School Board Meeting Date May 18, 2016 Part 2

1516-15 resolution to request state adoption of an alternative summative assessments framework and to reaffirm student op-out rights.

I move that the board adopt resolution 2015 16-15 which requests state adoption of an alternative summative assessments framework as attached to the board action report.

I heartily second the motion.

C&I chair?

Your recommendation?

This actually went through C&I and then was moved on to exec for.

Okay.

I'll just interject that at executive committee we advanced it for approval to the full board.

We are now at the resolution on assessments.

This item was introduced at the April 20 board meeting where a motion was approved to delay action to today's board meeting.

I would first call for the motion for this item.

All right we just did the motion and we seconded that.

Okay so this item was moved forward from the executive committee for consideration for the food board.

I would now call on Director Burke which he already made and then I would now offer Director Peters an opportunity to speak to this item as the co-sponsor.

Well I would like to go back to Director Burke and let him be the first one to discuss this in a little bit more detail if he so chooses.

Thank you.

I would like to just talk a little bit about some of the changes between introduction and now.

I want to start out by thanking staff and Superintendent Nyland for the thoughtful discussion that really helped I'll turn this from what it was originally when it was introduced to the version you see before you.

And I want to say as an entry point that this is not intended in any way to be anti-assessment but rather this resolution is a recognition that under the Every Student Succeeds Act we now have a window that provides us potentially more latitude to right-size our assessments and that we would like to take a proactive role as a board in helping to inform that discussion.

And I think that one of the challenges that came up between when we were originally discussing this and now was more clarity around what is the The mandate for performance in the state assessment and the ramifications of opting out.

One of the testimony questions was why did opt out get removed from the title and so I want to be able to address that explicitly that we are trying to address opt outs in a realistic light.

And we are under a state mandate to achieve 95% participation in the state assessment as Dr. Nyland mentioned.

Yet families have the right to make their own educational choices.

And so last year half of our students were not meeting these participation targets.

So if we don't meet these targets there is a possibility of penalties from the state which could include partial withholding of funding and we don't know that.

It hasn't happened to anybody but it is a very you know it's a risk that we would be putting the district in.

And so specific language was added in the whereas section to highlight the challenge that the district faces of this double-edged sword that we have to have 95% participation Yet, families have a right to choose their own destiny.

And we also added the paragraph in the resolution highlighting that the intent of this is to collaborate with the community and state regulatory agencies to work on the implementation.

This is not a Seattle going it alone.

This is not a rogue thing.

This is identifying an opportunity and trying to capitalize on it.

And then I wanted to just touch briefly on comments from testimony this evening to restate this isn't about lowering standards it's about choosing proven trusted normed assessment tools potentially with less impact on classroom instructional time.

For example this resolution would enable consideration of assessments that SPS students are already taking.

such as the SAT or ACT or even the compass assessment which SPS students have been taking for years as part of running start placement into the Seattle colleges program.

Okay well I would like to thank Director Burke for his work on this and his energy behind it and his vision.

What we are trying to do as he just said is we are trying to use the new flexibility that is afforded all states and districts by the reauthorization of what is commonly known as no child left behind is now referred to as every student succeeds act.

It allows states and districts, well states more flexibility in determining the nature of their assessments.

There is a process that we would have to go through so what this resolution represents is primarily a request to the state to go forth and make the necessary changes so that we can choose a different assessment.

Why do we want to choose a different assessment?

Well, testing in this nation has gotten out of control and that is something that a lot of us in the community, parents and public education community have been saying for a while.

Teachers have been saying it, students have been feeling it and finally I think last fall even President Obama recognized this and his Department of Education issued a new testing guidelines.

I think he said that testing should constitute no more than 2% of instructional time.

I don't know that that's being followed at this point.

And then even the Council of Great City Schools did a report on assessments and discovered that there is an awful lot of testing going on.

So there is now a new understanding that we went too far with No Child Left Behind in terms of looking for accountability in the form of testing.

And it has gotten to the point where it is at the expense of instructional time and it's at the expense of our children's well-being.

So in addition to that what we saw in the last year was an unprecedented number of families opting out, students and parents choosing to opt out of these mandated tests.

Specifically the test tied to Common Core and that was a smarter balanced test over on basically the West Coast and the Midwest and then the park test on the East Coast.

Why were they opting out?

They were finding these tests to be too long, too excessive.

They were finding them to be problematic in how they were wholly computerized and yet that doesn't mean that every student is prepared to do a computerized test.

and it was causing significant problems.

The results were not being reported in a timely manner.

There have been questions about the validity and reliability of the tests and also whether the tests are developmentally appropriate.

Here in the state the tests were adopted not with community input and so nor were the common core standards and so it is not something that had great community input and community buy-in and we saw last year that the tests were problematic.

And so what we're trying to do is recognize that we do need accountability measures, recognize we do need to know whether our children are progressing in school, but we need to find a saner way to do it.

And so that is what we are seeking to do with this resolution, with this request to our state, our state government.

I was interested to see recently that a number of candidates for state superintendent were asked specifically about the Smarter Balanced test and they were asked about opt-outs and of the four that were interviewed every single one of them expressed great concerns about the Smarter Balanced test.

And a number of them vehemently supported opting out and were very supportive of changing the test.

So, there's a lot of promise in coming to a constructive solution here with whoever our new state leader will be at that level.

A couple of other thoughts I want to add.

We are responding to the hundreds of students and families who express legitimate concerns about the test and have been opting out of it.

And we have been told by the state OSPI that we need to address the lack of participation in this Smarter Balanced test.

We believe we are doing this because we are addressing what we believe to be or I should maybe speak for myself the root cause which is the test itself.

By replacing the test with one that is more efficient, like a paper and pencil test, one that gives us results faster, one that is proven to be reliable and fair, we believe we will not be seeing the level of opting out in the future.

So we are honestly attempting to address that particular issue that OSPI is putting before us.

We believe that a reasonable, efficient, appropriate, valid assessment that offers some value to our students, parents and teachers will not prompt the same opposition.

I would like to also add that I believe that the opt-outs are a legitimate public protest against the excessive testing that has taken hold of this nation's public education system as a result of No Child Left Behind.

Parents and students see the lost instructional time and increase of stress placed on students and they are saying enough.

We are attempting to address this with this resolution.

I would also like to thank all of the staff members and Superintendent Nyland for working collaboratively on this resolution.

We heard the concerns about some of the language in it and so we gave us all more time to work on this.

We did not rush this through.

We have been very respectful of people's concerns.

We have changed some of the language and we hope that we can reach a consensus tonight and support this resolution which I believe brings us in the right direction towards greater sanity and how we measure our students and how we teach them.

Thank you.

I would now like to turn to Superintendent Nyland to see if he would like to provide any remarks on this item.

I would like to echo the comments.

Thank you to the board for the extra time to work on this issue.

Thank you to Directors Burke and Peters for working through the process with us and recognizing the risk that we face in terms of having to move forward with how we can improve the participation rates with regard to the test.

I think we all recognize the dilemma that we face in their wisdom in reauthorization for ESSA they gave us both ends of the spectrum.

One to give the right to opt out and at the same time to require school districts to make sure that we get 95% tested.

I do believe that as part of and in addition to this resolution the district has been about the business that the SEA, the federal government, OSPI and the recent directives have asked us to do.

So actually the resolution passed by the board a year ago.

said can we look at what the causes of concern were from the smarter balance and we did that.

Eric Anderson and our testing department did in fact meet with schools and look at what some of the barriers were and have been responding to that.

So the training that we provided for schools this year took into consideration some of the problems that we had last year.

Smarter Balance addressed some of those issues in terms of logins and protocols and those kinds of issues.

Technology continued the process of upgrading and adding computers and also as I mentioned earlier tonight rotating computers from site to site which greatly reduced kind of the logistical challenge that caused a great deal of concern to all of us last year when weeks or months went by where we couldn't do field trips, we couldn't do other activities because we were spending our time trying to figure out how to get the right number of students in front of the right number of computers.

Thanks to a lot of work by staff, the testing coordinators at the building level, principals, greater comfort by teachers and for the students who had taken it before a little bit better understanding of what to expect.

I do believe that our numbers will be moving in the right direction.

Whether we hit the 95% target or not remains to be seen.

I think we will.

I didn't ask for numbers when I visited my five schools this week but I think one school told me they had none and one school told me they had one opt out so I know that that's not necessarily the norm across the district.

But I do think that we've moved in the right direction and this resolution also signals to the state our interest in as Director Burke indicated working with the state to figure out what our alternatives are.

Particularly the 11th grade test is a challenge for all of us and it comes in addition to the SAT, right now it comes in addition to the end of course offerings.

It's not part of the higher stakes yet, it is scheduled to become part of the higher stakes soon.

But it does raise that issue of what is the right amount of testing, what is the right location for testing, what is the relationship between high stakes and a report card if you will on the district.

So I think that there is certainly ample room to continue that conversation at the state level.

So again thank you to the board for the extra time, thank you to Director Burke and Director Peters for working with us on I think a good compromise moving forward.

Okay do directors have any questions about this item?

Director Harris.

I echo the thanks to my colleagues Directors Burke and Peters and I'm excited about another situation and that is that Erin Bennett will be working on issues with the legislature and OSPI in Olympia and who better to do that that knows our policies inside out back and forth and having that kind of talent on our team with a new OSPI director with a new President of the United States of America and a new Department of Education person that can only help us.

And this is proactive this is not reactive this is thoughtful and this is pragmatic and I think it is a huge win for us.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

I appreciate the adjustments to the language of the resolution when it was originally put forward in front of or for consideration by the curriculum and instruction committee.

A serious concern had to do with the 95% participation rate and what the ramifications of that 95% percent participation rate would have if we continue to fall below it.

My understanding was that it would have a significant impact and put at risk our Title I funding which in my mind would be unconscionable that we would allow, put at risk our funding for Title I particularly for our low-income students.

So I'm pleased to see that change happen to the resolution.

I have a few questions that as I was reading through the language of the resolution the first thing that I saw that caught my attention was the whereas number 7 that states if I can get to the language here quickly.

It states that whereas Seattle school district is a richly diverse community of 145 nationalities and 128 languages and dialects comprised of 12% English language learners, 38% students of color, so on and so forth.

The 38.5% students of color caught my attention.

because we received testimony last year that stated something to the effect that we are a majority minority district and that we have more students of color than we do white students.

So I went and looked at the OSPI website to see what it says about our enrollment and it says I'm looking at 2014-15 it says that 45.6% of all the students in Seattle Public Schools are white students.

And so depending on how you do that calculation we are a majority minority district unless something occurred differently between 2014 and 2015 and I don't believe that it has.

