Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors legislative meeting on May 9th 2018. And the fact that you're inside on this glorious day we appreciate immensely.
We're going to have roll call here in a moment.
And Director Pinkham is on his way.
Welcome to Seattle traffic.
Ms. Ramirez the roll call please.
Director Burke here.
Director DeWolf here.
Director Geary here.
Director Mack here.
Director Patu here.
Director Harris here.
Can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands.
Turn the meeting over to Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland for the superintendent's recognition.
Thank you.
Before we begin the recognition portion of the meeting I'd like to acknowledge the tragic shooting that occurred last night at West Seattle Stadium.
It's with sadness that I share the news about a shooting at the Seattle Parks and Rec track meet in West Seattle last night.
The victim who passed away is a parent family member of SPS students and staff and it impacts many families and students in our communities.
Although it was not an SPS event many of the students participating in the track meter SPS students and families including our staff.
We did have counseling support for students and families in the affected schools today.
So.
Recognitions as we do often at our board meetings we like to recognize our premier partners and very much appreciate the broad community support we have for the work of our schools and the important impact that our premier partners have in the lives of our students in terms of making all of our students feel welcome and giving them that connection that they need.
Tonight we want to recognize the Vietnamese Friendship Association.
They provide awesome work for us in connecting with 300 immigrant and refugee families.
Primarily at the Seattle World School but throughout the district and.
I'd like to introduce Dr. Concie Pedroza who will tell us a little bit more about the good work that the Vietnamese Friendship Association does in partnership with Seattle Public Schools.
Thank you Dr. Nyland.
I just want to share that I think the Vietnamese Friendship Association is embodies organization a community based organization that actually has the values of our policy our equity policy 0 0 3 0 as a through line in their work.
I also believe in terms of the collaboration and coherence model that they do, that they come alongside and want to learn and work along schools.
They're data focused, they're focused on equity, racial equity, working with especially the realms of the impacts of all the kids in our system, but most particularly refugees and immigrants and the students that they serve.
And what I really appreciated about them is they do their work based on research.
Based on research related to data related to they do their research around attendance about what does it mean to be in after school programming and they come alongside schools to do that work with them.
So I'm just very honored to be here to pass this on to James Hong who is the executive director from Vietnamese Friendship Association.
I've known James a long time and I'm really excited that this organization is being recognized.
Hi, good afternoon.
Thank you, Dr. Nyland and Concie and our school board for this recognition and this honor.
So on behalf of the Vietnamese Friendship Association, I'm humbled to be here today.
This year marks VFA's 40th anniversary, and we were founded in the 1970s to support the resettlement needs of refugees from the Vietnam War.
And as the Vietnamese community grew so did we.
Today we celebrate by reflecting on our roots and we're excited about the future.
We are very proud to partner with Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle World School to serve refugee and immigrant youth families and communities.
It's an especially exciting time for us at VFA to witness these communities organize and demonstrate their collective strengths in the face of an increasingly hostile and violent political climate.
At a time in our history when refugees and immigrants are being shut down, many are making their voices heard.
And I think in a moment we'll see a video highlighting stories from some of the youth that we serve.
And I think many of you know and agree that when youth feel safe and have respect and are dignified in their livelihoods, they have a lot of wisdom to share and we can learn a lot from them.
And I think we as leaders and organizations and as institutions who are in positions of power still have a lot of room to grow and learn in our own leadership so that we can continue to ensure that refugees and immigrants are not only a part of the conversation, but are also a part of the decision-making process at all levels.
So VFA is excited to continue our partnership, hopefully for another 40 years, and continue our work advancing racial equity and social justice.
And honestly, if we can get these goals achieved sooner, that would be fantastic.
So thank you, and I think there's going to be a video very shortly.
Thank you.
I like Seattle World School so much because in this school you have different students and different languages.
You can learn English, origami, photography, homework help, and running club.
Este programa es un programa que se hace en los sábados donde los estudiantes de la escuela vienen aquí y nos ayudan con nuestras tareas, con nuestro inglés, con cualquier asignatura.
Sometimes, if you don't have homework, they leave a little time to play a game, and after you can do Excel or something like that.
