayor unfortunately rejected the possibility of placing a school on the Fort Lawton land.

Fortunately though.

He's only the mayor the interim mayor and you are the school board.

So you still have power.

A lot of power.

Both groups here Seattle City School our city of Seattle and the school board must work together to discuss this piece of land in more detail.

I want you to recall that the city of Seattle has talked about placing 150 homes, I'll exclude the 85 senior homes, 150 homes on this piece of land without discussing extra children that will come at those homes and where they will go to school.

It's a major major oversight.

At any rate I think and feel that you have the power to still make this project work.

School and housing can coexist on this land.

Yet the mayor has made no mention of this possibility.

Please please meet with the mayor soon and discuss the possibility that both the district and the city of Seattle can work together to make a project with a school and housing work.

It can be done.

Work has to be put into it though.

And also recall that we're talking about free land.

I don't really know exactly how much an acre of land costs but probably around two million dollars in the city of Seattle.

And we're talking about the city or the school board part of me potentially being able to obtain 10 15 acres of land.

20 30 million dollars you are throwing away.

You're throwing money away money that could be used elsewhere.

So please don't take no for an answer.

Speak with the mayor.

Sit down with the mayor and discuss how this project could work.

I get the sense that the communication between the school board and the city of Seattle has been next to zero.

And I hope that more communication can be had between the between both of you and that a conclusion can be made that will help build a school there save money and put housing there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms.

DeWolf.

Hi thank you sorry obviously we've gotten some news that's changed everything and what I was prepared to speak about with Fort Lawton.

But it is still important that we let you all know that we're still wanting to fight for this opportunity because I'm sure you all recognize what an important opportunity this is considering the capacity issues that we're facing.

So I quickly had to change what I was saying.

One of the things I wanted to communicate was how very disappointed that we all are as a city as a city are bypassing an opportunity to help our children's future.

I see I'm just trying to scam through skim through some things.

So I'm not sure of the next steps as to this news just as because this news just emerged from my knowledge some of you on the school board did what you could for this rare opportunity to benefit our children.

But.

only to be shot down by our current mayor.

I continue to be disappointed by our city leaders for appearing to not be prioritizing our children.

It's very disheartening.

I have always loved Seattle but recently it is getting more and more difficult to retain this love with the city government that seems to have its priorities out of whack.

So I'm going to shift I guess my focus to back to what I was originally going to close with in regard to overcapacity issues in the Queen Anne Magnolia cluster.

There are a vast number of ideas for solutions to this capacity issue in the Queen Anne Magnolia elementary cluster.

My personal hope is that we can somehow arrange the schools in a way that would make it possible for K-8 Magnolia kids to stay on Magnolia and K-8 Queen Anne kids to stay on Queen Anne ultimately minimizing commuting times and distances to get to and from school and encouraging walking and biking.

Collaboration is the key in this endeavor.

I think that we should still be able to work together to plan something for our future and hopefully it's not off the table to get this land to help our kids because the overcrowding is here and coming.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This concludes the sign up list for public testimony this evening.

Thank you.

Okay I now invite directors to speak again if they would like to address anything that was said by the community.

Although I would ask that we not that we be mindful of the time since everybody most everyone spoke already.

So is there anybody who would like to speak to what we've heard this evening?

Director Pinkham.

Thank you to all the speakers today and sharing your views and perspectives is definitely valuable because you're the ones that put us here so we need to continue to hear from you.

Pinkham My first issue would be going back to as probably one of our speakers about the need for the board to select appraisers if you maybe have general counsel is that true?

Treat Good evening Noel Treat general counsel in the context of this sale no I don't think that is true.

I think there is a statute that addresses some types of property sales for the district if for instance you're selling what's actually been used as a school site or if you're selling something that's worth more than $70,000 then some different rules come into play but this was a sale essentially under threat of condemnation and at a low dollar threshold so some of those the rules that were mentioned earlier don't come into play in this context and then the other thing I would mention is that Under our policies you've delegated a lot of real estate management to the superintendent so things like appraisal or appraiser selection could be done by the superintendent.

Of course the one thing the board does have to approve is obviously final approval for the sale which you did and I would also further point out that at the time that matter was introduced to the board the presenter discussed with you the appraisal that was conducted.

Pinkham Okay and so I guess one issue you're saying that for over $70,000 but if the city picked the appraiser and appraised at $50,000 and if we would have had one if they would appraise it at $75,000 then we're at the point where oh yeah this exceeds the amount.