So, that is one issue of concern and it relates I believe ultimately to this resolution and the intent of it because if we are in fact a majority minority school district that causes concerns.

Let me continue with my through line.

There were a number of advocacy organizations throughout the United States, national organizations that wrote a letter strongly opposing the anti-testing movement and the opt-out movement.

They wrote this letter last year but I believe that it is relative to the conversation that we are having today.

And so I'd like to read excerpts of it that I think are relevant to our conversation.

It says, it's titled civil rights groups and then in parentheses we oppose anti-testing efforts.

It says data obtained through some standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community because they are the only available consistent and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes even while vigilance is always required to ensure tests are not misused.

These data are used to advocate for greater resource equity in schools and more fair treatment for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities and English language learners.

Anti-testing efforts have resulted in statewide bills and local pressure on schools to discourage students from taking assessments which would undermine the validity of this data.

This group's joint statement follows.

For the civil rights community data provide the power to advocate for greater equality under the law.

It is reasonable, it's the reason we fought to make sure that we're counted equally in every aspect of American life such as employment, the criminal justice system, and consumer lending.

Our commitment to fair, unbiased, and accurate data collection and reporting resonates greatest in our work to improve education.

The educational outcomes for the children we represent are unacceptable by most every measurement.

But the anti-testing efforts that appear to be growing in states across our nation like Colorado and New York would sabotage important data and rob us of the right to know how our students are doing.

When parents opt out of tests, even when out of protest for legitimate concerns, they not only are making a choice for their own child, they are inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to improve schools for every child.

Hiding the achievement gaps meant that schools would not have to allocate time, effort and resources to close them.

Our communities have had to fight for this simple right to be counted and we are standing by it.

There are some legitimate concerns about testing in our schools that must be addressed but instead of stimulating worthy discussions about over testing, cultural bias in tests and the misuse of testing data these activists would rather claim a false mantle of civil rights activism.

At the heart of the debate is whether or not we will have the courage to make the necessary investments in each and every child no matter their race, ethnicity, class, disability status or first language.

But we cannot fix what we cannot measure.

and abolishing the test or sabotaging their validity of the results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools.

And I think it's important to listen to the list of organizations that have signed on to this letter.

The NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, The League of Urban Latin American, United Latin American Citizens.

The National Disability Rights Network.

The National Urban League.

The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

The Council of Parents and Attorney, Parent Attorneys and Advocates.

The Association of University Centers on Disabilities and the American Association of University Women.

I wanted to take the time to share that letter to show the broad base of support around the idea that anti-testing is not good for kids and with all due respect to Director Burke I believe that we can mess around with the language and we can call it something different but this is really about anti-testing.

It is about creating a series of assessments that don't allow us to have an apples-to-apples comparison of how our schools are doing, how our individual students are doing and the implications or the ramifications of that choice is that we can't, we will not be able to make appropriate funding, resource allocation decisions that will benefit or work to the detriment of our students.

I believe that the confluence of events resulting in this, in our consideration of this resolution at this point dovetail really nicely with the research that we received last week and the report that we received in the Seattle Times that finds that Seattle Public Schools is the fifth worst district in the nation in terms of its achievement gaps.

I believe that those two things come together very well and when I read the story in the Seattle Times I immediately pulled up the 61 page report that the Stanford education center for education policy analysis created that details in great detail why we are fifth out of 380 urban districts around the country, fifth worst in terms of our achievement and opportunity gaps.

Nowhere in this document and I've read it from cover to cover does it say anything about this being a solution to that problem.

In fact, it says that you need to have standardized assessments, you need to have some way of comparing an apples to apples comparison of how students are doing.

So I believe that this is very wrongheaded and I believe that this resolution actually works to the disadvantage of the staff and particularly the teachers in our schools who are working to identify and mitigate our achievement and opportunity gaps.

And so I will be voting no.

I want to start by thanking you for the perspective because I think that's a really important part of the dialogue.

I want to come back to my first statement which is that this is not anti-test.

And that's my entry point and that's also my exit point is if this resolution were about anti-test I would not support it.

Because I believe that as an engineer, you build something, you test it.

So it's not a question of no testing, it's a question of appropriate testing.

Because when we speak in generalities it's easy to get into minefields or more difficult areas so just talking about very specifics this resolution is something that would allow us to consider something other than the 11th grade SBAC and reduce one test that our high schoolers are taking.

and replace it with something that they're already taking.

So it's really just changing how the boxes are checked using those tools.

And I think that that that feels like the low-hanging fruit that we are now enabled to do through this federal legislation.

And I just wanted to highlight that this is not something that is new or innovative I mean I'd like to think that we're really thought leaders on this but you know I was reading an article in Ed Week about a superintendent in Pueblo Colorado that was their state Board of Education went around and was touring the schools and the quote from her was from Constance Jones her statement was I see this as a golden opportunity to rethink our entire accountability system.

And I think that the indication that nationally this is something people are looking at it's gotten national attention and again this is not a do not test this is a let's engage with the people that can approve them and try to find a better more appropriate solution that frees up class time and with that instructional time And with the focus that we get from it, we can improve achievement.

We can maintain an accountability framework.

And I believe that we can use that to close our opportunity gap.

Director Peters.

If I could just follow on from Director Burke.

This is very focused first and foremost on requesting a change in the current test and pursuing a different one.

So this is very much about maintaining testing.

In fact this is a place where Director Burke and I differ because he's always been a proponent of testing and measuring and I've always been a little bit more skeptical of it because I've seen it done excessively and I've seen it misused and I've seen inappropriate testing.

So I mean I just for the record I mean here are three of the main parts of the resolution.

Now therefore be it resolved that the Seattle school board requests the state legislature, board of education and superintendent of public instruction to promptly amend or adopt all laws and regulations necessary for Seattle public schools and other districts to implement alternative locally selected assessments in lieu of the smarter balance assessment.

The school board requests the superintendent to include in the Seattle Public Schools state legislative agenda adoption of an alternate summative assessment framework to allow use of assessment other than the currently mandated smarter balance assessment.

Be it further resolved that the school board requests approval from the superintendent of public instruction to administer a locally selected nationally recognized normed high school assessment in 2016 or 17 or subsequent years per section 1111 B2H of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

So it's very much focused on not throwing out every single test but finding one that serves our needs better.

And then as far as the opt-out issues I recognize what you put forward in terms of that letter from the various communities but I also want to remind everybody that When we first introduced this we had compelling testimony from other people in our local community including the president of our local NAACP which is Rita Green who very much supported our resolution and she cited issues that she had with the smarter balance test.

So I mean I think there is an array of positions on this.

And as far as opting out, I mean I do have to differ with my esteemed colleague Director Blanford.

I think that there are times when we do need to rise up and speak out against things and sometimes in this case opting out was the only thing, the only tool people had to say this is too much, this is enough.

And the fact that this has been an unprecedented number of people opting out of tests, both the Smarter Balance and the Park test throughout the nation.

We haven't seen this before.

This tells you that there's something wrong.

There's either too much testing or there's something wrong with the test.

And so that's, I think that's a legitimate concern, it's a legitimate action and it's not necessarily something that we want to do all the time because it would be better not to have to fight against the misuse of student time year after year but address the problem.

As far as the Title I funding that of course would not be a good thing but I will say that the federal government has been saying that and has yet to do that.

So far it's operated as a threat.

I recognize that it's a risk but so far it has not been acted upon.

I think that addresses most of the issues as far as apples to apples.

We are still talking about apples to apples.

We are still talking about having some form of assessment.

We recognize the obligation.

We are just saying we would like an assessment that is fair, that is valid, that It takes less time and less resources and it is less discriminatory than arguably the Smarter Balanced one is.

In fact that has been a main issue of the Smarter Balanced test is what it requires in order to complete the test in terms of computer skills, keyboarding skills are not skills and resources that every student equitably has access to throughout the district.

And so that is another component of the whole thinking behind this.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

I just want to share some of my perspectives and thank all of my colleagues for what is being shared now.

I want to say that yes I agree that we need assessments.

I don't want to see this as being an anti-assessment movement on the school board's part or the Seattle school district's part because we need a way to measure how our students are doing.

And to me it seems like this is more anti-smarter balanced movement because there has been troubles with this assessment.

So if we can find alternatives that will still provide this measurement so we can measure how all our groups are doing.

However the groups want to identify as far as their ethnicity, their gender, their needs and skills and abilities that we need to have an assessment that can show are we truly closing that achievement gap.

But to me it seems like the smarter balanced isn't doing what we need to do.

So I appreciate Director Blanford's input that yes we need this.

If we do away with all assessments and then we are going to say okay everyone is equal because no one is being tested.

And then we will lose sight of the achievements or are we truly closing the achievement gap if we don't have any assessments to show us how we are doing.

So, I do want to make sure that it is heard that we are still going to have some kind of assessments but it's going to be the proper assessments and that will still be the apples to apples comparison.

Director Harris.

I too want to thank Director Blanford for bringing up these points.

They are very important points to me.

I also appreciated his reach out to Rita Green of the NAACP on this issue.

having a very thoughtful I thought fairly deep conversation about the juxtaposition of the national and the local.

Hugely appreciated because anytime we can learn we do better.

There was a comment about not doing right by our teachers if I put it correctly so that they could have an apples to apples comparison.

The thing that strikes me ironic is that last year teachers were threatened with firing if they discussed opting out.

Now we've come some way this year we didn't send that kind of a letter and I'm very pleased about that.

And I spend a fair amount of time with teachers and most of the teachers that I get feedback from are sick of their classrooms being taken hostage for test preparation and yes it's getting better in terms of computers etc but it is a really big disruption on the important learning.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

I'm wondering because the issue of teaching to the test or test preparation has come up frequently.

I'm remembering from testimony last year when we were discussing this issue a figure that was quoted I don't know if anyone can share that number.

Shawna Heath maybe?

And my direct question would be I think a number was shared last year that was the amount of time that students per year spent in assessments as opposed to instruction.

Shana Heath executive director of curriculum and instruction.

So we did do an analysis after Obama announced the threshold that he would like to see and we did find that we were underneath that threshold as best that we could determine with calculations.

The 2% threshold?

Yes correct.

And that was for the current school year?

Because Obama made his announcement recently.

Yeah I believe it was in October that we did.

So and I raise that issue not to beat a dead horse but frequently in the conversations around testing, assessments, anti-testing.

you hear lots of dialogue around we are testing too much, we are spending too much time in assessments when the reality is if we are under 2% then we are under the threshold that that the federal government has stated for us and I've seen research that suggests that for many of the school districts in Washington state we are well under 2%.

And so in my mind though it is an argument that is frequently used, in my mind it doesn't bear much weight.