I like after school class because some college students, they are helping me.
I like it because English is hard for me to speak and to write, to read.
That's why I stay after school and they are helping me.
Many times we have nothing to do in our homes and it would be good to come here on Saturdays when we have new people, people from other schools who could give us advice on what could be our next step.
I like art class because I like Miss Universe so much and I like the students because I have different students and different languages.
I like that.
I just come to here because it's so boring in my home and maybe they can do the same thing and you can learn too and you don't have more homework to do at home, just here.
The most important thing is that they love you as a family, no matter where you come from or who you are.
They don't look at that and they treat you pretty well and they are very beautiful people.
I'd like to invite the board down and we've got a plaque to present to the Vietnamese Friendship Association and then I guess we do have double duty tonight so we'll have the board come back up here and then we'll go down for our next recognition after that.
All right we have another recognition tonight excited about Seattle Chungking sister city partnership has been underway for 35 years and this is the eighth anniversary of the Confucius Institute of Washington partnership that we have enjoyed for many many many years.
And I will want to take this opportunity to thank Wenxiu Wang for her great work over the last four years.
They were just explaining in very great detail all of the ins and outs that had to go through to get a couple of exchanges done this spring about teachers swapping positions and doing whatever it takes to make sure that we can continue to have students and teachers from China come here and students and teachers from here go to China and build that Chinese language appreciation as well as the cultural appreciation along with that international global perspective.
So I would like to invite Michelle Aoki to come and tell us a little bit more about the partnership and give us an opportunity to meet some of the representatives that we have here with us tonight.
Thank you so much.
It's a great honor to be here.
I'm Michelle Ancy Aoki, International Education Administrator.
So I had the great pleasure of working with the VFDA as well, all the cultures and languages of our district.
But in particular, I've been involved with the Confucius Institute of the State of Washington.
And the sister city relationship with Chongqing has been key to our being able to establish such a strong Confucius Institute.
And as I pointed out in the program there, this last year in China, among thousands of delegates from all over the world, our partner in Chongqing, Chongqing Municipal Education Commission, which is like a school district except that it's a little larger place than the city of Seattle, received the Partner of the Year Award recognition.
So that partner, partner awards don't happen one sided.
It means that we really were a good partner here in Seattle to them as well.
So I what I wanted to highlight really here is how much our students have benefited in Seattle from the visiting teachers that have come from Chongqing and some other areas of China as well.
Right now we have six seven of our teachers I guess here that are in a variety of schools from Dearborn Park excuse me not Dearborn Park this year but Beacon Hill Mercer Denny Chief Sealth and Pathfinder KH.
Thank you very much.
And as Superintendent Nyland mentioned Wenqiu Wang has been our Chinese director from China provided to us through a visa through the University of Washington as our partner institution for the last four years.
So she'll be leaving this summer.
So we're really happy to have a moment just to thank her for her tireless work to serve our students and our teachers in Seattle.
And so the other thing I just want to mention is that that this is coinciding again as Superintendent Nyland mentioned with the 35th anniversary of our sister city relationship.
I think what the sister cities really point out is that other countries are prepared to make long-term commitments to relationships with our country and I hope that our country will reach the place where we understand what a long-term commitment means.
So at this moment is this a good time to have people come forward?
Okay, so I would invite all of our teachers.
We also have Stephan Blanford who is up here tonight as a parent who has enjoyed our Mandarin dual language immersion programs and traveled to Chongqing with his daughter too.
And we have Scott Heinlein, president of the Chongqing Sister City Association.
Do you want to just say a quick word, Scott, while we kind of line up here for a picture?
And for those that also have families including Nat Bowman who is one of our original students in Mandarin dual language immersion and recently won the Chinese Bridge competition in Washington and will be going to San Francisco this weekend to compete nationally.
And for those folks that are unaware and I can't believe there are very many.
Stephon Blandford is alumna of this board of directors and serve with distinction.
Good to see you back here.
Would you like us to line up with the board members?
Is that what happens next?
Thank you for being allowing me to come here first of all.
Yeah it is our 35th anniversary coming up.
