School Board Meeting January 3, 2018 Part 1

OK it's 4 15 and we are about to start this meeting.

Welcome to the January 3rd 2018 regular board meeting.

Ms Shek roll call please.

Director Burke.

Present.

Director DeWolf.

Present.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Mack.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Present.

Director Harris.

Here.

May we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK I will turn it over to Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen for superintendent comments.

Our superintendent Dr. Nyland is out with a health issue.

He hopes to be back tomorrow and we hope he gets well and we know where you're watching.

Thanks.

Good afternoon.

I'll make my comments as brief as possible given that we have a terrific board meeting coming up including discussion on the boundaries.

So jumping into our strategic plan under our educational excellence and equity.

We've asked Gail Morris to come and present to us our overview of our native program.

And I'm looking for where is Gail?

Is she back?

She's there somewhere or on her way.

So.

While she's coming I will just say that our program has been expanded dramatically in the last couple of years and we have a very strong program at Chief Sealth and Denny and we have other programs being instituted in other areas and I'm nervously looking for her so I will just say I'll continue with my comments and when she gets here we will introduce Gail.

We have new race and equity teams coming up across the district.

Yes.

Absolutely you can do anything you want.

Perhaps we could have the fine young people from John Stanford International.

That would work fine too.

And then that will give.

Gail time to get here.

An opportunity to come on down.

All right.

Thank you.

OK.

Thank you Nate.

OK.

So John Stanford International school choir.

The directors will come on down and we cannot wait to hear you.

Thank you.

Hello.

Okay.

Um, hello, we will be singing, um, A Spoonful of Sugar, My Favorite Things, and Lach Lament.

In every job that must be done There is an element of fun

You find the fun and snap the jobs again In every task you undertake Becomes a piece of cake A lark, a spree It's very clear to see That a spoonful of sugar Helps the medicine go down The medicine go down The medicine go down Just a spoonful of sugar Helps the medicine go down In the most delightful way Robin feathering his nest has very little time to rest while gathering his bits of twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and twig.

Twine and tw For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down The medicine go down The medicine go down Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down In the most delightful way The honeybees that fetch the nectar from the flowers to the comb, and retire with every blessing to and fro.

Because they take a little nip from every flower that they see, and hence they find their task is not a grind for us.

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

The medicine go down.

The medicine go down.

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

In the most delightful way.

In the most delightful way.

Thank you very much.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.

Brown paper packages tied up with strings.

These are a few of my favorite things.

Ring-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles Waggies that fly with the moon on their wings These are a few of my favorite things Girls in white dresses with blue sacks and sashes Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes Silver white winters that melt into springs These are a few of my favorite things When the dog bites When the bee stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad.

By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie banks, where the sun shines bright on Lapland.

And I'll never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Oh, you'll take the high road and I'll take the low road And I'll be in Scotland afore ye For me and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Washburn We parted in yon shady glen, on the steep, steep sides of that mountain, where deep purple hues, the highland hills we knew, and the moon coming in.

For me and my children will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks of the river.

♪ Birdies sing and the wildflowers spring ♪ ♪ And the sun shines, the waters are sleeping ♪ ♪ But the broken-hearted kents may set in spring again ♪ ♪ But the wakeful maize keeps on growing ♪ Rose and I'll take the road Rose and I'll take the road

You are not done yet.

Nope.

Can you announce yourself how long you've been teaching how long you've been at John Stanford.

And then if we could pass the microphone around and first names and your grade and what language you're working with at John Stanford International School.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Rabia Ahmed the kids call me Miss Ahmed.

This is actually my first year teaching and my first year at John Stanford which has been super fun with this choir.

My name is Nell and I'm in third grade and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Zadie and I'm in third grade and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Maeve I'm in third grade and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Audrey I'm in third grade and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is London I'm in fourth grade and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Mohini and I'm in third grade Spanish.

My name is Gina and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Julia and I'm learning Spanish.

My name is Lucia and I'm also learning Spanish.

My name is Chloe and I'm learning Spanish and in third grade.

I'm Valeria and I'm learning Spanish.

I'm Natalia and I'm learning Spanish and I'm in third grade.

I'm Marcella and I'm learning Spanish and I'm in third grade.

Hi I'm Isabella and I'm in fourth grade and I'm learning Spanish.

Hi I'm Spencer and I'm learning Spanish in fourth grade.