I also want to share a a warning that I have shared on the dais before as we consider resolutions asking our legislature to take action on our behalf and I believe that that is a very complicated issue that we need to do very judiciously after giving a lot of thought I know that in the state legislature right now it is very split on the issue of assessments and whether or not you believe that SBAC is the appropriate assessment.

There are many on the state legislature that believe that it is.

They have worked for years to get it in place.

And for us to take a strong and to my knowledge a sole position advocating for changes in the assessment framework may inadvertently work to our disadvantage in that it may work, it may be offensive to those who have done the work around the SBAC for years.

As we've discussed there are a number of projects and pieces of work that we want our state legislature to be doing for Seattle Public Schools and all the school districts in Washington state.

And so I fear again and I will state again that I believe that when we veer outside of our lane which is to manage and provide governance for a school district.

and start going into the weeds of what the state legislature does.

It makes us feel good but it may have an unintended consequence of alienating us from the people that we need most to be in our corner.

And so I think that is important for us to reflect on as we cast our votes for this resolution.

Director Peters.

Again Director Blanford you bring up good points.

As far as the 2% that was something that the Obama Department of Education came up with.

Again it's the federal government making some determination that affects local governments.

You could argue that's unconstitutional.

You could also argue that the federal government is not necessarily in touch with what's going on in our schools.

And while I appreciate staff's assessment of how much time is being spent on testing, what I'm hearing on the ground is it's actually a lot more than what's being counted here in the central office.

There's test prep, there is the process itself, there's moving kids around.

The Smarter Balanced test is taking five hours for the English language arts part, the ELA part.

It's taking five hours for the math test.

These are children as young as eight years old who are having to sit for five hours and take these tests.

That's 10 hours of testing.

I think by any obvious measure that appears excessive.

It is longer than an AP test that a child will take in high school which is only three or four hours long.

I've even heard it might even be longer than the bar exam but I'll have to defer to some of our legal experts here.

It is a long test in multiple parts and in some cases takes multiple days to administer and that's in addition to any other tests that kids are taking especially at the high school level where they have EOCs They have SATs, they have MAPs, it goes on and on and on, a veritable alphabet soup.

So I think if we were to do a really deep audit of how much time our students are spending testing, prepping for tests, doing the preliminary tests, I think we would find it is a fair amount of time.

And even if it isn't 2% it's still a lot of time.

As far as The quality of the Smarter Balanced test, that's another thing that has perplexed me from the beginning.

Because when it was rolled out last year I asked for background information about the test.

I contacted OSPI and they were never able to prove that it was a valid and reliable test.

And those are two terms that are required by the federal government in terms of what we administer.

It needs to be a valid and reliable test.

They were not able to prove that.

In fact they said, the consortium said itself They won't really know until they give it.

Alright, so they gave it last year and I still don't know if they've given us an update on that.

So that was very problematic to a lot of us.

They were still gathering data.

As far as getting into the weeds with our state legislators, let's not forget that Common Core and the Smarter Balanced test are unfunded mandates from the state.

Okay, they gave us some money for it but they certainly didn't give us the millions of dollars it has cost us in terms of technology to administer this first time ever all computerized test.

And I dare say they haven't funded us for all the professional development around common core and all of the other resources we have put into the smarter balance test.

And so the state that is giving us these mandates of a test that has not been proven to be valid, that we know is excessive in terms of time and may be discriminatory, I think we are within our rights as the largest school district in the state to say we would like you to consider helping us find a different assessment Perhaps one that's already been proven and one that doesn't take as much time and as many resources.

I think it's a perfectly legitimate use of our conversation with our state legislators and it's not the weeds at all.

It's very much a part of our children's lives.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Again appreciate the comments but with respect to going there again.

if we are in fact the largest school district in this state then it is our leadership responsibility to lead the way.

And these same fine folks in the legislature now owe $27.8 million on McCleary fines.

So I'm having difficulty getting excited about whether or not the legislature is happy with the Seattle school board.

I'm not very happy with the legislature.

Thank you.

Any more comments?

Questions?

Well I'd like to say that I congratulate Peters and Burke for really working on this assessment.

We've had testings and assessments for years and as long as I can remember and we have yet not closed the achievement gap.

So testing and assessment does not really tell us exactly what we need to do in order for us to close the achievement gap.

And I also would like to say that it's how we implement it and what we do within the schools that actually is going to help our kids learn.

Yes testing we need to assess our kids so we know where they are at and no matter how we look at it our kids will be assessed and tested no matter what.

I think that what Burke and Peters is trying to do is actually to make it more understandable.

The aspect is quite a hard task to understand and I've talked to many parents of color and also a lot of teachers telling us not only it wastes a lot of time but also many of the kids do not understand the testing.

Where many teachers are kicking back and said they don't want to implement the test.

So I you know I think that when Burke and Peters were trying to do was actually coming up with a more easier assessment that we can actually use within our schools.

They are not saying we do not test and we do not assess just looking at a more easier way for our teachers and kids to understand how to actually assess our kids so we can better understand their learning styles and how do we actually able to close our achievement gap.

So I really wanted to say that you know we as a board need to work together and as Director Harris has said we should not depend on what the legislature is going to do to us in order for us to move forward any issues within this district.

We as board directors it's our responsibility to come up with resolutions to help make things easier for all our kids and provide better opportunities and clarity of equality education for every child in the Seattle Public Schools.

Whatever we can to do as board directors that is our choice for us to come up with resolutions and just many ways for us to be able to improve what is happening in our district right now so that our kids can actually have an equal education as we promised them that we need to give them.

So I believe that this assessment here that we are actually pushing forward is one way of actually giving our children an opportunity to be able to assess and be able to take a test that actually is easier for them to understand and be able to see the real resolution in terms of what is it that we are going to be looking at once this test is actually hopefully that we can be able to move this test forward.

So I really think that you know I want to support Director Burke and also Director Peters for moving such an assessment forward.

I know it takes a lot of work.

been working on it for a while and I want to congratulate you for the work well done.

So I will be supporting this resolution.

Director Burke.

I was trying to respect everybody's time but something that you said really resonated with me and I wanted to just build on that a little bit.

What you talked about was you know what happens in the classroom is where we're going to close our gap.

And I want to emphasize that this resolution is a summative assessment.

This is like the bookends of our education.

And with the work that's being done, the focus of Shawna Heath and Michael Tolley in formative assessment is what is moving the needle.

And this relates to the summative component so we are trying to clear out more space for more focus on that formative work that truly influences the teacher's practice and truly influences the student outcomes and I just wanted to really bookend that.

Thank you.

Ms.

Ritchie roll call please.

Director Pinkham.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion is passed.

5-1.

Thank you.

Now we are going into our Second action item Department of Technology services PTA for projects loaned from community schools fund in the capital eligible program.

Okay I guess we are all waiting for the motion.

Okay I move the adoption of resolution 2015-2016-14 authorizing an intrafund loan from the capital projects community schools fund to the BTA IV projects funds in the amount not to exceed 2.5 million as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

Can I get a recommendation from A&F?

Right this came to the Audit and Finance Committee meeting on March 10, 2016. The committee reviewed the motion and moved it forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

Do we have any questions?

Director Burke.

Yes I have a brief line of questioning.

I think following up from the discussion around this item when it was introduced.

I'm going to try to paraphrase my understanding and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong.

So this is essentially an inner fund loan to help accelerate some of the technology projects that are planned already.

Essentially because we've identified them as low-hanging fruit per se or something that the district will benefit from from that early start as compared to how the BTA funds are metered out over a six-year period.

Yeah Carmen Ram chief information officer that's close.

I wouldn't say that they are necessarily low hanging fruit.

Some of them might be considered low hanging fruit but others are just, it's just an opportune time to go forward and start the planning and the development and the requirements gathering and if there is an RFP that needs to go out you know that we can get that done before the bulk of the money shows up because we all know that when the money shows up everybody is going to want the end product delivered a lot sooner than we would be able to do that.

to have all the proper planning and everything done so it's just allowing us to get a head start on some of the major projects too that aren't anywhere near low hanging fruit.

And can you restate what those were because I was trying to go into the bar and see what those up front things are that we are funding.

Okay some of them are bringing in the project staff for the point of sale system, for the budget and finance systems.

Those are two big ones that we are going forward with.

We will be hiring 15 of the new technical support specialists that directly support the schools and getting them on staff.

bringing in the administration staff, the system administration for the new learning management system Schoology that we implemented on an emergency basis last year.

I have these written down back in my briefcase in the back of the room.

I'm trying to think of a couple other ones that are on there too.

Oh one of the things is since there is a significant amount of funding in there for new faculty and administration staff computers that are very old we are starting to expedite the procurement of those and the first ones that we are going to order are laptops for all of the sped psychologists who have got older computers and we have had some security sensitive information breaches because of that so that we can get new computers in here that we can better encrypt to stage authentication and things like that.

Thank you very much I appreciate that.

Director Peters.

I have a question for you Carmen.

So this amount is $2 million?

2.5.

2.5.

So looking at the bar graphs that you have in this presentation that's really a drop in the bucket compared to everything else in there.

So how, why do you need these $2 million?

I mean how does this help?

Well there is only three months left in the fiscal year.

And the majority of the cost is going to come down stage when we are implementing it, bringing in the consulting and everything for these larger projects like the point of sales and things like that.

So the upfront, the first three or four months of these in doing the RFP, getting things out and those sort of things are not high cost.

high dollar amount costs and then when September 1 comes of this year so just three months away then we get $9 million which will help us then move forward at a more accelerated rate and then starting at FY18 is when the bulk of the property tax is collected and we get the full approximately $31, $32 million a year.

So it's just to sort of get things started.

Yeah I would look at it as if you were comparing it to building a house which I've done before.

You know you put a few thousand dollars in and you're working with an architect and you're working with a project manager and it may take several months before you get the design of that house and then once you've got it now you're bringing in the contractors to build it, you're bringing in the materials and that's where the real cost builds up.

So that's why this is going to help us get that head start.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Two questions, one this is going to be paid back when then?

The schedule I think in the bar to be paid back by October of 2017 so we are planning on paying it back right at the end of the fiscal year of the next fiscal year which would be around the September timeframe.

And you will have how much money in receipts then from the property tax by then?

According to the bar charts what we are looking at is there is supposed to be a total of $9 million coming in in FY17 and so we have allocated $1.5 million which would be the technology's current share of that Interfund loan and then $7.5 million is scheduled in our spending plans to be spent in FY17 and that would give us the $1.5 million to pay back the loan out of FY17 funds even though Officially the loan would not have to be paid back until the first month of FY18.

And then the second question is can we make this contingent upon you staying here to spend it?

I have not got the text message that says I am leaving yet.

The Kent school board is meeting right now.