The sister cities had a long and well established relationship with Seattle Public Schools.
We have a number of resources we believe that are at our disposal to leverage even more cooperation with Chongqing.
So we look forward to the opportunity to do just that.
th th
And without further ado the Stevens Elementary School Choir.
Come on up.
What I am is supposed to be.
I'll stay strong as you will be.
And I will always be the best me that I can be.
I'll be what I am.
I will be.
I'll follow it.
I will be.
do do
Bye!
Hey thank you so much for inviting us.
We are so honored to be back here again today.
I just want to tell you who you're hearing.
This is the Stevens Elementary Choir 5. They're all fifth graders.
They are all top notch students and they are sweet wonderful people.
They represent our Stevens star.
standards at Stevens.
They do great academic work.
They take care of the Stevens community.
And they give up two lunch recesses every week.
We get to practice for 20 minutes twice a week, and that's all we do.
And these guys are just phenomenal.
They just led our spring event, the Stevens Multicultural Concert, about a week and a half ago.
and they were the stars of the program.
And we just think they are the best.
This is our 12th Choir 5 at Stevens.
So we have two, that song is by Will.i.am, a great songwriter.
And we have two more songs that we'll do for you very quickly.
One is called Don't Laugh at Me.
We use it often for our anti-bullying work at Stevens and Assemblies.
And the last song that we'll close with, if you want to help us sing it, we always welcome that.
It's called Shake a Hand, Shake a Hand.
You.
Oh.
You guys rock.
Thank you.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your program, and then we'll hand the mic to each of our extraordinarily talented singers to introduce themselves so that moms and dads, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and guardians can see them on video for posterity's sake.
Thank you.
Yes we have a great music program at Stevens.
We have two music teachers Amy Carroll who is a district teacher.
I am a resident artist funded by our wonderful PTA and I run choir five.
I help produce our holiday event the pancake breakfast and our multicultural night and I do selected curriculum based musical units for fourth third fourth and fifth grade as the year goes on.
And this is our star group.
They are just so fantastic.
I can't tell you how dedicated how committed and how easy to work with this group of kids.
Yes and we're not at full force here today.
We're typically about 34 kids so we're about 10 short.
Some kids couldn't make it.
And next week we're going to go meet the Seattle University Chamber Choir and we exchange songs with them.
It's our other exciting field trip every year.
And let's meet these guys.
And don't stop.
You guys do not stop your music education.
Keep it going next year and beyond.
Introduce yourself and pass it around.
Hi I'm Drew Davies.
Hi my name is Sophia Judd.
Hi my name is Ziyu Li.
I'm Laura Caposella.
I'm Goldie Martin.
I'm Donya Ditamo.
I'm Jaime Mullen.
I'm Noah Bowoi.
I'm Havana Hakala.
I'm Jordana King.
I'm Hanna Garrett.
I'm Amelia Zwerin.
I'm Delia Black.
I'm Nalian Orbeck.
I'm Silas Markey.
I'm Jameson Guthrie.
I'm Lila Pierce.
I'm Red Macintosh.
I'm Mateo Morote.
I'm Dagon Maslow.
I'm Taylor Woods.
I'm Ruth Swift.
I'm Rebecca Assefa.
Hello I'm Maya Walker.
And I'm Lauren Foster.
OK we need to get a really good shot with this sign that I've been watching and those might be our watch words and I'm stealing that from you when you're done.
You guys you rock the house.
Keep up your arts education.
Keep up your music education.
It it makes for well-rounded good people.
Thank you ever so much.
I think the top line on the right might be overstretching.
It's a musical.
Oh, yeah.
We could have one.
Without question that might be the best part of being a board member is to see all these extraordinary performances and they give you inspiration.
Now turn the meeting over to Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland for his comments.
Thank you.
All right.
Wow that was awesome.
Lots of celebrations this week and this month.
It's teacher appreciation week.
And as you hear me say often the highlight of my time is spending time in classrooms.
All right.
We have 3385 educators and 1179 substitute teachers and they do awesome work.
We many of us had the opportunity to be at the alliance for education lunch today and it was nice to have them give a shout out to our educators.