Hi my name's Eleanor and I'm in Spanish and I'm in fourth grade.

Hello my name's Nico and I am in fourth grade in Spanish.

Hi my name is Maddie I'm in fourth grade in Spanish.

Hello my name is Cora and I'm in fourth grade Spanish.

Hi my name is Caitlin and I'm in fifth grade Spanish.

You know the best part of the meeting.

Thanks so very very much for being here.

You did a fabulous job.

th th

Deputy Nielsen the floor is again yours.

Thank you.

So we again want to thank the students of John Stanford International School.

Let's give them one more round of applause.

I had forgotten what a sad song that last one is so we're going to perk things up now and talk about happy news.

So I'd like to introduce Gail Morris who is program manager for our Native American program and she will be providing her annual report to the board.

Gail.

Hello.

My name is Gail Morris I'm the trauma First Nations I'm manager for Native American education and I'm here to give my annual report.

I'm pressing it.

So I would like to talk about things that we're doing in our program.

I'd like to talk about things that we're doing in our program and you all received an update so that you can read that at your own convenience.

I have a few minutes to talk about this so I'm going to go through this quickly.

We are up 552 506 forms which are up from the previous year.

It looks like low numbers but what happened was that we had a lot of our students transfer out of Seattle Public Schools because they could no longer afford to live in this area which is sad to say.

So while we are up we've lost a lot of students.

Our classroom at Shekachib is doing quite well.

We're getting more and more students enrolling and families we even have Samoan students who want to be in our classroom and we've enrolled a few.

Our high school credit retrieval programs going really well.

We'll talk about that at the end of the presentation.

We do our summer school program.

We had about 20 students last year and that was that worked out really well at Lincoln and we're now at Meany.

Again our main objective for our title six native ed program are 506 forms.

The problem with getting 506 forms are identifying native students so that continues to be a challenge for us.

We're just getting ready to go out and collect again.

Again we don't have enough staff to meet all student needs in schools.

We don't replace teachers or buildings we push in and we give support academic support in the classroom mostly around special ed IEP's transfers appeals those kind of things.

But when we are in the schools the staff that I have is amazing and doing great things.

Transportation continues to be a huge issue for us in our afterschool programs.

We cannot have enough afterschool programs we can't open anymore because we just don't have transportation for students and most of the students won't walk home.

So that continues to be a problem.

I wanted to talk about this.

Since I've been here today we've trained 402 teachers.

and librarians and since time immemorial that's up quite significantly.

Before I was here they trained 33 teachers from 2010 to 2013. We're excited about this.

Shanna Brown who's a teacher at Robert Eagle Staff and I have been doing these trainings throughout the school district last year alone.

We trained 141 third fourth and fifth grade teachers which was great and I thought it was successful.

I just want to talk about we've done one training this year October 13th.

We're doing one January 27th and one in the spring of 2018. The one on January 27th.

I'll post it in a Friday memo update.

We're now collaborating with our visual arts manager Gail Sellhorst and we're doing training for all of our visual arts teachers here in Seattle Public Schools and it's the topic is making the invisible visible and look forward to that in the Friday memo.

Please.

We have Highland Park in our after school program is our fourth year at Highland Park and Sandpoint Elementary.

This is our first year technically there through the city grant.

Last year was ran through our vice president of our parent advisory committee Chandra Hampson.

She ran that of no pay and grabbing kids and working with them along with another parent in the community.

This particular school really.

needs a lot of our attention.

There's been a lot of things that have happened in that neighborhood recently.

And so we're excited to be at Sandpoint Elementary.

This right here the SPS Native American family meetings.

I would really love it if Kyle could speak to that.

Kyle facilitated the meetings.

Thank you.

Kyle Knost our chief of curriculum assessment instruction.

And part of the outreach to the native community was to try and get some input in terms of how the district could better serve the needs of native students.

And so we worked to make these meetings low key.

We had five meetings that were in various regions of the district stretching out from May of 2017 to November.

There are small attendance with one exception but some common messages and want to thank Director Pinkham who attended some of these meetings.

But there are some clear and consistent messages some of which that native students around the district part of what they experience unfortunately are instances of bullying and intimidation and demeaning treatment sorts of name calling and things like that because of their background.

And you know even though these instances may be few and far between in some cases it still has a pretty great impact.

And so that drives a need that was stated by native parents and community members.

For identity safety and a development of pride in Native identity.

