Seattle Schools Board Meeting Dec. 18, 2024

All right, we've gotten word that we have a couple of directors still in traffic.

We'll call the board meeting.

We'll call the order in just a moment.

We set?

Okay.

This is President Rankin.

For the last time, I am calling the December 18th, 2024, regular board meeting to order at 421 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded, and we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, the roll call, please.

Director Briggs?

Here.

Director Clark?

Not quite yet.

Director Hersey?

Here.

Director Mizrahi?

Here.

Vice President Sarju?

On the right.

You can see that she's here in the parking lot.

If you're in the parking lot, I can't see it.

Excellent.

Vice President Sarju is remote for the next 30 seconds or so.

And then Director Top?

Here.

President Rankin?

Here.

And Director Bragg?

Here.

Director Ilyas?

Here.

And Director Yoon?

Present.

All right.

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

Good evening board members and President Rankin and community watching today.

This evening we'll start with progress monitoring on two of our goals, third grade literacy and seventh grade math.

We'll discuss the strides we've made especially in middle school mathematics and also address our efforts to accelerate progress in third grade literacy which appears to require special attention for this particular cohort of students.

I would encourage the board to situate our agenda this evening in our Year Zero framework.

Year Zero serves as the diagnostic period from some of the most significant areas of our work in the district.

While we are between strategic plans, tonight represents an important milestone in our efforts as we create a smooth transition into our next strategic plan.

Following progress monitoring, we will discuss governance review conducted by our partners at Moss Adams.

The findings from the review suggest that we have an opportunity in front of us to build institutional awareness and ensure clarity around our shared responsibility to implement an effective governance model.

So I'm fully committed to working alongside this board to build on the initial implementation work that we've done together and our need to go deeper and further.

So at the heart of our governance work is the board's goal and guardrail setting.

And I want to thank each one of you for the clear direction that you provided during last week's goals and guardrail work session.

Later in the meeting, you will introduce a bar to operationalize the top line measures, which will then be shared with our community for ongoing engagement.

This process is crucial as we move forward together.

I see tonight's reports as the additional grounding for us to level set as a governance team, especially as we prepare to transition into our new strategic plan.

We are excited to focus on moving ahead on the board's revised goals, including second grade literacy and high school graduation as aligned with students' planning efforts.

I look forward to building on this exciting works in the months and years ahead.

We also have board officer selection process this evening, and I want to express my deep appreciation for President Rankin for her leadership this year.

She's guided us through some challenging times with courage and determination.

President Rankin, we, senior leadership team, we value your partnership, and we look forward to continuing to work alongside you and the rest of the board along this journey together.

On a somber note, by once...

I want to acknowledge the devastating impact of recent gun violence.

One of our partner schools in Madison, Wisconsin experienced this.

And we must stay vigilant to address this.

And we need to do what we can to continue to create safe and welcoming environments for each and every one of our students.

So just wanted to acknowledge that as we go forward.

And that concludes my remarks.

Back to you, President Rankin.

Thank you.

We are now at the board comment section.

As Dr. Jones noted, this is our annual organizational meeting.

We'll be moving into the election of board officers immediately after the consent agenda.

And the officers elected tonight will then immediately take on those new roles, and the newly elected president will preside over the remainder of the meeting.

So we now move into if there are any other reports from student members, reports or comments from student members or directors.

Are there any liaison reports that anyone wants to share?

OK.

I have included two for legislative liaison and Council of Great City Schools liaison.

They are in the informational items in the packet in the interest of time.

So please read those when you can, if you haven't already.

I did send in the legislative liaison update prior to Governor Inslee's budget proposal yesterday, today, yesterday, which includes a wealth tax.

So that is something definitely that we will be keeping an eye on and that isn't included in what's in the packet since it just happened.

I will say this is, you know, in my opinion, long overdue and welcome.

And also, while we will continue to advocate for increased funding and better support of students from the state, the expectation that this will suddenly solve all of our problems would be unrealistic.

Just to put it bluntly.

But it is great.

And also that when the governor makes his budget recommendations, it is literally just a recommendation.

The legislature determines and then recommends a budget back to the governor.

So this is the governor's sort of, well, it's just exactly that, recommendations from the executive body.

The legislative body will be in this upcoming session, it's a long session, also known as a budget session.

That's where we'll know what we actually will be looking at for the state budget coming out of session, depending on what the legislature decides to do.

Oh, I had the opportunity to speak at the Seattle Human Rights Commission had an event this last weekend on educational equity following Human Rights Day, which was a couple days before.

And so they asked me to speak.

And I talked about our goal and guardrail process and just wanted to share with you all how much of a really positive response we got, how excited our community is to see real tangible measures that we're holding ourselves accountable to and monitoring and sharing out with the public.

So that was really positive feedback and encouragement in the work that we're doing in this governance model and goal and guardrail setting.

And I also asked, or let the student board members know about it, and they were all available to attend, so also got to speak, which was awesome, and then they did a fantastic job.

So just to share that, we have a whole new group of people who are into, you know, doing work in their community that are now, I would say, coming alongside and excited about what our school district is doing and what the board is doing on their behalf.

Do students have any comments?

Yes.

First and foremost, all three student board members attended the annual WASDA conference last month, and it was a great opportunity to network and meet other students with our position.

In a way, we gained insight from districts who've had student reps for much longer than our district.

Next, we have a few social media posts in the work, such as a vlog on the conference we attended last month, a summary post regarding the meetings, the big meetings, and an update on when we plan to visit schools.

You can find all of that on our Instagram page at SPS Student Reps. Consequently, I'd like to emphasize, well, I'm pretty sure I'm talking for a lot of students when I say librarians are a huge part of our day and schedule.

I remember I remember as a elementary school student, I was very excited for the read aloud times and library times.

So yeah, just wanna share that.

Sorry.

I also just wanted to give an update on the school visits we've been planning, and we've also previously mentioned this in our student comments last board meeting.

We've moved all three school visits, Ballard, Franklin, and Lincoln High School to January, and we've been planning a lot for these visits, so we're very excited to start fresh in 2025 and have a voice to listen to student voices.

I also wanted to kind of add on on what Director Elias was saying.

I met with 16 library leaders at Ballard High School this week.

Library leaders are students who help manage the library and host events.

And I've just heard so much from them and how much the libraries mean to them and their students and their communities.

And You know, for students, libraries aren't just places to check out books.

They're places where students go to study, meet for tutoring sessions after school, or just find a quiet place to focus.

And they're also a place where many clubs meet, friends hang out, and they host a lot of events that bring schools, communities together.

And a lot of students talked about how libraries feel like a safe and welcoming space for them.

they just expressed that it feels like they will be losing more than a physical space and they're losing a space where they could learn, grow, and connect.

So I just wanted to, you know, after listening to these students, I just want to emphasize how much libraries matter and how much big of a part of their community it is.

Thank you.

Director Bank, do you have, it's okay if you don't?

I want to make sure you have the opportunity if you have something.

I can say that it was really exciting to go to the human rights event this weekend.

And I did have the opportunity recently to speak to a lot of student leaders at Lincoln.

And they are actually informed and excited about the goals and guardrails process.

So from a student perspective, that is going quite far, because it's a lot more digestible.

And students are having the ability to understand and feel connected to the process.

That's great.

Thank you.

And I forgot, it seems like such a long time ago, but yeah, the WASDA conference, I think, wait, let's see, Director Briggs, Director Topp, and I, and the superintendent were there, as well as our three student members.

And it's probably the largest representation that Seattle has had in a lot of years, which is for the largest school district.

You know, I'm just really excited.

People were happy to see representation from our team there, especially as we go into a budget session where we really need to work with our partners across the state.

Having...

So many of us there was really, really great.

Just a chance to further our own learning and ongoing continuous improvement in our governance roles and collaborate with other boards.

And then, of course, having student members having the opportunity to talk with students who have been from districts who have been doing the student board member thing.

longer than we have.

I know that they already have some ideas we've been talking about, now that we're in the third year, taking a look again at our student board member policy and seeing how we can apply what we've learned from the last three years and what this cohort has learned to making some updates to continue to strengthen that role.

So that's super exciting.

And I don't see any other board director comments.

Okay.

So we're going to move to the tables.

Please take your microphone.

And we will be doing progress monitoring.

And then we'll just stay there for conversation with Moss Adams before we come back here for testimony.

All right.

For our monthly progress monitoring session, we have reports on goals one and two.

Dr. Jones.

Thank you, President Rankin and Board.

We are going to be talking about progress monitoring, third grade reading, and seventh grade math.

And this will be our sixth formal opportunity to review outcomes in these two areas.

I'm joined tonight by colleagues from our Office of Academics, Cashel Toner, Executive Director for Curriculum.

and assessment and instruction, and Dr. Caleb Perkins, Executive Director of College and Career Readiness, and Dr. Mike Starosky, Assistant Superintendent for Academics.

Tonight's presentation, I'll begin by summarizing our theory of action for both goals before sharing the results from our Fall 2024 MAP assessment, and that's Measures of Academic Progress.

I will then conclude by recapping what the data is telling us and how it's informing the strategies and actions we are taking to achieve both goals.

Next slide, please.

So our theory of action, beginning with the impact on the far right, is to increase the proportion of students achieving grade level proficiency on the SBA, and that's the smarter balance assessment.

Working backwards to the left, we'll be able to achieve that impact as more teachers deliver high quality, standards aligned, culturally responsive instruction.

Teachers will be able to do that when they are given ongoing job-embedded professional learning and support grounded in student data and research based on instructional, research-based instructional practices.

Also, ongoing professional learning and support is in turn enabled by our district's investment in the following.

high-quality curriculum and assessments, a focus on improving a limited number of instructional priorities a year, instructional coaching and dedicated time each month for teachers to engage in professional learning communities, and finally, strong instructional leaders who create the conditions for professional growth.

Those investments are in turn enabled by our system's leadership ability to, one, articulate a clear, coherent, and actionable vision of instructional excellence that is maintained over many years, and two, to align the central office's work across departments to enable system-wide continuous improvement.

One of the things I've been saying since I've been superintendent is that central office exists to support schools.

And that's been very intentional so that the support that we provide schools for instruction is meaningful, relevant, and timely.

So if we go to slide four, let's turn the focus of tonight's conversation to third grade reading and seventh grade math.

Given there's a positive correlation that we've talked about between the fall MAP scores and predicted proficiency on the SBA, so that's really important that we ground ourselves in the different assessments that we're doing.

So as we monitor the interim assessments, excuse me, interim measures for support in achieving our top line goals, it's always a comparison to map in the fall and then map in the spring.

So for tonight, for third grade reading, We'll be reporting on our first interim measure, which is the percentage of black boys who, based on the fall third grade map reading assessment, are projected to achieve proficiency on the third grade smarter balance assessment the following spring.

And for our seventh grade math, we will also be reporting on our first interim measure of the percentage of black boys and teens who, based on the fall seventh grade map assessment, are predicted to achieve proficiency on the seventh grade smarter balance assessment the following spring.

And so you all received memos, and as a result, I'm going to proceed with a brief overview of the executive summary before sharing the data and discussing what we are seeing with our interim measures, starting with third grade reading.

So next slide, please.

So in summary, 25.7% of third grade African-American males are projected to achieve proficiency on the ELA, English language assessment portion of the SBA in spring 2025. This is representing a 6.5 percentage point decline from fall of 2023. 39.4% of third grade students of color furthest from educational justice are projected to achieve a proficiency on the ELA proportion of the smarter balance assessment in spring 2025, representing a 4.2% decrease from fall 2023. In the targeted schools, year-over-year declines amongst African-American males and students of color furthest from educational justice were four percentage points and one percentage point.

So if we go to slide seven, as you can see on slide seven here, maybe not on your screen but in your packet, As previously stated in my executive summary, we're seeing year-over-year declines for African-American males and students of color furthest from educational justice projected to achieve proficiency on the ELA portion of the SBA in spring 2025. I will also note that 22% of our multilingual learners are projected to achieve a proficiency on the ELA proportion of the SBA in spring 2025, representing a 1.4% decline from fall 2023. And 44.2% of students with IEPs are projected to achieve proficiency on the ELA proportion of the SBA in spring 2025, which represents a 5.7 point increase from fall 23. So hopefully you all have had a chance to kind of look through these data.

It's very telling as to where we are.

And with that, I'll move forward and have some discussion of these student outcomes.

So when we talk about the cohort analysis and fall map reading from second through fifth grade on slide eight, I'd like to take a step back from the specific data point being discussed and look at the overall trajectory for certain cohorts, which you will see here on the slide eight, which shows an upward trend in ELA proficiency.

What you see here are different cohorts of students as they are tested in the spring and fall from second to third grade.

So for example, the orange line are our current fourth graders.

You can see their map results at each point in time, beginning on the far left when they are tested as second graders, and then moving right through the spring of their second grade year, then as third graders until their most recent map tests this fall as fourth graders.

The gray line represents fifth graders and the yellow AND THE YELLOW CURRENT SIXTH GRADERS.

THE BLUE LINE IS OUR CURRENT THIRD GRADERS.

NOW, MAP WAS CONSISTENTLY ADMINISTERED ACROSS OUR SYSTEM STARTING ONLY IN THE 22-23 SCHOOL YEAR.

SO WE DON'T HAVE COMPLETE LONGITUDINAL DATA FOR ALL THESE COHORTS.

NONETHELESS, YOU CAN SEE A CONSISTENT PATTERN OF PERFORMANCE EMERGING AT EACH OF THESE POINTS IN TIME.

Except for this past fall, where you see the current third grade students represented in the blue line starting to diverge from other cohorts.

That gap is what represents the year over year decline in MAP scores for grade three.

What this view of the data shows is not only that last spring when they were second graders, there was virtually no gap between these students and the prior cohort.

But for some reason, over the summer, a gap did emerge.

This may indicate a need to boost enrollment and expanded learning over the summer.

We confirmed in our analysis that demographic differences between cohort was not a factor in the year over year change.

While that gap did emerge over the summer, it is critical that we help schools get students back on track.

And if we go to slide nine, Thank you.

Also, with the year-over-year drop as a concern, we're confident that job-embedded systems of instructional improvement that we've been building over the last several years equips schools to monitor these kinds of data changes at the building level and develop the appropriate instructional responses.

These systems include multi-tiered systems of support, MTSS, curriculum embedded assessments, the early literacy principle network, regular teacher professional learning communities, we call those PLCs, and instructional coaching.

In addition, at our targeted schools this year, we have expanded the number of third grade teachers using adopted instructional materials for the writing about reading project, and we'll be training multilingual and special education support staff on those in January, which will be aligned with our efforts to focus on inclusionary practices.

More generally, we know that schools are able to achieve consistent improvement over time when their principals are strong instructional leaders, when teachers engage in regular instructional coaching and PLCs, everyone is aligned around the common adopted instructional materials, improvement efforts are bite-sized and focused, and data about student learning is put at the center of everything the school does.

So that concludes talking about third grade reading, third grade literacy.

I'd like to now transition to our second goal of seventh grade math.

So like third grade reading, I'm going to begin with the executive summary before reviewing the data.

The percentage of seventh grade students furthest from educational justice projected to meet the standard levels of third and fourth on the 2025 spring smarter balance assessment based on the 2024 fall map assessment has increased from 34.6% IN FALL 2023 TO 40.4% IN FALL 2024. SO ALMOST A 5% INCREASE.

THE PERCENTAGE OF SEVENTH GRADE AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE STUDENTS PROJECTED TO MEET STANDARDS, AND THAT'S LEVEL 3 AND 4 ON THE 2025 SPRING MATH SMARTER BALANCE ASSESSMENT BASED ON fall 2024 map assessment has also increased from 23.5% in fall 2023 to 33.2% in fall 2024. That's almost a 10% increase.

And for our six targeted schools, we have seen an increase from 12.9% to 27.5% of African-American male students projected to meet Smarter Balanced Assessment math based on the fall MAP test.

Almost a 15% increase.