Thank you for that I guess.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

Carmen we received testimony during the public testimony section where and I don't know if you heard that or not the concerns that were raised about this item.

During the public testimony?

Yeah.

about the interest loan?

I was back there I didn't hear it I'm sorry.

Maybe the deputy superintendent.

During the first meeting.

Stephen Nielsen deputy so the question is.

I'm just wondering if we can respond to the issues that were raised about this being an interest-free loan.

I just checked the King County investments page about five minutes ago to see what we're getting on return of our investments right now.

And on average, and this varies depending upon the vehicles that they are using so I'm lumping them together.

We are receiving about two-tenths of 1% in return on our cash that is banked with King County.

The cost, if you are thinking about the time value of money and the cost expenditures compared to the future with an inflation rate right now of about 1.8 to 2% in the City of Seattle, we are actually saving money by front funding these projects compared to the future cost.

And we had a rich discussion about this issue at the last meeting I just thought it was important to particularly given the fact that the issue was raised at this meeting to then again respond to it.

Yes.

Any more questions?

Comments?

Dr. Pinkham.

Yeah I might have to have Steve and Abby come back up here again.

But it still seems like that we are taking money out of one pot that's not going to accrue any interest even though we maybe if we don't spend it yeah costs are going to go up.

Why don't we pay whatever interest we'd lose back into that fund?

We could.

So why aren't we?

We hadn't planned it that way.

Without changing the amendment one could make an amendment tonight to require that.

So it's a possibility.

Again, I think it's a matter of structure and a matter of whether it's really worth making the transfer.

From a financial view it is not.

If it adds comfort to the board for some reason or another then we could entertain that motion.

I just wondered if this was again a common practice do we do this and if it is something common you know it may be I don't know what is it $500 I have no idea how much we are looking at here.

Just to know that you know is there something that is common that we will do we will borrow from one and pay it back at no interest.

First of all it is rare to make an inter-fund loan.

And when they have been made many, many years ago when inflation was high, interest was in those very rare occasions factored into some of those loans.

The difference is the financial market now and the cost of tracking versus the saving.

It's just a matter of preference.

I think it's great to have that on the record as to why we're not doing it this time.

Thank you.

Any more questions, comments?

Ms. Ritchie roll call.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Okay we are going to BEX IV and PTA IV award architecture and engineering service contract P1436 to Pasetti architects for modernization of Lincoln High School.

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute an agreement with Bassetti architects in the amount of $6,705,588 for architectural and engineering services for BEX IV and BEX IV project at Lincoln High School in the form of the draft agreement attached to the board action report with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the agreement.

Second the motion.

Can we hear from the ops?

Excuse me for a second I think I misread that.

I think I misread the levies.

I should have said BEX IV and BTA IV.

Second the motion.

Ops Chair.

Thank you for that correction.

This item was heard by the Ops Committee on the 21st of April and was moved forward for approval.

Any questions?

Comments?

Director Pinkham.

Yeah again I think what really comes up here again in one of our public comments we were talking about again when there is a conflict of interest and for me this comes up with the landmark issues and that sometimes those landmarks can be voted to go around them and sometimes they are not.

Is it common that we do have architects on the landmarks board that are also bidding for the same thing and how do we get around that as far as the appearance of conflict of interest?

Lucy Morello senior project manager capital department.

I would say yes at times there are architects from local firms that are on the landmarks board and yes indeed there is a member from the Bassetti firm on the landmarks board.

And when Lincoln or any other Seattle school district project goes in front of the landmarks board that firm member from the architecture firm that could be representing that project will recuse themselves.

We have discussed, staff did discuss this with our legal counsel and it is not a conflict of interest.

very quickly as well.

I think much like our BEX oversight committee the landmarks board is made up of industry professionals that comment on that.

If their firms knew that they couldn't bid on projects they probably wouldn't get industry professionals on their landmarks board because no one would want to miss out on the opportunity.

So that's why the process of recusing themselves when that project comes up to bid that's why they have that process in place.

Director Burke.

Thanks for the clarification on that because that makes a lot of sense.

for a volunteer board to be able to recruit industry professionals but then tie their hands to be able to do their business.

I could see a different type of conflict of interest.

As we discuss this item I wanted to thank Ms. Morello and Michael Tolley and his team and anyone on your staff that's been on the dialogue as well as a new director and Director of District 2 which has no high school, this is like a child for me.

So I'm really interested in getting the information out publicly, engaging the community and having it be ultimately a successful transition.

not just for District 2 but for the entire city and all of our students.

So I think in our some of our email dialogue there was discussion around a community meeting planned for late June and I just wanted to try to see if that's something that we can get a public commitment on or if it's still sort of tentative because I know that work is underway around some of the facility planning and I want to make sure that the community doesn't feel like they've been surpassed or overlooked in that discussion and just keeping them engaged with regular checkpoints I think would be really a valuable thing.

We will give plenty of notice and outreach to the community.

We just need to get the architect on board and from the dates and we certainly want to have a community meeting before school is out for the summer.

Thank you and then also I ask my colleagues to help weigh in on the visioning for this.

You know a new comprehensive high school doesn't happen very often and so that feels like something that some board guidance around programmatic aspects you know it's going to impact the assignment plan and so I just wanted to share that with my colleagues as they can help inform that process as well.

I welcome their experience and input.

Director Blanford.

Ms. Morello when you made the final statement in your first part of the presentation where you said there is no conflict of interest I was just curious for what organization?

Bassetti architects, the landmark board, Seattle Public Schools?

Seattle Public Schools.

only.

Noel Treat General Counsel I can jump in here.

In this situation there is no conflict of interest as defined by state law or district policy as to Bassetti the firm working with Seattle Public Schools.

The only legal conflict of interest issue that really is involved in this really is one for the City of Seattle which is they've got a board that makes quasi-judicial decisions about projects and they've got a board member who may have an interest in a project that his firm is bringing forward.

as you've heard under the city rules that member has to recuse himself from those proceedings.

But that's the only real conflict of interest that's anywhere in the mix here as far as I see it.

And my understanding is that they have a pretty robust ethics department as well and there's periodic review of the work of the landmarks board for example.

that if there were a conflict of interest it would be daylighted somewhere in that review.

So being as that has not happened we have some measure of assurance that we are consistent with the ethics rules and the laws of Washington State going forward.

Yes, that is correct.

There is a legal obligation at the city and in other jurisdictions for members of boards like that, planning commissions, landmark boards to fully disclose any potential conflict so that they won't then be involved in those matters.

Excellent thank you.

Director Peters.

I just want to follow up on something that Director Burke said and that has to do with community input and even board input on the direction of Lincoln High School.

I completely agree that this is perhaps a once in a term opportunity for a school board to weigh in on a high school.

And this one in particular is going to be important because we are going to have to redraw boundaries and we will be drawing students who will be otherwise assigned to establish schools.

And so I think I've said this before it's really important for Lincoln to be a very appealing school.

And so now is the time for people to weigh in with that vision and for the district to share that vision so that we can move towards it in a structural way as well as a philosophical way together rather than having a situation where people feel that a decision was made without their input.

And so I think this is a great opportunity and I thank Director Burke for opening up that possibility to us and putting that forth.

Director Blanford.

I appreciate the last two comments.

However, and maybe this is just me, I find that when we are engaged in a community engagement process, because we eventually get to make the decision on it and to weigh in on it, I tend to not I don't want to insert my opinion at the early stages but be more of a listener just because the dynamics of school board members in those types of meetings we can bias the type of conversation we want to hear or the conversation that is heard just by our involvement in it.

And so maybe this is just for me, I imagine that individual school board members can choose the method that they want to choose but for me personally I would choose to wait to be more of a listener in those initial sessions.

involving the community and then later on to weigh in.

Does that make sense?

I may have been a little bit unclear with that but in my mind I feel that we can bias the decision in one direction or another and that we should be more in listening mode during the initial community conversation.

Director Burke.

I think your question of does that make sense is absolutely spot on and it certainly does make sense when we go into a room people will say oh you're a board director what vision is this going to be?

And to be able to create the community engagement structure that says this is what's been done so far here are the different options.

What are the passions of the community?

What are the needs of our students?

Would be super informative for me to be able to make those decisions.

Anymore questions?

Director Pinkham.

Just one more question on some of these points I brought up because I'm not, still being new on the board, not having any past contract bids to look back on.

But it appears that Bassetti got the Roosevelt project but went millions of dollars over budget.

Is that correct?

And is that something we'll monitor as people, we accept bids?

how much do they eventually go over to the budget if they do and even though yes they may be a little bitter but if they have a history of going over their budget how do we address those issues?

Well typically I can't speak specifically to the Roosevelt project without going back and doing a little history on it.

But the architect contracts are basically a reflection of the overall budget.

So if the overall budget increased then the architectural fee is tied to the overall budget.

So if their fees went up it has a direct correlation on the project budget side.

So that's certainly a possibility but it would have been reflected in an increase in the overall budget.

So you wouldn't know if this cost over the budget was an expected thing to happen or did they underestimate what the project would cost?

Yeah I would have to research that a little bit more but generally the architect is the one that I believe their fee is a certain percentage based on the overall contract so if again if their fee was going up The architect has a bidding process that goes on but again it's tied, it's going to be tied to the overall project budget size.

So if there was an issue with the construction or the renovations of Roosevelt and it went up over budget then it would be tied and that would have changed the architectural outlook as well.

Any more comments, questions?

Ms. Ritchie.

Director Blanford.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

So we are now into our introduction items.

The first one is amending policy number H01.

F21.00 and 2200. This motion actually came to the executive committee and the recommendation was to review the motion and move it forward for the board for consideration.

Okay, well as a main sponsor of this collection of items I guess I'll address it.

This whole concept was first introduced at the executive committee back in February just as an idea and since then it has been, we've had a work session on it, we've I think it's gone to committee once or twice since then.

We've gotten feedback from other directors and extensive feedback from staff.

It's been worked very carefully and there's a lot of pieces to this because there's multiple policies.

But the basic gist of this is it's to give the school board more authority over some of the decisions that significantly impact our schools and our communities and that is our school communities and that is some of the closure decisions, some of the placement decisions involving schools, services, programs, the nomenclature of which have not been completely clear.

So we are trying to clarify that, we are trying to give the board more authority over some of these decisions because the public for one thing expects us to have more authority, second it will allow us to be constructive participants in these decisions at a point where there is a place to you know have a say rather than having a decision made such as was mentioned earlier in the evening the closure of a middle college site a decision made and then have people come to the board upset with the decision and ask us why don't we do anything you know what can we do about it.

So Director Patu and I talked about this issue in the past and we felt that this was something that needed to be addressed.

And we are not interested in making and authorizing every single small decision that goes into our services, our programs.

our closures.