Being third in the nation for urban districts in terms of year over year growth for students.
And that's a tribute to our educators throughout the district.
So much appreciated.
National school nurse day and a lot of impressive statistics there and as President Harris often mentions the state generously funds us at nine nurses for 53000 students.
Fortunately Seattle is able to do better than that.
We have 50 FTE nurses on staff and then the city supports us and we still don't have enough.
So we greatly appreciate the work that our health care professionals provide for us.
It's also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month celebrating Asians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.
It's digital inclusion week recognizing that we have a digital divide and some of our communities are working to make sure that we have increased equity.
and access to digital resources.
It's also national bike to school month and our employees here at the John Stanford Center had a coffee and goodies event out today celebrating the number of employees here in this building that ride their bicycle to work.
And tomorrow night in this room we'll be celebrating Seattle schools scholarship fund annual award ceremony.
Appreciate board members participation in that event.
It's always special to have.
The Seattle School Retirees Association and the Seattle School Scholarship Fund recognized two students from each of our high schools and to hear just a little bit of the incredible stories that each of them have.
I'll be brief on the rest of my comments.
Our three strategic planning goals are excellence and equity systems improvement and engagement and I'll comment just briefly on each one of those.
Under the Excellence and equity portion.
Thank you to the school board.
Continue to have a lot of meetings in addition to formal board meetings.
I had work sessions last week in terms of enrollment and capacity and then a discussion of the SMART goals for this coming year.
So lots of good discussions have been underway already and more discussions to come.
Board at this point seems to be zeroing in on continuation of excellence and the equity and the engagement goals and then adding a goal with regard to high schools for the 21st century.
Still some discussion about what that goal might be called.
And.
And the 24 credits and how we continue to give more opportunities to our students to have them be as our strategic plan says college career and life ready.
Under ethnic studies I think we have some on the sign up list tonight to talk about ethnic studies and there is at the back table a memo an update with regard to where we are with our ethnic studies work and I I'll just comment briefly that we have had a group of 25 educators on our ethnic studies work group.
They've been working with us to develop an ethnic studies curriculum and then we've had approximately 40 teachers who have been piloting the draft ethnic studies core content that were that was developed by that group.
So thank you to the board for providing the funding for that as part of our smart goals funding and thank you to the city who also contributed some funding to that.
And I said I was only going to mention one but there's one more here.
So arts focused culturally responsive teaching is another one of our efforts that's underway that has a group of teachers saying how they can use arts to provide more culturally responsive opportunities for our students.
Under improving systems we have had a lot of concern generated with regard to transportation and our delayed transportation in too many cases.
So first student is having difficulty getting sufficient drivers and that means that we've had to double up on some of the routes.
So we continue to work with them.
They will be flying in some drivers from out of state to help with that probably next week.
And meanwhile we're continuing to do what we can to try to get routes doubled up and get kids to school.
And then interesting topic here that I won't do justice to trying to figure out how to digitize our archives and go from I think it says 35 boxes of paper that we generate just from student records each year and so trying to figure out how to digitize that and archive it more efficiently.
And then the third goal is with regard to community engagement.
We've recently completed five regional meetings with regard to capital construction requests coming up for February of 2019. We'll be going out to some of our communities of color here in the next few weeks and then there'll be more opportunities for engagement as the board goes through a process of deciding what will go on the ballot in February.
Lots of good news across the district.
The first one talks about President Obama's mother who has some connection with Mercer Island High School and a partnership with Rainier Beach.
So two of our students from Rainier Beach have received Stanley and Dunham scholarships for college.
Five thousand dollars each.
So congratulations to them.
The Garfield chess team took 12th in the U.S.
Awesome for them.
The Duke Ellington festival every year.
Seattle is always well represented.
I think there's about a dozen maybe 15 schools that are invited from across the country.
Roosevelt and Ballard have been invited this year and to like say of about a dozen chosen out of 109 schools that were vying for that honor.
Governor Inslee came and spent some time with Concord students fourth and fifth grade students were with Governor Jay Inslee at the dedication ceremony for the new C.
Marr Museum of Chicano Latino culture.