So we go to slide 12. Fall 2024 MAP assessments results show a positive trend in all subgroups of students projected to meet proficiency in spring 2025. And we can see similar positive trends of African-American males and students of color furthest from educational justice with an increase of 7.9% from 10.3% to 18.2% for seventh grade students receiving multilingual services and an increase of 7.7% from 30.9% to 38.6% for our students receiving special education services.

So if we go on to slide 13, Since our last progress monitoring update, we've asked our instructional coaches to synthesize what have they learned about schools and educators who have shown growth in the fall MAP scores.

And their insights include the following.

One is strong school leadership and an instructional vision for the school that supports the seventh grade math goal.

We've also used formative data consistently, such as curriculum embedded assessments, student work leads to learning more about students and informing instructional planning.

Also, partnering with families through frequent outreach and math engagement opportunities.

We also noted that participating in instructional coaching on mathematical discourse and belonging in the classroom was important.

AND THEN THE LAST TWO ITEMS THAT HAD AN IMPACT WERE INCREASING OPPORTUNITIES AND QUALITY OF STUDENT DISCOURSE ABOUT MATHEMATICS AND SUPPORTING STUDENTS IN PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE IN LEARNING NEW CONTENT AND USING SUCCESSMAKER AS AN INTERVENTION TOOL.

NEXT SLIDE PLEASE.

SO BEFORE I TRANSITION TO THE BOARD FOR QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION, I want to conclude by thanking the board for providing a framework for which we can monitor how frequently we can monitor frequently how our students are doing.

And by establishing a robust assessment of portfolio measures and implementing curriculum embedded assessments, our system is now able to better understand student learning, which in turn helps to inform our teaching and learning practices and ultimately improve student outcomes.

We'll now transition to questions and discussions, and I'm going to turn it over to President Rankin to lead that, so thank you so much.

Thank you.

I'm actually, oops, sorry, I'm still getting used to using these.

I will pass it over to Director Briggs to facilitate in just a moment, but I just...

was thinking about, and this is not something that has to get answered now, but we just approved a progress monitoring report, or a progress monitoring calendar that I'm guessing we may need to revisit once we have the new interim measures and kind of know what those might be and when it might be best to monitor them.

But we really should, this is a lot of information.

We should be aiming for one goal a session.

I'm not gonna fault us for overachieving here, But generally, we want to monitor one goal monthly.

So that would be one interim and either or.

But like I said, we'll see when we have the new interims, what might make the most sense in terms of the timing.

But I would imagine that we might want to revisit the calendar.

Yeah, we'd be more than happy to make that adjustment.

Okay, great.

And then other thing I was thinking about is I think the most useful pieces of the, we have the reports and the presentation, and actually I don't know that we need much more than what's in the presentation.

I think the executive summary is really helpful.

But what we really want to focus on is what is the current reality for our students?

and then what strategies may or may not change.

The other information about inputs and whatnot are things that if we're all doing our homework, we should be keeping up on.

So I don't want to have you all have to produce duplicative work, especially when we need to read ahead of time, which brings me to my last point, which is we've made a commitment as a board to try to, in the interest of using our time together well, try to differentiate between technical and tactical versus strategic.

Technical and tactical questions can be asked between meetings or in writing just to save time.

And it's the strategic questions that we want to be focusing on here, which are things that we need to be able to discuss together.

In order for us to maintain our commitment though to that effective time use, we need these sooner than the Friday before our meeting.

We really need these 10 days ahead when the material posts for the meeting.

And then also I will say that, so because we didn't get this far enough in advance, I'm not gonna fault anyone for maybe having a tactical question come up that they didn't have a chance to think about and submit ahead of time.

And then also, I have, unless I missed it, we haven't received the responses to technical and tactical questions that we have asked in other monitoring sessions that there's been a commitment to.

We'll get that, we'll answer that in writing later to the board.

We haven't actually seen those.

So, we need a mechanism that we can all rely on to make sure that If we ask them here and don't get the answers here, we are getting the answers.

So that's just a little bit of, I guess, administrative housekeeping and also keeping us all, you know, we want to use our time well and focus it on the strategies for students.

So I will now pass it over to Director Briggs to facilitate and we can use this method again.

Okay.

I see Director Hersey's got a question.

A statement and a couple questions, if that's okay.

I don't want to skirt past the fact that the growth and projected growth that we're seeing in math is pretty phenomenal.

I think that as one of the folks that kind of like brought this system here, It's evidence that it takes a minute for things to take, right?

That being said, the question that I have is, given that we're seeing this substantive projected growth in math versus a substantive decline in reading, From y'all's vantage point, what is the difference in administration of the strategies and why are we seeing opposite impacts in our math instruction as opposed to our reading instruction?

And I have a couple of follow-ups depending on the answer to that question.

So I'll take the first crack at it.

And team, feel free to jump in.

I think we have stronger systems in middle school in terms of how it's all working together.

I think we have much more fidelity of implementation.

And I think there's also been a strong foundation that our students are starting from.

in elementary, so by the time they get to middle school, they're in good position to take advantage of what they learn.

But I do think it's more about the systems, the adopted standards-based curriculum, the multi-tiered system of support, the using data to inform instruction.

I think there's more experience with that and a little more Yeah, I think we've had two or three more years of experience with the math pieces.

But if my colleagues want to add in, please do.

Let's just keep a conversation between the superintendent and the board for now and then if we have, if there's other things that staff want to add, that would be great to get after the fact in writing.

Okay.

Do you have a follow-up?

I do.

And so Dr. Jones, in concert with that, and to be clear, that makes perfect sense to me.

I guess my outlying question is, given the fact that both seventh grade and second grade, or rather, students going into seventh grade and students going into third grade, those are both significant transitions in their own way.

what I'm trying to understand is, have you all identified any particular occurrences or outliers about this specific cohort that falls outside of instruction that could be impacting the gap?

And just framing that question, as we all know, there's been a lot of, you know, I think a fair word is turmoil, specifically in elementary schools, given that we have moved around with what our plan for closures might be.

That is not gospel.

I'm just saying, as an example.

I'm wondering, from y'all's vantage point, being the ones who are communicating with buildings on a regular basis, or Taking into consideration that I believe if a child is in second grade, or rather in third grade this year, that means that they've been with us for four years, which means that they started school during the pandemic.

Correct.

Are we seeing any other impacts that may potentially be attributed to the depth that we're seeing?

Yes, and if you can go back to slide eight, And this gap, that gap that we're seeing right there, this year over year dip that we saw in fall 2023 in grade three, we think it's partly because of the impacts from the pandemic, but this is also the place where we're studying right now.

These data are really important for us to really dive in deeper to see, okay, what's really impacting that?

We could say the pandemic, but there's pieces to the pandemic.

I think this is more around our recovery efforts and our implementation of our strategies and doing it in a strong and coherent way.

And I don't think we've had this much opportunity to do that with this group given what they went through during the pandemic.

That tracks for me because as a teacher, what's coming to my mind is that if you're looking at 2019, right, those students, if I'm not mistaken, still had the foundational experience of kindergarten in class, right?

That's correct.

And if we're looking at this particular cohort, the chances that they had that are low, right?

Or they went to a different educational environment, potentially came back.

We could pontificate and speculate about all those things.

But what this says to me is that the foundational pieces of literary instruction, which kind of speaks to the goal that we're adopting in second grade, right, hopefully, are incredibly critical to the point to where, as we continue to go through this process, really thinking about how do the experiences in K, one, and two impact what our ultimate goal is for whatever the grade might be that we're measuring, right?

Because what I would imagine is that unless there's something significant that happens in between, and y'all have talked a little bit about like the fact that this, you know, we noticed this dip specifically during the summer.

I think that like the fact that we're moving from learning to read to reading to learn is a big indicator, right?

So I don't know personally, and I would love to hear at some point whether it's responding in writing or talking at this moment, like, How much of it do you actually think is like summer slide, which there's data that says maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

And how much of that do you think it is the innate transition to the model that we are using to measure progress and growth?

Let me try to rephrase that question into something more clear.

I guess my, the first part of that question is, are we utilizing the same measure in second grade to measure preparedness as we are in third grade?

Like it's the same structure of testing.

Is that accurate?

Or no?

That is accurate.

Okay.

Given that, I'm still trying to parse out, and what I would love to see in writing at the appropriate time is if you look at this cohort, what could potentially be some outlying factors that are impacting them, because this drop is statistically significant in my eyes, and how are we going to catch them up?

Yeah, so a couple things.

One is a positive outlier is that 44.2% of our students with IEPs are seeing a 5.7% increase.

And so what that suggests to us is that our MTSS work is effective there.

Our inclusionary work is effective there.

How we're utilizing adults in the classroom is effective.

We're doing push in instead of pull out.

So I think we may be seeing some of the fruits of our labor from those efforts.

And so I think there's some positive outliers that we can learn from as we go through this.

So it's kind of disrupting our thinking because we were trying to look at, oh, is it the summer slide?

How are we seeing significant increase with our students with IEPs?

And so we're still kind of learning and walking through this to try to understand it better ourselves.

Right.

So that actually just triggered another question.

I swear I'm going to be quick.

It's all good.

I love the fact that you brought that up, because what that says to me is that interventions and individualized instruction works, right?

That's pretty clear.

How do we, in the vein of targeted universalism, take those aspects that we know are working, and through MTSS or whatever structure y'all are hanging your hat on, how do we provide that type of experience to as many students as possible within the resource constraints that we have at this moment?

Is it possible, and do you need anything to change from the board's perspective to make that happen, right?

Because here's where I'm getting with this.

You just told me that students with IEPs and individualized instruction plans are actually increasing when we have our general population of students who are decreasing.

What I want to know is how I'm...

Is that right?

Okay.

Tell me if I'm wrong.

Okay.

What I want to know is what changes in our funding and our budget conversations do we need to make in order to give more support to this particular cohort, right?

That is the type of, I would say, intertwining of our progress monitoring and our budget conversations as we enter those in the next few weeks.

I want to know specifically what are my options to let go of potentially to incorporate more of the strategies that you're seeing clearly are working at this level for some students to as many students as possible.

So a couple of responses to that.

Well, one singular response, actually.

My last three school visits were to Beacon Hill, Lowell, and Sanisloe.

And what I saw that was effective at each one is they had adults with very clear roles function seamlessly with each other.

And so they were, and those school leaders and those school teams were maximizing every adult's time, talent, and treasure in a way that was powerful.

And so the way they were implementing MTSS, the way they were doing push in, the way they had groupings of students was powerful.

So if we see budget requests come through to support those type of interventions or practices I think that's where we're going to see dynamic changes and so Lowell in particular was a is a an early adopter of the what's what are they priority school and but they're there along with Gatewood there Yeah, they're part of the UDL cohort.

And so the universal design learning cohort, we're starting to see a dedicated resource to help them to have consistency and predictability.

So I think that's an other piece for the job embedded professional development.

So requests for, one, focused adult supports that are strategic, and then the professional development for UDL and these inclusive practices, I think you would see, I think if I was advising a board, I'd say analyze our budget for those type of things that'll go along with our strategy.

I don't know if I fully, okay, great, thank you.

Okay, so I have a couple of questions.

So when I look at the top four points of the executive summary, while it's great to see an increase in proficiency of student with IEPs, I wonder when we break that down if that's attributed mostly to white students or if that includes students of color with IEPs.

an increase is great, but who we're trying to focus on and who is clearly experiencing decline are African-American males, students of color furthest from educational justice and multilingual learners who are more likely than not also students of color.

If those students also have IEPs and are not included in the increase, that to me says more about white students than it does about IEPs.

and how our system is or isn't serving students of color.

So I'm curious about that, if we were to break down the IEP data, if that shows a correlation along racial demographics or not.

It's still positive.

But, yeah.

And then I noticed that across all schools, those that enroll smaller proportions of African American males and students furthest from educational justice declined faster, which I'm really interested in, because then later it says that nothing emerged as a major factor, but if there was a more significant decline where there's a smaller population, that seems to me to be a factor of some kind.

So I would like to know more about what we attribute that to and what we could maybe do to address it.

Is that a function of having many, many elementary schools that are under enrolled?

Is that a function or not of having staff spread very thinly and having students be sort of in isolated pockets instead of with a bit larger community?

I don't know, but I certainly would like to, especially if you notice that that data point.

And then I'm wondering about, I guess, and this is also as we move into talking about the strategic plan, may signal an increasing need for expanded learning during the summer months.

I think I would be more, I mean, I think that's probably a great solution, but with the next bullet point saying nothing emerged as a major factor in the decline, I would be concerned with the suggestion of a solution when we haven't identified the problem.

So my question after all of that is the analysis of demographic changes and test taking participation rates not indicating anything.

I would assume that maybe there's more happening at the school base level.

And I wonder if you all Think there's more to look at there?

I mean, for me basically saying there's a significant decline but we don't know why, to me says we still need to figure out why.

So what's the next step in this into figuring out the current reality for our students where this cohort declined and is projected to continue upon that for the spring SBAC.

what can be done between now and then to change that.

President Rankin, you have some really astute observations here.

And I believe you're talking about what is racial equity 2.0 in Seattle Public Schools.

And I think we're talking about access to consistency, access to the high leverage strategies, the consistency in that.

And so I think as we look at the differences here and why is there deviance between these different groups, I'm thinking as we dig deeper into this, we're going to see that certain students have higher access to the best MTSS practices, the best UDL practices, the best high leverage teaching practices.

And so as we think about the next iteration of our strategic planning, I think we're really talking about access to the best of the best that we have to offer.

And I don't know if we have clarity.

Well, I know we don't have clarity yet as to which students get that, at which schools, how that manifests.

But I think that's what we're seeing is a little bit of inconsistency between school to school to school.

And that may be broken down demographically.

It may be broken down based on income.

We're not sure yet, but I think you've raised the ideal question around the intersectionality of all those pieces, and I think that's our next step as we step into this strategic plan to look at, again, access to consistent and predictable tier one practices.

I think that's the key.

Is this on?

Oh, yeah?

Okay.

Is that all for you, President Rankin?

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

I don't see anybody else's name tag put to the side, so does that mean there are no...

I have a question, but I'll go last.

Oh, okay.

Do you have a question too, Joe?

Oh, okay, okay.

You want to?

Yeah, I just wanted to agree that disaggregating the racial demographic data from the IEP data would be very interesting for future reports.

Yeah.

We'll get on that.

We have those data.

We'll just enter them into our next report.

Yes.

Okay, Director Clark.

Oops, I turned my mic off.

Director Clark.

Thanks.

I think I had a similar question to Joe, but is it possible for us to map school by school which students are receiving access to these supports and which ones aren't, or is that too granular?

It's not too granular, and that's what we're doing internally.

We have it broken down just as you've talked about it.

I don't know if it's just a limitation of the six pages that we have, but I think we can figure out an elegant way to enter that into here if that's of interest to the board, for sure.

I mean, I feel like that would be important information for us to have as we go into strategic planning and budget conversations.

Thank you.

And Director Clark, if I may follow up, by asking that, can you go deeper on the question that you want to, that you're trying to tease out?

Because we want to be responsive, ultimately.

And if you don't have that answer now, that's fine.

I don't think I necessarily have.

I guess my question is more around, yeah, are we equitably distributing our resources?

And if not, how can we balance things out to ensure that that our students who need more investment are getting the investment they need.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

And as we're in year zero of kind of doing our diagnostic work, those are the type of things when we start to talk about programmatic service mix we want to be looking at.

So thank you for that question.

President Rankin.

This is so not a strategic question and really not allowable, but I can't, I, so you don't have to answer it, but all of these different things that were examined that nothing emerged, exploring a range of possible other factors, teacher tenure, teacher objectism, la, la, la, la.

I feel like teachers and students and families would probably be able to tell you why they think they're having challenges and they're just not represented here.

So that was really an unallowable question, but in terms of like I don't see how we can even talk about trying to determine the factors when the people who are the closest, who are the students themselves and who are the closest to the students Like they might be able to say, oh yeah, this major change happened at our school and we know exactly why this led to a challenge in reading instruction.