And these things could be addressed through curriculum education of teachers and administrators and different programs.

One other thing that was stated were that various kinds of services were needed to need to be increased to deal with the various needs of Native students both social emotional as well as academic.

There are some pretty clear messages around program advocacy.

One was the restoration of the Indian heritage high school.

But as well we heard that increasing the number of programs such as Sakachi at Chief Sealth and Denny would be important.

These findings were reported to the superintendent and the superintendent will have a response to the community forthcoming.

So let me just talk to you a little bit about the data quickly.

So the data summary that I'm not going to spend time going over I'm going to let you look at it.

When you look at it there's going to be two different types of data that you'll see.

One of the data is going to be the Native American Fed 7 those are the students who identify as Native Americans.

We have about 354 that only identify as Native American.

In reality we have more we had close to 2000 students who identify as Native Americans in the falls in the multiracial category and they also fall into the Hispanic category.

So when you look Through the data later you'll see that I'm sorry the Native American was 334 who only self-identify Hispanic was 1941 and multiracial was 635 with a total of 2910. Realistically those aren't the right the realistic numbers of Native American students in Seattle Public Schools is around 13 to 1500 and we're currently working on it.

One set of data that I would really like to see go into this is the students that we actually work with with 506 forms.

Those are the students that we count that we can track that we know how they're doing in Seattle Public Schools and that is something that Eric Anderson said that we could work on creating a 506 input into the power school.

So.

I'm going to let you look through all of this later it will be posted on the website but I would like Richard to talk about this quickly as he works with high school high school credit retrieval and fifth year high school students as well.

Good evening I'm Richard Summers I work with secondary students for Native Ed.

My family's from Heidelberg Alaska we're Eagle Frog clan Alaskan Haidas.

I graduated from University of Washington with a bachelor's in American Indian studies.

So these are the numbers strictly for our seniors for the 16 17 year that graduated and had a 506 form on file for our program.

Just in case everybody doesn't know what a 506 form is it gives our program funding and documents cultural heritage for each student that we work with.

So this is just a representation of that.

Historically nationwide our graduation rates hovered around 50 percent.

This year for the graduation rates last year is 23 out of 40 which is 57.5 percent which is pretty good but it gets even better when you realize that eight out of 40 of our students they transferred out and we can't really tell if that transferred out means they went to another district to continue school or they transferred out and dropped out and just didn't continue.

So you have to take that into account as well.

Also our fifth and sixth year students that re-enroll.

They continually graduate at a little bit slower rates so these students that didn't graduate last year they might be graduating or close to it this year or already have.

And even sixth year students continue to graduate after that.

So our numbers keep increasing.

Just for comparison our graduation rates for 15 16 maybe we're around 75 percent.

So I think with these students in this data set we could get to around there.

We also have a couple of students that participate in the Bridges transition program or in the experiential learning program and they'd never go into our account for being graduated because their programs are usually for special needs students and they don't get a diploma that counts on our list.

So there's all these different factors that go into these final numbers.

But I think we're doing pretty good overall for the students that we work with.

Thank you.

So for the sake of time that's what we have to present.

And like I said we had some sites in there that we took out that will be in the Friday memo and in upcoming collaborations.

You can look at our report and see who the staff is and what we're doing and who our partners are in Seattle Public Schools and what we're doing there.

And that concludes this report.

Thank you.

Thank you Gail.

Thank you team.

And we understand and appreciate that there is a lot more data here that I know is of interest to the board and to our community.

So again we'd encourage us to take a look at that and we can address that through C&I committee and other opportunities as well because it's very important and we're focusing on those things and it looks like Director DeWolf has a question.

Just a clarifying question.

So this mentions the first Monday of every month that media middle school will have a culture night.

So does that take place next Monday or is January out?

No we're going to we just had a meeting today to look at our culture night and it will be the I think Monday is the 27th.

That's what we're trying to do and for the new board members welcome and please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions.

Thank you again, Gail and team.

Other issues coming up around race and equity is we have 10 new race and equity teams.

They have been out working in schools.

They launched effort in December to educate school staff about how to institutionalize racial equity at the school levy at school level.

Excuse me.

That's a very important part of our UOG work and we're proud of that effort and we thank the board for investing in that opportunity.

We're also making progress towards building effective systems in support of schools.

For example the Seattle Education Association and our HR human resources department is working together on improving site based hiring.