And the governor tweeted about the students at Concord saying that was the best part of his visit.
Naramore art exhibit is huge.
Every year we appreciate the partnership with the.
Seattle Arts Museum.
They give a showcase for 200 of our artists to have their work showcased there.
And the awards were given on Friday but I believe that they're on exhibit there for a while.
And so it's great to see the talent that our young people have.
And you see the posters around.
I think the Seattle Center School every year does several posters advertising the event.
So there's four different versions of those that are scattered around the district encouraging people to come see the work of our students.
Ignite is inspiring girls now in technology evolution.
And they have honored two of our teachers for the work that they've done.
Michelle Amato at Broadview Thompson and Julie Gotti at Franklin High School were recognized.
One of our third graders Corinne Manning.
I don't think I can say this.
The Google doodle.
I think that's the thing that comes up on our screen.
She's in line for competing well and moving on toward having hers included in that national doodle for Google contest.
So a budding artist there maybe she'll get an audition with Google.
Mr. Zetterberg's class at Thurgood Marshall was recognized for participating in facing difference challenge.
Our nutrition services held a culinary summit here.
Gee I've been party to that before I missed out on food.
Hmm.
They came here on a field trip and participated with us here.
And then finally congratulations to Zen Williams of Chief Sealth International High School for her first place win with voice through my hands at this year's 7th district congressional arts competition.
So lots of good things underway and again looking forward to the scholarship recognitions tomorrow night here in this room.
Thank you.
you.
We have reached the point of the agenda where if board directors have committee reports a few minutes to tell us what we're up to and when your next meeting is and what is a hot topic.
Who would like to go first.
Director Mack chair of operations.
Good evening.
We had a great work session on May 1 about enrollment capacity for next year and the year after that though we ran out of time to actually get into the details on the 2019 20 school year but great conversation about our challenges for next year.
And as I understand it staff is going to be getting back to us on some of the questions around.
Robert Eagle Staff and portables and possibilities of moving wait lists at the Audit and Finance Committee meeting which is next Monday.
So the staff is working on looking at options there and want to let you know that's happening for operations.
We have our meeting tomorrow and an incredibly full agenda.
To include nine various capital project board actions.
Discussion about the natural resource conservation procedure.
We're going to have a report on our rental activities facilities activities and rental rates.
And we've also added something to the agenda that you can find online where we list all of the upcoming meetings and there's a lot of them around BEX and other district sponsored meetings that are related to operations.
And on this Friday the BEX BTA oversight committee meeting is meeting and I think that's about it.
So looking forward to a busy conversation tomorrow.
Thanks very much.
Who else would like to report out.
Director Pinkham chair of audit and finance.
Thank you Director Harris.
We had our April meeting before our last meeting so I just have an update now for our meeting coming up on Monday.
Actually Eden kind of touched on it that we will be looking at Eagle Staff and how things are impacted not only for that site but other sites as we're looking to add portables and the financial costs and what maybe we can do.
differently or just try to see what other ideas we can come up with to help lower the cost and the number of portables that we're putting on our sites looking at our agenda for this coming Monday.
Definitely a lot of bars.
That's one thing I kind of missed having to say yes that was heard by Audit and Finance and we recommended it for so it's like I'll be doing that quite a bit in the next few budget meetings or board meetings.
Yet really nothing more to report than other what I report at the last board meeting.
But again we'll be meeting Monday May 14th from 430 to 630. If you're interested please attend.
Director Burke chair of curriculum and instruction.
Curriculum instruction next meeting is Tuesday May 15th 430 p.m.
and we have two board action reports up for discussion and potential action.
One of them is the student rights and responsibilities handbook and one is the annual approval of our highly capable annual plan which you know I think is has typically been a great conversation.
item at those committee meetings.
We're working on being introduced to several policy things.
We're moving forward the program evaluation and assessment work with an accompanying superintendent procedure.
That's actually not expected to come out of committee but I think it's going to be developed a little bit further.
We're going to touch on the early stages of policies 2021 through 2024 which relate to electronic learning.
And I know that's a topic that's been a point for the board for quite some time.