I mean, they also might not know, but we need to ask them.

Ask your question because you said it's not technical or maybe technical or strategic, but I want to actually try to walk through it.

Well, in trying to ask, you know, in trying to look at what the current reality is for our students and hear from you all what you're thinking about in terms of addressing it, Where is talking to teachers and students and families about, you know, it says nothing emerged as a major factor, but Why don't you ask that?

Let me give you an example.

So I mentioned I just had school visits and I was talking to Chelsea, principal at Lowell.

And one of the things that she prides herself on and the staff is consistency.

And when they have substitutes or they have people on long-term leaves, it impacts their consistency.

So when we start talking about teacher absenteeism or IA's not being there, it kind of impacts their ability to do their work.

We don't know in the aggregate what those are yet.

I mean, so we need to continue to break those down.

So when we say nothing emerges yet, we haven't really gotten to kind of the bottom line or the root cause analysis for some of these.

So some schools may have different needs.

I know at Lowell, for example, Chelsea was talking about consistency is their currency.

And that is the thing that is most valuable to her and their team as they deliver services.

And they have a very diverse population in multiple ways.

And so I think for that particular school, it's around consistency, so when we start naming all those different things, it could be multiples of those, or some schools may have a greater impact with just one of those factors, but that's the work we're doing right now, so I appreciate the question.

Okay, seeing no other questions, I'm gonna ask my question.

Oh, oh, sorry, I'm so sorry.

Colin, I didn't see that from down here.

Please, go ahead.

Well, OK.

President Rankin kind of beat me to it, because I didn't know if I could ask it.

It is more technical.

Because when I look at these, when I read through all of these, I see a lot of numbers.

And we love numbers.

And when I hear you talking, it's a lot of that.

But during your diagnostic period here that we're going into, how much time are you going to spend on those less numbery, more talking to people things, talking to your students, talking to your teachers, talking to your parents, to make sure that we are, because a lot of the questions that are being posed of we don't know, I feel like can be answered partially when you just ask someone.

And it will look different for school to school.

I understand that.

But what will that look like?

Is that going to happen?

So I think this is worthy of a response.

And if any of my colleagues here, can you talk about the PLN work, the PLC work, those type of work, those type of efforts where we have forums, where we're getting data from those on the front lines who are actually doing that work?

Because I think that's a missing piece that's not articulated here.

So if you all could just give some highlights.

I don't know if they can give highlights, but just saying that there is missing pieces here that

was that might be enough just if you say there is stuff it's just not here that is that's an answer to my question I I would suggest just in the interest of time that I think that's a great question and and I think everybody's interested in the answer to it so if that could be included in the written responses that get sent to all of the board including the student board members that would be I think the best most efficient way to get that question answered

Okay, some of that is already in the memo, but we'll get more specific.

President Rankin.

I have one more, and it is a strategic question.

As the various things that So what I'm hearing is that you all have identified that strong instructional leadership in the principal is one of the best, like is Lowell and, what was the other school that you said?

I just happen to have...

Well, in Gatewood that have been some of the strongest aligned to the UDL and MTSS implementation, the students that attend those schools, do they represent, the African-American males and students of color, do students at those schools represent a departure from the decline overall?

Was there less of a decline at those schools at Gatewood and Lowell?

I don't know those specifically.

We may have those data, but demographically, I don't have that right now.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because what I'm hearing is sort of a vague statement that that leadership is really important for the success of students.

So if that's the case, I would expect strong instructional leadership on the part of the principal to be a pretty powerful strategy that we should be investing in.

So we do believe strong instructional leadership is one of the keys.

And we've kind of said that throughout.

And regardless if you're at the UDL early adopter schools or some of the schools that we're seeing really good outcomes, you're seeing strong instructional leadership.

And so that's really around the consistency of the practices.

That's really focusing on data.

That's really providing the type of timely, relevant, professional development that's necessary.

And so I think you'll see that comment to any of these schools that we're seeing positive growth.

I don't know if that's the answer.

Well, no, I guess I'm wondering if you've identified that that is meaningful in terms of the outcomes.

would we not expect to see that investing in principle support and implementation of these best practices is a strategy that is worth pursuing and investing in instead of leaving it up to what people feel like.

I don't know because I can't tell if, you know, correlation causation It feels like you're saying that those two schools are outliers and that that is important.

And so to me, I wonder why there's not, that would be a strategy, ensuring that principals are implementing these best practices.

And the investment in that would be in the accountability and support from central office.

No, you cannot.

My question is sort of tangentially related, so I wonder if it makes sense to just pile on.

The increase in math proficiency for seventh grade is awesome and really positive and and i'm wondering about these high leverage strategies that that we know are working or that we believe are the reason behind the improvement that we are seeing and what what do you see dr jones as the barriers to widespread implementation of those strategies so taking um like to Liza's point that like we do have a really decentralized system where every school is kind of doing its own thing.

So how do we create a system where we can implement these strategies with fidelity across the entire district?

The things that we know are working.

How do we do the implementation part of that is my question.

Yeah, so

We've been talking about having instructional coaching.

We've been talking about PLCs, common adopted curriculum, doing that across the board.

And so we know that there's been, we have an adopted system-wide curriculum.

Now we've done that.

We're a couple years in.

So we're starting to see that happen.

One of the pieces that we've talked about is curriculum embedded assessments.

We've done that intermittently.

Now we're seeing that consistently.

We're seeing that at about 80% across the board for all of our schools.

So that consistency in terms of using the assessment calendar, making sure that you have job embedded professional development, making sure you have coaching, you're looking at data.

When we see those things happen consistently across the board, then we'll start to see, that's our theory of action, we'll start to see those results.

And so I think if we were to go back two or three years, we'd see a lot of deviance in terms of, are people using the same standards-based curriculum?

Now we're seeing across the board, everyone is using that curriculum.

Now they're even making some reasonable and reasonable relevant demands on central office that how can we have those in different languages?

You know, some of it doesn't consider some of the diverse needs of our learners.

So now they're starting to inappropriately interrogate our curriculum saying, okay, this is where there's gaps in it.

And so I think we move from some diversity of how we were doing it to some consistency.

Now we're starting to see people leverage the tools and I think that's the key as we move forward.

So it's always been about fidelity of implementation and it's always been about consistent practices, scope and sequence, just making sure that everyone knows we're on the same page.

So when I talk about all those things and we start talking about instructional, strong instructional leadership from a building perspective, those school leaders that have all those together and can look at all of those in the aggregate and implement those, I think, again, that's where you'll see the strong gains.

And the converse of that is if they're done kind of intermittently, I think we won't see gains.

And in fact, it could be we could have the equal and opposite impact.

President Rankin, back to you.

Thanks.

Sorry.

I have two more questions.

As we're moving towards the strategic plan, I would like to see what you all are going to do, what the strategies are from central office to increase the presence of learning environments where the things that Dr. Jones was just talking about exist.

It still feels kind of like we'll just kind of see if it happens or not, but when we're talking about strategies, that's the strategies that we want to see.

What is happening here to make the implementation and the consistency a reality for more students, not based on if it just happens to be there or not, but based on what actions happen here.

And then when is the next time that this, the reading goal is being monitored?

February.

February?

Okay.

So I'll just say that in that monitoring session, I hope that we're talking about what changed between now and then for those students.

So in response to your statement about the strategic plan, we should see a strategic plan that looks like a coordinated set of implementation plans.

And so that's how all these things should be manifesting.

That's gonna be kind of the difference between our past strategic plan and this strategic plan.

Our past strategic plan was a set of extraordinarily brilliant ideas and visions.

This strategic plan should be a set of strategies and how they're going to be implemented with timelines, with monitoring along the way in a way that we haven't seen before.

But I think this is going to be the difference between the Seattle Excellence Plan, which was ideal and everybody saw it across the nation and thought it was fantastic and it still is.

Now we're moving into a strategic plan that should speak to how are we going to implement each one of these strategies over time.

And so that's what it should look like.

Director Clark.

All right, thanks.

I guess kind of piggybacking off of where President Rankin was going and Director Bragg about, you know, trying to identify, deeper identify some of the gaps that we're seeing as far as whether it's instruction with fidelity or teacher absences or trying to identify some of the causes.

I'm curious if, like, I'm thinking about the budget and curious if funding for some kind of broader qualitative study where we can actually bring people on to go into schools and have those conversations with students and families or surveys or whatever the methodology might be, is something that you think would be helpful when we're looking at the budget or the strategic plan?

So that's my first question.

Yeah, so one of the things that we're doing in support of that is a resource allocation study to see where are our resources going and are they having the right impact.

But I also was remiss in not affirming that any time that we can generate, get to talk to those who are closest to the work, to understand what some of their challenges and barriers are and opportunities is always a good thing.

So if we have those opportunities, we should take them early and often.

If we can be more strategic and intentional about it by using some third party to come in and help us to do some analysis, that's great too.

But I don't want to run by the fact that talking to those who are closest to the work is powerful in terms of us understanding it.

I mean, there's evidence-based things that we talk about all the time.

There's research-based.

There's promising practices, but how it manifests at the point of service delivery, educational delivery, you can't get better data than that.

So I didn't really touch on that, but I just wanted to affirm that that's a really important thing, talking about what President Rankin and Director Bragg were speaking to.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And then my second question, there's a point here, I'm looking at the third grade reading progress monitoring memo on page two.

The point that says this may signal an increasing need for expanded learning during the summer months.

And I see a note here that about a fifth of students for this from educational justice participated in summer school.

I'm wondering, did those one fifth of students that participated in summer school see an increase in their scores?

Is that...

I wasn't here, I'm just trying to better understand that data.

Yeah, the answer is yes.

I can't speak to the specificity of it, but there are, we did see in the aggregate, yes.

And one thing I want to say about summer school, that's kind of recovery and catch up.

we want to really try to embed during our 180 days the best of practices we can have.

But for some of those students that we haven't served them well enough, I think summer school is certainly an opportunity to try to bring them back up to standard.

Great.

Thank you.

Any last questions?

Okay.

I think we're done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Directors and superintendent, we are going to stay here at the tables for this next item before we move back to the dais for public testimony.

We have a fairly hefty report, thank you, which we're not going to go through all of it right now.

This is just intended to provide a touch point and an update from Moss Adams about this work and there's much more for us to do in the future and not right now in this moment.

So from Moss Adams, we are joined by Colleen Rosillas here in person and Annie Rose Favreau remotely for their presentation of the completed governance assessment for Seattle Public Schools.

If you'll remember, in June, we voted to contract with Moss Adams to support the board's work to implement a policy governance model.

started work in 2021 in the adoption of this model and have faced some significant challenges to implementation.

So we asked for Moss Adams to come and support us with the in-depth kind of investigation of what's moving, what's not moving, why, and then what can we do about it?

So this is...

very much aligned with, this shouldn't be a dramatic surprise to anybody, but very, very helpful to see it all laid out here and give us a path forward as we continue to implement and improve our practices as a board and our direction to the district into the coming year and beyond.

So Dr. Jones has a comment or two, I think?

And then we'll go to Colleen and Annie Rose.

So thank you, President Rankin.

I think this is really important that we're doing this work.

We're talking about creating effective governance so we can have clear, predictable metrics.

We can have clarity in terms of our goals, clarity in terms of our roles.

And if we recall the last strategic plan, we kind of retrofitted our goals and guardrails on top of the last strategic plan.

This is our opportunity through this effective governance that we can do this in advance and we can do it in the right order.

And so the last thing I want to just state is we're doing a lot of diagnostic work, as I've talked about, in year zero.

One of the areas that we're doing is governance.

My role as a superintendent is around implementation so this work that's helping us diagnose where we have gaps is tremendous and is valuable to us as we move forward and so I'm grateful for the opportunity to look at you know what is what's the board's role vis-a-vis the superintendent's role bring that clarity forward it's going to help us as we again do our diagnostic work getting ready for the next strategic plan so so thank you

And just to add to that too, in terms of the board role versus superintendent role, the strategic plan, the board is the owner of the top line goals and guardrails.

Once we adopt those in January, we are not part of this, I mean, we'll be in conversation about it and want to know about it and I'm sure want to, you know, be invited or be present to different community conversations, but once we set our goals, the development of the strategic plan is 100% the responsibility of the superintendent, which means that for the next five or six months, we have some time to dedicate to the recommendations that are in here about governance that, you know, obviously align.

But, you know, the heavy lift of the board for strategic plan is getting the goals and guardrails set.

we kind of, we don't have a role to play in governance specifically until we receive recommendations and evaluate whether or not we want to accept them for the plan.

So, I will turn it over to Colleen and Andy Rose.

I'm gonna take both microphones.

I'll start with this one.

Okay, good afternoon everyone, my name is Colleen Rosillas, I'm a partner at Moss Adams and I'm our firm's government national practice leader and I provided quality assurance and oversight on this project.

I've worked with the district since about 2017 and my colleague Annie Rose Favreau who's joining us virtually from beautiful Bakersfield, California, oversaw this project and led the analysis.

If you could go to the next slide please.

Tonight we're gonna give just a quick overview of this work to allow you time to ask questions.

I do want to know like other assessments in this type of work will be coming back to the audit committee.

There will be regular progress reporting.

The district has already put together a draft implementation plan.

So you'll be able to continue to engage with this through the audit committee process like all the other assessment work across the district.

So next up, I just have a quick overview of our background.

In 2017, the board commissioned a study, if you could go to the next slide, please, related to operational efficiency within the teaching and learning function of the district.

And one of the recommendations in that study was to align governance practices with a policy governance model, which is a best practice in the public sector.

In 2021, the board adopted student outcomes focused governance, which is a policy governance framework.

And our objective was to assess where the district is in implementing policy governance.

Our main objective was really to look at those rules and responsibilities, how far are we along on this path within the school board, those that directly support the school board, the superintendent's office, district staff, And then we also looked at kind of that big picture of what is the school board responsible for?

What does governance mean?

So it's not just the operations in these meetings, but it includes progress monitoring, it includes risk management and compliance.

And so we wanted to look at that holistically.

As part of our work, we benchmarked the district against other districts that had adopted either student outcomes focused governance or policy governance.

And then we provided recommendations on how to get closer to the district's goals.

On the next slide, we show our methodology.

So we conducted interviews with folks across the district from building leaders to folks in the superintendent's cabinet, all the way through to board members.

We reviewed a lot of documents, including board meeting minutes, data, tools and templates, all of those sorts of things.

As I mentioned before, we did peer benchmarking and also research into industry standards and best practices.

And then we put all that together to make some recommendations and we worked with staff to make sure that those recommendations were practical and implementable.

It's really important for us in a resource constrained public sector environment that we're looking for things that actually can be implemented.

And so that's hopefully what you will see in the robust report that we provided.

Before we get into the meat of our findings, I did wanna give just a quick introduction to policy governance.

I know those of you who are on the board are quite familiar, but I think it's important as we're having this discussion in the public to be able to talk about this a little bit.

So a policy governance model is a best practice in the public sector and it identifies clear roles and responsibilities between the board and staff.

And it's really trying to focus the board on policies and goals.

So that essentially the what, so that the how is done by staff, the folks who are experts in their particular areas.

And performance is then assessed on quantitative measurement of progress.

Policy governance in the public sector is also characterized by strong connections to the community.

and their expectations should be reflected in goals and policies.

Student outcomes focus governance, as I mentioned before, is a policy governance framework.

It's been designed for education and the board adopted it three years ago.

So next up we have some commendations.

We always include some nice things in our report before we identify all the opportunities for improvement.

A couple of things that we want to highlight for this group, across the district we had folks at all levels really acknowledging that there was a need to improve governance and cultivate a culture that was focused on student outcomes, really using the governing body to help move the whole district forward.

And we also found a very strong commitment to student success.

We talked to folks, again, in buildings, all the way up to the board.

We were very impressed by the theme of student outcomes there.

I also want to acknowledge the environment that the district has operated in since this model was adopted in 2021. So it was adopted at the height of the pandemic.