But we do want to bring a level of oversight that is part of our responsibility and that will allow us to be responsive to the concerns of the community as well as mindful of the recommendations of staff.

So in some respects all this does is add another step to a process that will continue which is staff and the superintendent will make recommendations on these decisions.

and the board will be informed and in some of these decisions the board will also have the final determination on how to move forward.

So I really appreciate all the help that came from staff on this work specifically Deputy Superintendent Nielsen and Erin Bennett whose current title I'm not sure of.

But a lot of work went into this recognizing that these were interlocking parts and that we have policies that were created over different periods of time that may not correspond to each other as well as we would like to.

And staff brought in the importance of the student assignment plan.

And so this was our very best effort to bring all these pieces together and meet both the needs of the board for oversight and staff for flexibility and the superintendent of course for his oversight and his flexibility.

And I hope we've accomplished this.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Comments?

Director Blanford.

We have had extensive conversation about this resolution and I have some questions and the first one has to do, recognizes the fact that the superintendent wasn't at the conversation that I remember where we extensively considered this item.

And so I'm wondering if you can share your thoughts on it.

Well I think that we've worked through to a place that is a workable place for us to go forward with.

I don't know that any of us can see down the road clearly enough to know what all the ramifications are but I think it's a good spot to go forward from.

I'm wondering if you can share what you believe the number, I'm trying to get a sense of the scope, how many decisions like in the last year do you believe you've made that would have been affected by this decision, this item?

I probably need help from staff.

I guess it's easier going back in time and looking at the ones that with 20-20 hindsight we say we got wrong.

And that's usually about one a year in my time as well as previous superintendents here.

We've tried to be super careful going forward to at least alert the board as to items that may be coming.

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, I defer to Michael.

Steven's been, as you point out, at some of those conversations more than I have been.

Michael Tolley associate superintendent for teaching and learning.

So over this past year there are a number of programs for example that have been changed where we went through the process of current board policy to inform the board examples being the couple of interagency programs that were placed and that's the one Queen Anne and of course the one at the original Van Asselt building as well as the decision to discontinue classrooms at the as part of the middle college school.

And so those are the ones that I think have come up repeatedly in conversations.

But as we move forward I think there is within these changes the ability for the board Not only to be informed of those planned decisions but also to weigh in on the decision itself for final approval for those sites.

But we also, as you note, we have a definition that we refer to in terms of services and want to have some flexibility along those lines as well.

So today I feel like Mr. No and I will not support this change because I did a little bit of research I reached out to a very unscientific survey of school board directors that I know who are veterans who have been around for a long time and Several of them served around this table and I asked them to help me understand what would potentially be the ramifications of us moving forward on this.

And to every single one of them couldn't believe that we would consider something along these lines.

None of them had language in their policies that was as extreme as this is.

And so It feels to me like we are reaching into a space where, and I have shared this with my colleagues around the table, that we are reaching into a space that we, there is intention around making the superintendent and senior leadership responsible for this, for these types of items and insulating us from them.

I understand completely the conversations that have been had and the testimony that we have received around there not being a sense of accountability.

I believe that there is a sense of accountability and that we supervise the superintendent and when he makes those types of recommendations that ultimately we have some oversight of those types of recommendations.

I think it's very unfortunate that the conversation around Middle College and the conversation around this item got linked and in my mind they are two separate things.

I think we have to have some conversation about what is going on at Middle College but I don't believe that that is warranted for us to take this type of an action.

And so again I intend to not offer my support to this amendment.

Director Burke.

I have a couple of maybe potentially clerical questions.

I look over at Erin Bennett.

These policies H01 and F21 is part of the intent as doing this work to renumber them and put them on our current policy structure?

I'm Erin Bennett Executive Director of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives.

I'm learning that title myself.

So in answer to your question we did think about that in terms of whether or not to shift it over to a number now or to keep it in the letter format.

As you know we've been trying to move our letters through.

There were a couple of these letter policies, we didn't look at the entire policy and so if we switch it over to a number now it might appear as if we've now done a complete review and it's totally ready to switch over to a number.

By keeping it in a letter it flags yes we've updated it will have the new date, it will be an active board policy but it will indicate that there are other sections we need to look at.

So that just to reflect back what I heard that indicates that the feeling is that these are in many cases some clerical changes or that there is a lot more places where detailed study would dictate additional policy work.

I probably would not use the word clerical just because there are some pretty significant changes in these proposed amendments.

But if I'm looking at F21 for example there are sections around curriculum, fiscal management, program evaluation, safety and school operations that we did not look at during this discussion.

Okay thank you and then the other question relates sort of builds on what Director Blanford was talking about.

I'm curious the granularity that's in here.

I appreciate the work that's been done and I like the definition of instructional site added to our lexicon because I think that's a good sort of governance discussion topic.

I'm curious if any of the other districts in WSSDA or other peers have comparable language understanding that we are one of the larger districts in that pool.

Finding a benchmark that matched exactly with what was trying to be done here was difficult at best and so I would say that in terms of these definitions they are ones that we have pulled I would say mostly from experience as well as our new student, I guess not new student, our student assignment plan because we found as we went through here the granularity that you speak of I think likely is with regards to the number of times that the student assignment plan is referenced and that is because there is, the board approves the student assignment plan And yet we needed to distinguish between programs that are within the student assignment plan and services that are within the student assignment plan and those that are not.

If that answers your question.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

As always I appreciate my colleague Director Blanford's input and I learn something new each time.

However, I'm going to take some issue with them.

I heard Superintendent Nyland say at one of our meetings that he felt very good about how this process had played out.

Did I hear that correctly?

I don't know maybe.

I'm pleased that the board is willing to talk it through and make the best consensus possible.

That said, I would agree with some of the comments that have been made.

I think that we are bringing to the board some issues that are going to be challenging and time consuming.

That's part of the public process.

I mean that's what the board has to do is try to balance out how much of that work gets done efficiently and how much of that work gets done more politically in a public eye.

At the risk of saying too much I'll say.

Middle college is a terribly terribly terribly complex issue that deals with a lot of personnel issues and many other things that we could have had the controversy in a public eye but we would not have been able to daylight for the public some of the issues that we were dealing with.

Appreciate that.

with respect to somehow taking away authority or disrespecting our superintendent and senior staff.

I respectfully disagree.

I suggest that the board with this resolution is willing to assume some of the responsibility for making very difficult decisions.

Additionally I am perplexed by a lack of data and an unofficial survey of folks that chose not to run for reelection to this board.

I am confused by that meme.

And I guess my bigger question or concern about this particular policy is how special ed programs are categorized.

I am still trying to learn enough about whether they are programs or services, whether we are going to say that special ed placement is completely off the table or that certain portions of special ed placements on the continuum are off the table.

We all remember the bad old days when kids are treated like widgets and numbers and plugged in wherever there is space.

And I think that those concerns are valid concerns.

I appreciate that to add that to this resolution now isn't going to fly but I would like to see us address that concern soon.

Moreover I think that the public expects that a board with leadership potential would weigh in to some of these tough decisions without pulling the nuclear option which is to God forbid fire your superintendent if you disagree with a decision your superintendent makes.

That is all or nothing that is crazy making.

This is a good balance.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

In my mind at the center of this debate is not disrespecting the superintendent or only listening to a certain piece of information.

It is all about, it is all about the appropriate role of a school board director.

Unfortunately several of my colleagues because they are new weren't here for a presentation that was made at our board retreats.

We've actually had two board retreats that focused on our role providing governance of this large 53,000 student a $1 billion organization.

And I've cited this several times, studies that say that if the board stays focused on governance then it actually can move the needle on student achievement.

And that moving the needle on student achievement is not only for students of color, it's for low-income students, it's for all of our students.

And as a researcher, as someone who does this as my profession, I get the opportunity to look at lots of different data points that all suggest that if we take that role, if we take the high road and look at governance and weigh in when it is appropriate on management issues then we are far more effective than when we are managing.

Some would say micromanaging.

This is an issue this is an issue many people would suggest that is about micromanagement and I fear that in our urgency our desire to accommodate the needs of a group of parents and a group of students that we lose sight of the bigger picture and we lose sight of the appropriate structure that can actually do the business that we are elected to do.

And that you know according to my read of the roles and responsibilities of the school board is to provide appropriate governance structure for the school district.

I would actually like to say that being an employee of the Seattle Public Schools for 32 plus years I have watched the many boards that run this school district and we are still at where we are at 30 some years ago.

I think we are making more progress in 2014-15 as we move forward.

But in terms of what's been happening in the past, it's been terrible.

We've had more complaints from communities and parents than we've ever had in my lifetime since I've been working for the district.

And I would like to say that this whole policy came about because when Sue Peters and I actually discussed it.

I actually have gone through many times where programs were closed as a school board director programs were closed and I as a school board director was never notified.

As a matter of fact the community knew more about it than I did.

and it kept going on and on to the point where I just kind of like you know realized you know I'm going to have to do something about it.

I can't continue on to just sit back and let things happen without my knowledge of what's going on.

So this policy is not to take over what the superintendent or tell the staff what to do.

It's more or less an oversight of what board directors responsibility is to make sure that programs that are successful to the needs of many of our students out there are being able to get a fair chance to actually for us to explain why did the program close or you know because even the community has not been told about how when these programs close it's closed just by the district but the board is not notified and the community is not notified and the parents are not notified and they have to realize These programs serve to the needs of our kids and parents have the right to know exactly why these programs were closed especially if their kids are being successful.

So that's the reason why this policy came about.

It's not because we want to tell the superintendent what to do or try to do the job for the staff.

It's because I feel like you know yes we I've gone through workshops, many workshops about governance and our board's responsibility is to go through the governance piece.

Well I'm sorry that's not going to work for me.

I realize I'm a hands-on person and I realize that sometimes we have to do things to help move things along so we can see success take place.

And I always say that, you know, our superintendent has a lot of things that he has to worry about.

To me, board directors should be an assistant hand to the superintendent.

If whatever we can do to help the superintendent, you know, even do a better job, that's what we want to do.

We're not here just to read the governance piece and follow through with what, you know, we were told.

I believe that as a board director, I believe that we, you know, we all come with expertise and we all do things in a different way and I feel like we can share those with our superintendent to help make things better.

So if we, you know, if some of us believe that our job is just to sit back and listen to what our governance policy that we need to just be quiet and not do anything, well I'm sorry that's not this board.

I'm a hands-on board director and I believe that moving and doing something to help make things better.

and having the opportunity to be able to share whatever it is that I can do to move things forward, that's my job.

My job is not to sit back and just fold my hands and let the superintendent do whatever it is that he can do and not be able to say anything about it.