That work will be referring pretty carefully or closely with our information technology advisory committee that I believe the application window for that closes tomorrow.
Thank you for that.
So we'll be doing a final selection or selection of folks for that committee within the next one to two weeks and we have some special attention items.
We're going to be talking a little bit about civics as a component of of our high school or our K-12 Social Studies and an update on the advanced learning work and an update on ethnic studies and also some of the things that are coming forward on the Naviance that was approved by the board.
Some of the details about how that's being worked through in terms of opt out.
So it's going to be a really as always interesting and lively discussion.
Hope folks can attend.
Thank you.
Any other directors would like to report out.
Seeing none at this point I'd like to introduce our students that are here at the dais to my left Gian Rosario and Essence Roberson.
Gian is a senior at Rainier Beach High School who is responsible for organizing social justice equity a much needed renovation for Rainier Beach High School.
We've been hearing from several.
extraordinary speakers as to the need for Rainier Beach High School and its placement on BEX V. He's very passionate about Rainier Beach community generally and will continue these efforts after graduation and he will be attending University of Washington in Seattle majoring in engineering and poli sci.
Go Dawgs.
Essence senior at Rainier Beach High School has joined the social justice efforts with Gian and recruited a slew of students to fight the good fight.
Oh I love whoever wrote this.
Thank you Nate.
She is an art major and planning on attending Cornish Institute.
The floor is yours.
Tell us about yourselves your schools your hopes your aspirations what you like and what you don't like.
And pick up the microphone and hold it closely so that.
Do you have any specific like this order of questions you want to answer first.
How about who what how come and where you're going.
OK.
Well I'm going to Cornish because my teacher Mr. Stephen Miller recommended it to me.
He recommended the school to me.
He thought it was a good fit for me and he said you should always research your teachers and who you're studying with and make sure you like them because if you don't like the school then you shouldn't just go there.
Tell us about your art teacher at Rainier Beach High School.
Well for I believe two to three years we had Miss Hancock.
She was wonderful.
She just she's just a wonderful person.
She made sure that what we wanted we were on track to get.
And now we have Miss Morelli who is also a great teacher and she recommended Cornish as well.
I'm not sure if they went there but they're very adamant about it.
Yeah.
And why is art important to a high school student.
Well I'm not sure about anyone else.
But for me I've been I like all forms of art.
I find beauty in everything and everyone.
Art is just a way for me to express myself.
I don't often show anger or anything, so I'll show it in a sketch or something.
I don't know, art is just everything to me.
Thank you Jian.
Can you tell us why engineering why the University of Washington in Seattle.
What did you like best about attending Rainier Beach and why the community is so important to you.
So I was recommended by my counselors to go to the University of Washington and I was looking at the engineering program and I wasn't actually much interested in engineering until I was more interested in political science but I decided to do engineering instead.
after we did an internship at Bassetti Architect last summer.
And so that's where I had kind of like a mentor.
His name is James, and he kind of told me about all the things that we could do with engineering.
And so with us trying to push the renovation, I was like, why not just do engineering?
So I decided to do that.
Yeah.
And then so sorry what was the other questions.
I mean not just because I live not just because I live there I think it's I feel like it's just it's different from other school experiences that I've had going from Cleveland to Rainier Beach.
It's just I can't say I don't know what it is at Rainier Beach but there's something there that just makes me keep wanting to.
come back every time like even after graduation.
I'll be there after graduation.
Yeah.
Thank you guys very much.
Have a round of applause.
More?
Please continue.
Oh.
So I haven't really had the opportunity to give a shout out and thank you to Mr. Richard Best and Gretchen Dedecker.
So they helped out on our day of service where we did cleaning around the school, did partial improvements and renovations at our PAC lobby so I wanted to say thank you to them.
You're reading the next part.
We also want to give a shout out to all of our counselors Ms. Tran, Bethea, Zavalli for ensuring that our seniors at Rainier Beach High School graduate.
And I'd also like to thank Mr. Pierce who is who has been stressing as much as we have during IB exams or basically the whole school year making sure that we give our all and our assignments are completed and like to the best of their abilities.