There have been significant budget challenges.

There's been board and leadership turnover.

There are a lot of barriers to change.

And so the fact that there has been some progress is good.

Would we like to see more progress?

Yes.

But we think there's a lot of opportunity for additional progress and to build on the momentum that has been made so far.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Annie Rose, to cover our recommendations.

Thank you so much.

Can you hear me okay in the room?

Yes.

Great.

All right.

Well, then I'm going to quickly go through the recommendations.

We had our observations and recommendations broken into three sections, transition to policy governance, leadership engagement, and governance processes.

And there were two recommendations in that first section.

We first looked at implementation planning.

As Colleen mentioned, we know that the district adopted this model in early 2021, and there has been work at both the board and the management level to implement a variety of new practices, processes, reports, staffing structures to support this work and the various processes that come off of the governance model.

And a lot of that work has taken place in the past year.

However, we noted that there has not yet been a unified planning process that really outlines the work that is yet to be done at both the board and the management levels.

The recommendation here focuses on collaboratively developing that type of plan to guide the next set of implementation activities, and we hope that this report will also support that planning process.

The second area that we looked at with communication and change management That's because when you're implementing a new policy governance model, especially one like SOFG that has very specific ways of setting goals and reporting on data and incorporating community impact, all of which have operational implications, This can impact positions really across the district.

And so it's particularly important within contexts like this that there is very clear communication and that when things are changed, there's help to support folks through those changes.

And there's been a lot going on in the district since 2021. While the board has been fairly well brought along in this work in terms of training and coaching, we did find a wide variety of levels of understanding within different areas of the organization about policy governance and its practical implications.

While by no means everyone needs to be an expert in policy governance, we do need to make sure that staff, particularly those who support the specific related processes, that support SOFG and those who may be answering questions from the community have enough information to do that work well.

So the recommendation here is really related to developing that comprehensive communication and training plan that is tailored to different groups within the organization and in particular focusing on clearly documenting roles and responsibilities so that when employees have questions, they have a really clear point of contact within the organization.

If you go to the next slide, our second section focused on leadership engagement.

There are three recommendations here.

First, we're looking at board engagement and the board has made positive progress toward implementing this policy governance framework.

And there are still some challenges to ensuring that this framework is fully understood, but most importantly, regularly applied in a practical manner.

So the recommendation here is focused on continuing to enhance the board's effectiveness in applying that policy governance framework and doing that through things like continuing to receive coaching, regularly using the SOFG tools, continuing to improve communication, especially in terms of responding to constituent concerns, adopting tools like school visitation policies, and other things like that to make sure that there are appropriate methods both to understand and respond to constituents.

Because this framework really shifts some of those more traditional kind of constituent engagement activities.

In terms of central office engagement, the superintendent, the cabinet, other teams across the district are responsible not only for engaging with this work and kind of championing this model, especially in relation to the goals and guardrail structure and some of those related processes like data monitoring.

There has been some good progress on this front, but there's still varying degrees of engagement and understanding of this work.

The recommendation here focuses on continuing, I would say, those current efforts to clarify roles, incorporate responsibilities into standard practices like incorporating it into job descriptions, performance evaluation process, those types of things, and making full use of the relatively newer project management infrastructure and team that has been put into place that can really help move this work forward.

Finally, we also looked at board office support.

Right now, this team, there are several vacant roles and there's certainly a need for support because as all of you know, board roles are volunteers.

Some of the members of the board office support team currently split their time between board support and performing other tasks.

And what we learned here is that based on peer benchmarking data at least, there is not a singular best practice in terms of how to set up this team.

So we would recommend continuing and going in and assessing whether their current roles within the board office are fully aligned with the needs and the priorities of the board.

and specifically as part of that defining the responsibilities of each position and distinguishing which roles and which features of those roles support the board versus assisting superintendent cabinet members or performing other tasks to help reduce confusion and ensure that tasks can be focused on as they are received in priority order.

Then on our last slide, we have quite a few pieces here related to the governance process.

If you can go forward one slide.

So our last few recommendations are really focused on some of the processes that support this work.

So our first one, strategic planning and goal setting under the SOFG model, it's important that the strategic goals and guide rails are based in the needs of the community, as we have been discussing tonight, and for those goals to really cascade throughout the organization.

And the district is in the process of implementing this model as part of your most recent strategic planning work that is in the works right now.

There were good strides to offering more comprehensive opportunities for community input within that process.

So moving forward, the recommendation is to continue to expand those efforts and ensure that there's that strong stakeholder input.

especially also incorporating input from school level staff during the goal setting process and taking steps to establish a cascading goal structure.

So there's strong alignment between the priorities that are established in the strategic plan and those individual, for example, department operating plans.

Number seven, we looked at data and progress monitoring.

Again, as we saw earlier this evening, there are strides happening in terms of coming and presenting information and implementing new structures to support progress monitoring.

But there are some challenges here ensuring that data is collected, reported, and acted on in a timely manner.

So the recommendation focuses on ensuring that, for example, the accountability office has full access to the essential data that they need to productively monitor the work, exploring options to incorporate educator input into the data that is selected and used, and continuing those efforts to strengthen the review process to make sure that we're not only receiving this data, but actually taking action upon it and making shifts in strategy so that it can fully inform decision-making processes.

Accountability was another area that we looked at.

As we know, historically, the district has struggled to cultivate a culture of healthy accountability.

And that can get in the way of ensuring that district wide initiatives, including the policy governance framework, but certainly not limited to that and its related processes, making sure that those district wide initiatives are actually implemented.

And the district has a lot of the pieces in place to make this work happen, but there is still work to be done.

So the recommendation focuses on clarifying expectations, empowering the accountability office, and supporting consistent, equitable implementation of district initiatives like standardized curriculum and similar.

A big part of this is continuing to also strengthen the collaboration between central office and school-level staff to address mutual concerns and to continue to build trust in that area.

Compliance oversight was another area we looked at as part of the board governance role to provide oversight in this area.

We noted that the district has not yet established a centralized compliance function and instead individual departments and teams are responsible for various aspects of compliance monitoring and reporting.

And so with that kind of limited coordination, there may be risks of non-compliance and it's really challenging to see a holistic picture of compliance activities across the district.

So we would recommend establishing a compliance matrix, which is a tool that can help give you that holistic picture and considering creating a position to provide more of that centralized compliance oversight and coordination.

Finally, in terms of risk management, in the past, the district's risk management activities have often focused on operational or more tactical issues.

Right now, the risk management function is going through a period of transition.

You have a new risk manager that's refocusing this role to provide more strategic organization-wide risk management leadership.

And even with limited staff, we do want to note that the district has integrated many industry best practices within this space to strengthen its risk management framework, things like periodic enterprise risk assessments, maintaining a comprehensive risk register, providing risk updates on a quarterly basis to the audit committee, and I believe you're in the process of updating the district's risk register as well.

So the recommendation is to continue those efforts and continue to strengthen the enterprise risk management function and ensuring that that risk manager can have the appropriate resources so that they can operate at the strategic level.

So with that, I believe we can close out our presentation here and see what questions you may have.

I got questions.

Sorry.

Thank you very, very much.

Quick notes before we go to questions.

The implementation planning is something we've already undertaken.

That is in progress.

An implementation timeline.

A REFRESH OF WHAT WE HAD PREVIOUSLY THAT WILL DELINEATE BETWEEN BOARD RESPONSIBILITIES AND SUPERINTENDENT RESPONSIBILITIES AND GIVE US SOME STEPS TO TRACK OUR PROGRESS AND TO MAKE SURE THAT WE DO THE THINGS THAT NEED TO GET DONE.

AND SO I THINK WE WILL, I CAN'T REMEMBER NOW, BUT AT THE RETREAT WE'LL PROBABLY TALK SOMEWHAT, JANUARY RETREAT, ABOUT THAT.

about community engagement policies.

Again, what's board, what's superintendent.

And we also have tentatively for the board retreat discussing a board code of conduct or just board operating procedures, however we want to call it.

But that is, again, a standard practice of how we do our work together that will help a lot with number three that we'll also be talking about in January.

I have a question for Liza, not this, if I can real fast, or President Rankin.

So the implementation plan, you expect it to be ready in January?

I think we'll have a draft in January, do you remember?

Yeah.

Okay.

And yeah, I think we'll have it in January to look at.

And then we'll adopt it, too, so we'll have a formal introduction and adoption.

All right, Director Sarju.

My question is, this is the first time that I'm hearing the term accountability office.

And so I'm sure I missed something.

But I need clarification.

Like, what is the accountability office and who works in it?

So we have an accountability office and our accountability officer for our district is Ted Howard and we have kind of three connecting pieces.

We have the strategic piece where the academic folks come up with our strategy and then we have the implementation piece where we have a team plans and programs office, as well as our student support services, our regional executive directors that provide the implementation support.

And then we have the accountability office who monitors and measures how well this implementation is happening, how well the strategy is being implemented.

And so that position has been on board for two years now.

And again, it's led by Ted Howard as research and evaluation in there, as partnerships, but that's the office.

Okay, so what I'm, thank you.

So when I read, empower the accountability office with access to essential data, incorporate educator input into data metrics, I won't cover that.

So the fact that this report is stating to empower the accountability office sounds to me like they don't have power.

And what you just described was that this office partially exists, that wasn't your word, but to collect data and ensure implementation is happening.

And if they have no power and they're not collecting data, that seems like a big disconnect for me.

And again, I'm willing to accept that I'm missing something here.

And maybe this is not the time to discuss it, but it's concerning to me that an office with the title accountability office doesn't have power and they don't have access to essential data because that defeats a lot of the things that we're trying to do.

And so I'm not saying we need to have that conversation right now in public, but I do not believe this report would actually point that out if that office had power and had access to the data.

There's something in their research that discovered that this office does not have power and that they don't have access to data.

And that to me seems like something that really needs to be turned around very quickly because it's essential to a high functioning district and outcomes for our kids.

This is just my opinion and my assessment.

So Vice President Sarju, I'll let our folks who did the report kind of explain that.

But I believe they do have power.

I believe that they do have data.

And I'm the one that's empowered them.

And so there may be a different way to kind of characterize it from those who did our evaluation on this.

That was something that I kind of said emphatically, that that office is powerful.

That office has range, it has influence.

But if it's not obvious, then we need to maybe do some more clarity and clarifying and marketing or communication about it.

But that's certainly individuals in there are powerful and influential, as well as having a great range of data, access to data.

Folks can speak to it now or later, but I just didn't want to let that lay, because it's...

Part of the challenge for me is that, again, I am willing to take responsibility and ownership that I miss something, right?

I mean, I'm trying to get through 3,000 emails, 2,000 of them which are about school closures, And I have a full-time job.

This is just for the audience.

And so I do my best to keep up, but this is the first time that, in my memory, I'm hearing the actual term accountability office.

And yes, I know Ted Howard, but I didn't know that he was in charge of the accountability office because we've had no interaction with him related to, I think, the things that we need as a board that we need to do our jobs best.

And so maybe there's a gap in how implementation happens, and that's what we should address.

But for me, it's, I would like my board directors to weigh in.

Did I miss something?

Okay, I'm seeing people shake their heads, so thank you.

I see your, oh.

Sorry, Annie Rose, did you?

Yes, if I could speak to that, apologies, because I cannot fully see the dynamics in the room.

So two pieces that I would add to this, and Colleen, obviously, if you have other elements to add here as well, I do think the item that Superintendent Jones brought up is very important in terms of clarifying roles and responsibilities.

And this goes to some of the elements that we spoke to earlier around making sure that there is very clear documentation around what each of these groups do why they exist, what the work is, and that's something that we found, and not just for the Accountability Office, but some other groups that are doing really important and critical work, we don't have a centralized place where all of those roles are described.

Within the report, within the Central Office Engagement section, there is a description of roles and responsibilities specifically related to the policy governance model, so that might help be the beginning of some of that description, but in general, clarifying those roles and responsibilities and and fully communicating those out in a consistent way I think is a big piece of this conversation.

The other element that I wanted to add specifically when we're talking about data and progress monitoring is that a lot of, especially for data that falls outside some of those really, really key elements that you will be getting through your standardized assessments and testing, A lot of the other types of data that might be useful in this situation really rely on cooperation and investment of time at the individual school level as well, and making sure that there's really clear information communication happening, clear expectation setting happening there.

And this goes back to how do we ensure that there's consistent implementation of district-wide initiatives.

And so that speaks to a piece of why I think the accountability office has not always been able to get all of the data that they would be interested in getting and receiving as part of their work.

is because this is a very, very large shift that relies on many people to come and help provide data and input as well.

So that section does get into quite a bit more detail around some of those challenges, but I just wanted to highlight those pieces too.

Thank you.

If anybody has more questions specifically for Colleen or Annie Rose, let's get those asks.

I want to stop us from getting too far into the actual recommendations and deliberating over what we should or shouldn't do next, we will do that.

What the intention was for this tonight was for the these two folks to present this, make sure everybody has access to the full report.

There's tons more.

This is a great overview.

There's tons more in there to read.

But something that I wanted just to say is how important it is that this isn't anything personal about anybody.

Since at least 1990, maybe before that, but since at least 1990, it has been recommended by multiple outside professional entities to the Seattle School District that the number one lever for improving the system, improving customer and community engagement and service, and most importantly improving outcomes, is for the board to adopt a policy governance model.

That has been made multiple times Again, going back to 1990. And so that this is our reality didn't happen in one year, didn't happen in five years.

It's happened over many decades.

And trying to figure out whose fault it may have been is totally unimportant.

We're all here now.

We have this information now.

We have an opportunity to change the trajectory for our students now.

And hopefully this will help get us closer to making some progress that has not been made yet that is long overdue.

So we'll have a lot more to talk about in terms of the recommendations and how we get there.

But does anybody have any more questions for Colleen or Annie Rose?

Michelle, do you have another question?

Okay.

Okay.

Well, then I will say thank you.

Thank you very much.

Some fun winter break reading going even deeper into all of these recommendations.

But thank you so much.

This is a huge value add for us here.

Thank you, Annie Rose.

We're going to go to public testimony.

So we're going to go back up.

There, and then, do you guys want five minutes before public test?

Okay, we're gonna take five.

For those who are joining us on the phone right now, waiting public testimony, the board is currently at recess and will be called back to order.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and move along.

We have two empty seats up here that I'm sure will be filled momentarily, so I'm gonna go ahead and get us going.

We are now gonna go to Public testimony board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony.

I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

In summary some important parts of this procedure are as follows.

First testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from the public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the school board website.

Only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium, and only one person should speak at a time.

Listed speakers may cede their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called, but the total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined speakers.

Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list.

Those who do not wish to have time ceded to them may decline.

And if you are on the testimony or wait list, you can retain your place.

The majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic you have indicated you wish to speak about.

And the board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as we expect of ourselves.

As board president, I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by board procedure 1430 BP.

a speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or otherwise substantially substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave and staff will read off the testimony speakers good evening for tonight's testimony um please do uh start your testimony by reintroducing yourselves apologies in advance i will not be getting all of your names pronounced correctly

And if you are joining us by phone, I will be enabling it so that you can unmute when your turn comes.

And you can press star six at that time to unmute on the conference line.

That is star six.

You'll also need to unmute on your device.

The first speaker today is Lillian Stilwell.

After Lillian will be Haley Ryan Sander and then Hamza Ali.

Hello, my name is Lillian Stoll and I'm from Denny International Middle School.

My siblings go to West Seattle Elementary in Chief South.

In the present day, there's no place more important than a school library.

There, students can physically interact with people, a rare occurrence in the days of social media.

When the library is open all day, people can stop by anytime for a book recommendation from our librarian, a thing that's so important but often overlooked.

Finding the right book is the key to learning to like reading, and librarians have time to pick one out for you.

I know that I never enjoyed reading until I found my sort of book, and many others agree.

Over 800 people have come into Denny's library since September.

That's more than the entire school during lunch alone.