So I think that's the issue that's being brought up by people from our public hey if we selected one appraiser and they say it's lower if we would have had another one that said it was higher than requires another board action to come in.

Not necessarily.

My understanding is that the staff reviewed the appraisal and they were satisfied that it was independently done as required by appraisal licensing.

The other thing I'd point out is the statutory section that mentions the $70,000 probably doesn't even apply to this type of sale because this wasn't the sale of a school.

A piece of property we're using for a school use which is what most of that statute applies to.

This of course is just part of our parking lot here at the administrative office.

I'd have to look closer at.

Or wasn't there a time element also in the presentation.

I forget who it was but someone said that there was an issue around getting the appraisal done in short order.

I don't recall that but that's that's possible.

OK.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Peters Thank you.

Peters Any other directors would like to speak?

Director Patu.

Patu I guess I wanted to ask our person that's actually over the advanced learning to find out what are we actually doing in providing equitable access to advanced learning?

Good evening.

Chief Wyatt Jesse with student support services.

So we've taken a credible effort actually working with some of those parents.

They helped inform our work around actually getting out to all our Title 1 schools.

and double down about our parent outreach.

Some of our traditional methods and I would say this is not just for advanced learning but other areas as well is really getting out in the community groups double and down and when we didn't hear something back about helping identify students who could possibly be assessed for advanced learning services.

was not only to provide typical things like translation of the documents but also following up with phone calls going out and doing outreach bring them in educating about the process.

It's that special extra touch that we found to get an incredible boost actually in the number of students I believe it's almost another 30 students actually that were identified for highly capable services that were both Hispanic and African-American just in that one effort.

And so yes we have to replicate those efforts.

Yes we have a lot more to do.

But I think those are things that we are working towards around how we're going to.

And you'll hear this coming up in one of our work sessions related to program review.

is really kind of transforming how we do advanced learning services.

I mean we really have to look at about how we're looking to provide those opportunities to a lot of our learners because they develop those those gifts along their developmental cycle here within Seattle Public Schools all the way from when they walk in through the door kindergarten all the way as they exit up to 21. Thank you.

I'd like to follow up with a question for what?

Right.

Okay.

I've been looking closely at the whole whole issue of how we bring and identify more students underrepresented students students of color into our HCC and our spectrum program and advanced learning as well.

And it seems that from what I can tell that one of the key problems is with referrals.

We simply aren't referring as many students of color.

What are we doing as a district to help our teachers and our parents know how to identify students who need those services?

I think that's a great question Director Peters and that was actually out of this extra effort that that effort cannot be done just by the advanced learning team.

One of the things we reached out was across departments we grabbed staff to actually go straight out to schools meet with all those staff members at those schools to educate them about the identification process.

We doubled down that's where we got those names.

I miss this part of the process from Director Patu's question.

was educating them on that and then we got more referrals and then those more referrals and getting out there and translating those documents that got us so far.

But then we had to do those follow-up phone calls so it's It's a lot of work but it's something that we're we're learning through that process and how one small department cannot carry this.

This is the weight that the district has to hold on something that obviously the community values and that we want to value as well as we think about policy 0 0 3 0.

Director Blanford has a question.

I heard something in your response to Director Patu's question that was a bit concerning so I wanted to give you the opportunity to clarify if necessary.

Your initial response was to talk about reaching out to Title I schools.

And whereas I think there's a lot of value in doing that I would not want anyone listening to these proceedings to believe to take from that that our strategy is only to identify kids that are in Title I schools because many of our schools are not Title I, many of our students of color are not in those Title I schools.

And so it would be important to identify across the board recognizing poverty but also recognizing another of other number of other factors that are at play that are keeping kids from being identified.

Is that in line with what you were thinking or?

Yeah and so some of that effort was actually born out of the grants program for Title 1 people folks who are paid out of Title 1. So some of that was the cross departmental efforts that we were able to do and so that was an initial target.

I think in this particular case that this is about learning from this opportunity.

And then as I was trying to mention and I would want to be really clear about is replicating it across the district.

so that we can do those efforts.

We do do that outreach but we've got to do more of that outreach in all of our in this case elementary schools across the district because there are absolutely in this particular case students of color in every single one of those schools.

And so we want to do want to identify those students and work with them.

I think this in a particular case was around a funding issue and a staffing thing.