So I believe that this policy is to help us to work together with the staff and the superintendent to make sure that we are all on the same page that when they decide to close the program that at least we can sit down and discuss it and come up with ideas of how we can actually look at it from a different perspective and not just close it right there because we feel like it needs to be closed.

And then we have to look at who is affected by this program.

These are the very kids, the reason why we are sitting on these tables right here, this table is because of the kids that we represent.

If we are talking about we are here because we care about kids, well those programs are actually geared towards kids that are the most neediest kids that are affected by these programs.

And that is the reason why it is important as board directors that we put in our input and be able to decide what is it that we are going to do to help make things better for all our kids.

Not just sit back and let everybody do whatever the heck they want to do.

You know I believe that it's our responsibility as board directors to be helpful and do what we can to make things better for the Seattle Public Schools.

Director Peters.

I think they make a couple of observations.

One of them is I would argue that student achievement requires community buy-in.

We need support from our community, from our parents for our students to succeed.

But when we make decisions without proper oversight that affects the trust that our community has in the district and then it's hard for us to accomplish anything.

So one of the objectives of these changes are to reestablish trust with the community.

The other point I want to make is these decisions don't actually happen that often.

Closures or openings of schools or sites they don't happen that often.

So I don't think we are adding a whole bunch of work.

But when they do happen and the way we have been doing it right now They resonated in a way that has gone on for a while and it hasn't been to the public satisfaction and we as a district we haven't done it I would argue in the correct sequence.

So the other objective here is to put things in the right sequence.

So here are some examples of some places that were open or closed that the board didn't have any real say in.

One of them was the Indian heritage program.

Another one was the middle college at High Point.

Another one was opening interagency.

placement of special ed classrooms, I think it was three classrooms at original Van Asselt.

Now even if at some point somebody thought all that could be done at the staff level and superintendent level neatly, that isn't what happened.

In each one of those cases there was some kind of public outcry.

We still have people coming to us about middle college now.

So, what we're doing right now isn't really working as well as it should.

And so that's what we're trying to fix.

What we're trying to do is, the logic here is, if we bring the board in at the appropriate level, at the appropriate time, we can help make better decisions.

We know our districts at a very, this is where the weeds do matter.

us.

We are in the weeds in terms of our schools and our communities and we can bring that knowledge to staff and to the superintendent and help inform decisions.

Some of the reactions that have happened to some of these decisions any one of us could have predicted because we know our communities and so rather than keep us out of the equation we are saying bring us in at the appropriate level where we can have some input and in some cases some oversight so we can all come to good decisions.

So, those are some of the points I wanted to make.

And I'll give an example, there was a site that was opened in my district and to the extent the board was told about this, I don't know, apparently we were told about it but I don't think any of us realize the ramifications of it.

There was some public concern, there was actually public outcry and it resulted in a community meeting of about 200 or more community members, a very heated meeting.

We had multiple staff members there, I was there and this was all to address a decision that was made that the community didn't know about and they read about on a blog somewhere.

And so I maintain that that was not the best way to handle that.

That if we had brought the community in sooner, if somebody had brought in the board director sooner we could have had a much smoother process.

Ultimately the decision was a good decision and ultimately the community did accept it.

But it was a very bumpy road to get there and I think the district suffered in terms of losing trust along the way.

So this is a way, the policy changes here are a way to address those kinds of issues and to build more trust and that gives the board the appropriate amount of authority but also allows the board to be constructive contributors to some of these decisions.

And I think that's it for now.

Okay we are going to go on to our next item.

Director Pinkham.

Thank you.

With these changes again I have a personal tie-in with Indian heritage and I do appreciate that again it is more for me about the communication issue where our public hears that something is closed and then they don't necessarily go and ask the superintendent what's going on and they go to the school board, school board, what happened here, what's going on.

So I see this as a better reflection of our duties as elected officials.

You know that we are going to be able to provide that better feedback to those communities that elected us to serve in these positions.

And part of that is to make policy and I see this as policy going in the right direction.

I do want to see if we can address the concern brought up about you know special ed being called out as still a program that the superintendent can place or close.

That's not my expertise but then if we can bring in the special ed people and let them be involved in the conversation I think is definitely going to help us out to make sure we are covering all the bases here.

Okay our next introduction item repeal of board policy A01.00 and approve board policy 0010. C&I.

This has been through C&I a bit.

It was discussed at a committee of the whole on March 14 of this year.

It was also discussed at the C&I committee meetings October 12 of last year, January 11, February 8, April 4 and May 9 of this year.

On May 9 it was moved forward for consideration by the full board.

Good evening Shawna Heath Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction.

making a motion to repeal board policy A0100 to adopt number 0010 partially because the policy was outdated and definitely needed a review.

The policy as it stands and as it has been brought before C&I was based on research of several national and instructional policies.

As Director Burke mentioned it was brought before the board C&I policy committee first and foremost in October of 2015, then a committee of the whole and again finally in May back to C&I with changes that were made.

It has been a collaborative partnership between the directors, the superintendent, teaching and learning and C&I.

Any questions?

Dr. Burke.

I know there's a lot of words in the air this evening so I'll try to be brief.

Thank you Shawna and to your team for your patience with us and helping knit this all together.

This was, I was really excited seeing this come through because it is sort of a bedrock policy when you think instructional philosophy of the district you think wow that's it.

That's like the DNA.

And, you know, I think the gathering of the feedback and consolidating it was a little bit of a sausage factory.

And I just want to really congratulate you on the outcome.

And I wanted to pick three bullets that I think are additions or modifications that are really compelling to me.

When you go into policy 0010 there is a section that says what we are committed to.

And one of them is an engaging, rewarding and challenging curriculum that provides all students with an opportunity to meet or exceed learning standards, multiple career and college possibilities as well as opportunities to enrich their lives.

And I like the depth of that.

And I like that it's also rooted in engaging and challenging curriculum.

Another bullet, basic education.

We are committed to basic education designed to provide broad-based culturally responsive education in areas not measured by state or federally mandated standardized tests.

Such as music, visual and performing arts, physical education, career and technical education, social and emotional learning.

We are not defined by our box, our standards, we are thinking outside of that.

And the third one in support of the MTSS work that is being done that we are committed to processes to identify struggling students and those who arrive underprepared.

to diagnose barriers and deficiencies and deliver instruction designed to accelerate their learning with the ultimate goal of eliminating any opportunity gaps.

I just wanted to have that on the record.

Thanks again.

Any more questions or comments?

Okay thank you.

Number three amending board procedure 1430BP audience participation.

This actually came to exec and the motion to amend board procedure 1430BP was discussed at the executive committee meeting on May 5 and the committee reviewed the motion and moved the item forward for full board consideration pending the discussed edits.

Thank you Director Patu.

Good evening Directors, Teresa Hale Board Office Manager.

This evening I am introducing an item to amend board procedure 1430BP audience participation which centers around our public testimony.

The revisions that began based on some feedback we had from directors to address having a protocol for elected officials to be able to speak at board meetings.

When we began to review the procedure we always look for opportunities for how we can update things so we realized that we have a standing practice for student speakers in our first spot of public testimony so we wanted to add that into the procedure.

And then we also did a little reordering on the first page so that the instructions for testimony were a little bit clearer and also some of the rules of testimony were added.

We have a document for rules of public testimony and we took some pieces from that and put it into the procedure itself so people can find information all in the same place.

When we brought this procedure to the May 5 Executive Committee meeting we received some feedback and so we did some updates to the procedure.

First around elected officials they can contact the board office to make a request to speak during superintendent comments on the agenda.

That way they don't have to be concerned with the order of the list and they would also get to actually speak a little earlier in the meeting.

We also made an addition to include language to allow district students to get a priority spot on the speakers list.

The steps for the process are that the students would have to sign up through the regular process like everyone else.

They would of course have to identify themselves as students because we can't tell from email addresses all the time.

And if that student makes it into the speakers list through the standard protocol then we would take that student and put them in the spot that immediately follows the first speaking spot.

I would just note that this process would never displace someone from the speakers list who went through the process as well.

So if there is a student who is on the waitlist they stay on the waitlist.

They don't get pushed up into the speakers list just by being a student.

It just allows us to kind of take the students and say you get to go first because you probably have homework and you probably want to get to sleep and so let's go ahead and have you get to speak first because you are on the list already.

Now if this item, it is coming back to the board on June 1 for action and if it is approved these protocols will go in place beginning with the June 15 board meeting.

Any questions or comments?

I want to thank you Ms. Hale for the work on this.

I don't know if other directors also provided input but I will confess that I was one of the board directors who felt really strongly that the protocol that is extended to us as board directors to be able to go and testify at other jurisdictions and thinking particularly of the Seattle City Council.

The board president there caught me one day and said you know you guys don't, you don't reciprocate the generosity that we show to you.

And I thought that was an oversight that I hope we would be able to correct.

I know they are very busy individuals and being able to hear their testimony seems very relevant to us and particularly if we are able to provide testimony in their venue then it seems to me to be a worthwhile quid pro quo.

So I support that notion.

I support the other notions as well that are in here.

No questions?

No comments?

Dr. Peters.

I also am really happy with the direction this is taking.

You know it's putting a focus on our students but it's also being fair and it's also finding a place for other public officials to speak and I think it makes a lot of sense and I'm glad we had the opportunity to take a look at this.

And thank you for the discussion at the executive committee it was very helpful to get that input since we know how important public testimony is to the board.

Thank you.

Any more comments?

Thank you very much Teresa.

Okay our next item is Seattle preschool program Dearborn Park.

This also came to accept and the motion was discussed at the committee meeting and the committee reviewed the motion and moved this item forward for consideration by the full board.

You're on.

Good evening I am Cashel Toner the Director of Early Learning for Seattle Schools.

I would like to thank Assistant Principal Barbara Mann who is still here this evening and she is from Dearborn Park.

So thank you because you have school tomorrow.

So we will sort of keep this pretty condensed.

March 18 the board approved our partnership for accepting funds from the Seattle preschool program for next year.

So that was March 18. March 25 we were informed that the community-based provider at Dearborn Park is voluntarily relocating their preschool programming and before and aftercare programming to a new site that they have obtained.

So they voluntarily are leaving that space.

So the community-based provider currently provides two preschool classrooms and before and after care in the gym and in the lunchroom.

at Dearborn Park.

So staff came to executive committee and discussed the potential opportunity to add one Seattle preschool program funded classroom to one of the vacated preschool spaces at Dearborn Park and then use the other vacated preschool space for before and aftercare, school age before and aftercare rather than having that service take place in the gym or the lunchroom.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

It's been reported that Dearborn Park used to have a special ed preschool that got evicted or sent over to Old Van Asselt and now the SPP comes and swoops in.

I'm not suggesting that this is true or that I buy into this but there is. a set of facts that folks are talking about that suggests that the special ed preschool was moved around so that this would be the ultimate resolution.