To find a book, take a break from the noise of the cafeteria, hang out with friends, join a club, like crocheting club, or print something in our 3D printers, or have a safe space to read.

A variety of things that no other place has the ability to fulfill.

People from Madison Middle School feel like the library is a safe space to read, too.

My friend Mira spends 15 minutes every day in the morning in the Madison Library just reading.

Things are the same at Denny, a Title I school in South Seattle.

The library is utilized by so many people and fulfills the needs of so many students.

And the thing is, since the library matters so much to so many people, that taking full-time librarians away is going to take a vital part of kids' schooling away.

I am not the only person thinking like this.

I and other classmates in seventh grade have gotten the signatures of a third of Denny's students, 242 in all, in agreement with this statement.

Seattle Public School needs their librarians.

Thank you for listening.

The next speaker is Haley Ryan Sander.

Hello, I'm Haley Ryan Sander representing my Ballard High School library.

As a library TA, I have come to understand that libraries are a crucial part of a school's ecosystem.

They provide more than just books.

My librarian at Ballard has spent years cultivating her library into a welcoming space that offers safety, warmth, and diversity.

She has done just that.

Every day, students flock to our library for academics, books, eating lunch, and more honestly, a space where we know we can feel accepted, secure, and happy.

A space that wouldn't be there if our library hours are cut.

In my four years at Ballard, I've utilized library space daily because I know it is an area where I can be scholarly and make good use of my time and feel safe while doing so.

My librarian plays an important part in all of this.

She is a bridge between students, teachers, and academics, and is an advisor to a number of library-oriented clubs.

In my case, she is the advisor to a club I am president for, Comic Book Club.

We meet weekly in the library for discussion, snacks and comics, and good times.

If you are deciding to cut library and librarian hours, making it a non-accessible space, my club will not only lose its advisor, but also the space in which we discuss our books.

Making libraries and their curators part-time is not a problem solver.

I rely on this space.

Other students rely on this space.

And teachers rely on our librarians as fellow educators.

I implore you to consider the lives of your students and their well-being over your budget.

We love our libraries, and we need our libraries.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Hamza Ali.

After Hamza will be Munira Muhammad and then Nolan Jones.

Hamza, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference call line.

Good evening, members of the board.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Hamza Ali, and I'm at Nathan Hill High School.

I'm here to strongly oppose the proposed reduction of the library in workdays and the closure of libraries during lunch.

This decision would not just harm students, but the entire school community.

At Nathan Hill, our library is a room filled with books It's the lungs of our school's culture.

It's where ideas breathe and creativity thrive.

Ms. West, our librarian, plays an irreplaceable role in the making of this space.

Cutting her presence for just two days a week would deprive students and teachers of essential support and resources that keep our school alive.

On a personal note, the library has been my sanctuary.

During the pandemic, I couldn't go outside for two years.

When I started high school as a freshman, I felt isolated.

I had friends, but I never ate lunch with them.

Instead, I will take my lunch to the library, grab a chair, sit by the glass wall, eat while reading lunch.

It became my refuge, a place where I could feel at peace and connected in my own way.

I know that I'm not the only student who finds comfort and belonging in this space.

The library's impact goes beyond individual students.

During lunch is a safe haven for many, a place to eat, meet for club activities, or simply a place for solace.

Ms. West also collaborates with teachers to enhance classroom instructions, whether it's designing lessons finding resources, or teaching us valuable research skills.

Reducing her availability would harm both students and staff.

I understand the need for budgetary decisions by cutting library resources, but cutting library resources is a false economy.

The library is an investment in our education, mental health, and future.

By limiting its access, we're not just cutting costs, we're cutting opportunities.

Please reconsider this proposal.

Our libraries and librarians are vital to the heart and soul of our schools.

Mason Hill is thriving because of spaces like ours.

and reducing its availability would restrain the very culture that makes our school unique.

Thank you for your time and considering the voices of students who are directly affected by decision.

The next speaker is Nolan, sorry, the next speaker is Munira Muhammad.

Munira, if you're on the line, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Hello, my name is Munira Mohammed and I'm a student at Nathan Hill High School.

Today I want to address an issue that deeply affects not just me, but my entire school community.

The reduction of essential school resources, particularly libraries and classrooms.

These spaces are not just physical areas.

They are the backbone of our education, our community, and our success.

As a Running Start student, I spend part of my day taking online classes and the other part attending in-person classes at Nathan Hill.

The school library is my lifeline during this time.

It's where I go to focus, to learn, and to access resources I simply can't find anywhere else.

Without it, me and countless other students would lose a quiet, productive space that is critical for our education.

But the library is so much more than just a study area.

For me, it's where I stay connected.

Many students, like me, are not there during morning announcements.

to which I go to my librarian, Ms. West, who has become an invaluable source of information.

She ensures I know about school events, updates, and opportunities.

But more importantly, she ensures every student feels seen, supported, and empowered.

Ms. West is more than a librarian.

She's the heart of my school.

Her kindness, dedication, and resourcefulness have helped me and so many others succeed.

And to lose her consistent presence would be devastating to my community.

The library is also a hub for technology support, helping resources that many students rely on to complete assignments and access vital tools.

Reducing library access to just two days a week would leave countless students and staff without timely help, creating unnecessary barriers to learning.

Most importantly, the library is a space where we create community.

It's where ideas are shared, friendships are built, and collaboration thrive.

It's a safe haven for students who might not feel at home anywhere else in the school.

Taking that away would be taking away more than just a room with books.

It would be taking away a place where students find belonging.

Setting access to libraries and classrooms is not just about saving money.

It's about sacrificing the very resources that make education meaningful and impactful.

We need these spaces and we need our librarians.

We need to protect what makes our schools a place for everyone to learn, grow, and succeed.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Nolan Jones.

Nolan Jones.

After Nolan will be Chris Jackins and then Malin Landis.

Good evening, board members.

Oh, it is the low end.

Okay.

Is this better?

Yes.

Okay, good.

I'm here back to basically have you guys just take a look at the school board action report, which is going to deal with your, I guess, acquiring SAP's cloud services.

And I don't know if you had a chance to look over that report or not, but it's like about 88 pages long.

And I'd be surprised if any of you understood the technical pieces behind all of that, because it's pretty in-depth.

And the thing is that I would gather to say that maybe 1,000 people in the United States could possibly go through and understand the technology that's behind this system.

Not to say that there's anything wrong with the system.

There isn't.

The thing is that you're basically purchasing a system for over $12 million.

And I've done some research here in terms of when I first came here over a year ago, and I saw that you guys had invested over $8 million with the iPads.

And I looked at the purpose or the actual benefits behind these.

They're supposed to be related to helping children, the primary kids that are having issues.

But if you look at the history, these systems, they're not helping the children.

So I'm here to say to you that I have an application, a software application that will help the children that are directly not getting helped.

And so I hope that you will find in your resources to give me a chance to put my application into your system and you'll see the benefits of it.

Thank you.

Next is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. My appreciation for the library testimony tonight.

Also for Ted Howard who is in the room but has not yet been invited to speak on the minutes of the November 26 board meeting.

Thank you for voting to stop school closures.

The minutes omitted the board discussion of future closures.

On Aki Kurose the board is being asked to vote before receiving final environmental review.

Please vote no.

On the PERC notice two points number one the PERC notice references an appeal won by the Seattle Education Association against the school district before the Public Employment Relations Commission.

Number two, under Order 2F, the notice must be signed by an authorized district representative.

The copy of the notice provided with the board agenda is so tiny that the name of the signer is not clear.

On final acceptance, on Rising Star Elementary School at African American Academy, The reference to African American Academy was left off the board report.

The district is thereby wrongly burying the history of its harmful closure of the African American Academy.

On board oversight, three points.

Number one, at a recent court hearing on school board recall, there were claims of inadequate board oversight.

THE DISTRICT NOTED THAT THE BOARD STILL RETAINED A BOARD AUDIT COMMITTEE.

NUMBER TWO, I ATTENDED THE DECEMBER 3rd BOARD AUDIT COMMITTEE MEETING THE DAY AFTER THE BOARD HEARING.

THE COURT HEARING.

COMMITTEE AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 21 WAS A PROPOSAL TO CONSIDER REMOVING ALL BOARD DIRECTORS FROM THE COMMITTEE.

NUMBER THREE, PLEASE DON'T DO THAT.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THE NEXT SPEAKER IS MALAN LANDIS.

Hi, I'm Maylin Landis.

I'm the librarian at McClure Middle School and the former librarian at Sandpoint Elementary and John Rogers Elementary.

As you consider our goals, guardrails, and budget, please keep in mind the immeasurable value library programs offer to our school communities.

Multiple independent studies have shown positive correlation between high quality library programs and student achievement.

These studies are mindful of demographic factors showing that the benefits of well-resourced library programs are strongest for students farthest from educational justice and students with disabilities.

Additionally, a 2022 human rights campaign study showed that while half of all LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school, 9 out of 10 of those students usually or always feel safe in their school libraries.

Beyond improving test scores, literacy and being a safe place, school librarians teach information and media literacy.

Studies from Stanford indicate high schoolers are largely unable to identify misinformation online.

school librarians are information professionals trained to prepare youth to navigate the vast amount of unverified information found in our changing media landscape funding school libraries is a preemptive move against misinformation because teacher librarians empower students with strategies to be discerning users and creators of information statistics tell a story school libraries are vital to students staff, and families, and support SPS's goals and guardrails.

Cutting all librarians to halftime positions is not a Band-Aid.

It would be a wound.

Our schools need full-time certified librarians.

Thank you for your consideration.

The next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera.

After Laura Marie will be Hank Morgan and then Annie Becker.

Good afternoon, my name is Laura Marie Rivera and I am the proud mom of four Seattle Public Schools students, two in elementary school and two recent graduates, like I said, very proud.

I've been involved in SPS since we moved up here in 2016 and there have been a lot of moments and changes since then and not all of them are productive steps in the right direction.

But as we look forward to this new strategic plan and implementing new goals and guardrails, I encourage the board and all of the staff and the superintendent, of course, to consider all that public schools can and really should be.

We know that each student is an individual.

They come with their own strengths and challenges and hopes and dreams, and I wanna make sure that they will be welcomed and supported, not only by the district, but by their specific school communities.

I'm asking each of you to remember what works for some students will not work for all.

Whether we were talking about academics or sports, option programs, dual language immersion, advanced courses, and the often ignored needs of special education.

We have at least 20% of our students relying on special education services, and yet the needs of these students are often an afterthought.

This doesn't work for their education, for our communities as a whole, or for the future of our society.

We live in one of the wealthiest cities in the country, and we are operating in a massive deficit.

This isn't news to anyone in the room, but we need to change the way that we're thinking about this.

I am a mom.

My children are, of course, the most precious things in the world to me, and I think that all of you would agree.

Yet when we look at our schools and the lack of investment that is going into them, I wonder where our values truly are.

The next administration is threatening to dissolve the Department of Education, but I believe it is exactly that lack of education and investment in education that has brought us to this place.

I appreciate that Governor Inslee has come out in support of education needs, and I hope that our governor-elect Bob Ferguson and all of our local legislators will carry that torch going forward.

If we would like to keep our societies, governments, and companies running, we need to invest our children, and Washington State needs to fully fund our schools.

The next speaker is Hank Morgan.

Hank, if you're on the phone, you can press star six to unmute on the conference call line.

I'm not seeing Hank on the line, so I'm going to move to our next speaker, Annie Becker.

Is Annie Becker in the room?

Annie, it looks like you were unmuted on the conference line.

We should be able to hear you if you're unmuted on your advice.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you.

Excellent, thank you.

My name is Annie Becker.

I am the parent of four current SPS students.

In public health, it is well known that the greatest failures are interventions that are conceived, designed, and implemented without consistent community partnership at every step.

The school closures debacle this past year has been a nightmare for parents, students, and teachers who all understand fully that this situation was either due to mismanagement to affect five and its unintended consequences, a governance model that is both obfuscating district finances, a lack of authentic engagement with the community that SPS serves, perhaps a lack of comprehensive, transparent, long-term plan that involves the community, or some combination of all of the above.

Trust in the school board leadership and school district leadership is at an all-time low.

Parents are rallying together with full understandings of the consequences that If we built a coalition and campaign to vote no on BECC 6, we could, but would we want to?

There is so much on the line with the new BECC levy.

Since Director Song and Rivera resigned from the school board nearly a year ago, there has been no school board representation on the capital oversight committee.

Why is that?

While the public have many questions and concerns, the biggest concerns swirl around the lack of a comprehensive nuclear plan around the construction design and implementation of the Capital Buzz project and how they clearly lack community input around which buildings are or are not included.

Because if the public were included, our first demand would be a comprehensive plan.

What is a comprehensive plan?

It's one that includes students, teachers, and parents at every step.

It's one that includes construction growth and up-zoning in each of the school's attendance areas.

How our families actually utilize studio and one-bedroom apartments.

Generally speaking, it's pretty standard for most of the world to fit multi-generational families and multiple children in one-bedroom apartments.

It's Eurocentric to consider that we wouldn't.

And that's exactly what lands the district with gross underestimates of student involvement.

A comprehensive plan would also include all of the schools that have building conditions rated between a three and a four, and would actively engage with communities to ensure that they get what they need.

It would plan for the future of all our schools, all our communities, and all of our children.

Just throwing it out there, but what if we insured a $4 million in design services on the BEX levy for each of the schools rated between a three and a four?

And what if any school that had been placed on a previous levy for design and preparation for modernization or total replacement was named on the next levy for the next stage in that process?

And since the district wants to earn the trust of the public, keeping their word would be imperative.

Because our student outcomes are paramount, keeping small schools that are appropriately sized for the school population would be part of that discussion.

Not a 650-child school, but rather smaller schools that are built for the population using best practices and partnering with academic centers for excellence, like those at the University of Washington.

The greatest mistakes are interventions or plans that are conceived, designed, and implemented without partnership with the community.

ask us which board and district governance model we want ask us if we want sofg if we are focused on student outcomes we shouldn't be spending million dollars on evaluation and implementation of a governance model that the board hasn't assessed if the public wants your time has been exhausted please wrap up okay bring us in to partner with you bring the community back into the picture create community co-design roles on community on committees and please reinstate the finance committee ALSO, PLEASE MAINTAIN OUR CURRENT LIBRARY FTE.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

THE NEXT SPEAKER IS MEGAN HAMILTON.

AFTER MEGAN HAMILTON WILL BE ERIN MOORE AND THEN BAILEY MEDILLO.

Hello, my name is Megan Hamilton.

Growing up, I walked to North Beach with my mom and brother and dog, Shadow, and now I live across from Stanislaus Elementary with my two-year-old and five-year-old.

Stanislaus is one of the most diverse student bodies in SBS.

78% of students are BIPOC and 34% are multilingual.

Stanislaus is a safe haven to students of color and immigrant families.

Sanislo has deep community partnerships and a stable staff roster.

Its extensive student supports and extracurriculars envy wealthier schools.

In the upcoming administration, spaces that are safe for students of color are going to be more important to protect and foster.

Yet Sanislo has routinely and systemically been neglected and its enrollment adversely affected by district choices or inaction.

Stanislaw has not received meaningful BECCS funds since 1998. Stanislaw has not had earthquake safety or seismic improvements since 1998. Parents, staff, and students want SBS to invest in model programs like Stanislaw.

There is an alternative path forward that does not include building mega schools and closing model neighborhood schools.

These actions will only further drive more parents away.

The Beck six levy is an opportunity to reframe how SPS spends vital dollars on more students.

As written, one of the current project plans is to rebuild one elementary school to serve 500 students at a cost of $150 million.

Instead, consider fixing delayed maintenance at elementaries and K-8s rated poor health on the SBS building reports.

In 2021 numbers, so it has changed, the district could have afforded to do that with 87 million.

Let's say construction costs have doubled.

If we chose all those schools, we would benefit roughly 20,000 students, 20,000 versus 500 students.

In a time of budget crises, why is the district not shifting its strategy to spend pivotal dollars on more, on more students?