And I appreciate the opportunity to clarify that.

I just have a little follow up because I did ask staff about that topic earlier today and our title one schools are defined as having a percentage of 40% of students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch 40% or more.

And so in order to expand the reach of the identification process the district has reached out beyond our Title 1 schools to schools that have you know who have higher lower thresholds and that way they've been able to administer testing to more students of color.

So that's one thing they've been doing because as was just pointed out by Director Blanford I mean we don't just have students of color in Title 1 schools.

Director Harris did you want to say something?

Not on this particular topic.

If somebody else wants to follow up while he's at the podium.

Happy to.

Seeing none.

Thank you.

Peters I wanted to say thank you for everyone that came out and testified tonight.

I want to say thank you for everyone who puts their boots on the ground and helps us with our due diligence.

That's community.

That's community building.

I want to address a couple of points that were brought up both here tonight in testimony and other chatter including amongst our beloved colleagues here at the dais.

Why would you do intro and action?

Harris you're the one that that sounds off most if you will about community engagement.

You push back hard on staff when they bring you an intro and action.

Is that potentially hypocritical?

And I'm pleased to say that we have these kinds of kinds of conversations where we call each other and work through those issues.

Director Burke bless your heart.

Urgency.

Urgency urgency urgency.

I don't believe I'm being a hypocrite here asking for intro and action.

I believe that the fact that we cannot get a date for when our window of opportunity closes absolutely enhances the urgency.

Do I respect Mayor Burgess?

Absolutely.

Most definitely.

Do I think that perhaps all of the different moving pieces here are in alignment?

No I'm thinking not.

I'm thinking it's an interesting concept when our community members can get calls back from agencies that are respected staff cannot.

And and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

I think it shows the power of collaboration.

So given the mayor's letter are you backing down Director Harris?

Not even.

I think it shows even more why this is important.

And I want to say that this is not about next year.

This is about 30 years from now when a good many of us won't be on this planet.

This is about the future of the children of the city of Seattle.

This is the hard left.

It's very very difficult and a little trepidatious believe it or not to push back like we are.

But that's what you elected us to do is to stand up and get counted and we can get creative and we can get really great work done.

And that's where I stand.

Thank you so much.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Patu.

I just wanted to find out the I thought that we had a Spanish teacher at Concord.

I wasn't aware that We don't no longer have a Spanish literacy as a teacher or the course down there.

So you know I'm just kind of curious to find out what can we do to actually to be able to have that Spanish teacher down there at that school.

Peters I attended the Concord meeting and I've been working with.

the director of bilingual programs Dr. Michelle Aoki Kelly Aramaki and principal Norma Zuvela.

It's not a question of just one Spanish teacher.

It's a lot more complex and layered to that and I'm more than happy to spend time offline or or bring it in to that conversation.

It's complicated.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

I find myself just wondering if staff is prepared to respond to some of the issues that were raised particularly around Fort Lawton during during that part of the agenda.

I'm anticipating that that is when we will discuss this in greater detail.

I'm just noting the fact that there are several people who've testified about that issue.

I want to be sure that if you hang around then you will get to hear some of the information that we have heard as board members that helps to inform the decision that we take on that item.

Peters would any other directors like to address any other matter at this point?

Okay then I will conclude with my remarks.

So let's see.

So regarding well regarding Fort Lawton we will discuss that later on.

As far as the mayor's letter interim mayor Burgess's letter my understanding is he He hasn't necessarily made a decision.

He has simply informed us of how he perceives the timeline to be and what we would be asking for tonight is just to make a request to the city.

And my understanding is that that would also include the city council.

So we can discuss this in more detail later on.

Regarding high school and pathways I've also been hearing from families who are concerned about what we're going to do in terms of opening Lincoln and amongst many concerns one of one consistent one is are we going to move students out of their current schools in their senior year?

And then are we going to move students out of their schools in their junior year to move them to Lincoln.

I think I've been on record for saying that I'm opposed to doing that to students opposed to moving them in their last year.

And this is a case where I think we shouldn't be moving them in their 11th grade year either.

That is such a crucial year.

And for students who are engaged in any kind of programming there's some special programming at schools like Ballard and Ingram.

We would be interrupting what they're doing there.

So I'm just going to say in advance that I would advocate for either some form of grandfathering or a plan where we do not disrupt our juniors and seniors.