So I can't speak to that particular thing but I can do some research and get back to you.

Director Burke.

Two quick questions, it might be in here and I just haven't seen it but what is the right size capacity for the Dearborn Park school?

I see the table of enrollment projections, what is the right size capacity for that?

I'm not sure exactly.

I think there is a little bit of space there.

They are not as bursting at the seam as a couple of the other places but I don't have the right size capacity right on hand but I can get back to you on that.

Thanks that would be great.

I guess the, and is there an existing before and aftercare program there now?

Yes so the provider gave notice March 25 that they are relocating all their programming so the two preschool classrooms and the before and after care service that they currently provide.

So staff would recommend funding one Seattle preschool program classroom and then identifying a new community-based provider to provide the before and after school-age care.

Thank you.

I guess as part of the evaluation of the right sizing if you could break that in a Friday memo into classroom space excluding this preschool space and before and aftercare and then also if we came to the unfortunate situation where they had to be evicted.

I just want to try to understand exactly how close we are to that barrier as we look at putting something in place that we can sustain it for multiple years.

Director Peters.

Well I notice that this, so right now there are two preschool classrooms there and that will be leaving serving 20 students each so a total of 40 students and this will replace them with only 20 students.

So it is a net loss of 20 preschool students.

And then the other thing I noticed is that again the city preschool program is not adding seats it's replacing seats.

So it would be nice if SPP were adding more seats to the existing ones throughout the city and I'm not seeing a whole lot of that.

I have a question about attendance area and priorities.

So for the district we have certain rules for who attends which schools.

Does the district's approach to, I mean do the preschool students at Dearborn Park, are they local, are they within the attendance area of the school?

Currently Seattle Schools doesn't enroll the community-based providers into the preschool programming so we don't actually influence that enrollment but the enrollment rules for Seattle Preschool Program that are currently potentially being amended by the City Council would much would mirror our enrollment practice.

giving priority to children that would attend the same school.

Okay that's where I was headed with this because I don't think that's what currently exists so you're saying that City Council is going to revise that.

Okay because that would have been problematic to have kids come from all over the city to create the mix that the city's program said they wanted only to have these kids leave after preschool instead of rolling up and I know that which is not.

preferred outcome.

Okay so the City Council is going to be making that change when will they be making that?

They are considering that revision right now.

Okay and will that require a policy change for them or a change in their implementation policy of the SPP?

So I can get you more detailed information on exactly their process but it's my understanding that enrollment priority changes like that actually do need to be approved by the City Council.

Okay I would like to know more about how the city is enrolling in the SVP because I know that that has been a bit of a challenge and that not all the classrooms are full and so to ask us to get involved as a district with these classrooms I think it would be great to have assurances that we will be meeting the capacity.

and all the resources and efforts of the district will be well distributed in that regard.

One other question, so the before and after school care, who will be providing that under this scenario?

We would go through an RFP process and select a new provider driven by the community assessment and the community need.

Okay, thank you.

Director Harris.

Now you brought up yet another question.

With respect to any changes that the City Council is entertaining could you push that out to us so that we can stay abreast and what the process is and the timing is would be most helpful.

Second with respect to a community-based organization offering childcare services is the process then to put out an RFP and just select that and is that how if we get to doing that at the old Schmitz Park elementary school that that process would be followed?

That is my understanding.

Okay.

And I well appreciate that we expect to get some answers about utilization of that space at the end of May.

But how do we tell the folks in daycare child care crisis in northern West Seattle.

How long does this cycle take is the question that I guess I have because it's not like we didn't know that Schmitz Park was going to not be empty.

How are we going to meet those needs for folks that are trying to plan for childcare next year at Schmitz Park?

I appreciate this is not Dearborn Park but what you brought up was a process.

So would it be helpful to summarize that timeline and that process and get that information to you?

Extremely so.

Any more questions?

Director Pinkham.

So is this Dearborn Park then losing, is that CBO just relocating or are they closing totally and not offering these?

They are relocating, they found space in the community and they are consolidating their programming.

Okay so in the area they will still be before and after care.

So the new Dearborn Park preschool that we are actually trying to get in, that's going to be Seattle Public Schools?

Correct.

If you choose to accept that funding then it would be taught by a certificated teacher, supervised by the principal, instructional assistant, SEA represented.

I want to follow up on the comment that was just made.

The existing community-based organization, two pre-Ks and a before and after care, moving to another site consolidating the same program, the same seats or are they changing up their offerings?

So I guess the question that Director Peters had of are we creating new seats because those seats are moving to a different site or are they dissolving?

Or do we know that?

I can research that and get back to you I don't want to speak on their behalf.

Any more questions or comments?

Thank you.

Our next one is approval of the 2016-17 student rights and responsibilities handbook.

C&I Recommendation Let's see

This came before the C&I committee earlier this month on May 9 and the committee moved the item forward for consideration by the full board pending the amendments discussed.

And I do want to clarify at C&I some time constraints were identified and the item is introduced at this meeting and is scheduled for introduction at not next meeting but the one following.

Let me back up for action a month from now.

Okay thank you.

Pat Sander executive director of coordinated school health.

We are here this evening to provide for the introduction of the 2016-17 student rights and responsibilities document.

This board action occurs annually.

document you have before you is a major shift from the discipline document of years past to a document that creates a new narrative for students, families and staff in addressing student behavior and discipline.

The behavior resolution passed by the school board on September 23 along with the action plan for accelerating achievement for African-American males and other students of color serve as a foundation pieces to the 2016-17 student rights and responsibilities.

The SR&R leads with the focus on positive beliefs, positive relationships, positive learning and positive partnerships.

Student voices incorporated in the document and in fact this evening we have two students who have joined us, Elise Mackley a junior at Garfield High School and Ruth Fox Ramirez a senior at Nathan Hale High School who will speak to their participation in the process.

The key staff leading this work has been Erin Romanek our new program manager for attendance and discipline.

Brad Fulkerson assistant with coordinated school health and Ronald Boy from the office of the general counsel.

So at this time I'm going to ask Erin to come forward.

Good evening, Erin Romanek program manager for attendance and discipline.

I want to provide you with an overview of the engagement that we did for this document.

Starting in December 2015 we proposed a timeline for feedback and we went forward with going and looking at different representatives that we wanted to talk to.

We met with the equity and race advisory committee multiple times.

We met with the city of Seattle race and social justice communities roundtable committee on racial disproportionality and discipline which also included some members from the African-American think tank.

We also met with our special education department, with the safety and security department, with students from as Pat had mentioned Nathan Hale high school and Garfield high school, managers with our health education and prevention and intervention departments.

Again ongoing communication with legal occurred during this whole process during the winter months.

We also put this document in front of MENDER which is the Minority Engagement and Disproportionality Reduction Advisory Committee as well as the SEA partnership committee.

In addition we partnered with PASS with the Principals Association and I in my current work I consult with principals on a daily basis regarding this document so much of their feedback that's come up through the course of this year was also embedded into this document.

We know that we have to continue to engage our community, our parents as well and that is something looking forward to next year as we continue to increase the relevance of this document to where we are headed that we believe as a district.

So we know that there were gaps.

different stakeholders that we engage at this point in time but due to some time constraints and over the four months this is kind of where we were able to focus.

I do want to invite Brad Folkerson up just to kind of speak overview of the changes that we made to the document.

Thank you.

Brad Fulkerson Coordinated School Health.

So overall to the document the majority of changes that we made were to the beginning sections.

You'll notice comparing to last year's document or excuse me this current year's document and the proposed changes for next year cosmetically it looks and feels like a very different document.

We've included photos of our own SPS students in there and done some things to just kind of make it look a little friendlier.

In terms of content we really focused on the introduction in terms of rewriting that to focus on positive beliefs, relationships and learning which was things that we heard kind of throughout our engagement with different stakeholders.

The student rights and responsibilities section the majority of changes there were largely driven by student voice and what they said they felt their rights and responsibilities should be as students so expanding specifically the right section beyond their constitutional rights to some actual rights that felt a little bit more relevant to them and our two students will speak to that a little further.

there is a school responsibility section which is brand new going forward and that came from conversations with those students who said you are showing this document, you have a nice list of student rights, you have a nice list of student responsibilities but where does the school come into this.

And so there were some very good suggestions from them in terms of things that they felt they wanted to see from their school and then from further feedback from both the operations and curriculum and instruction committee we have tweaked some of those to improve the academic side of those school side responsibilities and cleaned up a little bit of the behavioral language there.

The very last piece the code of conduct is kind of what Erin had referenced in terms of really in our long-term work plan needing to address that and needing to kind of revamp that section it is going to be a very heavy lift.

So this year largely just some minor cosmetic changes, cleaning up some things in consultation with Erin's work with principals and with legal just making sure that it is still in line with where things need to be.

So I'd like to invite our students up to speak and we would like to thank both their leadership classes that we got an opportunity to speak to but also Elise and Ruth for coming and staying up much later I think than they intended to on a school night and I know at least one of them still has some homework to do so we really appreciate the feedback that they shared and I'm sure that you will enjoy hearing from them as well.

Hi.

Foremost I'd like to thank all of you for offering me the opportunity to speak on Nathan Hill high school's behalf.

We are honored that Seattle Public Schools has given students the chance to contribute ideas and input to the student handbook for 2017 and beyond.

As we move forward in creating an environment where students of every culture and creed are able to learn we must also consider our responsibility as active participants in the education system that we should be able to offer every student the right to not only survive but to thrive.

As an active member in Latina and queer community I hope I can offer unique and unifying perspective to this discussion that statistically I am defying the odds by standing here before you rather than juvenile detention or the principal's office.

Regarding the topic of violations of conduct conduct the priority of discipline must be to rehabilitate the students rather than to punish them.

Additionally no talk of discipline can be approached without acknowledging that punishments are used to disenfranchise and apply undue oppression on students of color.

The Seattle Times reports that black students make up 41.1% of all suspensions while consisting of only 17.9% of the student population.

This disproportionate response is unacceptable and must be addressed immediately.

This problem must be approached from multiple directions through improving the conditions and environments of every school and through not applying suspensions or punitive punishments except in the most extreme circumstances.

The new student handbook does a great job in addressing the importance of creating more relationships and a more secure school environment.

However the handbook does not go far enough in restricting the use of suspensions.

The use of suspensions must go through a rigorous procedure to ensure that punishment is not in any way being applied to disproportionately especially when the student is not of cis male identity or European backgrounds.

Additionally a moratorium of suspensions, expulsions and incarcerations must be applied to all nonviolent infractions and instead students who are in trouble should be provided with free counseling and health services.

By reforming this discipline system our school can start to value the lives of all of our vulnerable students.