And this is a quote from the Seattle education unity interview teams will quote now go through hiring training and receive the opportunity to engage in a larger discussion around tackling implicit bias at work sites while interviewing and hiring educators.

Which we're very excited about that and our HR department will utilize that same training into principal and central office hiring.

Six years ago four of our leading educational institutions in our city Seattle Public Schools University of Washington Seattle Education Association and the alliance came together to create the Seattle teacher residency.

So just a quick update on that.

The participants are all working alongside a seasoned resident mentor in a Title 1 school so we put them in our toughest schools.

Participants commit to teaching in Title I schools in Seattle for at least five years.

Addressing teacher retention that's a huge problem for us and we're delighted that we're getting terrific results from them.

When they graduate they get a master's degree and they have it in either English language and or special education.

Our graduates are 40 percent.

people of color.

That's double the number that we have in any of our other recruiting for new teachers.

And best of all they're staying in the profession.

91 percent of the teachers who went through this program in the last six years are still with us and working in Title 1 schools.

So we're delighted and we're looking forward to 19 more students in training this year.

Families told us that they're interested in receiving texts.

So in the process of helping communicate information to families our communications department will be starting an opt in program.

So it's voluntary for people who would like to get texts and they're on sub sub subjects I cannot talk about school.

The texts are better by the way.

That was a joke.

School breaks emergencies and major district workings or meetings.

Thank you someone for laughing.

This spring the communications department will support piloting this at a handful of schools and we'll see what we can do for expansion next fall.

Our family engagement task force has been active and that has improved our survey results from families by 14 percent.

They're working on developing clear vision framework and tools to support school based engagement.

and are launching a new task force starting on the 24th of January and they'll present the recommendations to the superintendent in June.

On the 14th of December good news we had lunch and learn with Department of Family and Community Partnerships.

It was a way to bring people together to talk about what we can do to support our schools and it celebrated our communities and schools program and what they're doing to help our students.

We also have other good news.

Our participation was up 5.4 percent for sophomores and 8 percent for juniors taking the PSAT.

The scores were up 9 percent for sophomores and 16 percent for juniors.

The school board again voted to support this through district funds.

This is a great asset to help students prepare for college.

So again thanks to the board and for our community in supporting us with those resources.

Also, coming up in March, every student will have access to the SAT.

Again, this is something that we provide for our students.

We don't get funding from the state or anyone else to do that.

We do it with our local levy dollars.

We think this is an extremely important thing to do to help our students who otherwise would find this as a roadblock to pay for those costs.

We have schools of distinction.

We were recently honored with eight schools.

They are Rainier Beach Olympic Hills Madrona Hazel Wolf Hawthorne Cleveland BFD and Alki.

That's the largest number both by number and percent of any school district in Washington state being recognized with schools of distinction.

And some of you may have noticed just last month that the New York Times published a survey.

about school district support.

It was a Stanford study and it was about student support and student achievement.

And the Seattle Public Schools came in third out of 200 of the largest districts across the United States in student performance.

So we're very proud of that.

And Larry asked me explicitly to say this reflects the hard work of our great educators our community partners our students families central staff and the support of members here on the board.

Thank you very much.

And that concludes my remarks.

OK we will have two students giving testimony first up at 530. So we do not have the two South Lake High School students sitting here on the dais tonight.

So let's move on.

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

May have a motion for the consent agenda.

I move the consent agenda.

I second the approval of the motion to approve the consent agenda.

OK.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

Director DeWolf I saw you moving down there.

OK.

Going once going twice.

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

Aye.

OK.

We have reached 440 450 excuse me and it is time for board comments.

Who would like to go first.

We're going to start drawing straws here folks.

Director Geary.

I'll keep this short and sweet.

Welcome back.

Happy New Year.

Looking forward to continuing the great work that we've heard about tonight.

Had lovely holidays with my family really did take the time off as I hope many of our staff did.

It's time to regenerate to refresh and get ready for the new year.

The days are going to get longer and.

will be putting in the hours.

I know it.

I wanted to give a shout out I did attend the Native American pack holiday celebration at Daybreak Star cultural center this December.

Santa made an appearance.

There was a toy shop with a room full of gifts for all the kids.

And some of the comments that I heard while attending were one that people were commenting that more children were there than they had seen in many years.

And they were very happy about that.

They really felt the spirit for the Native American community coming together at the center and celebrating together as a group.