And also I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the entire Rainier Beach High School staff for the outstanding job they do every day at school.
And we also wanted to invite the school board to some events that we're having in the later half of the year.
So we have multicultural night tomorrow I believe at 7 correct?
If you guys want to stop by you can.
And on June 7th at 7 p.m.
we have our yearly fashion show that we will both be in.
So we invite you to that as well.
Thank you.
Thanks very much and thanks for the assist director DeWolf.
Much appreciate.
OK.
We still have a little time.
for board comments but let's get the consent agenda out of the way presently if we might.
May I have a motion for the consent agenda please.
I move approval of the consent agenda.
I second the motion.
Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.
Do directors have any items that they would like to remove from the consent agenda.
Director Mack.
Yes ma'am.
I noticed that there is some public comment around something that's on the consent agenda.
And I recall we had this conversation about the order of the consent agenda coming before public comment.
And I don't remember what we resolved around.
Can you link it up to the public comment topic.
Well I public testimony number seven just says personnel report and I don't know what it doesn't say anything more than that but that's in the consent agenda.
So if we adopt it we can't.
I would entertain a motion to delay this until after public testimony.
Do I have such a motion.
This item or this entire action.
This entire action until after public testimony.
Motion to adjust the agenda to move the consent agenda to follow public testimony.
Thank you.
I second the motion.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
OK.
Now we have reached board comments who would like to go first.
We have 15 minutes before public testimony starts.
Don't all yell at once.
Director Burke.
Thank you.
OK I'll keep it short.
I want to also extend thanks to you know for our recognitions.
James Han the Vietnamese Friendship Association and happy 40th anniversary.
That's super exciting and I know that that work has has personally benefited my family so I really appreciate that.
The there's a point in Superintendent Nyland's comments about teacher appreciation week that said thank a teacher who had an impact on your life.
So I just want some of you maybe all of you have heard this story.
So I apologize if it's a repeat but when I was attending Ballard High School when we didn't have to have quite as many credits and there was more opportunity and flexibility I took metal shop twice with Mr. Taylor.
and woodshop twice with Mr. Bogota.
And now I do a lot of work on my house and actually got a feature article in this old house and and the job that I work now the company that I run I started as a student because I knew how to run a vertical mill.
So I say I owe my career to Mr. Taylor and I owe my hobby to Mr. Bogota.
10 percent back and you're getting it as we speak.
I want to thank the team that's been doing the work on ethnic studies.
We've been getting regular reports on the C&I committee and I know it's an area of passion for the community and I know it's something that there's a sense of urgency behind.
And I really want to thank the people that are both creating the sense of urgency and that are working their tushes off to fulfill.
I've honestly I've never seen the district jump so fast in doing a body of work and also trying to do it with fidelity and doing it well.
You know the folks that are creating and curating the materials and putting it out into schools to pilot and doing it you know incrementally but as fast as as they they feel like they can actually get things into service.
I'm really looking forward to hearing feedback from some of those pilots and understanding how we can take it more to scale.
One other thing I had a community meeting last weekend and I just wanted to share a couple of the topics.
The Eagle Staff Licton Springs capacity challenge came up again with the community interests and I just wanted to share with the board and also with the community that there are staff is looking at different options and scenarios to try to understand what that looks like.
And we'll have a more more public facing.
you know actually some messaging some scenarios certainly before the summer break and I'll be doing some more outreach for the folks that I'm in at the schools to try to make sure that we're capturing their input.
I also heard from from some librarians again and a reminder about sustainable funding model to try to put librarians into every elementary school and the challenges of elementary schools that don't have the numbers that they don't get a 1.0 allocation they get a point five and it's not a point six or a point seven it's either a 1.0 or a point five so that that discretization of either get half or whole really makes an impact on some of these libraries.
I had some folks who were inquiring or encouraging more city collaboration on properties and capacity work.
And so I just was able to reassure him about the great work that is happening.
And it's I'd say it's it's completely a new chapter.
And then I also had community concern around language immersion work and how we do that across all of our different language immersion sites in a way that has.
is in alignment with our equity principles but it's also something that we can sustain the funding on and that we commit to it as a district and build it into our model so that it's not something that requires supplemental funding that we design a model that can be funded and then we actually fund it.