But this is something that the board is going to have to and staff is going to have to work out as we move forward in our growth boundaries discussion and our high school discussions.

Let's see I appreciate Director Burke bringing up the conversation we had recently at a work session regarding technology.

You know things are moving very quickly in terms of devices and manners to redefine education or redefine the tools of education in our classrooms.

And a number of us voice concerns about what kind of vetting we're doing for the materials we give our students online materials and whether it's appropriate to be giving our students devices and for how much time and whether a device can ever replace a teacher.

So I am glad that we are leaping into this conversation.

It's a conversation that needs to continue.

And I encourage the public to also get involved and send us their their input because I know it's very exciting to be able to bring technology into our classrooms.

But there's also a lot of concerns and there is some research showing that the effects of screen time on our students and our children is not necessarily positive.

Let's see.

Now on the topic of HCC as I mentioned earlier that I share the concerns that the program does not reflect the diversity of our student of our district and we're obviously not identifying all the students who would benefit from highly capable programming.

So what we need to do is identify what the problems are and we know what the problem is but how do we what are the solutions.

So there are two solutions that were brought up by some of our speakers tonight.

One of them was to do away with the private appeals.

So we brought that we looked at this last year we were looking closely at advanced learning and I took a close look at that.

And what happens is we have about 400 families a year who appeal like their student took the test through the district and the student didn't achieve the scores that would make them eligible but there was reason for the families to pursue it and believe their student didn't do well on that day or the test didn't reflect their abilities and so for our free and reduced lunch families they are allowed to have the testing appeals testing provided by the district at no cost and for families who don't qualify for that they are free to go and be privately tested.

So of those families that are tested about half to two thirds who have appeals have successful appeals.

What that means is not every appeal is successful.

Even a private test is not an assurance of qualification for HCC so it's not a sure thing.

I think that's one misconception out there.

People think people are buying their way in.

And there's no benefit to having your child in a program that's not appropriate for this child.

So I also took a look at what would happen if we got rid of the appeals.

Would that help with the diversity of our program?

It would not because if you take a look at the appeals and the students and the demographics of the students who are appealing they pretty closely match the demographics of the whole program.

So if we discontinue private appeals what that would do is make the program smaller.

We would have about 200 to 300 fewer students identified every year.

and proportionately it would be similar to the makeup of the rest of the program but it would also include some students of color who get in by appeals.

So the appeals wouldn't solve, getting rid of appeals wouldn't solve the problem.

So where we have the main problem is in referrals.

Identifying enough students and identifying all the students.

And so that's where we have to look and I think I brought this up a little bit earlier.

And then we also have to create a critical mass.

We have to have enough students of color in our programs so that other students will feel comfortable there.

They'll feel that they belong there.

And so it's a bit of a chicken and egg.

And there's a bit of a leap of faith that we have to ask our families to do.

And then we also need to take a look at other ways to identify students.

So let's see.

I mentioned already that the district has expanded which schools it's testing.

It's testing all second graders who are in not just our free and reduced lunch schools but they've expanded beyond that to try and capture some students who might not otherwise the families might not otherwise know to have their students tested.

I also wanted to say that there were some comments made about why people are in the program and I don't know that we can speak for all the families who are in the program there's about 5000 students who are identified for HCC and spectrum and I don't think we should make assumptions about why people choose to send their students to the program or not and I would advise against making overstatements or generalizations about people's motives.

As a family that was involved with the program for many years I know segregation was not anything that was pursued you know by my family and the families that I knew.

And so that I don't believe is a motivation.

It's an unfortunate you know the lack of diversity is an unfortunate upshot of the program right now.

Let's see.

All right.

OK so this is something that the district is very aware of and trying different ways to expand it.

Again we did have a presentation at our board retreat in June that talked about different methods for identifying more students and to diversify our programming.

And some of these methods the district is able to do some of them may cost a bit more but it's an investment that we need to make.

We absolutely need to make.

Let's see we did talk about Lawton and I appreciate Director Pinkham for asking the question about the appraisal I had the same question.

And then let's see.

Then my next community meeting will be on Sunday October 29th from 3 to 430 at Magnolia library.

And that might be my last community meeting.

So I welcome people to come and join me for one last time.

And then we just see if I've covered everything before we go for our break.

And so it's something that I forget.

All right well thank you all very much for coming out tonight.

We always appreciate the community input and the board is now going to take a 15 minute recess and we will resume at 6 49 I guess.

Thank you.