In a time of low public trust, why is the Beck's oversight committee only composed of construction and real estate professionals?

In a time when students feel powerless and like their futures are decided for them, I'm almost done, why is the district not engaging students and staff in its process?

I ask that those who hold power in this room increase transparency and accountability and propose a 10-year strategy that centers students, invests in existing buildings, and attracts more families back to SBS.

Thank you.

the next speaker is aaron moore after aaron will be bailey medillo and then tuesday tuesday chambers i'm aaron moore i'm ceding my time to young escalante

I'm Yang, a student at Rainier Beach High School and officer of his Filipino club and a member of Anagbay in South Seattle.

Always speaking on behalf of our newly launched campaign, Save Our Schools campaign that seeks to achieve pro-people, mass-oriented, culturally relevant, quality and safe education.

South Seattle students are done with militarization being prioritized over social services and our education.

Our schools are in shambles under the deficit.

Last year, due to the same reason, the SPS board decided to cut the budget for liberatory classes, including the Philippine history class.

Students from club wish to see genuine representation of culture and ideas we want.

Learn more about the Philippines and our education because we don't get much information culture-wise.

We want to learn the real situation of our people as a product of forced migration and safety for our people, especially migrants.

Today is International Migrants Day.

As a youth living in South Seattle, a community with migrant families, especially Filipino migrants, how long will we have to face and endure this?

I, as well, we came here for a better life, only to face neglect in social services and education.

We are targeted by military recruiters who will send us to go to war against our own people.

As the Seattle Public School Board, we demand you fund education, not militarization.

Normal police or military recruitants on campus.

Thank you.

Next will be Bailey Medillo, and then Tuesday Chambers.

Good morning, board members.

My name is Bailey Medillo, and I'm ceding my time to Annabelle Garcia-Andresen.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Annabelle Garcia Andreessen and I am an SPS parent with two children that are GHS alumni and one in elementary school.

I am an educator at Dunlap Elementary School.

I am an officer of the Filipino American educators of Washington and a community member that is involved in the development of the Philippinex American history curriculum currently being implemented in this in Seattle Public Schools, Philippinex American history class at Cleveland High School.

In all of these roles, having a culturally relevant and responsive curriculum is critical in ensuring our students receive the tools they need to rebuild a broken education system.

This is why I wholeheartedly support the Save Our Schools campaign, which demands that Seattle Public Schools plays an active and authentic part in providing a pro-people, culturally relevant education that ensures safe and secure learning environments.

This means providing a learning environment where our educators, families, and students are focused on learning, not in the fear of violence and mass shootings or whether their classrooms will be clean and pest free.

This means that instead of saying cops and practices that mirror the prison system as a solution, that we fund and focus resources on counselors and mental health supports and programs.

This means that we fund liberatory studies and ethnic studies classes and require them as graduation requirements.

This means that when determining the Seattle Public School budget, that it is informed by public participation in decision making and reflect needs of migrants and working class students and families.

We demand that Seattle Public Schools provides this pro-people culturally responsive and relevant education to ensure that every student in seattle public schools can have a genuine education that centers bipoc migrants and and working-class experiences in your role as a school board you have the means the responsibility and the positionality TO CREATE INFORMED BUDGETS THAT ADVOCATE FOR STUDENTS' RIGHTS FOR EQUALITY EDUCATION.

SO TO CONCLUDE, THAT SECOND DEMAND THAT WE HAVE FOR SAVE OUR SCHOOLS IS THAT SEAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS PROVIDES A PRO-PEOPLE, CULTURALLY RELEVANT AND RESPONSIVE EDUCATION.

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

THE NEXT SPEAKER IS TUESDAY AND THEN WILL BE MICHELLE CAMPEL AND THEN NIKASAI.

Hello, my name is Tuesday Chambers.

I'm the Ballard High School librarian, and I'm here to talk about well-resourced schools, and I'm ceding my time to Laura McGinty.

Hello, my name is Laura McGinty.

I teach biology at Ballard High School.

In a time where record number of students are struggling with basic literacy skills and books are being banned, it is profoundly shocking to me that we are even considering cutting library resources.

A school library is so much more than just a room filled with books, and a librarian is far more than a book manager.

Libraries are an embodiment of our values.

They are the heartbeat of our schools and a reflection of the vitality of our community.

In these spaces, students can escape into literature, finding themselves or becoming someone entirely new.

They offer a sanctuary of mental respite where imagination takes flight and worlds of possibilities unfold.

Of course, libraries do more than provide an escape.

They are vital for intellectual growth and freedom.

Through libraries, students explore new careers, discover ideas, and develop a sense of purpose.

The library is a place to research, collaborate, create, and imagine where ideas can come to life.

It is the ultimate equalizer, providing free access to knowledge and opportunity to every student, regardless of background.

Behind these spaces are the librarians, cultivators and curators of this treasure trove of resources.

They are the ones who help students navigate the wealth of information, who foster a culture of curiosity and exploration.

It is impossible to list the extent of work a librarian does within the time limit here today.

Suffice it to say that without librarians, we risk losing the key to unlocking the full potential of the library and therefore the student.

When we make cuts to libraries, we aren't just trimming a budget.

We are sending a message that we don't value intellectual exploration, we don't prioritize safe spaces for students, and we don't see the importance of fostering community.

The financial savings from cutting library resources will be small, but the impact on our students is immeasurable, and it is a blow to the very heart of our schools.

In short, the library is more than a place.

It's a vital space that shapes our future, nurtures creativity, and ensures that every student has access to a world of opportunities.

I urge you to stand with our students, with our community, and with the future of intellectual exploration, think of the long-term effect, and choose what will support future generations of students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Michelle Campbell.

After Michelle will be Nikasai and then Samantha Fogg.

Michelle, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference call line.

Hello.

This is Michelle Campbell.

I'm ceding my time to Laura Gramer.

Laura, if you're on the line, you can go ahead.

Hi.

Yes.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Thank you, Michelle.

Hello, everyone.

I'm online with an interpreter.

My name is Laura Gramer.

I'm a parent at Topps 8 Elementary, and I have a student in eighth grade and seventh grade at Topps K-8 school.

About a week ago, the Topps community found out that the assistant principal was arrested as part of a child trafficking During with T including targeting teens and I have a teenage child at that school.

So yeah, as you mentioned earlier that your role of at the central office of support for schools, which means, first of all.

At the right.

At the.

Relevant at the relevant.

Time.

and supporting students.

Those are your words to me.

So you have failed in all three of those roles.

The family at TOPS had no direct communication from the school until today.

At 315, we received a message saying that there would be a meeting tomorrow with the district.

We had to wait for a full week to hear back from the district.

And as a parent, I'm sitting here wondering, why didn't I receive any letter?

Why did I receive this letter with these questions in it?

How will SBS improve communication and transparency?

And how and what resources are SBS providing our families on how to discuss about child sex trafficking?

with children on the developmental spectrum from K through eighth grade?

Because I don't know what specific communication with the students has occurred in the classroom.

What are the students being told if they ask about their former vice principal being arrested?

Can you share if there's a current system in place that will alert the district if anyone were employed or formally employed by the district is arrested for crimes involving minors and how do you plan to make sure this doesn't happen again what changes will you do to screen and prevent screening and prevention process to ensure that this does not happen again now for all of you the the top discussion is the budget discussion And we were told that we have to ask the district again for support for ASL teachers for next year.

And I hope and I ask the district continues to support this because we have a deaf and hard of hearing para program at TOPS.

And also at TOPS, and Roosevelt High School, we have an accessible emergency system.

We need an accessible emergency system.

We've been advocating for that for a long time.

And finally, please save our librarians.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Nika Sai and then Samantha Fogg and Liz Berry.

Hello, my name is Nika Sai.

I am a member of Anakbay in South Seattle and I'm here representing the Save Our Schools campaign.

Anakbay in South Seattle is an organization of Filipino youth and students fighting for the rights and welfare of Filipinos back home in the Philippines and abroad like here in Seattle.

We're also members of Bayan Washington and the International Migrants Alliance, alliances that are committed to protecting migrants under an economic and political climate that makes them increasingly more unsafe.

At Seattle Public Schools, migrant custodial staff and their families aren't protected.

Custodial hour cuts don't just make schools unclean and unsafe, they make life unsafe for migrant families who are left without sufficient livelihood.

At SPS, migrant students aren't safe when they're subject to discrimination and bullying.

I want to uplift the story of Glendymar, a migrant mother who is fighting for justice for her daughter after months of relentless bullying at Mercer International Middle School.

After Glendymar's daughter was assaulted by a group of other classmates, and the video of this assault was posted on social media, Glendymar and her daughter have not received any true solutions.

The harassment has persisted, and her daughter's experience in the education system has gone from one of opportunity, community, and curiosity, to one of fear, isolation, and anxiety.

And this experience isn't isolated.

Thousands of migrants leave their home countries each day.

Thousands of Filipinos leave the Philippines each day in search of better jobs and better education abroad.

But instead, what they find at SPS is exploitative jobs and an education system that doesn't meet their needs.

Our Save Our Schools campaign is calling for SPS to uphold its duty to protect migrants and working class youth from state and interpersonal violence.

Under the incoming Trump administration, SPS must protect migrant families from deportation and anti-migrant policies.

We call for the justice for all migrants impacted by Seattle Public Schools inaction and lack of protection.

Justice for all people who are suffering under a system that prioritizes putting money into war and militarism rather than keeping students safe.

Thank you.

Next is Samantha Fogg.

After Samantha will be Liz Berry.

Samantha, you'll need to press, oh, you have unmuted.

This is Samantha Fogg.

I cede my time to Sabrina Burr.

Good evening, Superintendent Jones and school board directors.

As you know, I am Sabrina Burr, and I stand here as one, but I come as 10,000.

For 70 years, I can personally count Seattle Public Schools failing black children.

the descendants of the stolen ones, the generational educational trauma inflicted to the black community then and now.

The way that black and brown bodies are treated in this district is criminal.

And we demand that these practices stop in all the places and spaces that our children are throughout this district.

And now my East African brothers and sisters, their children like ours, have been here unseen long enough and now experience generational trauma.

at the hands of this district who once not only cared about but also practiced good, authentic family and community engagement, who once built capacity district-wide.

The fact that it no longer exists is why well-resourced schools was the biggest failure and the most harmful, traumatizing engagement of six superintendents I can personally speak to.

One, we want to practice two-way communication beyond the loudest and most privileged voices in a time when multi-tiered systems and support was a focus for our district and practiced in every building, when social-emotional literacy was practiced and aligned with our CSIPs, scaffold, and practiced in all areas of our schools.

School board directors, especially those newer on the board, I have documents that can show you that can no longer be found on the website that will tell the story of how we got to where we are now.

Why we must focus on student outcomes if we are going to close the opportunity and belief gap for students who are dying at the hands of decisions of this leadership.

Directors, you are the leaders of this district.

Your leadership must direct actions and outcomes.

Accountability to operational oversight and goal attainment has not been your strength.

and it is our students who suffer.

You chose this job.

Stop putting adult greed over student need.

I would be glad to meet with you and walk you through this journey.

The fact that we do not focus on student outcomes is exactly why we continue to fail not only black boys and young men, but black children and families district-wide.

These practices must stop.

Now, we are no longer asking.

Lassie, sexual predators within our schools show we as a district have not learned from decades of incidents.

Why do we not have a system in place instead of continually, repeatedly, cause the same harm to schools, students, and families and communities that make up our school community?

Shame on us.

I have been advocating and partnering with this district for over two decades.

How many black and African students need to die because we have a system put adults first at the cost of students and their lives?

Not only on the streets, but in our schools.

And when our students' voice tell us about their safety needs, like the need to have their doors locked, why is the decision in the sole discretion of a building leader?

Who is truly responsible?

Please read all the audit reports that tell the story of what the black community has been saying far too long for far too many generations.

Talking to, I've been talking to many leaders, advocates, advocates, and families.

You, you may not physically be, they may not physically be standing in here, but believe me, they are standing with me.

We will read and review the reports of the audit committee.

We will stand together.

We will say enough.

Our children, of our children not being seen, being disrespected, uneducated, characterized by the reaction to harm, trauma, not belonging, or even mattering in too many instances.

We demand that you practice what you say, your commitment to our children in writing, but not in action.

We demand that you take the safety and education of our children the same as white children.

Because if they were dying in our schools like no student should ever be, sadly, the care and the action you take would be different.

Why?

Truth is, you have a constitutional, ethical, and moral obligation to every student, not some.

And no student should have to die to be educated.

Next is Liz Berry.

Liz, you can press star six.

It will unmute.

I'm going to go to the next speaker, but I will circle back.

The next speaker is Shanna Shasteen.

Hello?

Oh, is that Liz Berry?

Oh, I see Liz's hand is up.

Liz, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Hi, this is Liz Berry.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, Liz.

And the next speaker who I called, we'll pause for Liz, and then we'll come to our next speaker.

So Liz, you can go ahead.

OK, I'm sorry about that.

This is Liz Berry, and I'm ceding my time.

The time is running, so Liz, if the person

Okay.

Good evening, board directors.

My name is Jeff Vonsodo.

I am an SPS parent.

Tonight, I am sharing a proposal with you that comes from a joint PTA effort from many of our dual language schools.

We are mainly addressing the needs of the dual language program at Concord International Elementary School.

However, we have been consulting with educators, experts, and PTA leaders at other dual language schools.

The set of concrete policy changes that we would like to propose are the following.

An increased enrollment in Concord's dual language program, prioritizing students from heritage Spanish-speaking families, strengthening the curriculum and instruction to ensure that dual language teachers have the support they need to effectively serve multilingual learners, and expanding opportunities for dual language programs across the district.

More specifically, we are requesting three action items.

one a district provided curriculum that is high quality and intended to meet the needs of multilingual learners in dual language programs currently the burden is on teachers and ptas to fund these curriculums or translate curriculum from english this is not sustainable and leads to burnout of our staff two revised district dual enrollment policies that prioritize multilingual learners within this Superintendent Procedure 3130ST be revised to specifically allow dual language schools to prioritize native speakers with a 50% set aside for heritage speakers with priorities that multi language learners.

We also ask enrollment to update the new student registration form home language survey section to allow families to identify more than one home language.

We also ask enrollment to proactively identify and invite families whose first language and or heritage language is Spanish to enroll in dual language schools K through 12. finally three fully staff and retain bilingual teachers at dual language schools through the following prioritizing a process to recruit and hire more bilingual staff codifying protections for bilingual staff to avoid displacements implementing a school teaching ratio that specifies funding of dual language teaching positions and proactively giving opportunities to heritage speaking students affected by school consolidation to choose to come to dual language schools in their region we encourage sbs to continue to learn from its existing international school and dual language models and begin taking steps towards expanding a formalized dual language program into morning road schools cited within native speaking communities while prioritizing set-asides that protect equitable dual language access I also have another guest, my son, who is the SPS student, Archie.

What would you like to say?

Say hello.

Hello, my name is Archie.

It's easier writing in Spanish because the word you hear, I mean, the letter you hear is It's that letter, but in English, it's a bunch of different languages.

So you may hear like, like, you think it's L-I-K, but it's L-I-K-E.

I want to learn both English and Spanish.

And learning both helps me grow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time, board members.

The next speaker is Shanna Shasteen.

Is Shanna here in the room?

Not seeing Shanna on the phone.

Going to go to the next speaker, Sarah Brown.

Hi, my name is Sarah Brown and I'm a math specialist at Wing Luke Elementary and I'm here to speak on behalf of my community.

I'm here to shine a light on conflicting district practices that result in class sizes of up to 33 in our very high poverty school.

Last spring, we were given a low enrollment projection of 74 students at fourth and fifth grades, causing us to lose a classroom.

This didn't account for the expansion of a nearby long-term shelter in an underperforming charter school in the neighborhood, and today we stand at 97 fourth and fifth grade students spread among just three teachers.

80% are defined by SPS as students of color furthest from educational justice.