So I appreciate that concern as well and look forward to more conversations around that.
I will stop there.
I do not have another meeting scheduled yet but as soon as I do I will get that posted and may have a couple more comments after public comments.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Who would like to go next.
Director Pinkham.
Thank you.
Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ and Taz Clout.
Thank you Director Burke for going first so it kind of set me up.
Hey what can I share.
So my last community meeting.
Kind of lonesome had three people show up but the first person show up because there were concerns about curriculum at Broadview Thompson.
They're saying hey I'm looking at going to sign my kids up for open enrollment.
I looked at.
Hazel Wolf saw what they had and our assignment school Broadway Thompson there is definitely a difference between the curriculum available between the two.
And so she didn't get the choice assignment for Hazel Wolf for the family so she's wondering well what can we do to help.
equalize the curriculum at the different schools.
Yes that's a new school but other schools if they still have the old curriculum how can we get those there.
And I said well be aware that we are got a new adoption so hopefully some our new curriculum will be getting out there to those schools that are in need of an update.
So that was one of the concerns that was shared and the other one was the Robert Eagle Staff middle school capacity about yes we're over capacity right now we're already looking at putting up portables on the side of the school that's only been open for one year.
So what can we do.
to help alleviate that and they're in favor of not putting up portables on the site.
So just sharing that as one of the concerns.
I also want to thank our speakers today Gian and Essence.
Gian I don't know if you know I work at the University of Washington for the College of Engineering.
So hopefully I'll be seeing you around a bit.
So if you got any questions and say hey I was on the board up there with you remember and.
We'll get you taken care of.
In essence best of luck at Cornish.
My daughter also is a art enthusiast so I know express yourself through that and other media besides math or science and it still is a talent.
Congratulations on your talent.
Thank you.
I just want to acknowledge again the Chongqing 35 years anniversary for that of the Stevens Choir 5. Thank you for the songs.
I actually saw our board members kind of dancing in their seats.
It was nice to see.
Teacher Appreciation Week.
Yes.
For me thinking about to a teacher that really influenced me I can actually go back to seventh grade.
mathematics where I was in a math class and I was in on the lower level math classes as a kind of OK you're on this track and you're on that track.
But the upper division math teacher or the teacher taught the different levels and the teacher saw something in me and he said Scott I'm going to pull you up and put you in another math class with these other students.
And he was also a teacher that always could make the students laugh.
I remember things he'd used to do sit up at the overhead projectors.
I know students but what's an overhead projector?
And he would try to plug it in by throwing the plug at the plug in.
He said one of these days he's going to make it.
So I don't know if he ever made it.
He didn't make it while I was there but.
He showed confidence in me or saw something in me that hey here's a student that was probably put on the wrong track but I see something else.
I appreciate that.
His name was Mr. Gilman.
So I'm sure he's no longer with us but I know his family is out there as well.
So he's the one that inspired me and eventually I went on and I graduated with a math degree from the University of Washington.
So without his belief in me I probably wouldn't be where I am today as far as degree wise.
I also want to know that I am looking at introducing a future bar about reestablishing Indian Heritage High School.
It's a need that I kind of got me on the board here in the first place.
And for me I see it as one way to really bring back our community into our education.
I had a visitor at the University of Washington Dr. Kamu Bob as part of our men of color and engineering series and he talked about that how unfortunate our education is moving away from the needs of the community.
Our education seems to be more in favor of the needs of industry.
Yes it helps if we tie in the social economic development that will help with.
Yes it's going to industry get those good jobs good paying jobs.
But if we don't bring along the community with it we're losing sight.
And our community then gets lost in as we're pushing.
Yes let's go career ready but let's not leave behind our community.
And I think that's something a Native focused school can really emphasize.
This is a school that's going to focus on the community and do what's best for the community because that's what education is designed to do to make our communities better.
And I'll save my comments for later but Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.
Does someone want to go really quickly or shall we take a stretch break until public testimony starts at 530. I see stretch break head shoulders knees and toes.
Thank you.