And then I have to say that I heard many lovely things about Gail Morris and how much she is appreciated and the resounding ask was that she be given more people so she can do more work.

Because the work that she is doing is so appreciated by that community and they want it to be wherever their students are.

They want to have that support for their kids.

They want their kids to be able to access The great education that Seattle Public Schools has to offer but they know that they need the extra wraparound services to gain the cultural identity safety that we know here makes for success in education.

I want to thank the John Stanford international school choir for coming and singing to us.

I know our new school board members no doubt just adored that because as you will see over the next years that it is one of the best moments of our meetings and so it's a lovely opportunity.

The other issue that seems to be coming up quite a bit lately is data privacy for students and so I assure parents that I know our board cares very much about that issue that we as we are hearing about talking about sharing information with vendors that we here at the district are making sure that students privacy is being protected that we are only releasing as much data necessary to access the benefit of the programs that we hold that information very dear.

But one of the questions that I personally couldn't answer and I know may be out there that to the extent that we as a district are not controlling the programs that are being used.

I do have a question that I hope will be answered soon about when teachers and schools are using programs and having students enter data in them or identifying students through their names as their user logons.

How are we making sure that that information is being protected Are we instructing teachers about whether or not that's being released.

What they're telling parents.

You know I just think that we need to be very mindful that parents especially of our younger students can be surprised when the student comes home with a log on already entered into a system that may contain their name.

And the parent doesn't necessarily know where that's gone and they feel perhaps maybe even a sense of violation that they weren't asked first in that process.

So let's continue to be very sensitive about that and continue to make sure that to the extent we have policies around it it is being enforced in our buildings.

And to the extent that perhaps we need a policy in order to create the training around it we look at doing that as well.

So until I hear comments from our parents I'm going to or our speakers that come and visit us I'm going to tie it up there.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Geary.

Who's next.

Director Burke.

Good evening and welcome back everyone on the board and in the audience and at home hopefully in front of a warm fire.

I'll start with some thank yous and congratulations to the John Sanford international choir.

Sweeter presentation than multiple spoonfuls of sugar.

So that was great.

It's always nice to start the meetings with with with child talent.

And that was that was awesome.

I want to also second what Director Geary had spoken.

In favor of the work of Gail Morris.

I think that every time she comes before us to share her work the progress that's being done.

It just highlights the commitment of her team to do whatever it takes to reach students at their point of need.

And I would also like to see how we can figure out how to provide a little bit of incremental resources to help build that beyond take some of that enthusiasm and fund it at a little bit higher level.

I want to also congratulate our schools of distinction with the trajectory that we're on we're going to start needing bigger walls or smaller signs.

And maybe we can overlap them a little bit but that's that's great.

It's a wonderful confirmation of the work that's being done.

I meant to say as part of the Happy New Year thing the holidays that I really hope everybody got a chance to play in the snow.

because it was a really unique opportunity here in Seattle and so we work a lot with kids and we should be kids at heart and there's nothing like going out and throwing a snowball at your kid or your colleague or whatever to truly truly make a year end.

Some of the activities it's been a pretty lean time.

In terms of board activities this has been really really pleasant.

I did have the pleasure of meeting last month with Phyllis Campagno of Seattle Education Association and thank you Phyllis for meeting with me and much belated.

I know we talked about doing that for a long time so it was great to catch up on some of that work.

And I wanted to put a huge thank you.

I know we're going to touch on this issue a lot more in upcoming conversation to the board and the staff and the community.

for their attention and their work on our boundaries and pathways because it's a complicated issue.

And we will unwrap it a lot more but I say privately and I'm also willing to say publicly that our last board meeting it wasn't our finest hour.

We didn't really have all of our information together we didn't really get our alignment that we needed to and we didn't move things forward.

And I think staff and my colleagues and input from from the community has been really helpful.

And I'm hoping that in the month of January we're going to be able to take that work and really narrow that down.

I have a community meeting or a an event that's going on at 730 today at Hamilton which I double booked and indicated that I probably would not be able to attend.

But depending on how the meeting goes tonight if it's possible I may excuse myself just a little bit early so that I can attend the last part of that event.

And if not I apologize in advance for double booking.

Upcoming community meetings for me I have three booked.

One of them is Sunday January 21st 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock Fremont Public Library.

February 17th Saturday 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock Green Lake Public Library.

And March 17th Saturday 10 a.m.

to 12 at Greenwood Public Library.