42% are ELL served and 18% are designated as homeless.

15 have IEPs and just five of 23 new students came in ready to work at grade level.

Equity tier one schools are supposed to be funded at 26 four or five students per teacher, so we waited eagerly for our October 1st adjustment.

Our math showed that we should be gaining one and a half teachers school wide, but instead we got nothing.

Turns out that new language was snuck into the budget gold book two years ago and schools no longer gain any additional teachers in October unless they qualify for at least two.

This shows that the district is intentionally underfunding schools.

Is the per pupil money from the state intended for the students on whom SPS claims to be laser focused being diverted from schools and used to balance the budget elsewhere?

That's not educational justice.

Adjusting for half as many staff as given by the weighted staffing standard is creating large classes over both the WSS and the CBA, and we know it's happening at other schools around the district.

Ten new four or five students have enrolled at Wing Luke since school started, and none have left.

Nobody downtown will answer the simple question of how big these classes have to get before they'll do something.

Is the only hard cap the fire code?

Already there's no room for students to make a circle in their classroom or meet in a small group with their teacher.

Don't punish kids for your bad enrollment projections and start fully staffing schools to match our numbers.

Thank you.

We're going to go now to those who were not with us earlier on the call, trying Hank Morgan one more time.

Is Hank Morgan in the room or on the phone?

And if I call your name, please press star six to unmute, not seeing Hank.

Going to try one more time for Shanna Shustein.

Okay, I'm gonna move to the wait list, Andrea Redmond.

Is Andrea here or online?

Andrea, please press star six if you're unmuted.

I'm on the wait list if folks wanna follow along.

Going to the next speaker, Gabriel De Los Angeles.

Is Gabriel in the room?

Okay, I'm gonna go to the next speaker, Virginia Trufan.

Virginia indicated they would be remote.

I think you are on the line.

Okay, you can hear me, right?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, hello everyone.

My name is Virginia Trufan and I'm the teacher librarian at Ingram High School.

Every day I see the positive impact of having a well-resourced school library and the positive outcomes that that has on students.

The research shows that the value of having full-time school librarians, there's a lot of data to support that that has a beneficial, that that has the benefit to, that that is highly beneficial to student outcomes.

And so I am here to ask to ask you to consider what the data is saying that this is helpful, to hear what the parents and students are saying that this is helpful, and also to consider all of the librarians you see standing before you and their experience of seeing every day the impact that the library as a place and program has on their students and staff.

A small sample of a typical day at the library at Ingram is that we see 115 students during lunchtime.

That's on average.

We generally see between 100 and 130 every day.

And I typically answer about 23 questions a day.

This number ends up being a lot more at the beginning of the school year and then at the end of the school year or any time at the end of the quarter.

And all the students, many students need help with their laptops.

Each day we check out, again, an average of 44 books.

And we also serve as a resource center for students to come and work quietly in the library when they need a quiet place or maybe they just can't handle being in class that day.

And so each day we have about 42 students who have permission from their teachers to be working in the library.

so far this year let's see it is uh december 18th and so far all of the together combined all of the school libraries across yall public schools have checked out one million books which is more we've beaten our record for the last two years and we still have two more days left before winter break which is pretty amazing thank you for your time going to the next speaker on the testimony list grace rooney is grace here in the room or online

Okay.

Rebecca Binns.

Oh, I see one speaker who is...

Rebecca Binns.

You'll need to press star six to unmute if you're on the conference line.

moving on elias markham okay we've now called all oh i see somebody is unmuted is this rebecca hello um can you guys hear me is this elias

yes this is elias okay elias will be our 20th speaker tonight okay you can go ahead elias we can hear you okay cool um my name is elias markham i'm a senior at nathan hill high school as the library teacher assistant i know that the library should not be cut down to two and a half days the library is a space for everyone in the hill community whether that be people in clubs people during lunch or even teachers teaching their class in an alternative environment The library is inclusive, and if it is cut down to two and a half days, then this valued space won't be available as often as it should.

I remember being a freshman and not having many friends to hang out with during lunch.

The library was a space where I met some of my closest friends.

That wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't open every day.

The library also gives class for teacher assistants, such as myself, going into being the fifth or sorry, Going into being the fifth period library teacher assistant, I didn't know anything about how the library works.

And Miss West taught me so much.

And now I sell books, I help check in and out books to students, and I also interact with the community.

If the library was cut down to two and a half days, that means the teacher assistants in the library would get cut, meaning Miss West would have to take over and cover what they would do.

If the library is cut, people will lose access to books.

Teachers and Miss West collaborate.

And if she is there half the time, that means she would do significantly less to support our curriculum at Hale.

This cut isn't feasible.

Thank you for your consideration.

President Rankin, that was our 20th speaker and then concludes today's testimony.

All right, thank you.

Lots came up there, but I just wanted to quickly address one thing, which is that Cutting librarians is not something that has been proposed by the board.

It is also not something that has been brought to the board to consider.

So I'm not saying it didn't come from somewhere, but as like, yeah.

And so for the budget, the next steps of the budget, we have a resolution as our one action item this evening that, if approved, will direct the superintendent to provide us with the first round of preliminary budget recommendations in January.

And then by state law, we have to pass a balance budget before August, but we typically do it in about June or July.

So just thank you for coming.

And we have more to look into it and discuss, but I just wanted to make sure you all knew that that wasn't something that was going to suddenly happen to you and that we haven't had it.

That's not how the, yeah.

I think you got it.

But thank you.

All right.

Consent agenda.

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

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second.

The approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Sarju and seconded by Director Briggs.

Are there any items for discussion removal?

All right.

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

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstentions?

All right.

The consent agenda has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm so ready to pass this whole situation on to somebody else.

All right.

We are.

Now moving to election of board officers, which is an annual practice that we do in December.

And as the president is tasked with chairing the meeting, and we are now in the process of electing new officers, I will turn the meeting over to superintendent jones who will run the election process as the secretary of the board and once we have officers elected the elected president will immediately preside over the meeting for the rest of the meeting um all right thank you i was gonna say it's been it people sometimes say it's been an honor and a pleasure to do something it's been an honor to be president, and it's been a year, it's been a time.

It's, yeah, a growth opportunity that I am excited to support someone else in participating in, so.

All right, thank you, President Rankin.

President Rankin.

Okay.

Before I open the floor for nominations, I'd like to review the election process.

For each officer position, president, vice president, and member at large, I will take nominations from the board.

A second is not required for the nomination, but can be made.

After all the nominations are made for a position, there will be an opportunity for directors to provide comments before voting.

After comments have been concluded, the board will vote for each position in the order the nominations were made.

By law and board policy, the voting will be conducted by a roll call vote.

The voting will conclude at the point when one nomination gets four or more votes.

After the president has been elected, we will move on to the vice president and then to the member at large.

In summary, for each position, there will be nominations, then discussion, then voting.

At the conclusion of the election process for all three positions, each new officer will have an opportunity to provide remarks.

Drum roll, please.

Nominations are now in order for the Office of President.

I'm not sure who was first.

Let's just do alphabetical order by the first name.

That was a joke.

You don't want to do it?

Okay.

Okay.

Vice President Sargent.

That's the last time you'll call me that.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

I would like to nominate for president.

Do I have to do a formal Roberts rules kind of OK because I don't know how to do that.

I would like to nominate for president.

Director top.

Are there a second.

Are there other nominations for president?

I'm a former teacher.

I'm comfortable with wait time.

If there are no more nominations, I close the nominations for president.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

About the nomination?

That's correct.

I'd like to make one.

Vice President Sargi.

Oh, man.

Last time.

So for those who are still left here and those who are online I think it's important that you all understand the colossal amount of work that this volunteer unpaid not necessarily respected job.

Well it's just not respected it's not even not necessarily respected job requires and.

You know I like to have fun this whole process is formal and I think it's ridiculous.

But the office of the president is pretty important in terms of providing leadership and direction to the board.

And for those of you who have watched me for three years I have been true to what.

I set out to do and that is in every decision in every comment it's about kids.

And so I actually had a conversation with director top.

If I'm if I'm being honest I told her she was running for president.

Although I think she was thinking about it.

But I stated it with the expectation that there will be a continued focus on the children that this district has failed for hundreds of years now.

We can't let our foot off the gas pedal on that and while we are seeing improvements we're still failing most of those children and so for me it's important and I'm stating this publicly because I want you all to know that I have shared what my expectations of our her in this role and that is to continue to advocate and continue to move that focus and while I have the mic I am just going to thank my bestie and my buddy Liza we have been through it this year and I just I I will thank you in other ways another time but I think it's important to publicly acknowledge what you have personally been through.

It has been ridiculous.

It has been not easy and has not been deserved.

And so what you deserve is praise for the way you stepped into the role and led even in the midst of all of the stuff that was actually not necessary and not did not move things forward for kids.

So thank you for that.

But I'm excited about Gina and with that I will are you are you like give me a look.

Are you OK with this.

OK.

All right.

I will close the mic so we can take a vote.

That's the next step right.

No.

Are any other directors liking them would like to make a comment.

OKAY.

MISS WILSON-JONES PLEASE CALL THE ROLE FOR THE VOTE FOR DIRECTOR TOP.

DIRECTOR BRIGS.

I. DIRECTOR CLARK.

I. DIRECTOR HERSEY.

I.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Vice President Sarju.

I'm sorry.

I really thought it was only going to be one more time of calling me by that title.

That's three now.

Y'all counting?

Aye.

Director Taup.

Aye.

President Rankin.

All right, I really want to make sure that mic is on.

Aye.

The nomination of Director Topp is approved unanimously.

Congratulations on your election as President, Director Topp.

Nominations are now in order for the Office of Vice President.

Are there any nominations for Vice President?

Mr. Do I need to be recognized?

Mr. I recognize Director Hersey.

Mr. Right on.

Thank you.

Mr. Emeritus President Hersey.

Mr. I would like to nominate Director Briggs.

Mr. Are there other nominations for Vice President?

I second.

Mr. A second is not necessary, but it shows affirmation.

Yeah, and that wasn't necessary.

Other nominations for vice president.

If there are no more nominations, I close the nominations for vice president.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

Director Hersey.

Oh, you don't know that it's going to be nice.

No, I'm kidding.

I don't know how to be anything but nice.

I think having pretty much worn every hat that the board has to offer at this point, what I'm really excited about, and this doesn't just apply to Director Briggs.

I'm going to get to personal stuff in a second.

But for all of our new directors, I have served with three or four different boards over the course of the six years almost that I've been here.

And I can honestly say that like the new crop of directors that we have, Director Clark, Director Mizrahi, President Topp, Director Briggs, Y'all are strong.

Y'all are very, very strong in terms of intellect, in terms of the willingness to get in and roll your hands up, and your engagement with community in your own different ways, right?

So regardless of the outcomes of these personal elections, I think that the leadership on the board is going to be incredibly strong for years to come.

And it's no secret that we have some very tough challenges ahead of us.

I think what I'm really excited about, Director Briggs specifically, is that when we adopted student outcomes focused governance, when we had new folks come and join, there's always a sense of well, a time period for folks to get their legs up under them.

Some folks coming in don't support it immediately.

Some folks coming in are just like full-throated.

But what I've really appreciated about Director Briggs' leadership is that when Evan was running, it wasn't like a full-throated support.

She was super curious around it.

And she has really leaned into developing an understanding of not only the governance framework as its own thing, but also how do we apply that in Seattle Public Schools in a way that is both accessible and representative to I think a lot of folks' curiosity and rightfully so concerns about how do we implement this and still be incredibly responsive to community at the same time.

I think what I am excited about really for the vice presidency is that it's an opportunity to not only support when the president is not around, but it is also just an indicator for where we as a board are headed and I and I'm really excited about these two specifically for one reason and particularly Director Briggs is are you a strong communicator.

Are you a person who can not only like take in information but disseminate it out amongst community in a way that is meaningful and understanding.

and provides context for folks.

Surprisingly, the board president and vice president don't really have that much power aside from like setting agenda, having served in both of those roles for a number of years.

But where I think the true value in both of these roles are is what is your ability to not only work with one another, but to genuinely work with community?

And I don't think on the board currently, and again, any of our new directors would serve really strongly in this role.

But I'm really excited about the balance and relationship between the two people who we've nominated for the presidency and the vice presidency to take the next phase of whatever this is for our district as we solve these big problems and really work together to figure out how do we not only solve these problems but communicate the solutions out to community in an effective accessible way because communication as we have heard very plainly here tonight in many ways and I feel like we hear it every single board meeting and it's fair and valid.

It is not a strength.

But I think under the leadership of these two very intelligent very capable women that we have a really strong shot at improving that in meaningful ways not only for our students but for all of our families and all of our constituents.

So it is with great pride that I nominate Director Briggs for the role of vice president.

President President top please.

Perfect.

So I've had an opportunity to spend some time with Director Briggs.

Somehow we end up traveling a lot together to either WASDA or to St. Louis for school board work and have, I've really come to appreciate and respect her values, her integrity, her willingness to have open conversations.

And I think Director Hersey's right, we are very aligned on where we need to go on engagement and communication in this district.

And I would be very grateful to have her as a partner as vice president.

President Emeritus Rankett.

Immediate past president soon to be invisible.

I don't know.

I just want to something that I am excited about this this pairing is this year has been Again I almost FCC violation.

This year has been quite a roller coaster.

There we go.

Quite a roller coaster.

And which happens when we're pushing for things to change.

against a long standing and very strong force.

But something that has been really that I have really valued so much in the role of president is that I always knew that you two would be there to check in with to offer thoughts or feedback to be part of the solution.

And there's a lot that I hope you won't have to deal with.

That needs to be different.

But I know that.

The two of you will support each other and I also hope you know that I will be here to support you no matter what what you need because the success of this board means The success of our superintendent means the success of our students.

And so it's really about the board as a as a body and the thoughtfulness and level headedness that you both bring and the genuine care is going to help move us into the next phase.

And I'm grateful that you're both willing to do it.

Any more directors like to make comments.

Miss Wilson Jones, please call the roll vote for Director Briggs.

Director Clark.

Director Hersey.

I. Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Vice President Sarju.

Aye.

Oh I still have to vote but I don't have to vote.

Aye.

Sorry about that.

Director Briggs.

Aye.

Aye.

President Topp.

Aye.

The nomination of Director Briggs is approved unanimously.

Congratulations on your election as Vice President Director Briggs.

Nominations are now in order for the Office of Member at Large.

Are there any nominations for Member at Large?

Director Clark.

Okay, much better.

I would like to nominate Director Mizrahi for Member at Large.

I will second since that was going to be my nomination as well.

All right.

Second.

Are there other nominations for Member at Large?

If there are no more nominations, I close nominations for member at large.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

I would like to make a comment.

So full transparency, I'm not sure what the member at large does.

Yeah, they second things.

So I think that Director Mizrahi would be great at seconding things.

But all joking aside, I really appreciate and respect your leadership.

both on the board and in the work that you do in community.

And I think that you've always been really thoughtful and mindful of prioritizing students furthest from opportunity, but also ensuring that all voices are heard.

I think that you ask really probing questions and just have an attention to detail that I really respect and I think that you will be a great leader for us next year along with our the rest of our leadership team.

I'll just want to add to that that's also why I wanted to nominate Director Mizrahi is and we have again half of our board has been here for.

A year or less.

The majority of our board has been here for a year or less.

And so.

Yeah.

And so I want to acknowledge all four of you for.

not hightailing it out of here after the the time that you've experienced so far and the hopes that we can you know keep keep disrupting what needs disrupting but also focus and and move in the same direction.

And I think Director Mizrahi has been such a level consistent voice that is always focused on on students And in primarily for me when I was the president the I tried not to have individual meetings a lot of times especially with agenda setting try to bring either the vice president or the member at large.

And so I think having you know the triumvirate to always be able to have two people when needed is really helpful in those meetings.

At least I found it helpful.

And I think any of those conversations Director Mizrahi would just be a great asset.

And yeah I've appreciated him on the board.