We understand and acknowledge that all of you are working to give us these.

That you work under strict guidelines and laws that can limit your ability to grant us with everything that you wish to give us.

But I would like to inform you that the simple process of talking to us and hearing our input and applying it to this document is monumental and does not go unnoticed.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I just want to start by thanking Erin and the team that worked on this for Coming to our classrooms for student input really meant a lot for us and to know that people in the district want to hear students and are getting student input.

So yeah we were very ecstatic to be able to look at this document and know that what we said actually went into it.

I just wanted to talk about a few things that we thought were important going into this and things that we appreciated about this document.

So in the discussion that we had with Erin and when she came to our classroom the students in my class really believed that this is the time to change and shape behavior and we hope that restorative and preventative measures are the focus for this document and we also thought that teachers knowing and caring for and establishing positive relationships with students was very important.

it's important that teachers care beyond the subject that they are teaching and have good relationships with students otherwise you know they could just be teaching at college.

So we thought it was great that that was especially the section on school responsibilities was nice to have in there to see that.

A couple of other things that were put in here that we appreciated were a couple of times it mentioned providing opportunities for student voice to be heard.

That was great that it was in this document and that you know we put our voice into this document.

The district is for students so we were glad that that was in there and then also the term equitable treatment and access to resources because That's a big issue.

So anyway we just wanted to thank you for hearing us and for all the work that has gone into this document already.

Thank you.

Do you have any questions for us or comments?

Can we highlight this in the media that was just so fabulous.

That was extraordinary and thank you ever so much and thank you to your team.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

I'll second that I appreciate you staying and listening to us talk so that we could have the pleasure of listening to you share as well.

The message that you shared really resonated with me as well it was something that as a new board director I had not seen this before and so like many of my colleagues that are new everything is new.

And so this is a document that's on a continuum every year it comes before the board and it's our opportunity to make incremental improvements or major improvements and I think what we've done here is we've started down a path of a paradigm shift and The message that you're putting out around restorative justice and progressive discipline and being more positive behavior interventions is one that I'm hearing loud and clear throughout the district but I don't think is fully captured in this document yet.

But I hear commitment to do so.

And so again I wanted to thank you and when we talk about the district and we throw out the number of 53,000 students the work that you are doing is leveraging into those 53,000 students so the extra hours you put in tonight listening to us talk, think of it as a good investment because we do.

Director Blanford.

I don't know about the good investment but I will second everything else that Director Burke said.

I too want to agree wholeheartedly with the work that's been done and Pat Sander and I have had some conversation about how we can expand the number of students who are providing input and I believe that that's the next iteration of this that's going to be absolutely critical and so I look forward to seeing how it changes from this year to next year and I believe that some of those changes will be Definitely to the better so I'm looking forward to that.

I think it's wonderful that we actually have students involved in codes of conduct.

After all it is about them.

So thank you so much for staying late.

Hopefully you get your homework done by the time you leave here.

And we appreciate all the comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay our next it's approval of head start application for 2016-17.

A&F.

Okay this one came to the Audit and Finance Committee.

It was presented with the budget and the motion for the Head Start grant fiscal year 2017 on May 12, 2016. The committee moved this item forward to the full board for consideration.

Okay you are on.

Is this yours?

It is.

Hi I'm Cashel Toner the Director of Early Learning for Seattle schools.

I want to make sure we actually have the right one here.

So this is the motion to accept a proposal for Region 10 Office of Head Start to reduce the slots from 430 to 400. So, let's see this motion addresses the need to have board approval to change the Head Start grant.

Due to higher labor costs it is necessary to close one Head Start classroom serving a morning and afternoon session.

And this classroom is located at Highland Park.

Highland Park was identified because of an overall analysis of waitlist and enrollment patterns.

This is where it gets a little tricky so bear with me okay.

The proposal is to reduce 30 slots overall and enroll the other Head Start classrooms at full capacity.

So this will have the least impact across the whole Head Start system but it's a little bit tricky to follow because we have a morning session and an afternoon session each serving 20 students.

We are reducing by 30 overall and then bringing up the enrollment to full capacity in our other Head Start classrooms to have the least impact on students across all of the Head Start classrooms.

Any comments?

Thank you.

Our next one is contract extension for first student for the 2016-2017 school year.

And this is actually went into ops and the motion was discussed at the operations committee meeting on May 3, 2016. The committee reviewed the motion and moved it forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

Peggy McEvoy assistant superintendent for operations.

We've got a couple of annual approvals that we're bringing forward.

The first one is transportation.

The next one will be about nutrition services.

This is the final contract, year for a contract for transportation.

The one for nutrition services will be asking the board to accept some revenue from the City of Seattle.

So with that let me introduce the director of logistics Kathy Katterhagen.

Hi this is Kathy Katterhagen and as Peggy said this was a Three-year contract with two one-year renewals and this is the last one-year renewal and then we would go out for a new RFP in the next year.

There is a 2.5% CPI increase which is the consumer price index and the total amount is $26,881,337.

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Director Harris.

Assistant Superintendent McEvoy I give you fair warning on this.

My understanding of this contract is that it really horrifically mistreats our bus drivers with respect to their health insurance.

Now I appreciate that we don't buy their health insurance.

and that the company that we contract contracts with its drivers is that correct?

The company that we contract with hires their drivers and they are represented by the Teamsters.

Okay so they have a collective bargaining agreement with the company.

Yes.

But we as a $26 million provider can say we think you should treat your people better.

Yes and I hear what you are saying and we have had this conversation earlier this year when this was brought up and the answer that I get from first student right now is that When they negotiated their contract back in 2013 with the Teamsters, the Teamsters elected to receive a stipend in lieu of their health care plan.

They do receive a health care stipend based on their service hours.

And it is in line with the Affordable Care Act.

However, we have had conversations around this.

They do know that we want them to provide better health care and I know that they are going into negotiations in mid-June and this will be on the table when they negotiate again with the Teamsters.

Where is the fine line between interfering in somebody's collective bargaining talks with one of our contractors.

Where do we as a district say that these people are darn valuable to us and we want them treated right?

We can influence them especially in our upcoming RFP process.

We can add language that influences how the companies work with their employees.

That

Bill Treat, General Counsel, I think as mentioned usually the RFP process is the place where we probably have the best opportunity to affect an outcome because we could look at including how we're going to rate proposers for the next contract, how they treat their employees.

As a public agency that's probably something we can take into account as a policy matter.

At this point I think through trying to influence them we can convey our beliefs about the direction they should head.

But right now absent a contract amendment we don't have a contractual right to demand particular health care coverage for their employees.

OK but if we extend this a year and then they bargain in June aren't we going to be yet another cycle behind.

Yeah I mean in terms of you know where were they bargaining in June we would be stuck with that additional term.

But if they don't you know if we convey the message now and we don't like their outcome in their collective bargaining negotiations then this could be something that we look at for the next new contract and we let proposers know this is going to be an important element that we are going to evaluate in picking a new transportation company is how you would look at that.

Any other questions or comments?

Director Pinkham.

I believe it was mentioned at the operations meeting too that as this last year this contract expires are we then looking at possibly two bus companies?

One on the north end one on the south end because one of the concerns was that given that the bus barn for this place is kind of further south we are paying for empty buses as they go back to the barn.

Yes, we would like to see us have a couple of bus providers that would give us a little more flexibility and more range.

We call it deadheading from the bus barn to the first stop of the student pickups.

But yes, we would like to see in the future having several bus contractors work with us.

Thank you.

Our next one is contract with the City of Seattle for summer food program.

And this went to ops.

Their recommendation was to move this item forward to the food board with a recommendation for approval.

Good evening I'm Teresa Fields interim director of nutrition services.

This is a longstanding annual contract that we've had with the state of Seattle to provide meals to students for the summer city program for the community of Seattle.

And it also provides employment for some of our staff to work during the summer months.

Any questions?

Comments?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last item is BTA III final acceptance of contract for CDK construction incorporated for Lincoln second elementary school project.

This also went to ops and the committee moved this item forward to the food board for approval with clarification of the high change orders.

Good evening board members and Dr. Nyland.

My name is Eric Becker I'm with Capital Projects senior project manager.

I'm here to introduce the final acceptance of public works contract with CD8K construction for the second Lincoln elementary school.

This is for introduction today and then action June 1. All payments have been made to the contractor from the BEX III levy funds.

No outstanding invoices remain at this time.

The total approved budget for this project was $1.935 million and the total expenditures is $1.644 million.

A little background on this project, this project is the second elementary school at the Lincoln school.

Originally this was originally brought forward through the main condition assessment report in 2009. It was originally designed as a generic elementary school.

and to provide capacity for an unnamed elementary school.

Once it was determined that the Licton Springs school or the K-8 program would be moving into Lincoln there were also some additional classrooms added to it, four special education classrooms, were added and that the actual project went out to bid prior to that happening and so there were some changes after the construction project was bid.

CDK construction has satisfactorily completed the contract work and the consulting architect for Ludo architects is in agreement and recommends acceptance of the completed work.

and all the attachments are included.

The final completion notice, change order memo, project budget and schedule of values and also the project closeout checklist.

May I answer any questions?

Director Peters.

Can you succinctly speak to the change order?

I see that it was 32% of the base cost.

That's correct.

There's a memo that's fairly detailed on the content of those change orders.

One thing being that the relative cost of the original budget was fairly low.

I believe we received some fairly low bids on this project also.

The content of the, most of the change order was change order number three.

And that included the changes that were required to go from a generic elementary school to a specific site specific work for the, to house the Pinehurst K-8 program.

Once they were moved from their location at the Pinehurst K-8 site.

Any more questions?

Dr. Pinkham.

So on the initial list here as far as what they are going through as what things are completed.

For the statement of apprenticeship participation form projects over 1 million since this initially came under 1 million but then the change order put it over a million there was no need to have that item initialed.

I believe that's correct.

I can confirm that but I believe that would be correct.

That the initial contract was under a million dollars so it would not have been required.

Any more comments?

Questions?

Thank you.

The board is now immediately recessing the regular board meeting into executive session to evaluate the performance of a public employee and discuss potential litigation which is scheduled for 30 minutes with an anticipated end time of probably about 930. Oh it's 930, 10 o'clock.

Hey can I throw a comment in since we are off the formal thing.

I would like to make an ask to whoever is responsible or whoever could take care of that we fix the saggy microphone problem because that really makes me sad to see our people doing public testimony and it's nerve wracking enough as it is.

Thank you.

Excuse me, Noel Treat General Counsel, we might be able to do the executive session in 15 minutes so maybe if you want to maybe announce that as a time because if we announce 30 then legally we have to wait 30 before we can come back in and reset.

Okay we are going to do the executive session in 15 minutes.

So let's get going.