Hope to see folks there.

Thank you.

Next director who wishes to speak.

Director Patu.

Patu I want to welcome everybody back and had a wonderful vacation did not want to come back.

But it's great to be back.

I want to say thank you to Gail Morris for the great work that she continued on to do and all the wonderful exciting things that's happening and on behalf of all the native students and really appreciate all the great work that you are doing with those students.

And it's wonderful when you have someone that actually has a heart and really work distinctly with these with our native students and hopefully to continue on the good work that you're doing.

I'd also like to congratulate all the schools of distinction especially special thanks to Hawthorne Cleveland and Rainier Beach high school for a job well done.

Hopefully that we will continue to see great things happening in the southeast and it's been an exciting year for me because as I go out there and visit the various schools it's amazing to see the wonderful things that each school is actually doing on behalf of the students that attended those schools.

So continue on the good work.

I also wanted to congratulate the Rainier Beach students that actually went to Hawaii to play a basketball tournament.

They won one and lost one but it was really exciting to see them play various teams from different states.

And also it's glad to be back.

There's a lot of work to be done but I think that the break that we had actually got us ready to continue on the work and hopefully that as we continue on the work that we are able to look upon various strategies of what is it that we can do to continue to provide the excellent education to all our students in the Seattle Public Schools.

And hopefully to continue on seeing more progress at the happening at Rainier Beach High School and also other other schools that are actually moving forward.

So looking forward to a good year and hopefully to see to see more and more great things happening in our schools.

Thank you Director Patu.

Next up would be Director DeWolf.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Just happy New Year and hope everyone had a great break.

I want to first thank the choir from John Stanford International School.

I'm I'm only maybe more excited about it because I'm tapping my feet at the front row because when I was in elementary school I I was in the choirs and I was the lion and the wizard of Oz and so I have a special place in my heart for the arts particularly music.

So thank you to them and big strong supporter of our of our music programs.

And also thank you to Gail Morris for your for your work.

We'll continue to look for opportunities to continue improving the outcomes and services and supports for our native students here in Seattle Public Schools.

Also wanted to congratulate congratulate all of the schools of distinction especially Madrona.

And another thing that I want to bring up this month I work at an organization called all home and every year in January we host an event called the one night count as you may have heard.

Prior to the last year but currently we are calling it the point in time count and this is the one time each year where we spend an evening from 1 a.m.

to 5 a.m.

or 6 a.m.

depending on the kind of the time needs.

to count the number of people experiencing homelessness within our county whether they are sheltered or unsheltered.

So we do a huge event on January 26. So I'm encouraging publicly everyone on this dais as well as staff here and folks in the audience to please sign up to volunteer.

We need about 720 volunteers to do this count.

We're at about 300. So I'm hoping every one of you are signing up this evening.

If not I will call you personally but would encourage you particularly I'm bringing this up because our school has a real crisis on our hands.

I believe about thirty five hundred students that are experiencing homelessness within Seattle Public Schools.

One of the issues that I talked about consistently on the campaign trail and really want to make sure that that is a part of one of the work priorities that I'm doing here on the Seattle school board.

I bring this to your attention because I think that there's already some really great best practices that are happening across the state particularly in Spokane.

They have an organization there called priority Spokane which prioritized students experiencing homelessness and reduced chronic absenteeism as well as graduation rates and a lot about positive outcomes for these students.

So I want to look at some of those opportunities and hopefully we'll bring some of those ideas here.

And I don't have any meetings set up just yet but I will look forward to connecting with our schools and doing a tour in the next couple of months.

So I will be reporting back on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham Director Mack.

Director Mack please.

Good evening and Happy New Year.

Excuse me.

I won't repeat the thanks but I'm deeply grateful for the choir as well as the work that's going on around Native American education.

And it's wonderful to learn about it.

Excited to be back.

Our first board meeting was really exciting.

And I'm honored to have been appointed the chair of the operations committee which is exciting and exciting actually to say it that way.

We have a full agenda tonight of introduction of a lot of items that are related to buildings and capacity and facilities and a discussion around boundaries and and you know the schoolhouse is it's where teachers teach and students learn.

It's the iconic.

picture for school.

And it's, you know, these operational logistics that we are talking about are really important.

And it's challenging work, because it's complicated work.

It's very personal, where we're going to school, what our buildings are like, the quality of them, et cetera.

And we're entering a really exciting time.

We're opening Lincoln in two years.

It's the first time we've opened a high school in decades.

So we have this huge responsibility and opportunity and it's a big investment in our students and community.

So I'm really grateful for all of the input and engagement that we're getting from the community and the support around this process.

I.

I know that I'm hearing and seeing all the emails that are coming through and I know that my board members are as well and looking forward to further discussion later.

I know that our board directors are focused on and staff are focused on landing on the scenario that is going to be the best for the most students so that all of our students each and every student has the potential has the ability to reach their full potential and graduate from high school ready for college career and life.

That's our goal.

And I'm excited to work towards that together.

I wanted to mention that last board meeting I forgot to mention in response to the students from Rainier Beach that were coming forward requesting renovation on their building.

I wanted to say that yes I strongly support that building and those students getting renovated as soon as possible.

And in my mind I'm wondering if we might even be able to speed up the timeline by pursuing other funding opportunities.

I have no idea if that's even possible but Even putting on the BEX levy is pushing it down the line and I'd love to see it happen sooner than later.

I also want to commend and thank SEA and the district for the work on tackling the implicit bias in the new equity teams.

I think this is really wonderful that we're focusing on that and and carrying through with those commitments.

And I've scheduled my first community meeting.

So on Sunday January 14th from 1 to 2 30 at the Magnolia library.

Come on down.

Thank you.

Harris Director Pinkham you're up.

Pinkham So we'll go halfsies on the next 20 minutes is that what you want to do?

Good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you John Stanford international school your students in the choir.

I wish my voice could go that high still but I won't even try to do it but that were lovely voices and sharing their songs so thank you to the choir and their music instructor.

Congratulations to the schools of distinction.

One of these days maybe we'll get all of our schools on that list and that'll definitely show we're going in the right direction.

Gil Morris, Rich Summers and Kyle Knish thank you for your presentation on the native education program.

We are making strides but we definitely have a long ways to go still.

Our native students oftentimes are overrepresented in many of our statistics while they are underrepresented in the overall numbers.

So the more that we can do to help one of our most underserved and most at risk students the better the Seattle school district will do.

And I think you'll get an idea from Gail with her presentation just even one thing just identification of our native students is a very touchy issue.

And how do we get them identified make sure they're counted make sure that they're supported.

Even if they may be counted in our reported numbers to the feds or whatever we report the numbers to as Hispanic or multiracial.

We don't want to lose them because they are valuable assets to our future native community.

So appreciate the work that she does and we need to see what strides we can go to help them out because they talk about we just don't have the staff to support all the students.

So if we can help them out with more staff and also listening to the community and what their needs are.

And I do have to give a shout out that I do support restoring Indian heritage high school to see what we can do for that.

If we are building a new school high school in this area maybe one thing to consider can that be the new American Indian heritage high school.

And not necessarily a high school just for Native students but a high school that will show that the Seattle schools The city of Seattle itself cares about the indigenous people of this area by having a school that reflects their presence here.

Think about things that even the signs we have in our schools we have very little Lushootseed language on any of those signs.

We have a lot of other languages but where is the native language?

The indigenous people of this area.

speak volumes of if we can include those in our publications.

Even though yeah maybe there aren't that many native speakers around but again it acknowledges the indigenous land that we're on.

Need to put my glasses on here look at my notes.

I was also out at Robert Eaglestaff middle school and did see the beautiful quilt that they got framed and posted so hanging on the wall so if anybody is around there please swing by Robert Eaglestaff middle school check out their cafeteria and the lovely quilt that was given to the school I believe it was by the Robert Eaglestaff his family that is now framed and thanks to you to the shop here actually I think they built the frame handmade and got that up and it's a very lovely presentation so I encourage people to go out there and look.

Also in mind the Urban Native Education Alliance does have its cultural and tutoring meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays out at Robert Eagle Staff from 6 to 830 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Thank you to blanking on the name of the principal at Robert Eagle Staff sorry Marnie Campbell thank you for being a gracious host out there for us.

Again this is a program that's open to all students and is going to cover about native culture much like what Gail was able to do with the resources we were able to pull together some data community help out and actually the students built hand drums themselves over these holidays and now they're making their drumsticks and once that gets all done they'll probably paint their drums as well.

So again it's just a good hands on activity for native students.

For me I will have my hopefully my first meeting of the year on January 20 waiting for confirmation from Lake City Public Library.

I put in the request for it and it should be once confirmed on again Saturday January 20 from 1030 to noon.

I will have another one then on February 24 from 1 to 230 at Northgate library and that space has been confirmed.

And then if things work out then Saturday March 24th I'll have another one from 1030 at Lake City library.

Again I have to wait for Lake City library to get back to me with confirmation.

And just before I leave I want to say for apologize maybe I don't apologize but maybe help out Rick's kids that are getting snowballs thrown at them.

That if there's a next snowball or snowfall comes we'll have to see what we can do to help Rick's kids out.

That's the first thing it says.

Hey snow is falling you can throw snowballs at your kids.

OK so be on the lookout for snow again Rick.

I'm with you director Pinkham.

I'll drive across town for that one.

Thank you so much.

OK.

I'm up next and I will make them my comments as short and sweet as I can.

My next community meetings are January 20th from 3 to 5 at West Seattle library and February 17th at the High Point library.

You have a 50 percent chance of getting lasagna.

And it's good lasagna and it's worth coming for.

And those of y'all that haven't set up meetings you're more than welcome to attend mine.

They're pretty rowdy and they're kind of fun and they're great people.

The John Stanford international school choir found myself singing along and from an old camp counselor I think that at some point here this board needs to put on a show.

We've all been talking about our musical talents and we could probably even raise some money for some homeless students.

So what do you say director Wolf you want to help me with that one?

Okay there you go.

A couple of other things that have come up the internal auditor Andrew Medina has revised and clarified the conflict of interest policies that will be going out this next week.

It will also include pass through funds through entities that do business with the Seattle Public Schools either the state CBO's etc.

So that we can.

show that the folks sitting on this dais and our senior staff are well above reproach and any appearance of conflict of interest.

It will also include honoraria and travel etc.

So that lest there be no doubt no way no time.

We have started the new superintendent search.

We put out an RFP.

We hired as you saw the last board meeting two board meetings ago.

Ray and Associates focus groups will be meeting the week of January 19th and there will be a town hall on January 19th from 630 to 830 for which the public will be invited.

And there is a live web page now superintendent search on our website that has a questionnaire and we would like as many people as we can find to fill that in to give the board input.

And my extreme thanks to directors Patu Gary and Mack and also our extreme thanks to folks that have come to the superintendent search subcommittee as well.

Money.

We don't have enough of it.

Pure and simple.

McCleary fixes in the last legislature did not fix our needs.

One of the issues that has come up on social media this last week.

Is that we have a dearth of school nurses.

And that children and students that have.

Medical conditions.

sometimes cannot attend their neighborhood school because we do not have a full time nurse.

The state funds nine nurses throughout the district.

The way that we.

Determine where those nurses go is part of the weighted staffing standards.

And I am aghast, appalled, believe it immoral that we are putting safety and health in as a bargaining chip for our students.

And I truly hope that you will pick up the phone and call your neighbors and call your legislators and call your city council folks and ask for help because It's just truly truly not OK.

We will be voting on an action item this evening with respect to whether the city of Seattle will give zoning or developmental variances in Southeast Seattle.

that the seven board members here that co-sponsored the resolution have strong feelings about.

And we certainly have heard a great deal from a great many folks.

But the schools in Southeast Seattle Rainier Beach Franklin High School and Cleveland High School are making extraordinary gains and we very much would like to see them continue those gains.

And there appears to be a good bit of support.

For that resolution in the city council.

And there appears to be a good bit of pushback from certain council members.

That this is not a quote unquote technical fix and it does not belong in the omnibus bill.

So says.

couple of folks at City Hall as late as 4 p.m.

today.

Good people can make disagreement on those things but charter schools do not have elected representatives overseeing them.

And that's an issue of accountability.

It's also an issue that is still before the state Supreme Court for the second time.

And the last thing I'd like to talk about a little is grace and libel and slander.

There is a whole lot of very ugly stuff going on out there in social media.

And this school board continues to receive anonymous letters pointing out staff people by name in this district but do not have the courage of their convictions to put their names on these letters or come to the table and back it up.

And you know we're all big folks here.

We all chose to run for these offices because we care passionately.

But we do not nor does our staff deserve to be libeled and slandered by folks.

And I would respectfully and passionately ask folks to model good behavior that we expect from our children and our students.

And with that we're going to take a short break until 530 at which time public testimony begins.

Thank you.