No please.

You still make comment.

I need help figuring out how to remove board vice president from my email signature.

So if somebody could help me with that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

That is technical, Michelle.

We can do that later.

But I am no longer vice president.

I'll seek you before you get up.

Thank you.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, please call the roll for the vote for director Ms. Rahi.

Director Hersey aye Director Mizrahi aye Director Rankin aye Director Sarju aye Vice President Briggs aye Director Clark aye President Topp The nomination of Director Mizrahi is approved unanimously.

Congratulations on your election as member at large Director Mizrahi.

President, I would like to report that the officers for the Board of Directors for 2025 are President Topp, Vice President Briggs, member at large Mizrahi.

I would now like to invite our newly elected officers beginning with the President to offer any remarks that they would like to make.

I won't take a lot of time.

I just want to thank Director Rankin for her leadership this past year in a challenging time.

You know our dedicate your dedication to our students is is truly admired.

And I also want to thank the board for placing this trust in me to serve this really awesome responsibility.

It is extremely heavy and there is a lot of opportunity in this coming year and I'm excited to serve in this role.

I think this past year, we've all alluded to it, has brought challenges, particularly, you know, with the school closures process.

And, you know, I think we did some damage in our community and we have some work to do to regain some of the trust, as Dr. Jones says.

I think the school closure process also highlighted how impactful our schools are in the community how what a valued asset they are for so many and how important they are the resources they provide to our families in Seattle education.

is what provides access to opportunity and we have the burden and the responsibility to make sure that all students have access particularly those who have been left out of the system previously and have not had that same access.

The year ends.

One thing I don't think we do as a board enough is just thank the educators in the classrooms who are doing this work.

every single day.

It is a job that I think is probably the hardest job there is.

So thank you to all those who are listening who are doing this work work out there.

I think that's that's where I'll leave it.

I look forward to working with my new vice president member at large but really the entire board on this upcoming year and all that we need to do.

But also as we talk about engagement the rest of our city, you know, we have, we live in a place with so much innovation and knowledge and experience, so let's harness that as we try to make Seattle Public Schools great again.

I know, but that was a joke, sorry.

But with that, Vice President.

I really just want to acknowledge and thank Liza and Michelle for their leadership this last year and let you both know how very much I've learned from both of you.

Wow, I'm strangely feeling emotional.

That's actually not surprising if you know me at all.

But just that you two have both taken real hits.

You've taken real hits this year.

And you don't back down.

And that is so much just determination and courage.

So thank you.

I'll just say, all due respect to your tenure, Director Briggs, I'm gonna second the heck out of those motions like you folks wouldn't believe.

I'm gonna revolutionize the whole seconding game.

No, in all seriousness, just thank you for the kind words.

I I found everyone on this board to be so incredibly welcoming to myself to director Clark as well and being the two newest board members and jumping in at a difficult time and it's been even through all the hard times a pleasure to work with everyone and I'm looking forward to the year ahead.

So I now turn the meeting over to our 2025 board president director top.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Jones.

We have very few items left on our agenda, but we're still going to take a quick recess.

We will reconvene at 755. Approval of board resolution number 2024-259, educational program reduction per board policy number 0060. Can I have a motion for this item?

I move that the board adopt board resolution number 2024-25-9, educational program reduction as attached to this board action report.

Second.

Yes, Joe.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

Approval has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

This item is sponsored by Director Rankin, Director Clark, and myself.

So I'm going to pass it to the sponsors for their remarks and updates since introduction.

All right.

Thank you.

So, yeah, so this item came to the board for introduction in...

in September, our current policy on financial planning requires that the superintendent bring us a resolution for approval in the years where there is a projected significant budget deficit or budget surplus.

TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT, YOU KNOW, WHAT THAT MIGHT LOOK LIKE FOR THE COMING YEAR.

SO WE ARE IN A YEAR THAT IS FACING A SIGNIFICANT DEFICIT.

AND THE UNDERLYING RESOLUTION THAT WE SAW IN SEPTEMBER WAS VERY SIMILAR, NOT IDENTICAL TO ONE THAT WE'VE PASSED BEFORE, BUT WE'RE, YOU KNOW, ALL RESOLUTION AND POLICY AND WHATNOT IS MEANT TO meant to change as needed.

And so in looking at it, we wanted to focus in on Just our direction on the budget is to align with the goals, align with making progress on the goals, stay within the guardrails.

Some of the challenge that we had this past year was kind of concurring around different areas without the really cold, hard numbers to talk about.

And so the three of us have offered language for the board to consider that specifies that what we are asking for is for preliminary budgets.

IN JANUARY THAT INCLUDE A SCENARIO WITH NO ADDITIONAL REVENUE AND THAT INCLUDE A SCENARIO WITH ADDITIONAL REVENUE SO THAT WE CAN REALLY UNDERSTAND AS A BOARD WHAT THE OPTIONS ARE AND, IMPORTANTLY, SO THAT WE CAN ALSO HAVE REAL CONVERSATIONS WITH THE COMMUNITY ABOUT what the tradeoffs are, what the challenges are.

And also, though, we will, of course, continue to advocate for and hopefully receive additional funding from the state.

The difference between us as board members as opposed to community advocates is we have to plan for the worst.

So I don't want anybody thinking that looking at a budget without additional funding doesn't mean that we think that's a good idea or hope that happens.

It's just that we're the responsible, we're the responsible body.

So we have to hope for the best, but also plan for the worst, which is specifically why we asked for preliminary budget recommendations in January that include the worst case scenario, basically.

So if other co-sponsors have anything to add.

Director Clark.

Thank you.

One other thing I just wanted to call out is that we're also asking that any reduction scenarios include should contemplate the impacts to enrollment that basically hoping for kind of an itemized look at the impact on enrollment so that we can make better informed choices if that scenario were to happen.

So it was great working with you guys on this.

And I will just add one thing in the resolution includes a, oh, a task force to help guide recommendations for a multi-year budget forecast.

This was in one of our previous resolutions, and there was some confusion whether it would continue on.

I think it's extremely important that this task force be created.

And I know the language, because this is a 25-26 budget resolution, is a little vague in here.

But I look forward to hearing from the superintendent further how he plans to execute that task force, not tonight, but in the future.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

SO WITH THAT, DO ANY DIRECTORS HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

OKAY.

SEEING NONE, COULD STAFF PLEASE CALL FOR THE VOTE?

DIRECTOR MISRAHI?

AYE.

DIRECTOR RANKIN?

AYE.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

We will now move, I guess, to the introduction item on today's agenda.

This item is adoption of board policy number 0020, goals for the district, and 0025, guardrails for the district, an amendment to board policy number 1010, oversight and progress monitoring.

Getting to pass it to Director Rankin as the sponsor of this item to update us on the board action report, which would adopt the goals and guardrails we've developed into policy.

Director Rankin.

Okay.

This is hopefully not a surprise.

This is based upon the work session that we had.

last week when was it yeah to to narrow down our our goal and guardrail drafts um the uh this reflects what we heard were the top priorities of our community thank you um and are being introduced tonight to give us time to take it back out to community.

We have some things in the works that I think you'll be getting more information from staff about.

But as we said earlier, the student members and I had an opportunity to kind of do a practice run with a presentation to the Human Rights Commission event just about talking with folks about how we arrived at the drafts and what we were looking for from the community.

So, yeah, I look forward to that.

This basically is just putting approval of it eventually would put it into policy to better support alignment and direction from the board as opposed to the current iteration existed as a motion, but it wasn't codified.

And so adopting this into policy would become then part of our governance manual and subsequent boards would further make changes to it to adopt new goals.

We also, as we discussed in the work session, may decide that there's some wording adjustment or different things that we want to consider and, you know, it's our policy so we can bring that back.

to vote on.

So was there anything else, Julia, that we needed to add about?

No.

Okay.

Was there a, wait, sorry, the guardrail, there was one guardrail?

Do you want to come and talk about, there was a, we had a, there was a little bit of a, Oh, it's not in here.

We had a wording question come up based on a legal concern about, we had in guard wall three, I think, that we wouldn't allow opting out of practices, curriculum aligned with our values and anti-racist practices and legal caught that we want to clarify that we mean adults.

Yeah, and so Julia, can you share a little bit more about that?

Yes, so the new guardrail language clarifies that it is regarding adults and specifically district staff and their practices within the district setting and that the guardrail does not apply to students.

The language has also been changed from opting out because that has some specific connotations and Greg will correct me if I am incorrect here, but making sure that we're also protecting staff's rights and their First Amendment rights.

So the new guardrail language tries to kind of thread that needle, as it were, but still reflect the community's value as the board understands it.

Do directors have any questions for either staff or for the sponsor, Director Rankin?

Director Clark.

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR THE SPONSOR.

I'M THINKING ABOUT THE CHANGE THAT WE'RE MAKING BOTH FROM THIS CURRENT STRATEGIC PLAN AND THE GOALS AND GUARD RAILS TO OUR NEXT ONE WHICH WE'RE NOW PUTTING IN POLICY.

I'M THINKING ABOUT OUR MATH GOAL THAT'S NOT IN OUR CURRENT STRATEGIC PLAN BUT IS future strategic plan but is in the current one and i know we've had conversations about you know that we're setting this foundation we're continuing the work forward even though it's not necessarily continuing written in the in this so if if that's just a motion for the last strategic plan or am i understanding correctly that the strategic plan that we're in right now is not in policy How are we going to ensure that that work continues?

Yeah, the goals and guardrails were adopted by the board through a vote of the board.

And legal, or somebody correct me if I'm wrong, they're reflected on the website and they're reflected as formal board action, but they weren't codified into policy specifically that we would be measuring these goals.

So, I mean, supporting math outcomes is still part of basic education in just district work.

So are you...

Wondering about getting, yeah, tell me a little bit more.

I guess I'm just wondering, even in our progress monitoring today, we are seeing progress in math.

I just want to make sure that we're still, if maybe policy isn't the vehicle, but if that we're still able as a board to monitor how that's going, even though it's not formally in our strategic plan.

I got you, I think.

So basically putting it into the policy for goals and guardrails, we're saying this is how we, these are the measurements that we're going to use to evaluate essentially the performance of the superintendent and the district.

It doesn't mean that we don't have access to or monitor other things, but in terms of like PROGRESS MONITORING AND SAYING HOW WE DEFINE, YES, THE DISTRICT IS DOING ITS JOB OR HOW WE EVALUATE, WE'RE SAYING THAT THOSE TWO MEASURES WILL BE WHAT WE'RE USING FOR EVALUATION.

SO THERE'S STILL REGULAR SBAC AND DIFFERENT REPORTS.

AND THERE'S ALSO SOME OTHER MONITORING MECHANISMS TO GET INFORMATION ABOUT STUDENT PERFORMANCE.

I DON'T KNOW IF DR. STROSKY WANTS TO EVALUATE A LITTLE BIT MORE.

SO OUR GOALS ARE JUST SAYING THIS IS KIND OF HOW WE'RE EVALUATING THE SUCCESS OF THE SYSTEM.

WE WILL STILL HAVE ACCESS TO AND LOOK INTO OTHER THINGS.

Yes Mike Strowski assistant superintendent of academics we will continue to prioritize our focus on seventh grade math and be able to report back out how we're doing on that so we want to build on the good things that are that we report out some of the promising things tonight and we will continue to do that moving forward.

So I'm not in contradiction to Dr. Starosky here.

However, if the board wants to prioritize an investment in mathematics, that should be very clear.

And so we will have this as part of our accountability framework.

But in terms of progress monitoring, my interpretation is we're going to do progress monitoring on the two goals and the five guardrails.

And that's it for the formal investment of time and energy into that.

But just like science, just like everything else, we're gonna still have that as a priority for us.

But in terms of the reporting and the cascading goals from the board through the superintendent to staff, it's gonna be on those two goals.

That's my interpretation.

So I just wanna be clear on that.

And if that's not the desire of the board, now would be the time to kind of speak into that, please, and thank you.

I appreciate the clarity, Dr. Jones, and we also don't have to, the great thing is we don't have to decide this tonight.

We have some time, and as Dr. Rankin, Director Rankin said, we have some opportunities to go back to community with these to see have we got this right?

Is this correct?

Is this what we really heard in the engagement session?

Director Rankin.

One other thing to add is that we will also have, well, I guess I don't know, but certain progress in mathematics is a graduation requirement.

So it's possible that we would see that in interim measures.

I don't know if you heard that.

Yeah.

And we still have those other indicators in the interims that will provide us the regular monitoring on.

DO ANY OTHER DIRECTORS HAVE QUESTIONS FOR THE SPONSOR OR FOR STAFF?

OKAY.

SEEING NONE, WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ON TO ANNOUNCEMENTS.

ANNOUNCEMENT PORTION OF THE AGENDA.

WE HAVE A PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS COMMISSION NOTICE THAT WILL BE READ INTO THE RECORD TONIGHT.

STAFF WILL OFFER THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

Thank you, good evening, Dr. Sarah Pritchett, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

I'm reading the Notice to Employees of Unfair Labor Practice related to Case 137237-U-23C, Decisions 13982-EDUC, and 13983-PECB.

State law gives you the right to self-organize, join or assist labor or employee organizations, bargain collectively through the representative of your choice, refuse to pay dues to a union unless you have affirmatively agreed to make such payments.

The Washington State Public Employee Relations Commission, PERC, conducted a legal proceeding issuing a ruling that Seattle School District committed an unfair labor practice and ordered that this notice be posted to employees.

We unlawfully disciplined employees for including other people, including their union representatives and similarly situated coworkers on emails with the employer concerning wages, hours, and working conditions.

We unlawfully directed employees to not include other people, including their union representatives and similarly situated coworkers on emails with employers concerning wages, hours, and working conditions.

We unlawfully issued written discipline to employees for including their union and other impacted employees on an email concerning a potential grievance.

We unlawfully discriminated and interfered with an employee's right by considering an employee's protected activity when evaluating their job performance.

We unlawfully included negative comments in an employee's summative evaluations.

in reprisal for their protected unit activity.

To remedy our unfair labor practices, we will withdraw the letter of counseling issued to Laura Jensen, erroneously dated November 23rd, 2022, but actually issued shortly after November 28th, 2022, and eliminate any reference to the letter of counseling in Jensen's evaluation, personal files, and employer files.

We will withdraw the written evaluation issue to Laura Jensen for the 22-23 for 2022-23 review period and eliminate any reference to the evaluation in Jensen's personnel files and employer files and conduct a new evaluation for the 2022-23 review period that is not based on Jensen's protected activity.

We will withdraw the written evaluations issued to Julia Diaz for the 22-23 review period and eliminate any reference to the evaluation in J.

Diaz personnel files and employer files and conduct a new evaluation for the 22-23 review period that is not based on J.

Diaz protected activities and change the proposed evaluation cycle for next year from comprehensive to focused.

We will withdraw the written evaluation issue to Elizabeth Ward Robinson for performance evaluation covering April 2022 to April 2023 and eliminate any reference to the evaluation in Ward Robinson's personnel files and employer files and conduct a new evaluation for the April 2022 to April 2023 review period that is not based on Ward Robertson's protected activity and remove that recommendation that she is moved to a comprehensive evaluation cycle.

We will not include negative comments in the employee's summative evaluations in reprisal for their protected unit activity.

We will submit copies of the new evaluations to the compliance officer at the Public Employee Relations Commission and to the union once the new evaluations have been received and approved by the compliance officer, provide the union and affected employees with the new evaluations and replace all copies of the discriminatory evaluations with the new evaluations in all personnel files and employer files.

WE WILL NOT IN ANY OTHER MANNER INTERFERE WITH RESTRAINING OR COERCING ITS EMPLOYEES IN THE EXERCISE OF THEIR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

DATED 12-3-2024 ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE FOR SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT.

THANK YOU, DR. PRITCHETT.

THERE BEING NO FURTHER BUSINESS TO COME BEFORE THE BOARD.

THE REGULAR BOARD MEETING IS NOW ADJOURNED AT 816. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE.